Pacifist Leaderboard? (And Rules Discussion)
6 years ago
Texas, USA

I recently posted two proof-of-concept pacifist runs through Normal Baal.

Sorceress: https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/668zh5/diablo_2_pacifist_74133/ Paladin: https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/668zh5/diablo_2_pacifist_74133/dgkofcd/

The response has been fairly positive, with both Yagamoth and BlazerFlamewing attempting runs of their own. Is there enough interest to set up an actual leaderboard for this category here? If so, let's hash out what we think the best ruleset is.

Here are my current thoughts on the rules I originally posted on Reddit.

Rule #1: You may not take aggressive action toward any creature or animated construct, nor may you provoke or summon an entity, or hire a mercenary, to do so on your behalf.

This is the core tenet behind the pacifist concept, and I think it should remain largely unchanged, though there are still a few questions that need to be answered. For example, should any Necromancer curses be allowed? Can anyone use them, or just Necros?

Rule #2: You may enable Ladder-only runewords.

Originally I allowed this because it wasn't known how to get a non-Sorceress past Lord de Seis, and because I thought Edge was necessary for the Sorceress run to be reasonably viable.

My Paladin run shows how to get non-Sorcs past De Seis, and BlazerFlamewing showed () that Edge isn't at all a requirement.

Since enabling Ladder-only runewords requires messing around with text files arguably external to the game, it's likely to be seen as fairly controversial. Let's avoid that controversy by disallowing Ladder-only runewords (or perhaps only allowing them in a miscellaneous category.)

Rule #3: You may freely use /players X.

Yagamoth seemed disinclined to use /players X in his run, perhaps because he's an experienced runner and none of the main categories allow /players X.

But pacifist runs (especially non-Paladin runs) are dominated by long stretches of leveling that are made a ¤lot¤ less tedious by use of /players X. I still think /players X should be allowed, as it makes runs a lot more palatable for viewers and players alike.

Rule #4: You aren't responsible for the behavior of character-independent NPCs.

I think this is fairly obvious and shouldn't be changed.

Rule #5: You may use damaging shrines, since they're "acts of god".

I used a damaging shrine once or twice in my Sorceress run, originally justifying it by saying the in-game character had no way of knowing what was going to happen. Yagamoth didn't want to use damaging shrines in his run.

In retrospect, I'm leaning towards Yagamoth's viewpoint that using damaging shrines isn't pacifistic. We players certainly know what's going to happen when we use them, and it seems against the spirit of the concept to incentivize players to optimize the best way to repeatedly and actively kill Rakanishu with damaging shrines at the start of the run.

Rule #6: If you accidentally do something non-pacifistic, simply apologize and don't allow that enemy to die. If that enemy ¤needs¤ to die, respawn it unprovoked in a new game.

This was a rule I made out of practicality, to deal with a terribly annoying bug that causes your mouse bindings to revert to attack completely unpredictably when any of your equipment changes.

For example, maybe you're fully statted for all of your gear even when naked, and you swap your amulet, or put on a pair of boots. Sometimes (not all the time, it's completely unpredictable!) your mouse bindings will revert to attack. It also happens quite frequently (but not all the time!) when you do the standard speedrunning trick of buying potions quickly by filling up and then picking up your belt.

If you aren't paying SUPER CLOSE ATTENTION, or being completely OCD about fixing your bindings every time you buy potions or switch gear, it's very easy to accidentally take a swing at an enemy, which is a crappy way to lose a multi-hour run.

I think this rule is good because it doesn't senselessly punish meaningless mistakes that largely derive from a glitch in the game. In that way I hope it makes the category more accessible and less annoying. Additionally, as written, I believe it doesn't incentivize players to optimize how to best skirt around the edges of the rule.

I still think actively provoking an enemy in any way and then watching it die (or simply killing it outright with any action) should be completely disallowed, however.

Germany

pacifist runs are good fun and all.. but I do not see the point of making this a speedrun category tbh. It is a challenge run - not a speedrun. Apart from that fact it would be a nightmare to review those runs - since you will literally have to watch the full run just to notice if the person used a dmging skill at any point of the run. Have fun doing that over a 4h+ run - It just wont happen.

Our current categories are much easier to control in that regard.

Texas, USA

The point of it being a speedrun category (like all categories in all games, I reckon) is to foster competition between interested parties, and to have a centralized source of rules and runs for people to refer to.

I feel attempting to classify a pacifist speedrun as mere "good fun" and a "challenge run" – as opposed to a ¤true¤ speedrun – isn't really defensible. You may have no personal interest in pacifist speedruns, but what makes any speedrun category truer than any other? Aren't all speedruns simply arbitrary challenges? (That being said, the pacifist concept is common to many games, and clearly isn't just completely random.)

Even my unoptimized proof-of-concept runs are shorter than existing runs, and the pacifist run undeniably submits to skill. That is, there are interesting, skillful strategies for optimization. Yagamoth and BlazerFlamewing have already attempted runs, and from what I understand, plan on doing so again. Optimizations are being discussed and discovered. There ¤is¤ interest in the concept, and as I understand the purpose of speedrun.com, this is the most natural place to focus that interest and codify the rules.

(And as further proof of interest, note that the original pacifist run was covered on a few large gaming websites and has been viewed more than 200,000 times in two days.)

Anyway, if you don't want to review pacifist runs, I think the obvious solution is to not review them. Just let people submit runs, and if someone notices a rule violation in a run, take it down. And if you don't want to sully the honor of the srsgaming categories by adding an unsightly "Pacifist (This Is A Stupid Meme Run, How Could Anyone Take This Seriously, What Is The World Coming To, Bah Humbug)" tab to the leaderboard, just add a "Miscellaneous" tab and list any pacifist categories under that.

AlanVault likes this

Just because you've done a run w/ some restrictions doesn't mean that it deserves a lb category. Lkeweise, just because some category doesn't have an lb, doesn't mean you shouldn't run it.

TalicZealot and Zaba like this
Germany

My point is not that I dont like the concept what so ever. But the point of speedrunning is clearly to go as FAST as POSSIBLE A "pacifist" run will never be anywhere near the fastest possible way to beat this game.

To your point of "your run beat some of the current runs on this page" There are a lot of runs in here that also arent the "fastest" possible and / or are played by ppl that dont have a lot of experience. Or ppl that only did 1 run, etcpp.

If there is an interest of more then a couple people for this category we can put it in a misc category.. I just don't believe the pacifist run will have a long life of interest. For example: The barb hell runs were played for a few weeks and since then noone touched it for quite some time.

British Columbia, Canada

As much as I would have loved to see an actual leaderboard for categories like this, I do agree that it would be fairly cumbersome to set one up like this and too much work for mods. BUt that doesn't mean we can't set up our own version of a leaderboard for extra categories, verified by others who do those runs (like using Google spreadsheets or something like that) - I know when I did my run I immediately had it disqualified by other runners (I wasn't even sure I did it right in the first place) but I was okay with that - it was fun regardless and I do plan on trying it again in the future

I do think that the attitude of "well, no one is gonna run it" or "it was only ran for a week and died" doesn't really reflect the nature of having fun while at the same time promoting healthy competition - afterall, the Hell Barb runs ARE still being run today, even if there haven't been any completed ones in a while, as it IS a difficult run. I know Ryu and Arctic are still at it. Not everyone is in it to be the absolute fastest, a lot are here to challenge themselves, have fun, break the norm, have conversations... the list goes on!

Happy running, everyone!

AlanVault likes this
United States

I love pacifist runs (and do quite a few of them in different games). However, it's quite a tall task to ask a mod to comb through a 6-8 hour run to make sure it's all legit. I don't think it would hurt anything to have the category, but it would depend entirely on a mod being willing to actually vet the runs that are submitted under that category.

Zaba and GoodleShoes like this
Germany

I liked the run when I first saw it on reddit, but I really didn't like the set of rules you were using

  1. You use /players X: I know we've had /players x leaderboard in the past (a few years ago; noone ever used them) ...

It's a gamechanging cheatcode-like command... Idk... using something like that in a speedrun would feel sketchy to me, but I guess you could argue allowing that for a run like that.

Other game changing commands like the '-act 5' launch parameter are not allowed either :P (That command makes freshly created characters start in act 5 on level 33 - it may be a fun challenge to try and gear a high level character only in act 5 - might be race-worthy, but nothing I would want a category for - personal opinion I assume...)

  1. Ladder Only Runewords: You are using a mod that allows ladder only runewords to be used in single player.

  2. You break your rules by accidentally hitting monsters and penaltize yourself afterwards. I mean - look at other speedruns: GTA San Andreas 'accidental cheatcode' resets hours into the run - or other pacifift speedruns - when they accidentally kill a monster it's run over.

From a verifiers perspective checking a run for mistakes like that would be horrible.

Adding a misc category would not be the problem, coming up with a good, clear and unexploitable set of rules would be the problem. People could say "Static field says 'Weakens enemies by 25 percent' - it doesnt actually damage them, its basically a curse"

Regarding the verification difficulty: I would probably just accept the runs unchecked or check them with minimal effort (to see if the time is correct) If a viewer finds a mistake they could just message one of us to have the run rejected. That would not be a big problem ("Innocent until proven guilty")

Just out of curiousity: By "apologizing to a monster" after accidentally hitting one - do you mean pressing numpad-4?

Edited by the author 6 years ago
AlanVault and Zaba like this
Texas, USA

@LaV

  1. As far as I know, other runs don't have significant stretches of forced leveling in them. (Maybe Hell runs do, I don't think I've ever watched one.) Regardless, I believe that using /players X makes pacifist runs more palatable for viewers and players alike. There's nothing interesting about doing 120 Countess runs instead of 30, or whatever.

I realize that coming from a more traditional D2 speedrunning background, some may find /players X distasteful, simply because people like what they're familiar with, and standard runs don't use it. But I really disagree with the characterization of /players X as a "cheat code". It's officially endorsed here, for example: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/basics/experience.shtml

  1. I did use a Ladder runeword in the proof-of-concept Sorceress run (not in the Paladin run), but in the original post in this thread I proposed ¤not¤ allowing Ladder runewords. You may have misread or misunderstood that point.

  2. As far as I know, "you break your rules by accidentally hitting monsters and penaltize yourself afterwards" is false. I am not aware that I took aggressive action against any enemy in either of my proof-of-concept runs, so I think there has been a misapprehension.

That being said, because Diablo 2 has an insanely annoying glitch that only meaningfully affects pacifist runs, I feel it makes sense to have a rule that minimizes the extent to which people will have runs ruined by the glitch. I believe the exception as written is philosophically defensible and mechanically unexploitable. If you can come up with a method of exploiting the exception for gain, I'm all ears.

"Adding a misc category would not be the problem, coming up with a good, clear and unexploitable set of rules would be the problem. People could say 'Static field says 'Weakens enemies by 25 percent' - it doesnt actually damage them, its basically a curse'"

Well, that's why I made this thread -- to get feedback on my proposed set of rules. As far as I can tell, my rules are reasonable and unexploitable. The Static Field example doesn't really make sense to me. The goal of the run isn't to pedantically follow an arbitrary mechanical limitation, it's to be philosophically pacifist. Would a pacifist actively cast an AoE spell knowing it would actively damage and provoke another? Definitely not! Thus, actively casting Static Field isn't allowed. (I also expect a pacifist wouldn't endorse curses, but I could see potentially allowing Necromancers to use curses if they don't pull aggro or otherwise alter behavior, to allow for another meaningfully different build.)

"Regarding the verification difficulty: I would probably just accept the runs unchecked or check them with minimal effort (to see if the time is correct) If a viewer finds a mistake they could just message one of us to have the run rejected. That would not be a big problem"

Yes, this is the solution I proposed earlier in this thread, I don't know why other people subsequently responded and claimed pacifist runs would place an undue burden on the mods. We seem to be in agreement: if a pacifist category ever exists, the runs don't need to be verified.

"Just out of curiousity: By 'apologizing to a monster' after accidentally hitting one - do you mean pressing numpad-4?"

As long as you apologize in your heart, that's enough. You may hit numpad-4 or apologize out loud if you like. The important part is that you don't allow that monster to die, since you would have provoked it and can no longer be held blameless for the consequences of its actions. (Though obviously the goal of any runner should be to never need to apologize.)

AlanVault likes this
Germany

well the "easy" way to not accidentally hit monsters is by putting "throw" on both left and right click at all possible times

Germany

This will get a little longer:

  • /players X - i can live with that
  • mods (ladder rws) - not allowed.

The way your rules look you could "accidentally" cast glacial spike into the pack of maulers that is stunlocking you. You just had to "apologize" to them and could run out of their trap. That is not okay so using skills that could harm/negatively influene an enemy has to be forbidden.

I think the list of spells you can't use would be too long so lets try finding a list of skills players may use:

Amazon: Critical Strike, Dodge, Avoid, Penetrate, Evade, Pierce (Although crit, penetrate and pierce are useless)

Decoy? According to the skill description ingame the decoy "draws fire from enemies" but its not a summon that agresses monsters. Its only purpose is distracting enemies.

Assassin: Claw Mastery, Weapon Block, Burst of Speed, Fade, Venom (Claw Mastery and Venom are useless)

Necromancer: Golem Mastery, Summon Resist (useless), Bone Armor

Barbarian: All Combat Masteries, Shout, Battle Orders, Battle Command

Find Potion? Find Item? Would a true pacifist mutilate corpses in order to find items or potions? I don't think so....

Paladin: Holy Shield, All passive auras except for redemption, Might, Blessed Aim, Concentration, Fanaticism (The offensive auras would be rather useless)

Charge? - Would a true pacifist risk accidentally hitting monsters with a dangerous charge attack? I'd say no Redemption? - Would a true pacifist pray for slain monsters in order to redeem their souls? - Probably, yeah

Sorceress: Masteries, Enchant (to look cool) Warmth, Teleport, Energy Shield

Telekinesis? Quite similar to charge, its nice to have, but would a true pacifist risk accidentally damaging a monster just to snatch a shrine, drink from a well or activate a waypoint? In this case I think yes. The main difference between charge and telekinesis in this regard is with charge you actually have to target a monster in order to accidentally hit it, charge sometimes auto-aims.

Druid: Werewolf, Werebear, Lycanthropy, Cyclone Armor, Oak Sage, Heart of the Wulverine

Solar Creeper and Carrion Wine? Would a true pacifict druid summon something that destroys corpses of enemies in order to regenerate health and mana? I think thats a very druidy thing to do, yes.

Skilling all skills should be allowed (as synergy to skills that are actually used, as synergy to skills that are triggered when hit, to create nice patterns in the skilltree) All passive skills should be in the list above (did I miss any?)

This is my thoughts about the skills that I came up with when looking at the skilltrees for 20 minutes, its likely I missed something so go do the same and correct me or express different opinions.

//

General Rules:

Hit a monster -> it has to survive the game (could this be exploited somehow w/o using skills?) Kill a monster -> reset /players x allowed Using a skill that is not 'whitelisted' -> reset (could possibly be changed for telekinesis - "using a skill that is not whitelisted outside of the town" - while in town telekinesis cannot harm anyone) Fire/Poison/Explosie shrines may not be activated

//

What do we do about other, mandatory helping NPCs in the game? Wild barbarians in act 5 and Flavie in act 1?

edit: In hindsight: Regarding the destruction of corpses with Redemption, Find Item, Find Potion, Solar Creeper and Carrion Wine: For all of these it should either be a combined Yes or No. And if it's a yes what should we do with corpses of dead rogues for example? What about those trapped souls in Act 4? Bone piles? (could be some sort of religious burial ritual from the monsters for all we know)

So the real question would be: Can a true paficist live with disturbing the eternal slumber of things that used to live?

Edited by the author 6 years ago
AlanVault likes this
Texas, USA

@Teo-

There's no "easy" fix because there's a glitch that randomly and unpredictably resets your mouse bindings whenever any of your equipment changes, whether or not you're naked statted for your gear, whether or not the equipment in question was a weapon, whether or not you even have a weapon equipped, etc.

For example, in my Paladin proof-of-concept run, there's an instance where I'm fully statted for all of my gear, and I merely swap amulets. As a result of swapping one amulet in place of another, my mouse bindings revert to attack. This is insane. (It also tends to happen a lot [but not all the time! It's random!] when you do the common speedrunning trick of filling and unequipping your belt to quickly buy potions.)

The motivation for the "apology rule" is to minimize the extent to which that glitch punishes people who want to attempt a pacifist run, because it's very easy to fail to notice that your bindings have been switched, and then accidentally swing at something. Yes, if you're super careful and in the habit of anally re-setting both weaponswitch bindings any time you equip or unequip anything ever, it shouldn't be a problem, and that's actually what I do religiously in both proof-of-concept runs. (As I said, I'm not aware that I accidentally swing at, cast at, or otherwise damage or provoke a monster in either run.)

But repeatedly and doubly re-setting your mouse bindings hundreds of times per run isn't a common thing for players -- even experienced speedrunners -- to do, and until you get in the habit, it's ¤very¤ easy to get "gotten" by the glitch. It happened to me in all of the runs I attempted prior to published proof-of-concept runs. It happened multiple times to BlazerFlamewing in his first attempt at a pacifist run (and he even directly ¤killed¤ an enemy on accident, which unfortunately disqualifies his run.) It happened to Yagamoth in his first attempt at a pacifist run, after which I believe he apologized to the monster and let it be, though he didn't finish the run regardless.

You may be a savant that would never make such a mistake, but the point of the rule is to allow the run to be accessible and attainable by mere mortals that think it sounds like fun and want to give it a shot, but don't want to get jacked by an insanely annoying glitch hours into the run.

Texas, USA

@LaV

If you cast Glacial Spike at an enemy, that means you voluntarily skilled Glacial Spike, voluntarily bound it to one of your mouse buttons, and then targeted a creature and clicked. I don't know how that could ever be construed as accidental. The mouse bindings glitch only reverts your bindings to attack, not random spells. (You could also get Glacial Spike from equipment, but you'd still have to voluntarily bind it to a mouse button and then target a creature and click.)

Anyway, that's just obviously forbidden and already covered by the existing rules. I think the point here is not to get overly pedantic, or to claim to have made a comprehensive set of specific rules, as that's what encourages players to try to find loopholes and game the system. I feel the most effective strategy is simply to specify the philosophy behind the run, which is to actually behave in a pacifist manner while still progressing through the game.

If a player accidentally swings at an enemy for no possible benefit a couple of times in a run as a result of the mouse bindings glitch, or does a careless TK -- and the creature lives! -- why punish them? But if a player behaves in a way that makes it look remotely like they are behaving non-pacifistically, or attempting to circumvent a rule or otherwise game the system, then whatever they are doing is obviously forbidden. I don't feel there's a real need to try to specify all possible situations.

As such, I don't think we need to list all allowed and forbidden skills. I don't want to stifle creativity, and there's always the potential someone could somehow find a creative yet pacifistic use for a skill in a way we aren't anticipating. I think we're better served by a general rule like "You may not take aggressive action toward any creature or animated construct, nor may you provoke or summon an entity, or hire a mercenary, to do so on your behalf". To me that's straightforward and unexploitable, though further specifying anything that's potentially confusing or ambiguous is fine.

Charge - If this really does auto-attack things that aren't even targeted, then attacking with it can't be deemed accidental. Use at your own risk.

Leap - Allowed? It doesn't deal damage. Does the knockback effect actually provoke? If it does, maybe this should be banned, but generally I lean toward allowing borderline stuff that helps make characters different.

Telekinesis - Allowed for interaction with inanimate objects.

Curses / Cloak of Shadows - Even curses that don't alter AI probably aren't entirely pacifistic. I'm not sure you can plausibly claim to be attempting to peacefully coexist if you're walking around cursing things, the only use of which is to make things more vulnerable in various ways. On the other hand, without curses, why would you ever run a Necromancer? I lean toward allowing curses that don't alter creature AI, perhaps only for Necromancers.

Bone Wall / Bone Prison - Arguably not pacifistic, but they don't deal damage, and I lean toward allowing borderline stuff that helps make characters different. Also, the bone barriers get a lot more interesting if Iron Maiden is allowed, which is one reason why perhaps we should allow curses, perhaps only for Necromancers.

I'm not sure we need to dig too deep trying to find reasons a true pacifist might or might not do this or that. You call Find Potion mutilating a corpse, while someone who looks at it from another perspective might call it respecting the creature by not allowing its sacrifice to go to waste. Regardless, it's obviously not an act of aggression against an animate entity. Once something's already a corpse, for whatever reason, I don't think we need to worry about what a player does with it. (Though obviously something like corpse explosion would be forbidden, as that would be an aggressive action toward any nearby creatures.)

As I already mentioned, you can't and shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of character-independent NPCs. (Flavie and Wild Barbarians are character independent. Mercenaries are not.)

Also, to avoid getting overly bogged down in pedantry, anything without a life bar shouldn't be considered a "creature or animated construct", in my opinion. That means it should be fine to interact with anything that's just a chest analog, and it should be fine to ignore things like the grubs in Duriel's chamber.

The life bar criteria does lead to one bit of weirdness in Act V, which can be seen in my Paladin proof-of-concept, namely, I needed to shop a Teleport staff to get past all the doors in the Frigid Highlands and the Arreat Plateau, since they have life bars, which made me wonder if they might be animate, despite not appearing to be alive.

Germany

[quote]If you cast Glacial Spike at an enemy, that means you voluntarily skilled Glacial Spike, voluntarily bound it to one of your mouse buttons, and then targeted a creature and clicked. I don't know how that could ever be construed as accidental. The mouse bindings glitch only reverts your bindings to attack, not random spells. (You could also get Glacial Spike from equipment, but you'd still have to voluntarily bind it to a mouse button and then target a creature and click.) [/quote]

You could be respeccing and putting the remaining points into Glacial spike to buff the lvl 37 blizzard on death from your rainbow facet, accidentally click it one to many times and boom its on your right mouse button - now all it takes is you realizing "oh I'm in the middle of an urdar pack, lets teleport out" and poof - you have successfully accidentally frozen a pack of monsters that like to stun you. You do not have to target a creature to cast a spell in its direction.

So yeah, the use of a skill like that - accidental or on purpose - has to be prohibited.

I do not want to have to make up rules afterwards when person B is butthurt, because person A used bone prison in their run which ended up faster than person B's run where bone prison was not used.

[quote]Charge - If this really does auto-attack things that aren't even targeted, then attacking with it can't be deemed accidental. Use at your own risk. [/quote]

You sometimes even attack monsters that are in the opposite direction

[quote]Leap - Allowed? It doesn't deal damage. Does the knockback effect actually provoke? If it does, maybe this should be banned, but generally I lean toward allowing borderline stuff that helps make characters different. [/quote]

"Provoke" - how do you "Provoke" a monster? Do you "Provoke" monsters by running past them because they attack you?

If you push someone back that is an agressive action, just because you can not kill someone with it doesnt make it less agressive in my opinion.

[quote]Telekinesis - Allowed for interaction with inanimate objects. [/quote]

And if you accidentally hit a monster you're out. Same as with charge.

[quote]Curses / Cloak of Shadows - Even curses that don't alter AI probably aren't entirely pacifistic. I'm not sure you can plausibly claim to be attempting to peacefully coexist if you're walking around cursing things, the only use of which is to make things more vulnerable in various ways. On the other hand, without curses, why would you ever run a Necromancer? I lean toward allowing curses that don't alter creature AI, perhaps only for Necromancers.[/quote]

The necro has bone armor, maybe you want to use bone armor to sneak past a lot of stuff

[quote]Bone Wall / Bone Prison - Arguably not pacifistic, but they don't deal damage, and I lean toward allowing borderline stuff that helps make characters different. Also, the bone barriers get a lot more interesting if Iron Maiden is allowed, which is one reason why perhaps we should allow curses, perhaps only for Necromancers. [/quote]

Its a prison. How is jailing someone for no reason pacifistic? Just because you dont actually deal (physical) damage to them?

[quote]I'm not sure we need to dig too deep trying to find reasons a true pacifist might or might not do this or that. You call Find Potion mutilating a corpse, while someone who looks at it from another perspective might call it respecting the creature by not allowing its sacrifice to go to waste. Regardless, it's obviously not an act of aggression against an animate entity. Once something's already a corpse, for whatever reason, I don't think we need to worry about what a player does with it. (Though obviously something like corpse explosion would be forbidden, as that would be an aggressive action toward any nearby creatures.)

Also, to avoid getting overly bogged down in pedantry, anything without a life bar shouldn't be considered a "creature or animated construct", in my opinion. That means it should be fine to interact with anything that's just a chest analog, and it should be fine to ignore things like the grubs in Duriel's chamber.

The life bar criteria does lead to one bit of weirdness in Act V, which can be seen in my Paladin proof-of-concept, namely, I needed to shop a Teleport staff to get past all the doors in the Frigid Highlands and the Arreat Plateau, since they have life bars, which made me wonder if they might be animate, despite not appearing to be alive.[/quote]

As I said in my last paragraph. I agree on the lifebar thing and it makes sense that find potion, item the non-damaging druid worm-thingies and redemption are allowed.

I just watched the part you mentioned and in the end you said "I don't think a pacifict would destroy another person's property"

So on the one hand you do not want to damage another person's property but on the other hand you want to throw them in prison? (Bone Wall, Bone Prison) I would rather have someone smash my door than be thrown in jail, but I think a pacifist would do neither.

When I watched that part of your playthrough I also noticed you were using thorns. One could argue that using thorns is actively bullying monsters into commiting suicide.

If we would allow stuff like thorns, where would we stop? Is the Amplify Damage curse allowed as it does not deal damage and just increses damage the baddies take? What about conviction? Iron maiden?

What makes Iron Maiden and Thorns more pacifistic than a sorceresses ice armors? The fact that there's just percentage damage values written in the skill descriptions instead of flat numbers?

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Brazil

I tried the run today and it's very fun, except that I tried Paladin and got stuck in Lord de Seis. Perhaps some rule exception could be make about him, allowing us to slap him to the death, as he totally kills any progress attempt (except for a very hard mechanic involving Infector, Bestow and nova procs: , video by DrCliche ).

About the leaderboards, I concur it adds motivation and healthy competitiveness, even if there only a few players willing to run. Just add a Misc category, with class and softcore/hardcore filters, and let runners/viewers watch and report possible rules infringements.

Germany

I would not mind setting that up, but it would not feel right without a good set of rules and currently I do not have a set of rules that makes everyone (including me) happy.

Brazil

I think the basic rule is, if the skill actively (the player actually cast the skill) deals damage or reduces the mob HP (like Static), it cannot be used. Passive damage (which is triggered by the mobs actions) is allowed (Thorns, Sorc's ice armors, "attacker takes damage" property, Frost Nova, Nova and Charged Bolt procs). Damage Shrines are NOT allowed as well, once the player knows that activating that will damage the mobs nearby. Curses that taunts or curses enemies are NOT allowed. Crowd Control skills should be allowed (like Bone Wall and Bone Prison), because the player casts it on the world and doesn't directly affect the mob.

Charge and Leap Attack are offensive skills, not mobility skills, so they shouldn't be used in a pacifist run. Leap (just leap, not Leap Attack) is a mobility skill, when you used it, is to get past a mob, and not to engage. When a mob attacks you, it's because you are in it's attack range, doesn't matter if you are running around or jumping over him. Think Leap as a very simple Teleport.

The only mob exception should be Lord de Seis, which is a total run killer. Maybe the players can roleplay and say 'He's too dangerous to be kept alive!' and just stab him to the death. Not even kidding here.

I'm hyped to run more, but there need to be a consensus about Lord de Seis and how to kill him.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Germany

Bone wall is not only a crowd controll skill. it also draws the attention of monsters that are pretty far away and causes them to attack the bone wall.

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"Curses that taunts or curses enemies are NOT allowed" So no curses?

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Killing Seis? A pacifist committing murder all of a sudden? Nice change of pace...

Brazil

"Bone wall is not only a crowd controll skill. it also draws the attention of monsters that are pretty far away and causes them to attack the bone wall." I see. So, no Bone Wall either.

"So no curses?" I'd say no curses. If you damage, control, confuse, weaken, etc, a monster, you are physically or mentally manipulating them to your benefits.

"Killing Seis? A pacifist committing murder all of a sudden? Nice change of pace..." I know, but, it's an unavoidable situation. Let's be honest, every time we equip something that will damage whoever tries to damage you, isn't really that pacific. You know that their nature is attack you, and you know that when they attack you, they will take damage and eventually die. And then, if you are lucky to do all Infector+Bestow+NovaProc thing, you are still conscious that you'll kill De Seis by the actions of Infector. I'd say that stab De Seis yourself is just as moral as manipulating Infector to kill him.

Germany

Define "Stab" - do you mean the use of the 'Attack' ability?

Would a paladin be allowed to use damage-increasing auras? Would a barbarian be allowed to use damage-increasing passive skills? Would a sorc/assassin be allowed to use enchant/venom?

Edited by the author 6 years ago
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