Pacifist Leaderboard? (And Rules Discussion)
6 years ago
Brazil

By stab I mean the normal attack, without any skill modification (like auras, venom, enchant, etc). You can use whatever weapon you have equipped at the moment.

Germany

What about a weapon that triggers spells on strike - like the Rift or Voice of Reason runewords for orb or grief for venom?

Granted that might be going a little far and without checking. I'm not sure which triggered "on striking" / "on hit" skills are available at that point in the game

Brazil

I'd say these on hit stuff should be allowed. They would save some minutes, but compared to the whole run, it isn't that much. The player should be aware that these AoE skills triggered on hit could damage other mobs, so De Seis must be completely alone in this case.

Also, changing the weapon (with on-hit stuff) to something 'weaker' (normal weapons) isn't very merciful, as the enemy would have a sloooow death. xD

Texas, USA

@AlanVault

I don't believe there's any reason to allow attacking or actively/directly damaging Lord de Seis, or anything else. You can complete a pacifist run with any character. De Seis one of the more challenging parts of the run, but with a little practice, most players should be able to do it.

@LaV

I don't believe the goal of this discussion should be to nitpick whether you can find a reason why a particular flavor of pacifist might or might not be willing to do any particular thing. We are dealing with a game, which needs to be progressed through and beaten. Wondering, for example, whether using Thorns constitutes "actively bullying monsters into committing suicide" seems counterproductive.

I do appreciate the work you are putting into nailing down a consistent set of rules, but I think it's also reasonable to suggest that satisfying your own personal interpretation of pacifism and how it applies to Diablo 2 shouldn't be your primary concern, as you don't appear to be the target audience, either as a runner or a viewer.

You said you wanted a consistent set of rules before you would consider adding a pacifist category, so here you go:

-- Rules for a Diablo 2 Pacifist Run --

Statement of Intent: The goal of these rules is to offer guidance on what it means to be pacifistic with respect to Diablo 2, but in a way that permits timely completion of the game and allows for meaningful differentiation between characters.

  1. Don't take any action whose purpose appears to be to circumvent other rules, or to pedantically exploit their particular phrasing.

1a) Don't take any action that spontaneously damages anything with a life bar. 1b) Don't hire or summon or induce anyone or anything to break rule 1a) on your behalf. 1c) You aren't responsible for the actions of character-independent NPCs like Flavie or the Wild Barbarians in Act V.

Note: Forbidden actions include (but are not limited to): swinging or firing a weapon; casting a damaging spell at or in the vicinity of anything that could be struck by it; using damaging auras; hiring a mercenary; summoning something which attacks or casts damaging spells; confusing or cajoling creatures into fighting among themselves; activating damaging shrines; setting traps.

Note: Permitted methods of damaging enemies include: using Thorns aura; equipping "of Thorns" or "when struck" items; using Shiver Armor or Chilling Armor; casting Iron Maiden; summoning Spirit of Barbs.

Note: There is a glitch that completely unpredictably causes your mouse bindings to sometimes revert to attack whenever any of your equipped gear changes in any way. It is advised that you set hotkeys for Throw and Unsummon and refresh your bindings whenever you equip or unequip anything.

Note: Use skills like Telekinesis and Charge at your own risk. Charge in particular is known to spontaneously attack untargeted things.

2a) You may use the /players X command. 2b) You may not use any modding tools (such as the "-direct" flag) to enable Ladder-only runewords in single player, or anything similar.

Note: If and when Blizzard natively enables Ladder-only runewords in single player, they will be allowed at that time.

-- Character Specific Notes --

This is a non-comprehensive list of some permitted and forbidden skills from each class. The aim is to allow for differentiation between the classes while still remaining generally pacifistic by meeting the primary criterion of not spontaneously damaging anything.

(You may personally consider, say, Bone Wall or Leap not to be totally pacifistic, but that isn't entirely the point. They meet the primary criterion, and allow Barbarian and Necromancer runs to be different from each other in an interesting way. Slight philosophical compromises are made for the sake of good game design.)

Amazon - Decoy is allowed; Valkyrie is not. Assassin - Cloak of Shadows is allowed; traps and Blade Shield are not. Necromancer - Bone Wall, Bone Prison, and Iron Maiden are allowed; Confuse and Attract are not. Barbarian - Leap, Howl, and Find Potion are allowed; Leap Attack is not. Sorceress - Cold armors are allowed; Thunder Storm is not. Druid - Were-forms, Carrion Vine, and spirits are allowed; Poison Creeper, Raven, attacking while in were-forms are not. Paladin - Thorns aura and Holy Shield are allowed; Holy Fire, Sanctuary, and Conversion are not.

AlanVault likes this
Germany

Generally in "Paficist" speedrun categories the goal is to not kill anything / only kill mandatory enemies. If we would do that in D2 there would be 12 monsters you would be able to kill. (Ofc that would not work since you would probably be ~Level 1 after the first 8 monsters)

What you actually want is to only use reflected damage or damage that is dealt by abilities triggered by enemies hitting you to kill stuff (possibly as suggested with Seis as exception). So instead of "Pacifist" why don't we give the category a different, fitting name like "Thorns%" or "Reflect%" - in my opinion that name (or something equivalent) would fit the theme much better.

Regarding your rules:

You keep using the word spontaneous like in [quote]1a) Don't take any action that spontaneously damages anything with a life bar. [/quote] Either I don't get what you mean or you want people to be able to inflict non-spontaneous damage (poison damage, open wounds?)

Also I think it's weird to have both - a whitelist and a blacklist for skills and not cover all the skills. If you would generalize "No Damaging Abilities, No Damaging Summons, No making enemies fight each other"

(Note: That would mean pure crowd control skills of all kinds are allowed)

I think that fits for all the individual cases you mentioned (the sorcs cold armors being a special case as they are damaging abilities that only deal damage when you are hit - the only ones in the game if i'm not mistaken), if we don't deal with that entire "provoking enemies" thing we can blindly allow debuffs of all kinds (curses, cloak of shadows, slow missiles, howl, taunt, bone walls) - we don't care if the enemy is traumatized or provoked because a barbarian shouted at them or because they were in a necromancers bone prison.

What do you think?

AlanVault likes this
Brazil

@LaV

I think Reflect% reflects (Kappa) much better the idea of the category. It's just naive to call pacifist a build where you equip a bunch of damage return stuff that will inevitably damage and kill your enemies.

The 'Spontaneous' word should just be removed. Or this rule could be changed to "Enemies can only be damaged by taking reflected damage from your itens and skills." This even reinforces the idea of 'Reflect%'.

"Reflect%" is a solid concept, imo.

Texas, USA

Again, I don't believe it's productive to attempt to pedantically nitpick anything and everything you possibly can to satisfy one person's interpretation of a fairly nebulous idea. There's no single word or concept that will adequately encompass the pacifist category and all of its subtleties across all classes in a way that absolutely everyone will agree upon.

That being said, there's a long and storied history of approaching games of all genres in a way that could be construed as pacifistic, and such behavior is generally referred to as a pacifist run. Refer to http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PacifistRun for an extensive (but obviously not comprehensive) list of over 100 games with pacifist runs.

Notice how there's no single rule that covers pacifism in every game, nor are all (or even most) pacifist runs truly entirely pacifistic. What a pacifist run entails depends heavily upon the exigencies of each individual game. Nonetheless, there's still an overarching principle -- a particular pattern of behavior and/or outcomes -- behind the pacifist concept that's not difficult to understand.

Making any attempt to abstrusely describe the niggling details of an individual game's pacifist category within the name of the category itself seems counterproductive to me. ¤Exactly¤ how the idea of pacifism can be applied to an individual game is "fine print", not the ¤essence¤ of the idea. The essence of what we're doing here is pacifism, whether or not we all actually agree on the fine print.

Furthermore, category names like "Thorns%" and "Reflect%" are clearly not correct from a technical standpoint, in addition to not reasonably communicating the category's primary motivation the way "Pacifist" does:

• Why use a percent sign in the name? The run doesn't complete a predetermined or fixed percentage of quests or goals. • Why would the category be named after Thorns? Only the Paladin run uses Thorns. • Why would the category be named after the idea of reflection? Only Thorns, Iron Maiden, and Spirit of Barbs actually reflect damage.

I think there's a bit of a language barrier here, but what I mean by spontaneous is "arising as a result of forces external to the entity in question". If you have Holy Fire active, and you walk near a Fallen, it will "spontaneously" take damage, independently of any decision or behavior on its part. The Fallen had no choice or agency in the matter, it seems it was predestined to take damage by in-game forces completely outside its own control.

Conversely, if you have Thorns active, and you walk near a Fallen, theoretically, the two of you may pass like ships in the night, continuing to peacefully coexist in the same space without any negative interaction. We humans, external to the game, happen to know that Fallen AI is programmed in such a way that the Fallen will always be induced to attempt to attack the player-character simply due to his or her proximity, but that's neither here nor there. If I'm wearing a helmet and you decide to charge at me, punch my head, and as a result break your hand, perhaps you should reconsider your life choices.

That's what it means (to me) to be a pacifist in Diablo 2. There's a clear philosophy underpinning the decisions we may reasonably make, and the actions we may reasonably take. But it's important to note that we humans can't be puritanical in how we define pacifism as it applies to Diablo 2. The idea of pacifism must be reconciled with the reality that we're playing a game, and need to be able to progress through it. Further, I propose that pacifism in Diablo 2 is much more interesting if we allow most non-damaging abilities to be used freely, because it allows for most of the character classes to have meaningful differences.

There may be a really great way to distill all of that down into a short blurb, but I don't think "No Damaging Abilities, No Damaging Summons, No making enemies fight each other" is quite there, as damaging abilities are, in fact, allowed -- you just aren't allowed to damage anything with them!

Brazil

@LaV So, I think we can narrow down the rules to a simple list:

  1. Don't take any action that would damage something.
  2. Crowd Control abilities are allowed, as long as they don't do damage or force enemies to attack you (Taunt) or attack themselves (Confuse/Attract).
  3. If an enemy is attacked, the player needs to leave the game. If an enemy dies by an active attack, the run is over.

@DrCliche "If I'm wearing a helmet and you decide to charge at me, punch my head, and as a result break your hand, perhaps you should reconsider your life choices." That's a good way to explain how it's still pacifist and not indirectly offensive. =]

@everyone About Lord de Seis, it's really possible to kill him without attack (using nova procs and the Bestow, as linked earlier in this thread), but it's just hard. To maintain the idea of pacifist, he must not be attacked. If anyone ever decide to make him an exception and attack, it should be another category. :p

Germany

The two suggested names, Reflect% and Thorns% have percentage signs because that's an ancient meme in speedrunning. I mean just look at old GDQ schedules: "any%, broken%, marvel%, glitches%, 100%, cutscenes%, low%, shirtless%" (agdq 2014)

What those pacifist runs have in common is that they seem the lowest amount of enemies possible.

Let's look at low% runs for example: If you manage finishing a game in 5 minutes with 19% on the progress tracker your run is worse than a run that takes an hour but only has 18% on the progress tracker. Would that make a Diablo2 pacifist run that kills the least amount of monsters better? No.

My first idea was "thorns" but then I thought "nah thats the pala skill and only refers to the physical reflect" so my 2nd idea was "reflect" and its really just an idea, if you can come up with something better I'm open for suggestions, but I think both of those names would be better than "pacifist"

I don't mean to be disrespectful or rude or something but I dont think "pacifist" is the right word to describe what you do in the game. Maybe "thorns" or "reflect" are not the perfect words either, but they're closer.

Also what you guys think was my well-prepared set of rules - that was just a 12-word-summary of the most basic rules we have which I wanted to comment on in a paragraph below that, but apparently I never finished that, so dont take those "rules" too seriously :P

Regarding crowd control / taunt: How many tauns are there in the game? Only the barbarians taunt skill? Blacklist that - easy. Bonewall doesn't count because it doesn't make enemies attack you so it's kind of counterproductive for the runner anyway? How many non-damaging crowd control abilities are there? Barbs howl, leap and grim ward, necs dim vision and decrepify and... that's pretty much it I think...

I do not think making that seis thing an extra category would be worth it. If it really turns out to be necessary we could throw in an extra variable to differenciate between runs that attacked seis and runs that did not attack seis.

Brazil

At this point I'm ok with both Reflect% and Pacifist%, but still prefer Reflect%.

The idea of a variable filtering if the runner attacked de Seis is great. That way we wouldn't have two categories that are very similar. I think runs that de Seis is attacked will be several minutes faster, though (this area, specifically). Also, attacking de Seis isn't very pacific, so one more point to "Reflect%".

About Bone Wall, it doesn't deal damage, so is up to the player use it or not. The initial argument was forbid it because it attracts enemies to attack it, but as the rule became a simple "don't do damage," then it's allowed. As the first rule would be "don't do damage, or make an enemy attack you or attack themselves," any skill should be allowed, but if the runner damage something, then it's over.

Blacklisting skills should be just a way to make validation easier. If a mod or a viewer/runner see a "blacklisted" skill be equipped in a run, then that alone is suspicious, but not really forbidden (like Charge or Leap Attack, which the player can use to move faster but must be aware of the risk of damaging something).

Texas, USA

@AlanVault

Note that in the most recent version of the rules proposed by me, there’s no exception for accidentally attacking and/or damaging any enemy. Though Teo- and LaV seem violently opposed to adding a pacifist category (to the point of utter absurdity), some of the original arguments against doing so were squarely aimed at my proposed bindings glitch exception.

(Teo- coinsiders it “easy” to “not accidentally hit monsters”. LaV suggests that it “is not okay to [do anything] that could harm an enemy” and any exception “must be forbidden”.)

As such, I removed that exception. It’s not all that hard to get used to constantly checking your bindings, it’s just an unusual thing that will bite anyone who tries a pacifist run on their first couple attempts.

It makes no sense whatsoever to add an exception for Lord de Seis. Any character can get past Lord de Seis without lifting a finger. “Pacifist except you can attack Lord de Seis, even though you don’t need to” is a simply nonsensical.

I think the runner must keep checking his skills and the run must end if any enemy is attacked.

I really liked the concept of the run and I'm gonna try it. But it's funny to talk about pacifism when killing all of the demons and stuff would actually bring peace to the world.

Germany

Well, I dont think "Pacifist" is the way to call it. I think it's an interesting challenge and if people want to compare their times I wouldn't mind adding the category (under the premise that runs will not be checked for compliance with the rules),

In the beginning I was unsure about the paficist part and how strict the ruleset should be (Note: You, DrCliche, said in your run "I don't think a pacifict would destroy another person's property") and after hearing complaints about my rules and thinking more about that pacifism is in other games (especially now that you linked the descriptions of other pacifist categories) I realized that usually paficism means killing the least ammount of enemies possible and not not hitting enemies or breaking their stuff.

So with you guys not liking (very) strict approach to finding an unexploitable ruleset and me not liking pacifists running around causing hundreds if not thousands of deaths per run. Then I had the idea to just call it something else - something that fits better in my opinion.

In my opinion if we do not have to deal with (strict) "pacifism" we can handle other agressive actions against monsters (curses, crowd control, etc.) more softly.

--

Regarding the Seis part - that would work for me either way

It might be hard in the beginning but I'm sure over time people will get better at it. Just look other things that seemed hard at first: Glitching out korlic in any% hell runs - in the beginning I just knew that he could get stuck and where I managed to get him stuck once and it took me like 15-20 minutes to recreate that scenario - now the active runners can do it in just a few seconds on a bunch of different positions all over the arreat summit.

Also lets be honest - what are +-10 minutes in a 5+ hour run....

Texas, USA

@LaV

I don’t believe ancient memes are relevant in the naming of this category. I feel that you keep changing the goalposts, but ignoring that, your current focus seems to be that the category name be maximally descriptive and maximally “correct” in some technical sense that only you understand, but won’t actually enunciate.

• As such, a percentage sign that only exists for meme value doesn’t seem to make sense. • As such, naming the category after a skill that only one of seven classes can use doesn’t seem to make sense. • As such, naming the category after the concept of damage reflection, which only three of seven classes can make happen, and which only two will ever actually use in a run, doesn’t seem to make sense.

Naming the run after the overarching principle of pacifism -- which led to its conception, informs the particular implementation of its rules, and reasonably characterizes the behaviors you may engage in -- makes just a ton of sense, however.

You keep getting bogged down in implementation details, rather than acknowledging the principle that the run is based on. What you’re doing is akin to taking a game like Soldier of Fortune and demanding that its pacifist run be called “ShootHands%” because that’s how the idea of pacifism is most reasonably implemented in that particular game.

The principle is pacifism. Because Soldier of Fortune is a game and a “pacifist run” must actually, well, run the game, the platonic ideal of pacifism is bent into a shape that fits that particular game. But it’s not about shooting hands. It’s about pacifism. (And this despite the fact that shooting someone, even in the hand, would probably be abhorrent to most pacifists.)

“What those pacifist runs have in common is that they seem the lowest amount of enemies possible.”

I assume you meant to say that they ¤kill¤ the lowest amount of enemies possible, but that’s incorrect. You’re getting bogged down in how the concept of pacifism is implemented in individual games.

It’s true that in many games, the most reasonable way to apply the principle of pacifism is to engage in behavior that results in a minimal number of deaths (occasionally even zero.) But that’s not certainly true in all games -- though it makes sense that mechanically similar games would implement pacifism similarly, hence commonalities across many games.

But consider the following examples:

Smash Bros. – “There's a bonus (‘Switzerland’) for clearing a stage without even attempting an attack. Given how many stages have level hazards, this isn't as difficult as it sounds to obtain.”

The principle of pacifism as it applies to Smash Bros. has nothing to do with the number of deaths that occur, but rather with not attacking -- which is virtually identical to how the principle of pacifism applies to Diablo 2.

In fact, one could reasonably argue that pacifism through the lens of Smash Bros. or Diablo 2 is “truer” than in most other games with pacifist runs. Pacifism is “opposition to war or violence of any kind”, and “refusal to engage in military activity because of one’s principles or beliefs”, which is a standard few pacifist runs can actually adhere to -- Smash and D2 being among the rare exceptions.

Super Smash Bros. Melee – “[The Switzerland bonus] still exists, although it also requires not being attacked as well (complete neutrality). There is however, another bonus, called, ‘Pacifist’, which does not have this extra requirement.”

Again, there’s no consideration for the number of deaths that result during gameplay, only in the player’s actions.

Nethack – “In NetHack, 'pacifism' is one of the many voluntary conduct challenges that is tracked by the game (along with atheism, vegetarianism, breatharianism, illiteracy, etc). However, in NetHack 'pacifism' means that your pets do all the killing instead of you; you can attack the monsters all you want as long as it's not you that lands the killing blow.”

Note how pacifism in NetHack has nothing to do with the number of casualties, but rather is defined by a pattern of behavior.

Additionally, this example is instructive because it shows how, despite starting from the first principle of pacifism, the exigencies of a particular game can nonetheless result in behavior that most people would likely agree is fundamentally not pacifistic.

(Similarly, most “pacifist” runs in other games directly kill at least a few bosses, which is decidedly not pacifistic. Nonetheless, the runs are rightly described as pacifist runs due to the overarching principle which informs their implementations; even when the realities of an individual game force one to occasionally stray from the pacifistic ideal.)

Fallout – “The Fallout series is notable for the possibility of not needing to kill anyone, although you will be indirectly responsible for the deaths of quite a few people (and, in some cases, populations). In most of the series it is even possible (although very hard) to do an evil pacifist run.”

Note how pacifism in Fallout allows for indirect deaths, a situation similar to D2, where the player chooses to wear gear that would be harmful to anyone that attacked, but doesn’t actually engage in any overtly aggressive or provocative behavior.

“I don't mean to be disrespectful or rude or something but I dont think ‘pacifist’ is the right word to describe what you do in the game. Maybe ‘thorns’ or ‘reflect’ are not the perfect words either, but they're closer.“

You’re getting bogged down in implementation details. “Pacifist” isn’t meant to strictly define what you do in the game. It’s meant to describe the overarching principle that led to the run’s conception. It somewhat nebulously informs the sorts of behaviors you may engage in, but doesn’t specify them in mechanical detail. This is consistent with the language used to describe pacifist runs in other games.

Many game categories are correctly described by a particular mechanical detail, but the pacifist category isn’t one of them. Pacifist runs are about a particular philosophy, which is then adapted to each individual game on an ad hoc (but not arbitrary) basis.

I feel fairly strongly that “pacifist” is simply the correct name for this category, and I suspect that most of the intended audience for these runs, prospective runners and viewers alike, would agree with me. You seem to be of a different mind, but I believe you should defer to the sensibilities of the relevant community rather than attempt to impose your personal worldview on a category in which you have no actual interest.

Moreover, if all of the current mods are disinterested in moderating a pacifist category, I would be happy to do so, with the understanding that I plan to approve pacifist runs by default and allow the community to police them. (But at least that way you won’t be responsible for dealing with any fallout related to perceived ambiguity in the rules, though I don’t believe my proposed rules are ambiguous.)

Texas, USA

@LaV

“Well, I dont think ‘Pacifist’ is the way to call it.”

Given that we can’t seem to agree on this point, I think it makes sense to defer to an actual interested party, like the creator of the category, for example. Other relevant points:

• You offer no real justification other than your personal feelings, while I’ve laid out a compelling case with multiple citations and reasonable arguments to support my view. • You don’t actually have a suggestion for a reasonable category name.

“In the beginning I was unsure about the paficist part and how strict the ruleset should be (Note: You, DrCliche, said in your run ‘I don't think a pacifict would destroy another person's property’) and after hearing complaints about my rules and thinking more about that pacifism is in other games (especially now that you linked the descriptions of other pacifist categories) I realized that usually paficism means killing the least ammount of enemies possible and not not hitting enemies or breaking their stuff. “

You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. You’re using my comments about the philosophy of pacifism (which then motivated me to choose a particular way of behaving in the game!) to … make some point? I don’t know, I don’t know why you quoted that, but it’s an example of how I used the idea of pacifism to figure out what to do in the run, which only supports my argument.

But then you turn around and ignore the philosophical underpinnings and say D2’s mechanical implementation of pacifism must for some reason be identical to the mechanical implementation of pacifism in some other games, even though there’s no universal implementation of pacifism, and not all pacifist runs are concerned with minimizing deaths. I don’t really understand where you’re coming from, or where you’re going with this.

You’re getting bogged down in implementation details. The pacifist category isn’t about how pacifism is implemented in any particular game, and not all pacifist runs seek to minimize death. Pacifist runs are about the principle of pacifism, applied to each game on an ad hoc basis. Exactly how pacifism is implemented in any particular run in any particular game depends on the game, and occasionally strays fairly far from the philosophical underpinnings.

For any particular game, you look at the actions you can take at any moment and ask whether a pacifist might or might not be willing to take such an action. Often, you may reach a conclusion that you shouldn’t attack things, or that you should minimize deaths, or whatever. The only universal among pacifist runs is the overarching principle of pacifism that informs allowable behaviors in each game.

One may also be willing to make certain compromises in order to make a category more fun, or interesting, or accessible. To that end, in D2 specifically, I propose allowing somewhat ambiguous abilities like Leap and most curses, since that goes a long way toward differentiating the character classes, and can be justified by saying “well those abilities are directly interactive, but they don’t deal damage, draw aggro, or provoke infighting, so it could conceivably be construed as nonviolent”.

Of course we all recognize I’m sort of looking the other way, here. Nonetheless, it’s important to note none of “don’t deal any damage”, “don’t draw aggro”, or “don’t provoke infighting” is the actual guiding principle -- pacifism is.

“So with you guys not liking (very) strict approach to finding an unexploitable ruleset and me not liking pacifists running around causing hundreds if not thousands of deaths per run. Then I had the idea to just call it something else - something that fits better in my opinion.“

I’m perfectly fine disallowing any and all direct damage to monsters, whether intentional or not, this despite the fact that you actually failed to describe a situation in which my proposed exception was at all ambiguous or exploitable. (Your example involved an insanely contrived scenario with a Rainbow Facet, which can’t drop in Normal or even Nightmare -- and your proposed sequence of actions would obviously have been disallowed regardless.)

I don’t think it’s relevant whether you personally like the idea of pacifists running around and witnessing deaths. Again, don’t get bogged down by the implementation details. How the concept of pacifism applies to any particular game is determined on an ad hoc basis, and that particular implementation must be shaped by the exigencies of the game in question.

“In my opinion if we do not have to deal with (strict) ‘pacifism’ we can handle other agressive actions against monsters (curses, crowd control, etc.) more softly.”

You’ve consistently refused to identify whatever target it is that you’re aiming at, and you’re doing it again here. What is “strict pacifism”?

Here’s what pacifism means to me:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pacifism http://www.dictionary.com/browse/pacifism https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pacifism

• “Opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes; specifically: refusal to bear arms on moral or religious grounds” • “An attitude or policy of nonresistance” • “Opposition to war or violence of any kind” • “Refusal to engage in military activity because of one's principles or beliefs” • “The belief that war and violence are unjustifiable and that all disputes should be settled by peaceful means”

My implementation of pacifism in Diablo 2 ¤very¤ closely hews to those ideals. However, Diablo 2 is a game, and a run of the game must actually run the game. There has to be a way to progress through the game and meet the usual goals of the game.

How might we do that in Diablo 2? Is there any mechanism by which we can make progress through the game while adhering to the ideals of “opposition to violence”, “nonresistance”, “refusal to engage in military activity”, etc.?

Thorns and similar abilities, Sorceress armors, spell shield items, and attacker takes damage items all seem like very natural (and equally valid) choices.

(And if you want all of the classes to have meaningfully different pacifist runs, I think it makes sense to allow other non-damaging abilities, as well.)

A needless exception for Lord de Seis makes absolutely no sense, and I wish we could stop talking about it as if it were worthy of any further consideration. There’s no reason whatsoever to treat Lord de Seis differently from any other entity in the game.

I've lurked for a while but registered to make this post.

I saw the pacifist run on reddit and thought it was pretty neat. As a name it has a good ring to it as well; you get an instant feel for what the run will likely entail.

I will be making a few attempts myself over the coming weeks; it will be a novel return to one of my favourite classics.

Brazil

So... let's just... Pacifism = "Don't attack, therefore don't do damage. Don't make enemies attack you. Don't make enemies attack each other."

And then, just call "Pacifism" category. No % necessary... like GTA:SA, "All missions" is just "All missions", and not "All missions%". It's not a necessary, but it's not a problem either.

About the unintentional attack with the weapon switch glitch, just make the player leave the game and continue the run. Unintentionally attacking with Charge or Leap Attack should invalidate the run, because the player knows it could easily happen.

About de Seis... the trick to kill him can really be performed by any class, it's just slow and annoying. I'd say you're indirectly attacking him by making Infector hit you and proc novas. "Hey, de Seis! I lured Infector to be healed, so he could attack me (even though I'm not forcing him to). The 'reflected' damage will eventually kill you, but I'm really trying to talk you out of this." Yeah, pacific... sure.

I still suggest to allow attacking him (only normal attack, whatever weapon you're using [for equality for all classes, player can make runewords or attach runes/gems], no hero abilities allowed [venom, enchant, etc]). If the runner still don't want to attack him, just make a variable filter on leaderboards.

Germany

I give up, you are (obviously) right. I am sorry for delaying the process of adding the category. I added the Pacifist category. - Give me any rules and I will add them later.

Submit your runs! All runs will be accepted without any checks. If people are cheating just lmk.

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And Alanvault: If (pacifistly) killing Seis by using procs caused by other monsters is not fair then all spell procs would have to be forbidden because a lot of the times they will hit monsters that are not involved in combat yet and that is perfectly fine because it's not your fault.

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Is the extra variable to differentiate between HC and SC enaugh or do you need seperate HC and SC categories?

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Brazil

I give up too, just kill him with procs and good luck.

Thanks for adding the category.

United Kingdom

The main problem that I have with this discussion is it keeps coming back to "what is pacifist" even to the point of bringing up a collection of dictionary definitions. The rules for pacifist should be defined based on the mechanics of the game. So for determining whether or not a skill can be used by you or your pets based on the mechanics of the game: -The skill cannot hit -The skill cannot apply a bit rate (poison/fire wall etc.) -Reflected damage/on taking a hit procs are allowed -Breaking any of these rules during the run should result in the run being disallowed -Must be done on /players 1 -Must NOT use a pre-generated map -This is a 'Real Time Attack' run: The usage of "Safe and Exit" is allowed -Timer starts on character creation and ends when Baal dies

Edited by the author 6 years ago