I'm tired of subdual rules here to be honest, I'm prefacing this because I'm posting this with a hint of annoyance.

The DMs have given us several pvp options.

Subdual, Full Damage, and Sparring.

We all know that when a NPC attacks us on Subdual, we should *stay the hell down* because that 50 strength fire giant was on subdual so we wouldn't all die for some plot reason. That's cool with me.

What I don't like is being told "STAY DOWN" in PvP situations. A player can switch from FD to SD and back with the click of a button without breaking an attack.

I've always seen SD as a "I'm not trying to kill you" attack. If you're knocked down and a priest heals you, you could get up and fight some more.

SD is scripted so that if you're SD'ed, you can't get up right away. Once that time limit is up and you can stand, I can't see why you shouldn't.

The DMs SCRIPTED subdual this way. So I'm confused why sometimes DMs want you as a player to treat subdual differently from how its scripted. Is this an unwritten rule? That now SD is to be treated as "you can never move again until your SD'er says so, the watching DM says so, or...? I don't know."

Again, to clarify--I understand that NPC SD means *STAY DOWN* a DM didn't want to kill you, but probably capture you or prove an NPC *could* kill you so you'ld talk and not fight.

But PvP SD is not as clear, its scripted one way and occasionally DMs tell players to treat it differently from how its scripted to work even in PvP where a player can just /c subdual full_damage as a hot key and not worry or BEAT your ass into unconciousness so you don't get up; yet occasionally I hear players or even DMs complain that the guy you subdued got up after being healed, or after his scripted time of being unable to move was over.

Note, I'm not asking because this happened to me recently at all. Rather that I've heard several times in the last few months about situations like this and I'd like to see it clarified. Its become an "unwritten rule".

It's a huge can of worms to make scripted changes to this. For one thing, Bioware hates changes to the death system already. But, on Subdual:

When used in pvp, most, if not all DMs consider subduing someone to being akin to taking someone out in that particular instance. It provides an oppertunity to keep interacting with someone after they're beaten, instead of sending them straight to the Fugue and calling it quits. It would have taken the same effort just to FD and have no interaction after the pvp conflict. When you get subdualed in pvp, you're "out," even if you've received healing (idealy you shouldn't heal subdued PCs, but that's pretty much impossible to enforce).

We can try scripting changes to make this more close to how we want subduing to be received. We could make it so you can't get up for 5 minutes, but then we run into the problem of a player wanting to drag the person we beat. We could try to make some commands like /c drag or /c get_up, but it will be fairly non-trivial. Modifing the subdue scripts is not easy.

I'm not sure why you think it's all right to stay down with NPCs and not with PCs, given that NPC death isn't generally perma-death but PC death often is. Presumably in both situation there's the same principle that you -would- be beaten, but the other player on the other side of the screen wants to continue the conflict or something else. I had thought our policy on this was really clear (if you are subdued, you should remain down until the conflict is over) but apparently it wasn't so we'll be taking steps to make it more clear.

A scripted solution is ideal and is being pursued, however as ES mentioned there are all kinds of issues with duels, wanting to drag someone else off, etc.

Most the reasoning is:

With NPCs I'm told "Stay down, this monster could have killed you easily-we want you to be...captured/humbled/scared off etc."

With PCs, I've never seen a clear cut answer anywhere. Just that "If you want to kill someone use FD, if you want to knock them out use SD." Hence confusion for people very often.

"Knocking them out" is one of the valid interpretations for subduing someone, but it carries the universal context with it: you lost your fight and you're as good as dead. It does not mean get healed and flee or fight again. It's true, to kill someone you have to switch to FD eventually, but we like seeing "GOOD RP OPPERTUNITIES" as much as possible, and the subdual mode facilitates this as best it can. I've seen a lot of interesting things happen while subdued, and a lot fewer with people getting up, running off, forming a gank squad, and coming back to kill their agressor on FD without any interaction.

At this point, without a perfect scripted solution, it's a courtisy to the winner of the fight to stay down and prepare to accept what they have planned for you because you weren't just killed outright. We don't want to have to enforce this all the time, because more things are usually happening during these kind of situations.

("You," as in anyone who's face down on the ground)