ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Embarassing as this might sound, I've had three archers die from their own arrows or sling shots (I tend not to survive critical hits for ~600 damage at level 17).
Although I would love to just refrain from shooting myself, I find that to be quite hard when being pulled into my own shot by a psionic grab.
Staying out of range of the grab (and still have line of effect to shoot) can be difficult in, say, Sher'Tul 1, and not attacking that horror does not sound like a good idea either.
Any suggestions as to how to avoid/solve that problem?

I haven't played an archer in ages, but IIRC you can corner-snipe them from out of LOS with Scatter Shot, Flare (if you leveled it), and maybe Volley of Arrows (?) Obviously you'll need Track or something to pinpoint their location. It still would be better to lure them to a place where you can pin them from out-of-grab range, though.

I suggest not shooting at grabbers until they have grabbed you.

This reminds me of the time my Paradox Mage killed himself when The Mouth pulled him into his own Turn Back the Clock. Which was a crit, of course.

Isotope-X wrote:This reminds me of the time my Paradox Mage killed himself when The Mouth pulled him into his own Turn Back the Clock. Which was a crit, of course.

I once had a similar experience when I got grabbed into my own gravity well, which was filled (among other things) with about a dozen destabilized oozes who went poof the very same turn. Everything in the room was killed in the resulting massive explosion. Most glorious death I ever had.

I just have mental warning signs flashing now whenever I see something I know can grab me at range. It works nicely now.

Fhtagn wrote:I just have mental warning signs flashing now whenever I see something I know can grab me at range. It works nicely now.

I haven't tried this, but wouldn't Merkul's bow be the ideal answer to this grab/suicide issue? +400% travel speed means all your arrows connect the same turn they're fired, if memory serves. Or does the grab still happen before your arrow moves, if everything happens in the same turn?

I actually don't know that, but a particular item you need to find does not seem to be a good solution anyway.

I brought up Merkul's just because I noticed that using it, even at max range (9) arrows always seem to hit the same turn they're fired. You can still achieve +400% speed with any bow of swiftstrike plus arrows of the wind or annihilation, so a general solution would be to keep a set of those in your alt weapon slot, and just hit 'q' when you spot a grabber.

All this, of course, assuming that the 'move' part of the grab doesn't happen before the arrow's own travel (funny, I just realized that I don't even know whether player and monster turns are simultaneous or not - if the latter, the trick should definitely work.) Worth testing, but I'm not that fond of archers and not going to do that myself anytime soon. Maybe someone else already knows the answer?

The game has behiind the scenes turn sets of 100 "points" (no idea what the actual unit is called) each. A normal turn is ten of these-one step, one attack, one just about anything at 100% speed is 1000 points. Speed varies point cost, so 200% move speed means you move in 500 points, rather then 1000. (Global speed actually gives you more points to work with, so at 150% global speed you have 1500 points each turn.)

You and monsters work on the same turn system, so here's sort of what happens. You fire the area at 0. The arrow, at let's say 300% move speed, moves one space at 333. It moves the second space at 667, and a third at 1000, so on until it hits the monster. THe monster, however, acts at the same time as you, so it activates its grab at 0 and, the grab being instant, snags you before the arrow hits it.

However, the above example assumes that both you and the monster have been acting at 100% speed on absolutely everything. If you, for instance, got a slow debuff for one turn before curing it that dropped move speed to 80% and took a step with it, that cost 1250 points. This effectively puts your start at 250, because you're 250 points over normal, so monsters always act slightly before you. Which would actually be to your advantage here, since it gives you 251-1000 for arrows to act in.

The actuality of the game is a hell of a lot more complicated, since speeds change so often, and I do not fully understand it myself. But this should hopefully help a little. And if not...

tl;dr

You and monsters act at the same time.

Arrows and other things with really high speeds act in mini turns that make up regular turns, which is how the game actually tracks everything. However, since you mostly act at 100% speed or around that, it doesn't matter until you try really powergaming.

Again, hope this helps.

It did help a lot, thanks. It basically means that even quicker arrows wouldn't help avoiding self-shooting when grabbed, except maybe in a few borderline cases (with a speed buff and at very short range, for instance.)

Makes one wonders at the physics at work in the world of Eyal, by the way. Grab making you move that faster than your own arrows (that'd be G's in the thousands, I guess - potentially infinite depending on what 'instant' means here) should be more than enough to liquefy your organs and kill you on the spot, in the real world. And of course there are other oddities like underwater archery in Nur. Weird world indeed

jaumito wrote:It did help a lot, thanks. It basically means that even quicker arrows wouldn't help avoiding self-shooting when grabbed, except maybe in a few borderline cases (with a speed buff and at very short range, for instance.)

Makes one wonders at the physics at work in the world of Eyal, by the way. Grab making you move that faster than your own arrows (that'd be G's in the thousands, I guess - potentially infinite depending on what 'instant' means here) should be more than enough to liquefy your organs and kill you on the spot, in the real world. And of course there are other oddities like underwater archery in Nur. Weird world indeed

Yeah it all got kinda wonky with all that magic, time bending and telepathy.

Fhtagn wrote:I just have mental warning signs flashing now whenever I see something I know can grab me at range. It works nicely now.

I suggested long ago for some kind of warning for every enemy who has that skill, at least through mod...

In the talent description of Shoot Down:

In addition, your heightened senses also reduce the speed of incoming projectiles by 18%, 32%, 42%, 51%, 58%, and prevents your own projectiles from striking you.

How is this a problem that happens?

Play a skirm and you'll see it happen.
Regarding archer, this thread was started in 2014, way before shoot down existed.