His Grace on MRP

[Vekter]

A round triggered a bit of a discussion on whether or not using His Grace is kosher on MRP, so here's a discussion about this specific situation.

Let's say the Chaplain who bought His Grace either dies or gets eaten, so it's now sitting on the floor. Is it okay for another antag (in this case, a Changeling) to pick that item up and start killing people with it? If so, at what point does it stop being reasonable for them to use it?

My personal opinion is that I think it's okay sometimes? If someone playing Chaplain is like constantly buying it to go nuts with it, I think that's a rule 10 issue, but it shows up so rarely that I don't figure I'm that pressed about another antag getting a hold of it.

E:

To remove doubt, for the past ~4 years (at least) Chaplains that buy His Grace can use it unrestricted.

The policy thread is purely about someone else that picks up His Grace after it consumes its owner.

[Redbert]

I don't think anyone has a problem with the chaplain having it, or even someone getting it as a gift and going ham. The problem that round was that we had two changelings passing it back and forth to maximize the body count.
One participated in killing the chaplain, then looted his grace from them. They then activated it and started going to town with armblade + fleshmend + cap laser + his grace.

They just used his grace as an excuse to murderbone with their normal tools until his grace was doing more damage before swapping to it.
I think it's very LRP behavior and shouldn't exist on Manuel.

[Vekter]

They just used his grace as an excuse to murderbone with their normal tools until his grace was doing more damage before swapping to it.
I think it's very LRP behavior and shouldn't exist on Manuel.

I think the operative questions here are:

1) If you find it on the ground as an antag, is it okay for you to pick it up and use it?
2) To what extent is it okay to use it? Should you only be trying to keep it fed so it doesn't kill you or should you be allowed to go crazy with it?
3) Does having His Grace entitle you to murderboning with your other tools as well, or should you only be using His Grace?

[Redbert]

They just used his grace as an excuse to murderbone with their normal tools until his grace was doing more damage before swapping to it.
I think it's very LRP behavior and shouldn't exist on Manuel.

I think the operative questions here are:

1) If you find it on the ground as an antag, is it okay for you to pick it up and use it?
2) To what extent is it okay to use it? Should you only be trying to keep it fed so it doesn't kill you or should you be allowed to go crazy with it?
3) Does having His Grace entitle you to murderboning with your other tools as well, or should you only be using His Grace?

1) I think we can draw the line here. You should not be able to use His Grace if someone else has failed with it. The chaplain has made the sacrifice to purchase it and attempt it, someone else with a full set of antag gear should not have that opportunity. The box calms down and you can save it until you feel like using it while keeping the bodies and damage dealt.
2) You should be able to do whatever means necessary to keep it fed if it is active. Activating it yourself in order to get that meta protection is completely different.
3) Back to 2, whatever means necessary to keep it fed while it's active, but limited to while it's active. If you wipe the entire station before activating his grace under the guise of wanting to feed it the bodies, that should be considered against the rules.

His Grace does not work with the MRP ruleset, we allow the chaplain to use it because it exists in their kit, we should not be providing this same exception to those who pick up the scraps after the user has died.
I don't want a code solution to this problem either, I think the sandbox interaction is perfectly fine on LRP. The issue I have is when another antag continues for the reason of maximizing kill count on an 'MRP' server.

The idea of His Grace goes against a changelings goals as an antag. A changeling wants to consume, they want DNA, they don't want to give all their food to a toolbox. The only reason it was picked up in this case was to maximize the number of kills they could get.
I'm not sure if this next bit is 100% currect, so correct me if i'm wrong, but it is also disabled as spy loot. I'm assuming for similar reasons.

[Vekter]

For the record, I'm using that specific round as a jumping-off point. This thread isn't to directly discuss that round.

[MooCow12]

Isn't there an achievement for ascending his grace to golden and shouldnt antagonists be allowed to pursue an achievement that a coder added to the game when available?


The same way a dragon should almost be expected to play friendly if they want their fish eating achievement due to the sheer amount of fish they have to eat almost 100% requiring help from crew...(30 wtf)




If you cant pursue an achievement as an antagonist....a role that is meant to have the most freedoms.....then it starts to feel like the policy isnt made around the code or there is a code issue.

[Yulice]

The issue arises if we have someone who doesn't know what his grace is, or is aware but is unsure of how it works, and then picks it up, or even mistakenly grabs it trying to get something else or thinks its an artistic toolbox or something (because how fucking often is His Grace really bought). They might have the robust-ness to start slamming, but wouldn't know or have unintentionally put themselves into a corner where they are forced to murder. And now you are tasking admins with being able to figure out whether or not someone is just stupid or is being malicious when this is something that only the person behind the screen can know. Granted, this is an issue with a GIGANTIC part of our enforcement honestly, because a lot of people are ignorant, or at least pretending to be, and we can't just ban everyone for fuckups.

His Grace is also VERY antiquated, and if I remember right a lot of maintainers have essentially just grandfathered it in, and a PR to either disable it on MRP or just remove it entirely would probably pass if it got coded.

[NecromancerAnne]

I'm going to be 250% blunt about this. If there is any restrictions placed on His Grace and its use, we may as well remove it wholesale. And I think that's immensely shit and I would call you a pussy for doing it because you are one (this is a general, unspecified 'you'). But it would be better than allowing admins to set up ban traps like that. I don't know how many times I have to keep repeating that, but don't fucking do that.

If you need policy, the policy should just be 'fucking who cares' and just accept that things will get messy. If someone is doing it too often, you can ask them to cool it, as with anything else. That's just policy around specific gimmicks and strategies. But anything outside of that and you're setting up players for bans they probably don't have a whole lot of power to circumvent. It being a such a clusterfuck is part of the experience, and it's a murderbone challenge item. If you can't use it to flex without getting banned because they stepped out of line too much in one way or another, that's, as I said, a trap.

MRP isn't fucking a paddling pool.

[Vekter]

I'm going to be 250% blunt about this. If there is any restrictions placed on His Grace and its use, we may as well remove it wholesale. And I think that's immensely shit and I would call you a pussy for doing it because you are one (this is a general, unspecified 'you'). But it would be better than allowing admins to set up ban traps like that. I don't know how many times I have to keep repeating that, but don't fucking do that.

If you need policy, the policy should just be 'fucking who cares' and just accept that things will get messy. If someone is doing it too often, you can ask them to cool it, as with anything else. That's just policy around specific gimmicks and strategies. But anything outside of that and you're setting up players for bans they probably don't have a whole lot of power to circumvent. It being a such a clusterfuck is part of the experience, and it's a murderbone challenge item. If you can't use it to flex without getting banned because they stepped out of line too much in one way or another, that's, as I said, a trap.

MRP isn't fucking a paddling pool.

This is generally how I feel about it, I don't think its existence meshes very well with the intent behind MRP but I don't see it as a big enough issue to require a bunch of extra policy to handle it. I mostly made the thread for the purposes of discussion and to see how others feel about it.

[bean_sprout]

IMO, and I say this as someone who never plays chaplain, the chap should have full ability to use His Grace with impunity despite normal MRP restrictions. Otherwise, it would be completely incompatible. His Grace is too cool and iconic(and risky) of an item to just exile completely.

Edit: I don't have strong opinions on non chaplains using it, in either direction for or against.

[Timberpoes]

To remove doubt, for the past ~4 years (at least) Chaplains that buy His Grace can use it unrestricted.

The policy thread is purely about someone else that picks up His Grace after it consumes its owner.

[NecromancerAnne]

To remove doubt, for the past ~4 years (at least) Chaplains that buy His Grace can use it unrestricted.

The policy thread is purely about someone else that picks up His Grace after it consumes its owner.

Okay, that's a little more specific and actually worth an examination.

Personally, I think activating it as a non-antag is probably not cool, as it's not exactly free antag. BUT, picking it up WHILE active is actually a way to possibly stop yourself from dying. I think giving a bit of leeway to pick it up for that reason. Jumping onto it to become a free antag? I don't think that's cool. It might be hard to enforce that but obviously, His Grace pulls plenty of eyes onto it that you can be sure that someone will have seen the random assistant that showed up last minute, saw His Grace on the floor, snatched it and started killing, and not just the person who is barely surviving getting chomped in half on the floor.

If we're talking about other kinds of antagonists, like lings? I feel like it's whatever. The fun is that it's His Grace, and I think if you're already an evil bad guy and you want to risk it all on getting the 20 kills to ascension, you should. It's in the spirit for it to be an opportunity for any antagonist to cause some mayhem after the Chap has failed, because normally that thing will get destroyed ASAP the moment the chaplain goes down.

[Vekter]

If we're talking about other kinds of antagonists, like lings? I feel like it's whatever. The fun is that it's His Grace, and I think if you're already an evil bad guy and you want to risk it all on getting the 20 kills to ascension, you should. It's in the spirit of the time for it to be an opportunity for any antagonist to cause some mayhem after the Chap has failed, because normally that thing will get destroyed ASAP the moment the chaplain goes down.

I would be a lot more concerned with the practice if people actually bought the damn thing more often than once every two or three weeks, tbh.

[GamerAndYeahMick]

I gotta agree with Anne about his grace here. I also gotta say I don't think there's anything wrong with going on murder sprees from time to time and MRP shouldn't strive to just never have them or never have things that facilitate them, I think it's always going to come down to why the person picked up his grace, I don't really feel comfortable forcing them to let it kill them but I don't feel comfortable letting someone self antag either.

[conrad]

I wanted to give my take real quick since I stumbled accidentally upon this thread and have been massivelly bored as the gears of life grind ever so slowly early in the year, because I got an 𝓸𝓹𝓲𝓷𝓲𝓸𝓷 on this matter.

For a stolen His Grace boning to happen, the following need to be true:

- Someone has to roll Chaplain with Traitor or Sleeper Agent enabled;
- That person needs to choose to order His Grace;
- That person needs to be consumed by it;
- Someone else needs to pick up His Grace.

That to me seems very, very rare. I wouldn't care if someone who wasn't an antag became free antag because the stars aligned and everything went like this and they decided to vore me into their lil' toolbox from hell.

"B-but people will start playing Chaplain more!" I don't think someone who isn't malicious would want to lose their antag roll just to give His Grace to someone else. Even then, this isn't efficient.

The point of concession I'd find is if you need to activate His Grace after picking it up a second time when the original owner died, 'cos I don't remember if that's needed or if it's just "pick it up when activated and it sticks to your hand and is hungee". And even if it doesn't need activation then, it's such a nothingburger it could be Burgerman's evil twin.

[JusticeGoat]

How often do you see his grace? I say just let it happen when it happens, unless its a regular thing its not a big deal to have a op antag once in a while.

[NecromancerAnne]

I think in the entirety of the last year, I saw it once. It lasted maybe...five minutes before he died to a bolted door.

[RedBaronFlyer]

yeah in my years of manuel play I've literally never seen this happen so I imagine it's rather rare. If it was more easily abusable then perhaps it'd be a bigger issue but it feels like it requires so many steps to go right to lead to ling murderboning or whatever.

sidenote but it's infinitely easier for the ling to get a high bodycount while not technically breaking the mass murder rules by spamming out blood spiders or killer bees

[Vekter]

I think we can just lock this up at this point; the consensus seems to be "it doesn't happen enough to worry about having a specific policy, buying it lets you go nuts if you really want to".