The Situation:
The pacifist quirk makes you unable to use harm intent on any living beings (deconstructing a table or welding a door still works). You also can’t even shoot harming weapons, only stun works. And I love that, it’s a lot of fun to roleplay a pacifist character. But the quirk also sneakingly modifies another mechanic: throwing items. As a pacifist, you can only throw lighter, more harmless objects like breath masks, pens, boxes or donuts, whilst heavier, possibly harmful objects like toolboxes, crowbars, power cells or health analyzers cannot be thrown, only dropped. At first glance, this might seem reasonable, as throwing stuff at other people is often used as a way to harm. But there are many situations in which no living being is harmed, where pacifists are limited in an unfair manner by not being able to throw some things.
Exemplary situations where no one is hurt but pacifists are still impaired:
Igniting a quick makeshift burn chamber
Usually one would just throw a welder in there. But a pacifist can’t throw it, next to most tools. A lighter works, but it’s still extra work to get one, especially as a non-smoking character. Mechanically, it is possible to just light the welder, go in, drop and quickly go out, but that is very unrealistic (bad RP) and also dangerous (imagine having space lag exactly at that moment).
Floating in space
So you did it again. You went into space without a fire extinguisher. No problem, just throw one iron rod from your stack and off you go back to the safe havens of the station. Oh, you are a pacifist? Better decide which one of your belongings you like the least.
Throwing, in general
It’s just a lot of fun putting something in its place by throwing it across the room, passing something to your buddy a few tiles away or quickly tossing something into the disposal unit.
Solution 1: Soft throw
Enable pacifists to also throw heavy items, but when these items hit a living target they just do not deal any damage. Instead, show a message like “Player1 softly tosses item at Player2”.
Solution 2: Roleplay
Just do not limit a pacifists’ ability to throw at all and just mandate them to act out their pacifism through roleplay. This is a good solution because it is actually already done. Mechanically, it is possible to bypass pacifism in several ways, but one should never do that since it would defy the purpose of the quirk. One example: the game has no means of differentiating good from bad chemicals and therefore lets even a pacifist throw grenades, beakers or glasses at their leisure, no matter the contents. In that case, it is already expected from a pacifist to just RP their quirk (e.g. not throwing pot/water grenades at other people). So why not in the case of all other items?
We could just make it so pacifists can throw but never actually hit anyone with their stuff, but I‘m not sure how this could even be coded.
Also yeah, pacifists are already circumventing their traits to gamer (I have seen them build firepits to kill people). We don’t need an even easier way for them to do it.
Yeah. If you ever “gently put X on the ground” Its because the item has a throwforce, even if its just 1 you cant throw it. Kinda sucked when tools didnt require harm intent to deconstruct tables… There was no way to place a wrench on a table as a pacifist. Kinda funny tho in restrospect.
Im assuming you have a holofan up in your burn chamber door? Easiest way would be to drop the welder infront of the doorway, stand in the holofan, drag the welder, click drag it into the room.
Alternativly. Drop a welder into the room before adding the gasses, wont last TOO long but might be long enough. Single use matches are cheap enough in the vendors too.
Throw cash:
Alt click ID
take 1c
toss it
(EVERYONE SHOULD DO THIS, not just paci)
As for lessened restrictions… Unsure…
Removing throwforce from objects medium or smaller (even just for paci) could be an interesting change… I can see it working altho might cause them to throw it back, injuring you.
Could rework the throwforces on certain items and especially tools. Cant say ive ever seen someone fight by throwing a wrench at their target repeatedly… damage numbers dont seem worth it too… 5-7 damage for basic tools, 8 for advanced tools.
Punch damage is also 7 for comparrison. Toolbox is 12.
Would be nice to have the ability to throw all tools rather than half.
And yeah. Kinda agree that throwforce blocker shouldnt be removed fully.
Both in terms of accidental and malicious use of it. I feel it would be better with something in place.
In all honestly most people who are serious about their character’s disablity be it social anxiety or pacifist usually have the quirk turned off.
Why? Because not having control of how your character reacts in context is important.
Like would someone be a shuttering mess when talking to someone they are friends?
Would your pacifist really not defend themselves when being attacked by nukies, even if it goes against their morals?
Personally unless you’re playing a character with health problems (i.e needing a wheelchair, blind, deaf etc) then I would have the negative quirks turned off and just roleplay them out.
Why pick Pacifist if you’re not going to be pacifistic? It isn’t a free point for other stuff as you literally can not harm people the conventional way. Someone taking Pacifist would and honestly should roleplay it.
I do like the suggestion MyraCross has of throwing stuff not doing damage. Even as a non-Pacifist I still feel bad for throwing a toolbox in my mates’ face. Perhaps it could be linked to intent? So even non-Pacifists can non-lethally throw stuff? Helping = No damage. Anything else = Normal damage.
Yes, I know that some people will not play along, but this is already the case. For example, pacifists bypass pacifism by throwing malicious grenades. And then getting banned for it. Just because some people don’t stick to the rules doesn’t mean the rules are bad.
Iirc matches go out when being thrown. But haven’t tested that yet.
Oh wow, that is such a good idea. Thanks for the tip!
Also, I want to add in general that the exemplary situations are just some random scenarios that I came up with off the top of my head. There are probably more such situations.
Just turning the quirk off might be a solution for some people as RP always opens up more possibilities than the precoded mechanics. But it can also be desirable to actually activate the quirk. First, if one doesn’t have the quirk, they might not have the points to activate positive quirks they possibly might want. Also, pacifism doesn’t appear in medical records anymore without the quirk. And where is the point in having those features if one just doesn’t use them?
And yes, my pacifist is an unrobust piece of trash, they would either run away or ask the nukies kindly to leave :D
I don’t like combat or conflict at all but the times I’ve been dogged by the pacifist quirk itself are more than I can count.
Not being able to butcher animals as cook (or aggressive grabbing to throw in the machine), not being able to use PKA as miner, trying to separate materials by throwing so they don’t stack, to name a few I can remember right now.
Regarding self-defense usually I (Odessa), just lay on the ground while pleading for my life.
Of course, it never works.
2 solutions, 1 possibly exploity but arguable, the other is perfectly fine and what I do normally.
The first: I dont believe the game stops you from hooking live monkies, being on the hook also causes either rapid bloodloss or brute damage. Leaving them on the hook for a while will eventually let you butcher them. on the fence solution and extremely slow.
Second: Learn how to make synth meat, its stupidly efficient.
-Ask chem for a beaker of cryoxadone
-get a syringe
-Take blood from yourself or a donor (monkey)
-add blood to the cryox (5:1 / blood:cryox) to create a slab
alternativly, hook a monkey up to a draining IV and put the beaker into it, will automate itself
Mining is a pain tho… I made a second duplicate profile without paci when I wanted to play mining and just didnt use lethals on station or around others
The whole “don’t gamer the workaround to pacifism” thing only applies to the quirk right? Seems like it’s still in character for say a traitor who got surgeried to be trying to fight the surgery by using whatever workaround. You could explain that IC as the surgery being imperfect at rewriting the tot’s brain and they still have ways to be violent indirectly
Start by acquiring either a Timer or remote signaler, then an Igniter and finally a screw driver, set timer/remote signaler to attach, attach to Igniter. Place within chamber. Wait for timer to expire/ Signal the device. BOOM remote ignition without throwingng
Take your ID, it contains what is likely at least tens, hundreds or thousands of perfectly disposable items which can be thrown to adjust your movement in space, It’s called Dosh, Moolah, Cheeeese, Holo-credits, the only thing you need to do now is possess your ID, be quick in the event you don’t have a space suit and air, and not be broke.
NGL this sounds like a character RP issue mate, you’ve selected the one trait that makes you a mere aesthetic change away from a hippie, being so offended and perturbed by violence you cannot willingly perpetrate it or supposedly acts that would lead to such.
Best way to look at it is pacifism surgery is brainwashing. Unless you want to advocate for people being allowed to fight against their brainwashing in general, they shouldn’t be fighting against pacifism surgery.
Pacifism surgery is done as a capital punishment to keep people in the round instead of executing them. Keep that in mind when you’re bypassing something that takes the same level of authorization as an execution. By all means, try to complete non-violent objectives, but obey the brainwashing all the same instead of trying to find an exploit to shit on the people who gave you mercy.
fuck I should have wrote mine out sooner, I had it in “Draft” for so friggin long I didn’t even read this by the time I posted it.
Basically I’ve said 2rds the same thing you said.