Permakilled a friend while sparring by accident

[Trafalgar]

Well, this was a little shocking. Me and a friend (Ferinex) were sparring (behind a building so clues wouldn't be visible), and as soon as the xp popup appeared, I clicked to walk away. However, he ended up being instantly permakilled somehow right about the time my guy took the first step away (It looked like combat ended - his portrat vanished, but he said on IRC he'd been permakilled).

We thought it would be a bit harder to permakill someone and that you wouldn't be able to do it by accident this way. For one we expected I'd have to hit him repeatedly while he was down before he died, for two, I thought combat would end after I KO'd him, and I'd have to retarget his body. Instead, I didn't even have time to end combat before my character permakilled him without my permission! D:

(And his body's irretrievable, so the items on it are also irretrievable, because it's behind that house)

Alternate Interpretation:
Your (presumably?) first DF-esque sparring fatality.

[WorkerDrone]

Bummer...You owe him one body load o' items. Hope he wasn't wearing anything expensive like steel. That and he had his Tradition slider full.

Which IRC?

[sami1337]

Well that's kinda dumb. I mean, he knew his hhp was dropping right..?
Also, i dunno. As far as i know you're first knocked out?

[loftar]

Maybe you just dealt so much hard damage to him that you instakilled him? In particular, the Cleave attack can easily do that if you're fighting a player severely weaker than yourself.

That said, I want to implement a dedicated sparring mode where one wouldn't have to worry about such things (and which wouldn't, of course, leave any clues around either); I'm just not sure about how, exactly, it would work yet.

[Trafalgar]

I was just hitting him with a stone axe using chop with 21 melee combat skill, no cleave. He had higher melee combat skill than me, actually (30).

[Ferinex]

I didn't have anything expensive on; I already replaced what was lost. Jorb is being helpful though, in deleting and replacing the house so we can retrieve the body .

[Laremere]

I think sparing could work like this:
FIrst person right clicks and selects "request spare" or something.
The second person has a pop-up like a party invite.
As they fight, no hard damage is done, and you can't attack while they're fainted.
There would be a "leave sparing match" button.

Also, more than two people should be able to be in a sparing match. Village vs. village sparing matches would be cool.

[sami1337]

Or just enter a party and right click spar. Combat for both is initiated and you don't lose hhp. Leave party to stop.