Category:Terminology

From HGWiki

Some D&D, NWN, and HG specific words and their meanings. Below is a list of these words and a summary of their meanings. Click on the word itself to visit a dedicated page, where further information may be found.

Anchor 

A party member that stays put in an area while other party members leave temporarily, for example to rest in the Parallel Pocket Dimension, or to shop in town. The anchor ensures that the area is not despawned, or that the other party members can return to the area via the PC Scry device's "Port to party leader" function.

Backspawn 

When a spawn occurs behind the primary direction of travel of the player or party. Can be problematic since the players towards the back of the party are not typically prepared to handle direct melee attacks. Many areas have these scripted in as an extra challenge.

Banker 

The Banker is a person designated by the party to pop and/or collect all of the loot that drops for a specific run. Since this tends to be a great deal of items when not using the !autosell or !autorand commands, many players dislike banking for both the tedium and the impact it has on their inventories (requiring as many as a dozen bags of holding depending on the run and the settings of the above mentioned random commands). In addition, many players feel that bards are de facto bankers due to their Treasure Scent spell, which increases the rarity of the next random loot container that they pop.

Blade 

Shorthand for Black Blade of Disaster. Sometimes also called "BBoD" or "BB".

Caster 

A Caster is terminology used to refer to any character type whose primary damage output is based on the casting of spells. Examples of this are a Sorcerer or Wizard.

Classes 

A class is a profession or vocation for a character. It determines what he or she is able to do: combat training, magical ability, skills, and more. Selection of a class for a character is typically based on the core concept for the character. The basic selections can approximate almost any character concept, and often several options are available.

Control Class 

The control class is what Higher Ground's Legendary level system uses in order to determine what benefits are available to a character when taking legendary levels.

Despawning 

When all Player Characters leave an area, any Mob that had been spawned in that area is automatically removed - "despawned." This is sometimes used to clear areas of mobs very quickly by spawning them (usually in GS) and then leaving the area, so that the now empty area can be passed through safely by other party members. In Legendary level areas, despawning any mobs usually has the effect that any loot and remaining spawns in the area are despawned as well, which may lock up a run by removing required quest items (see "anchoring").

Note that there is a despawn timer which is started when all player characters exit an area, if you reenter before this timer has expired you will find all Mobs still present.

Farming 

A term to denote repeatedly adventuring in a specific area, or repeatedly fighting a mob, in order to acquire item(s).

GS 

Shorthand for Greater Sanctuary. Also can be used to indicate the similar effect of Etherealness granted by the Precious ring and the Ghostly Visage spell.

Hug 

The term "hug" is sometimes used by players of caster characters to announce that they will cast a buff spell that affects party members in a relatively small area of effect around the caster, such as UEF. To make sure that they benefit from the spell, party members then run close to the caster and meet in a relatively tight group around him, which is jokingly likened to a group hug.

Kickback 

Kickback, also abbreviated KB, is damage applied to an attacker when a target is hit. For instance, a character with the Elemental Shield buff will cause fire KB, while Death Armor causes magic KB, and Mestil's Acid Sheath causes acid KB. Some mobs can cause party-wide KB, where the entire party takes damage. Sometimes KB can be caused by only certain kinds of attacks (e.g., melee damage).

Legendary and Paragon levels 

Legendary and Paragon Levels are a mechanism by which your character continues to increase in power after level 40. They are NOT normal levels as recognized by the game engine. On Higher Ground, the functionality of the HGLL System has been greatly expanded to include nearly every imaginable facet of a character from casterlevels, spell penetration, attack bonuses, feats, skills, saving throws, and more!

Mob 

A MOB is a NPC or monster.

Pop 

To pop an item is simply the act of activating a loot container by clicking on it, which in the case of chests, bags, and other such containers possessing loot, causes the loot to "pop" into the resulting bag of remains. Popping is quite the opposite of bashing, a practice that is generally frowned upon when it comes to acquiring loot of the "not broken" variety.

Powerlevel 

Similar to farming, Powerleveling is repeatedly adventuring in an area or areas in order to gain experience. Typically the areas are easy to adventure in and the experience gained there is good. However, powerlevel areas are deliberately short on random loot.

Example: "You're supposed to use a level 8 sorc with one level of druid for animal empathy and invisibility (bandits don't have true seeing so invisibility is all you need, not gs) for East Road. You level there to around 10-12. Then you hand off to a sorc with necro foci and UtD at level 16-18 and farm PoW. Then when you get to around level 18 you can hand off to a level 24 sorc that farms Zhents. Then when you reach level 24 you want to go to bone hoard where a level 30 sorc with evo focuses and sunburst will carry you through to 34. When you reach 34 you go to an LL run with a level 60-80 to carry you. Used to be desert but they made that require immo, so now Uro is your best option."

Pull 

An action, usually performed by a single character, to spawn mobs and lead them back to a specific position. This position is either favourable due to bottle-necking or because of souping, or both.

Rez 

Short for Resurrection. In Higher Ground, this typically indicates someone using a Resurrection scroll to bring a dead party member back to life. Resurrection scrolls may be bought in town. There are also Rods and Greater Rods which do the same thing but a little faster and at a distance.

Soup 

Soup is the term used to describe a "kill zone" containing many AOE (Area of Effect) or "cloud" spells. Often this can be located at a constriction (corridor, one side of a door, narrowing in the path, etc.).

Spawn 

An appearance of a group of mobs, and in HG, always hostile (see Oinos for one example where this may not be true). The scripting in HG sets up spawn points in each area, such that when a player enters the spawn point, the mobs appear and become active. This technique saves server-side processing power by only running mob AI scripts when players are interacting with them.

Spell resistance (effect) 

Spell resistance (SR) is a special defensive ability. When a spell (that has a spell resistance check) is cast against a creature with spell resistance, the caster rolls a die (with the modifiers described below). If the roll is less than the the creature’s spell resistance, then the spell does not affect that creature. Spell resistance is like armor against magical attacks.

Squishy 

A term sometimes used to indicate those characters who do not stand up well to being hit. In the Hells this is often used as a shorthand for casters and ranged attackers, even though technically some of them may be better able to handle tanking than some of the actual tanks.

Subby 

Short slang for subrace, see Races

Tank 

A tank is a particular role one or more party members fill during combat. The primary purpose of a tank is to prevent enemy mobs from attacking other characters, especially the squishies. As such, tanks must be able to withstand damage and debilitating effects, and also must be mobile to chase down anything that gets passed them. Damage output it secondary to tanking.

UEF 

Shorthand for the level 9 cleric spell, Undeath's Eternal Foe.

UFO 

UFO = UEF + IoF (the cleric epic spell Instruments of Faith). This will usually be said by a cleric in a hell or post-hell run as a means of notifying the group to: (a) gather in a tight circle for the UEF spell; (b) ready weapons for IoF