Pacifist guilt and Weariness have unexpected, deadly, bug-like interaction

[markiragoldberg]

Describe the bug

Killing a zombie child, with a melee attack, as a Pacifist, when you are still Fresh but close to Light weariness, and haven't killed many zombie children previously, will instantly set you to Extreme weariness and delay your next turn for >10x your typical melee attack duration. This is unexpected and potentially lethally dangerous.

Killing a zombie child makes pacifists extremely unhappy. Being extremely unhappy makes you slower in general and multiplies your weariness substantially, potentially going from Fresh to Extreme. Extreme weariness makes melee attacks take ten times as long. All of these effects take place instantly and retroactively apply to the attack that killed the zombie child, effectively stunning you with no warning.

Steps to reproduce

1. Get pacifist trait, and a wood axe.
2. Increase weariness (chop trees) until you are at Fresh weariness, but very close to Light. Ideally "Fresh ....."
3. Get into a fight with a group of zombies, including children.
4. Attack zombie children with the axe until you manage to kill one.
5. Observe your last attack cost 1000+ moves, that you now have "Extreme ....." weariness instead of Fresh, that your last turn according to the message log was ~10-20 seconds ago, and that your situation has probably worsened dramatically.

Expected behavior

I expected Pacifist to make killing zombie children more upsetting over a longer timeframe, and more generally to make combat skills hard to learn. I did not expect a devastating stun and tremendous danger from carelessly killing one zombie child.

The problem is the instantaneous cascade of guilt->depression->weariness->slowdown, so fast that it retroactively applies to the attack that caused it. Ideally I would expect time to have to pass for this sequence to take effect. But it might be better to just cap or weaken the link between psychological sadness and physical weariness, or to make pacifist's morale penalties smaller but also last longer than thirty minutes.

Screenshots

Versions and configuration

• OS: Windows
  • OS Version: 10.0.22621.1105 (22H2)
• Game Version: 9864b45 [64-bit]
• Graphics Version: Tiles
• Game Language: System language []
• Mods loaded: [
  Dark Days Ahead [dda],
  Disable NPC Needs [no_npc_food],
  Portal Storms Ignore NPCs [personal_portal_storms],
  No Fungal Growth [no_fungal_growth],
  Bionic Professions [package_bionic_professions]
  ]

Additional context

No response

[andrei8l]

/confirmed

Montana-trimmed.tar.gz

output.webm

Caused by this bit:

Cataclysm-DDA/src/character.cpp

Lines 4395 to 4399 in a14b798

	// Each 2 points of morale increase or decrease by 1%
	threshold *= 1.0f + ( get_morale_level() / 200.0f );
	// TODO: Hunger effects this
	return std::max( threshold, bmr / 10 );

[Snaaty]

Honestly this feels like the problem is also related to the fact that weariness slows melee attacks? What is the IRL correlate to this anyway? I was also caught off guard by suddenly struggling against simple zeds when I lost track of my weariness. The thing is, weariness wouldn't even improve, even if just relaxing in a chair for 30 minutes which feels wrong.

I feel like it would be more suitable if high weariness perhaps increased the stamina cost (for melee attacks) rather than the time it takes to make them? I don't see why you would suddenly take 3x as long to fight for your life because you were chopping wood earlier that day.

[kevingranade]

The retroactive element of this is problematic, but pacifist is intended to heavily discourage violence, which this is doing just fine at.