Advantages
- People will have even less motivation to run and then leave the town.
- Not applying project-based combat to travel is easier to implement (projects currently require a location, and walkers aren't at a location).
- It's a temporary solution that could be improved later.
- It will make it reasonable to chase people (e.g. thieves), whereas with project-based combat it may be much too easy to escape since damage is slow.
Disadvantages
- There will be two very different types of combat, which could cause confusion or difficulty in applying changes consistently.
- People can still be killed very quickly during travel.
- It could cause more combat to be during travel (where less people are around) instead of having combat in town. This could especially apply to sparring, unless we only allow skill experience to be gained via a combat project and not during instant combat (I think this is a good solution).
Alternatives
- Have combat be the same during travel, so people will get in whatever damage they can until the target is no longer in sight.
- Don't allow characters to leave during combat (changing the main combat proposal).
- Have damage continue to be applied to the target even after they leave the location (e.g. for a day). Since projects don't travel, in this case I think the damage would have to continue even without the attacker working on the project. One could think of this as the slow effects of a wound. And since we're thinking of giving better defense against a target one is attacking, fleeing instead of attacking the target would be a disadvantage (except that they may avoid future attacks).
I think that allowing instant damage for travel is important to not allow people to escape too easily with project-based combat, and I also think it's important to not force people to stay in a location- we want them to stay and interact, so we just need to provide incentive to do so.
Having damage continue to be applied for a day I think is a reasonable solution, and makes sense to me in terms of realism, at least until a wound is cared for. We could even consider slow damage without projects as a completely alternative combat proposal instead of combat projects, but I think group-based combat wouldn't make as much sense without projects, nor guards.
So, if we want a solution for land travel that matches project-based combat, we could somehow allow the project to continue during travel even when the target has left?