Right now we have web and arms of the abyss as the main tool against fleeing mobs, but there are mobs that break that and it turns into a real annoyance and there is nothing that a player can do to combat that directly, which really goes against the spirit of the game, there should always exist a tool to deal with whatever situation the game throws at you, at the right level.
I feel like this is a good chance to utilize some of the skills and spells that have the framework but seemingly provide very little benefit at the moment, like stun or force field.
Bards also have various songs that affect monsters behaviours and yet there are no songs that can stop a mob from fleeing, which is odd.
If this is an important annoyance, handdam check for stuns, cleric level check for forcefield and charisma check for bard songs could be coded in, so that players level or effort(via an adequate eq set) matches the importance of this annoyance.
And don’t forget about warriors. Maybe something like taunt, as an independent skill or as a an extra to underrated oath skills.
Bards do have haunted dirge, but I haven’t seen it used outside testing.
What other MUDs have for warriors is blockexit. An automatic skill that prevents a mob from fleeing.
Seeing as using it would make all other spells less useful for keeping mobs in place, maybe add a mv cost to it, say, 10mv per one block. Also, the skill has a 85% success rate and web affects hitroll, which means web/arms are still in use.
In a large group, several warriors should be able to hold back a fleeing pyrohydra w/ blockexit at the cost of approximately 150mvs each, which is what we might find useful, ie concentrated mv/mana loss in exchange for wandering about between brambles.
It would be pretty cool if there were a group tactic to prevent fleeing. Maybe something like people in front row can
Then when mob decides to flee, the mob randomly chooses 1 person in the front row to escape past. If that person is not blocking, then the mob automatically flees successfully, but if that person is blocking that mob then some kind of success check is rolled based on their comparative size, level, and primary class of the player.
I like it because it adds a level of complexity and responsibility to front row tactics. Front row players would need to be ready to block the mob on leader’s command or at least have scripts to do so.