Thoughts of death (Where is thy sting?)

Ideas and suggestions for game mechanics and rules.
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Ithildur
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Ithildur »

Didn't we have such a vote/poll already?

btw as I found out last friday, the floor effectively is -7, not -6, as far as having enough time for party members to react, and apparently is so by design.
Last edited by Ithildur on Thu Feb 13, 2014 9:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by HEEGZ »

Maybe? I thought removing the -6 floor was a dead horse...
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Ithildur »

Yeah, but we love bringing up dead horses. :) The removal/retention of the floor wasn't even the topic of this thread to begin with.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Zelknolf »

For two points brought up--
The stated purpose of _ACR_DTH_FLOOR is to prevent people from being immediately (or effectively-immediately) killed during a fight. Everyone (not just those who are put into negative hit points but not killed) is covered intentionally, and it is unambiguously designed to make ALFA less lethal. Reaction times come into play when placing where people start bleeding (at -6, with the first bleeding check happening right away, so it takes people a few rounds to actually die). Claims that letting people get instantly killed is part of the original design are just not true, as evidenced by the discussion and the downright-crazy extra complication added to the death scripts specifically to handle abrupt deaths dealt to previously-fit targets. Though of course that might not have bearing on whether or not any given person thinks that allowing instant death is desirable; just that such arguments would more accurately come from the perspective of "I think this is better" rather than "this is what we were trying to do."


And we can't put anything in the main thread on a timer while the game is paused, not even the pause itself. All game time stops while the game is paused, and the only code that runs is code that executes instantly.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by oldgrayrogue »

Zelknolf wrote: And we can't put anything in the main thread on a timer while the game is paused, not even the pause itself. All game time stops while the game is paused, and the only code that runs is code that executes instantly.
So does that mean this new pause function keeps the game paused indefinitely until a DM unpauses it? If so please disable it. That is unfair to all other players.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Ronan »

oldgrayrogue wrote:
Zelknolf wrote: And we can't put anything in the main thread on a timer while the game is paused, not even the pause itself. All game time stops while the game is paused, and the only code that runs is code that executes instantly.
So does that mean this new pause function keeps the game paused indefinitely until a DM unpauses it? If so please disable it. That is unfair to all other players.
It does, but only if a DM is logged in. It also notifies the DM of who died and where.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Zelknolf »

As Ronan says. We only pause the game when there's a DM there to unpause it.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by jmecha »

So it would be bad for DM's to stay Logged in and AFK for hours?
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Ithildur
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Ithildur »

jmecha wrote:So it would be bad for DM's to stay Logged in and AFK for hours?
Probably a bad thing anyway, breaking all those player's hearts when they log in and realize the DM is inactive. :) Also probably not great on the cpu/hardware.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Zelknolf »

Ithildur wrote:
jmecha wrote:So it would be bad for DM's to stay Logged in and AFK for hours?
Probably a bad thing anyway, breaking all those player's hearts when they log in and realize the DM is inactive. :) Also probably not great on the cpu/hardware.
I would probably draw more attention to maintenance. A long-term-afk DM will (and does) stymie tech work, particularly near releases. Though the performance problems mostly show up if you leave every quirky feature on; don't really need any of the information provided by, say, scry if you're afk.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Xanthea »

If people agree that bouncing up and down from bleeding without consequence isn't a desired part of the system then there doesn't really seem to be a need to make this overly complicated.

Hit points are treated as glancing blows and stamina and the like and dropping to negatives is considered to be a serious wound, so just apply a -2 to all stats penalty when dropping to negatives. The orc's hammer blow left you with a serious concussion, or broken bones, or something else along those lines, a wound that goes beyond the stuff typical healing magic is meant to attend to, something that either requires some rest, or specialized magic like a lesser restoration. You're dazed, stiff, a little confused. Still able to swing a sword around, but a little less effectively until you've had some treatment. And if you're constantly popping up and down during a fight then the minor penalty will rapidly start getting quite severe.

Sure, sometimes a cleric's going to be around with lots of lesser restorations and it won't end up being a big deal, but a lot of other times there's not going to be any spells capable of casting it on hand and the person is going to have to put up with it, or drink an expensive potion to counter it.

The only question is if people want to apply it immediately when someone drops to bleeding, or only if they bounce off the -6 floor, either seem fine to me.
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Re: Thoughts of death (Where is thy sting?)

Post by Twin Axes »

Xan's post corresponds pretty well to what I was thinking.

Subject title amended to better fit the topic.
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Re: Thoughts of death (Where is thy sting?)

Post by Brokenbone »

"Bouncing off floor" is maybe what some are thinking of, rather than the regular progression to, or past, -6. It's only the regular progression where people can really get excited about SRD rules.

ALFA saving you from minus (way worse than -10) may be a house rule that could use some major or minor detriment. Like on percentile per "floor engaged" log event or if more than once per 24 hours or something. Woops lost 1d3 of an ability picked on d6, get a yellow message of "wheezing, labored breathing, CON -1 til rest", whatever.

Or you know, don't. It is a fairly slow progressing game and bad luck and low density can mean fun PCs down toilet pretty easy too. Curiously I wonder if some of the major whack a mole activity is in campaigns (which also in cases has had to provoke house rules agreed between DMs and players where on pause, intelligent foes are rolling spot and heal and stuff to say "this guy is alive, target him").
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Re: Thoughts of death (Where is thy sting?)

Post by Ithildur »

While triggering the floor. Of course. I thought that was the topic.
If people agree that bouncing up and down from bleeding without consequence isn't a desired part of the system... The only question is if people want to apply it immediately when someone drops to bleeding, or only if they bounce off the -6 floor, either seem fine to me.

Looks like the topic shifted a bit again... Always fun when talking about apples and some folks start going 'yes, we need to do something about oranges'... which is fine overall, they're both fruit, but... sometimes just muddles things and leaves at least a few folks going 'Huh...?' :shock:

I'm pretty sure we were all talking about the Floor/ALFA's homebrew? Or does someone actually have problems with how the 3.5e negative HP system works?
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Re: Thoughts of death (Where is thy sting?)

Post by Xanthea »

Ithildur wrote:Looks like the topic shifted again
The OP wrote:But, since we seem to have a lot of house rules, here's another one: make it even more like DA and let people who get knocked below zero HP aquire some sort of wound.
Xan wrote:The only question is if people want to apply it immediately when someone drops to bleeding, or only if they bounce off the -6 floor, either seem fine to me.
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