The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

[HEEGZ]

If the thing was just advertised as "often... it will arrest at -6", but "in some battles with a lot of magic blowing off at the same time or dual wielders or whatever, getting pushed to full death will happen before the very generous "losing interest" stuff kicks in."

I approve.

[t-ice]

pretty out there yo-yo type situations where a whole party of surprisingly regenerate-y guys keep bouncing back to make their objectives.

This was indeed pretty common occurence at least in Exodus's application of the ACR. My experience roughly agrees with:

I'd say mobs play wack-a-mole with him every other [.] session, roughly.

Since exciting and fun is challenging, it's almost come to a point where if no-one falls to negatives even once (which often means the -6 floor), it was all too easy.

There's also the (probably) unintended consequence that often you're better off being knocked down to -1 hp as opposed to staying on your feet at +1hp: You've got 9 turns of practical invulnerability and your friends are almost sure to have time to catch you. If you stayed at +1, the next hit will drop you to -6 likely, and you only got 4 turns. But that's OK in my view, it's part of realistic battle chaos when sometimes combatants are disabled with more mortal wounds than others.

If the floor is supposed to act only sometimes, then of course the proper way is to have it do so in a controlled fashion: Like unless you roll a 1 on a d20, the floor kicks in. Right now it depends hugely on the type of mobs. Against direct attack mobs, melee and ranged alike, the floor is practically 100% in my experience (except for the #3 bug in the OP). Against spells the floor is quite unreliable (maybe 2 out of 3 or even less?).

For what it's worth, my personal opinion is against a stochastic floor. More PC deaths likely wouldn't improve the game experience, and often the floor acts to counter battle chaos due to the real-time engine: The characters in the thick of combat would have realized to retreat and help each other, and in a turn-based game the tactics would almost surely have played out, but the players pulling the strings behind the internet lines did not realize and act in time.

But a penalty effect forcing a floored PC to recuperate, and thus prevent the now rather prevalent whack-a-mole, would facilitate better game in my opinion. It would take some getting used to by DMs, too, to understand that flooring PCs can cause them to ICly have to fall back and fight another day. Expect some frustration due to PCs backing down on the plot rails. But at the end of the day, I think it'll lead to a better gaming experience when the PCs can also lose the day without having to die left and right.

Zelk's proposal of negative levels, needing a restoration spell, does sound to me like one good way to go about implement the flooring penalty. One concern with it is that due to the cost and availability or Restoration, you might end up punishing low levels severely, whereas higher levels can coast off with barely a slight inconvenience (Bring along enough Restoration scrolls, and you're back to whack-a-mole). It's the lower levels that the floor should help more, and would be expected to get floored more often due to less hp, after all.

Oh, and I thought the floor doesn't apply to "die or save" effects, like Slay Living, Finger of Death, etc, does it?

[Zelknolf]

One concern with it is that due to the cost and availability or Restoration, you might end up punishing low levels severely, whereas higher levels can coast off with barely a slight inconvenience (Bring along enough Restoration scrolls, and you're back to whack-a-mole). It's the lower levels that the floor should help more, and would be expected to get floored more often due to less hp, after all.

Well, I don't pretend that the rule was perfect in every way. Ultimately, the goal was to make hitting the floor an expensive and cripping thing, for the sake of immersion, but without the troubles presented by slow advancement and high mortality. Somebody hit you with the business end of a weapon until you couldn't stand up anymore, I reasoned, surely that has some long-term consequences-- but you're the hero of a high fantasy novel, too, so that's not necessarily fatal.

At least that was the thought. Feedback I got was that it was both merciful and gritty in most cases, but it had a significant flaw (dying and getting raised cost less XP than getting floored and re-floored until the cleric ran out of spells; resting off negative levels is, by such a system, unmitigated horror-- I can't say how right it would be for ALFA; we seem to swing between a desire for that gritty realism and a desire for epic fantasy by specific mechanic and by person).

Oh, and I thought the floor doesn't apply to "die or save" effects, like Slay Living, Finger of Death, etc, does it?

It is as BB relates; Slay Living is, in fact, Injure Living so Badly That it Will Very Likely Die, and Finger of Death is Finger of Bleeding Out.

[Ithildur]

3) When a PC is knocked out, healed, then taken below -9 within a round of his healing.

The ugly:
Failure mode #3 promotes stabilization over healing when there aren't AoOs flying about. If the PC pops up again its possible they'll be immediately killed, while a stabilized PC will not be attacked

And #3 is just a bug, the PC getting killed by a healing spell.

I have no problem with going back to RAW/alfa1 rules, ie no -6 cap at all. I also do not mind if the cap bugging out (i.e. not kicking in every time it should perfectly) does not result in a tech rez.

However #3 does seem odd, that applying healing to a downed PC actually may be more dangerous than not applying healing at all; as Ronan said, it's worse than bad (if ugly is worse than bad) and makes stabilizing/cure minor wounds a better option than a stronger cure spell/potion/etc. which probably isn't the desired result.

It is as BB relates; Slay Living is, in fact, Injure Living so Badly That it Will Very Likely Die, and Finger of Death is Finger of Bleeding Out.

'This seems silly - it's Death Magic!' was my initial reaction, although I realize that it's much more difficult to boost saving throws in ALFA compared to most pnp games (PW dynamic of not being able to have a save boosting caster every session, less availability of save boosting spells/abilities relative to number of encounters, lack of availability or means to purchase items that boost saves, etc).

Didn't Garlus die to a crit failure on a death spell though? Or did the cap for death spells get put in after Garlus died?

[Brokenbone]

Brought to negatives then within area of effect of something, Hammer of the Gods maybe.

AoE still "catches" downed folks from time to time, then it's curtains.

[kid]

think it was the same as multipul attacks in the same round.
finger of death brought him to -6, then hammer killed him.

This now qualifies for a tech rezz...?

[Brokenbone]

Unconscious folks, the only thing I'm used to seeing kill them (or really, if you are playing an unconscious PC, the one thing you should absolutely fear), is anything area of effect. If someone is lying there helpless/disabled, a fireball zooming in to roast the whole party will just mean the one guy who cannot move, is going to really get hurt. Most likely killed. Chances are the hostiles will not be targeting a downed guy as the centre of a fireball, but that's the beauty of area of effect, right? They splash all over the place.

[Ithildur]

think it was the same as multipul attacks in the same round.
finger of death brought him to -6, then hammer killed him.

This now qualifies for a tech rezz...?

Someone's saying it does???

[Brokenbone]

Not that I'm aware? The problem behavior as Ronan sees / saw it was laid out in the original post, and doesn't go into "AoE spells... which hit an unconscious target", although it does go into "spells which hit for a couple of times of damage", where it seems the first type might get arrested on the way to -6, the second one won't. Two very different kinds of "death by spell" I'd say.

[Zelknolf]

To clarify:

Situation 1: PC has 10 hit points and is hit by an ice storm for 25 damage (15 cold, 10 physical). From a technical perspective, this fires two events, one for each kind of damage applied, and as far as the scripts know, the PC was struck twice. The first damage puts the PC on the ground and into negative hit points, and the second one (understood by the core rules as an attempt to "finish off" the downed PC) kills him. This is seen as functioning against the intended purpose of the system because it was a single attack bringing the target from standing to dead.

Situation 2: PC has 10 hit points and is attacked by an NPC with improved two weapon fighting. In NWN2, the smallest measurement of combat-round-esque time is the "flurry," which is a two-second-long frame in which attacks may be resolved; when a given creature has more than three attacks per round, they are divided as evenly as possible between the flurries, and all of the attacks from each flurry are calculated simultaneously. In this example:
1) Attack roll for NPC's first attack is rolled.
2) Attack roll for NPC's second attack is rolled.
3) Damage for NPC's first attack is applied.
-- This triggers the dropped and bleeding function, for our poor PC has only 10 hit points. All future incoming damage will be understood as an attempt to finish the downed PC. It also sends the "lose interest" message to the NPC, however, this message cannot interrupt...
4) Damage for NPC's second attack is applied.
-- This kills the PC.
This is often seen as a bug because our core rules typically cause an NPC with multiple attacks per round to lose interest and find someone else to pick on even if that causes the NPC to refocus between a given round's attacks. However, the nature of flurries prevents us from doing so in circumstances with particularly-quick creatures.

Situation 3: PC has 10 hit points, is struck by an NPC and drops to -3 hit points. A friendly PC panics and uses some variety of cure light wounds on the target. Being cure light wounds, it heals about 5.5 hit points-- bringing, let's be a little kind and round up, the PC up to 3 hit points. The NPC notices the PC is both up and in between it and that juicy healer faster than the previously-downed PC's bleed heartbeat would have occurred (were said PC still bleeding), and bashes it to get it out of the way, doing 13 damage again (and dropping the PC to -10 hit points). However, the next bleeding calculation never happened, so the core rules never noticed that the PC got up again, and thinks (erroneously) that the PC is still on the ground and bleeding, thus viewing the event to be a finishing blow, and sends the PC to the morgue. This one is unambiguously a bug; the "finishing blow" is not, by any attempt to reason it, what we'd meant it to mean.

Situation 4: High-level PC and high-level pal are in the mountains fighting high-level bad guys. The bad guys are well-equipped, and expect the PCs to have prepared the usual set of protective spells. They, thus, begin the fight by doubling their dispel magics on the tanky-looking guy, and attempt death magic to knock him out of the fight. The dispels, being dispels, strip the tanky-looking guy's death ward, and Tymora hates dwarves, so he rolls a 1 on his fort save, dropping to -6 hit points. One of the NPCs then throws an area of effect spell in an attempt to get high-level pal while high-level pal rushes to heal, catching the bleeding high-level PC in the area of effect and doing more than 4 damage, sending him to the morgue. This is the risk of being down and bleeding, and one of the designed ways for a PC to be able to die (bleeding out, caught in some unfortunate environment while down, or actively targeted to finish once down). The player of this PC is also very much hardcore in his notion of the appropriate place of Raise Dead, and so we all miss Garlus now.

[Ithildur]

So

1. Working as intended
2. Not working as intended but limitation of game engine
3. Unambiguous bug/undesirable result of healing a PC kills them (fixable?)
4. As intended, dangerous AOE spells are dangerous


Seems like fix 3 and still advertise the cap may not always protect you = solution. Or alternately, remove the cap?

[t-ice]

As far as fixing 3, can you make the downed PC stagger back up and into the game only *after* the bleeing heartbeat recognizes that "Oh, I'm alive and well now, should activate floor again."? The delay between getting healed and getting back up, even as stochastic between 0 and 6 seconds as it would then be, should only be good.

Or generally, to fix 1, 2 (and 3?), can we make the script make the KO'd PC be invulnerable to all attacks except AoEs, the bleeding, and possibly blows by other PCs? We don't need the automated "finish him" functionality, do we, and the problems here are (mostly) unintended consequences of this functionality? Monsters never target a PC for a finish anyway, not without a DM specifically directing so, and the DM can direct that death without controlling a monster for the swing. I suppose this would have the downside of making a back-from-the-brink PC invulnerable while fighting for a few seconds, unless the previous idea is also included.

That said, I'd still strongly advocate a change that prevents people from bouncing back up to the fight from the brink of death like nothing happened. Ability drain/damage (does nwn2 even know the difference?) or Negative levels all would fit the bill. We also already have a neat rest system to deal with healing these. (And yeah, a restoration spell would also fixit, suppose high level fantastic people have fantastic magic to help them bounce back up - but at least those spells don't come without a cost. But make it a restoration, not lesser.) Crucially the penalty should affect offensive abilities of PCs rather than defensive, so only CON damage would be insufficient, imo.

[Ronan]

I submit that the entire idea of three 5 hp hits (whether they come from TWF, magic missile, rapid shot, ice storms, a DoT like combust, or whatever) being more dangerous than a single 15 hp is dumb, and skews effective mob CR. Since the system is bugged, we should probably just make something better.

I absolutely love the idea of stat damage or negative levels (which are currently all temporary in ALFA) from getting taken below -9.

We could probably just add to a downed PC's hitpoint pool using clever OnDamaged scripts, or Damage Reduction effects (though the later would still make multiple attacks more lethal, as the minimum damage is 1). So instead of being able to absorb 10 hp of damage after being KO'd, we could increase it to whatever we wanted (such as a function of the PC's hitpoint total, so tougher PCs are still tougher when they are on the ground). I seem to recall a variant rule that did something like this?

[t-ice]

I submit that the entire idea of three 5 hp hits (whether they come from TWF, magic missile, rapid shot, ice storms, a DoT like combust, or whatever) being more dangerous than a single 15 hp is dumb, and skews effective mob CR.

+1
The only question is, what about AoEs? An ogre smacks you over the head for 20hp, and a ogre mage blasts the party with a cone of cold for 31hp = dead, versus a ogre barbarian crits with a greataxe for 51hp = floored? By your argument being KOd should bring invulnerability from AoEs as well. Which imo is either way, since on one hand AoEs would be expected to wipe out helpless people caught in them, but on the other it skews AoE capable enemies to be hugely more dangerous than the rest. (Since otherwise you will have, by a crude gut feeling of the game, at least 95% chance to be healed by friends.)

[AcadiusLost]

The way that death magic (and DM kill, amusingly enough) are blocked by the death floor limiter was an unintended consequence of the implementation, rather than a design feature. Certainly wouldn't object to seeing those handled differently.

AoE damage makes full sense to push a PC already in negatives through the floor. I do tend to think that the "multiple hit" spells like Ice Storm and Magic Missile ought to count as one "shot" for purposes of the limiter, though.

I would also like to see some sort of penalty for at least a temporary window after coming back from negatives; even just the subdual "staggered" effect if nothing else (though the movement speed penalty can be problematic as raised earlier). Playing a melee type now, I find I have some existential angst on what is the Right Thing to do when being brought back up to positives mid-combat; certainly seems a bit OOC to leap back into the fray as if nothing happened, full BAB etc, but neither does it seem IC to emote/RP lying around dazed when the rest party is expecting you to be up and pulling your weight at the line again. Whack-a-mole feels pretty game-y from the player side as well.

Then again, this is D&D, where a PC at the brink of death fights just as effectively as when fully healed, so maybe it's not worth going overboard with trying to model new systems in a simulationist direction? Beats me.