The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

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hollyfant
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by hollyfant »

Are you two comparing modifiers to status effects? :huh:
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by t-ice »

hollyfant wrote:Are you two comparing modifiers to status effects? :huh:
Apologies to Standard Head for not being entirely kosher :oops:
I guess Zelk was saying many (stock) effects can interact unexpectedly in cases (like Shaken/Frightened vs Paladins), and I was trying to say I'm sure we can work around the rules-lawyering if some class/feat etc seems to overcome the effect and keep on abusing the -6 floor by whack-a-moling.

The tech working around is another thing, naturally, and in fact the NWN2 implementation of Death Ward could be the sharpest corner here to smooth: Death Ward makes the PC immune to all ability damage and negative levels. Including things that are clearly modifiers not damage/drain, like the downsides of Stone Body (-dex), Shrink Person (-str) and so on. How all that would work I defer to Tech's expertise.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Zelknolf »

It would work with significant difficulty.

And yeah, the terribad that is death ward is the big thing that's stopping me from saying "Pffft. Screw it; negative levels worked just fine before!" (it did, but nobody made it to level 7 in that world-- place was a bit of a meat grinder). We would effectively be implementing a new special rule that's able to wound almost everyone. There would be a few (myself included) who would have a good belly laugh at such penalties, and it would make death ward function in (more) ways that it explicitly says that it does not.

We could reasonably slap -1 attack / -1 all skills on a PC for hitting the damage cap; there are precious few ways to counter that, and we could use effect types to prevent silly cures from working, and then let players rest them off one per day or get smacked with a lesser restoration to clear 1d4 of them/ (greater) restoration to clear them all away. It would make it reasonably possible to stock potions to resolve hitting the damage cap, but it would continue to be a prohibatively expensive thing to solve with gear (what with it being 300 gold to hit the floor and keep fighting like that). It also means that druids and paladins can get someone back into shape after hitting the floor once or twice, and you should really see about getting a priest after a game of whack-a-mole.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Blindhamsterman »

Zelknolf wrote:We could reasonably slap -1 attack / -1 all skills on a PC for hitting the damage cap; there are precious few ways to counter that, and we could use effect types to prevent silly cures from working, and then let players rest them off one per day or get smacked with a lesser restoration to clear 1d4 of them/ (greater) restoration to clear them all away. It would make it reasonably possible to stock potions to resolve hitting the damage cap, but it would continue to be a prohibatively expensive thing to solve with gear (what with it being 300 gold to hit the floor and keep fighting like that). It also means that druids and paladins can get someone back into shape after hitting the floor once or twice, and you should really see about getting a priest after a game of whack-a-mole.
This Seems a good idea - maybe make it -2 for hitting the -6 floor, have it be cumulative and have it last 24 hours or till you rest. I'd suggest making it affect:
AB, Skills, Saves and Casterlevel.

means whack-a-mole becomes a bad idea as everything you do gets a little worse. Benefit of this over negative levels - is that the things that keep you alive - HP and to an extent feats that improve AC etc. Are not affected, so the ability to run away is still there, but the ability to meaningfully affect a combat is reduced (or becomes non existant in the case of hitting the floor a couple of times).

<edit>
In pnp taking over a certain amount of damage (50?) in a single hit forces a fortitude save or you die I think... could have it so that a fort save is made or you take the same penalties as hitting the floor too.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ronan »

Blindhamsterman wrote:AB, Skills, Saves and Casterlevel.
Isn't that basically what EffectNegativeLevel() does?
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Blindhamsterman »

Ronan wrote:
Blindhamsterman wrote:AB, Skills, Saves and Casterlevel.
Isn't that basically what EffectNegativeLevel() does?
not tested, id assumed it would also effect hp, spells/day etc too?
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Zelknolf »

We currently lack the structure to bump caster level down without using negative levels, anyhow.

Believe that BHM has it-- negative levels are -1 to pretty much everything, and I think they'll chew up your spell slots too. Not that this is all that unbelievable (actually dying makes you lose half of your prepared spells, according to pen and paper); mostly that I'm looking for a solution that circumvents death ward.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by t-ice »

The floored penalty shouldn't affect the abiltiy to run away (much), but it must affect the ability to keep on tanking. Otherwise the winning strategy is not affected: You have purely defensive tanks, who do whack-a-mole, and damage dealers behind the tanks. If you don't hit AC or HP at all, the tanks aren't meaningfully affected by being floored, since their main job isn't about dealing damage in the first place. Furthermore, it's precisely the defensive tanks who are (ab)using the -6 floor. (Though for the whole party's benefit, of course)

When a floored PC gets back up, enemy attention is most likely elsewhere, before they can re-train their targeting. So even if that PC takes a AC and/or HP hit, it should still get a chance to run away. But if we're really concerned about it, I suppose we might give the back-after-saved-by-floor PC a round or two before any AC penalty is implemented. Then there's an unhindered ability to disengage and run but not to keep on fighting. (Assuming we implement a custom penalty for different abilities)

Also reducing Caster Levels would be better to affect spells available as well, I reckon. Otherwise we end up with the oddity of spells cast at lower than their minimum caster level, like a CL3 fireball. Some spells scale more with CL than others, so you would screw up the palette somewhat.

Finally, a simplistic idea. For someone being saved by the floor, could we just:
1) Remove spell effects that are considered abuse-y together with the floor (polymorphs, vigor spells (& other regeneration), Death Ward, etc)
2) "Pfft. NWN2 Negative levels work just fine enough." (Oh, look, no death ward) :twisted:
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ronan »

We could probably remove then re-apply death ward once we figure out how GetEffectInteger() works, and how to make Death Wardy effects of the proper duration etc. from it. Edit: Unless you can re-apply removed effects? I've never tried this, but the wording makes it seems like it might work?
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Blindhamsterman »

negative levels if perhaps they either are removed with a rest or as zelky suggested 1d4 from lesser restoration or all of em with restoration would work I guess.

I just dislike the idea that you're still sentencing folk to death by dropping their level by a couple (level 4 character gets floored... gets up and is now level 2... as a fighter he just dropped 20hp 2 points of ab, a point of fortitude and a feat as well as every skill.... he then gets whacked by a couple of AoOs as he runs away - and dies)
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by t-ice »

1) Dropping max hp shouldn't matter much for running away. It's for getting back to full shape. (It's current HP that you should be concerned of when you crawl back up and run)
2) Does the NWN2 implementation of negative levels even make you lose feats?
3) Negative levels don't directly drop your AC, so it's actually quite graceful for tanks. CE is strong enough a feat even if it doesn't help you when knocked senseless. ;)

Your lvl4 to 2 example and HP calculation is precisely why I suggested level loss would scale with current level. Lose a percentage of max hp, as opposed to lose most hp if low level and almost none if high level.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Blindhamsterman »

fwiw in the same example but with my toon (level 11) Id still lose 1/4 of my hp assuming 2 levels lost.

I just don't see how suggesting it should be different between characters is a good idea.

Though you do make a fair point that max hp wont much matter as it's a rare thing to see a character go from negative hp to full hp with one heal anyway.

and yeah im pretty sure negative levels basically remove everything a given level gave to you - would include feats. I'll have to test it to put money where my mouth is though!
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by hollyfant »

Blindhamsterman wrote:im pretty sure negative levels basically remove everything a given level gave to you - would include feats. I'll have to test it to put money where my mouth is though!
If that is the case, what happens to the poor sod who's wearing the armour his last level gave him proficiency in? :chin:
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by t-ice »

hollyfant wrote:
Blindhamsterman wrote:im pretty sure negative levels basically remove everything a given level gave to you - would include feats. I'll have to test it to put money where my mouth is though!
If that is the case, what happens to the poor sod who's wearing the armour his last level gave him proficiency in? :chin:
I suppose this all needs some solid testing. But at least for NPCs, in the builder you can equip them with stuff they don't have proficiencies for. When you spawn an instance of the NPC, it has everything equipped you built it with. But if something gets unequipped, it can't be re-equipped. By that analogue, the sod's fine until something gets unequipped.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Blindhamsterman »

definitely affects hp, BAB, skills and saves, the lexicon says so.

negative levels also kill if they go over actual character level...

so a level 2 character that got saved by the floor twice (assuming a single negative level per flooring) would simply die and not technically be saved by the floor.
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