The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

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

Post by Ithildur »

So yes, the level drains, etc would make clerics (specifically the lvl 7+ variety) become significantly more valuable. Not saying that's good or bad, just that it definitely makes clerics more valuable.
:)

I'll leave it to others to decide whether that's desirable or not.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by t-ice »

The recovery system we have for ability/level drain/damage might not be perfect, but as Zelk said too, the basics work. In practice, mostly this means
1) Logging in for the next session after a few days since the last means your PC has had time to recover and will be ready for adventure again.
2) You can't shrug the damage off with a 1st level heal and keep on pressing whack-a-mole.
3) Ability damage as-is is cleared by Lesser Restoration, which is too trivial to get to scale back whack-a-moling in most instances.

As for availability of Restoration, SRD-wise a party without a cleric would go to a temple in a town for it. We do/could/should have recovery spells as services, no? DMd it can of course be done, but I thought even some scripted ones exist. The whole point of a floored penalty is that you'd feel consequences that can't be shrugged off with a lvl1 or 2 spell on the spot and keep on whack-a-moling.

The main point is that DMs could have a tool to send PCs falling back with tails between their legs without outright killing them. You seem to turn it on its head Ithildur, and assume that PCs are then supposed and required to carry that fantastic on-the-spot-fixall magic to survive. That would simply be bad DMing. The deal changes the battle landscape towards more nuanced than grinding waves of near-TPK encounters whack-a-mole, and of course the DMs, Viigas included, will adapt. And it's not like a DM couldn't give a party a wand of Restoration if some higher-levels are sent to an epic battle of attrition. (Anyone with a single level of a non-ranger divine caster can use that, unless the ACR stripped Restoration from nwn2 druid spell list?) But that should be the exception. Usually PCs should feel the attrition of repeated near-death experiences.
It's one of those awesomely-harmonious changes where an overpowered class loses power and feels more useful.
A good point, especially in "overpowered" meaning a mighty engine of personally-delivered desctruction, as opposed to party support. But it doesn't change that "more useful" still does carry the risk of twisting the playerbase towards more and more divine casters, and can make a divine caster feel indispensable for a higher-level party. (How indispensable it really is, of course depends on how the DM designs the sessions, how much attrition is present.)

On the other hand, a custom flooring penalty that can't be healed by magic, but only by time, does seem to go counter to the spirit of DnD in the sense that fantastic magic is fantastic. To every affliction there is a fix at appropriate fantasticness level. (And the magic increases DM flexibility for the cases when an epic battle against attrition is desired.)
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Ithildur
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ithildur »

t-ice wrote: The main point is that DMs could have a tool to send PCs falling back with tails between their legs without outright killing them. You seem to turn it on its head Ithildur, and assume that PCs are then supposed and required to carry that fantastic on-the-spot-fixall magic to survive. That would simply be bad DMing.
Actually, no. You seem to be assuming that's what I'm assuming without reading what I wrote. :) I specificly made the point that certain specific instances/campaigns it would've meant turning back, and specificly stated that
Whether all this is good or bad I really don't know


Same with the value of clerics going up (which is clearly the case), whether that's a good thing or a bad thing overall I leave up to others to debate.

I'll tell you a secret; I'm in favor of someone who would've legitimately hit -10 and been deaders being saved by the floor being 'staggered'/affected by penalties in some form and not being able to contribute meaningfully in combat for some time. I'm also in favor *gasp* of PCs that bite off more than they can chew having to run in terror from things. I also seem to have posted that I'd be ok with the safetynet of the floor being gone entirely; how I gave the impression that I'm in favor of making everything easy for PCs is beyond me.

But we are talking about a significant jump going from the way it is currently (should've been deaders, plop back up, emote 'Ow..', then you're good to go) to what's being proposed; whether it's a good one or not it is a huge change, and I did not assume everyone will be on board with drastic changes such as that or that it's automatically desirable. I suggested an intermediary option of being out cold for the rest of that entire fight, because it's incremental from the way it is currently, and thought it might be less work tweaking the current floor/cap system rather than putting in extra stuff for level/ability drains etc.

I also like playing ALFA (one of the reasons) because of one of it's Pillars as I understand it aims to bring the NWN2 engine closer to PnP DnD. It's why I said i'd be ok with the floor being gone, and why I believe adding lots of drain effects should not be approached lightly. Hardly because I want everything to be auto success for PCs, but it does mean I believe magic stuff in DnD (including healing spells) is that, magic, not a phenomenal heal check. If we change rules and effectively make certain magic (core, traditional magic like the cure spells not being enough to restore a character from physical injury if the injury is bad enough) less magicky/more gritty, that may or may not be a good thing (overall I like gritty), but it's a fair question to ask if it's in line with our Pillar, etc. rather than simply assume things about people who have such questions in mind.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Zelknolf »

Ithildur wrote:(core, traditional magic like the cure spells not being enough to restore a character from physical injury if the injury is bad enough)
This is well-supported in the canon. I'd cite crippling strike and roper grappling (note attack type). I would also note that the effect of poison and disease is a kind of damage which cannot be healed by cure spells, and even something as simple as being tired requires at least a lesser restoration to recover from by magic. It seems to follow that any effect meant to emulate crippling, weakness, fatigue, or ill-feeling as a result of being near death would use ability damage (or, at least, something close to it-- something that lesser restoration would ping sadly away at healing, and restoration would outright fix) to attempt to be most consistent with the core rules.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ithildur »

I didn't feel the need to be overly specific was there ('physical injuries that are inflicted by mundane weapons without special properties and/or special attacks and/or effects and/or etc etc'); certainly there are various kinds of injuries and special attacks that result in more than HP loss per RAW. Rather obvious such are not what I referred to by 'physical wounds' that a strong enough cure spell is sufficient to take care of for restoring a damaged PC (per RAW). :)

We're talking simply about a PC that takes plain old fashioned dmg that takes them to -10 or worse, getting these penalties instead of dying are we not? If it's a crippling strike, poisoned attack, etc then obviously there's going to be more than HP loss/recovery, but let's not muddy the waters.
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It’s not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who actually is in the arena, who strives violently, who errs and comes up short again and again...who if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement, but who if he fails, fails while daring greatly.-T. Roosevelt
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Creslyn »

A morale penalty for having your ass handed to you on a platter sounds like it would be ideal. You'd be shaken (and not a magical source, so no arguments for pallies or anyone else to be immune), but if you survived long enough you'd eventually regain your composure so a temporary penalty of -2 to ab, skills and saves for 1 or 2 turns after getting up would have a pretty strong effect on someones ability to contribute to a fight (more the ab at lower levels, saves later on).

Relatively simple to implement, makes ic sense, and doesn't require clerics to deal with the immediate consequences. You'll need one to heal you anyway if you intend to keep fighting, but that's a different story.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ithildur »

Creslyn wrote:A morale penalty for having your ass handed to you on a platter sounds like it would be ideal. You'd be shaken (and not a magical source, so no arguments for pallies or anyone else to be immune), but if you survived long enough you'd eventually regain your composure so a temporary penalty of -2 to ab, skills and saves for 1 or 2 turns after getting up would have a pretty strong effect on someones ability to contribute to a fight (more the ab at lower levels, saves later on).

Relatively simple to implement, makes ic sense, and doesn't require clerics to deal with the immediate consequences. You'll need one to heal you anyway if you intend to keep fighting, but that's a different story.

If we do that I'd suggest something more significant, like a -4 morale penalty for a few hours. It's still more incremental/less drastic a leap from the way it is now to actual lvl/stat drains which require a fairly high lvl cleric.


I do like the flavor of a morale penalty for being badly shaken up after getting your skull nearly crushed by a near lethal hit. RPing such resulting in say, a permanent and rather gruesome scar seems nice flavor. :D
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by t-ice »

And any such morale penalty should hinder casters as well. Losing spell slots and/or caster levels etc.

And Ithildur, I was trying to say the argument "past campaigns could not have been run in identical fashion with this rule chance" makes no sense, since the DM woud adapt the campaign to the rules. And this should give them more options for that. I'm right there with you in favoring gritty, but I also find it utterly frustrating as a DM if PCs can't hold on to their lives at all: A PC dying voids a shitload of planning work and deflates enthusiasm about the great things to come. Adding extra hurdles is usually just good ;)

Morale penalties (for AB) and ability damages (for other stats than STR, since STR hit disables running away chances) might as well do the trick. But lesser restoration would then certainly need to be brought more in line with SRD. In comparison to Restoration, lesser should only fix some ability damage, shouldn't fix ability drain at all (drain doesn't exist in nwn2, far as I know), and lesser doesn't fix negative levels (which is correct in nwn2).

From SRD on "physical damage that can't be healed by consecutive CLW", is certainly Regenerate:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/regenerate.htm
It's a lvl7 spell to fix severed body parts. Far more "fantastic" than Restoration, and equating a piece chopped off to a blow that would have killed you before you hit the ground sounds about fair. Although SRD doesn't much seem to have much rules on how body parts get severed, apart from DM creativity. Only this spell to fixit. (Not saying we should implement severed members. Just saying physical damage more severe than is healable by Cure spells is certainly supported by rules.)
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ronan »

So, whats wrong with EffectNegativeLevel() for this? Currently negative levels cannot ever become permanent.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by oldgrayrogue »

Been trolling this discussion, and IMO the best way to deal with whack a mole is to apply some temporary ability drain to a PC who is healed from negative HP such as the effect on a barb after rage -- say an automatic -2 STR -2 DEX -2INT for several rounds. You are healed but you awake weakened, slowed and befuddled for a few rounds which could cause many PCs not to just jump back into the fight right away and RP retreat or other appropriate resoponses. Level drains or other effects that need to be dispelled by potion or spell suck in my view. I want clerics and all classes to be more useful and to promote balanced parties, but the reality of the situation is that its hard to regularly put together a balanced D&D party to get your game on. Also, there are currently coded drain effects IG on BG that don't seem to dispell properly -- like the effect for running to long -- last I checked it didn't dispell on rest or lesser restoration but that might have been fixed. Also, we should keep in mind that magic healing actually heals damage magically! Is it canon that once you are healed by the channelled power of a god you somehow are still injured? :chin:
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by oldgrayrogue »

Or maybe applying one of these effects for several rounds:

Shaken

A shaken character takes a -2 penalty on attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks.

Shaken is a less severe state of fear than frightened or panicked.

Sickened

The character takes a -2 penalty on all attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks.


Stunned

A stunned creature drops everything held, can’t take actions, takes a -2 penalty to AC, and loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any).

I especially like stunned -- would be cool if we could make any equipped weapon and shield actually drop which would make the PC have to stop and pick it up or abandon it to survive.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ithildur »

oldgrayrogue wrote:Been trolling this discussion, and IMO the best way to deal with whack a mole is to apply some temporary ability drain to a PC who is healed from negative HP...

There seems to be some confusion here, maybe just on my part; I was under the impression the discussions of penalties/drain/etc were for those who were 'saved by the cap' i.e. would've hit -10 and been deaders from massive damage, not simply for going into negative HPs and being healed...
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Zelknolf »

Indeed-- the notion of penalizing people who would still have lived by the pen and paper rules isn't on the table. The SRD handles that fine just fine, and we like their rules.

The question is what to do when you're so spanked that you should have died, but the ACR feels too bad about it to actually kill you and instead drops you to -6 hit points. I'm a little confused by the "it's normal damage" assertion in this light. It is, sure, but it's a quantity of normal damage which should produce an effect which is not phased in the least by the cure wounds series of spells. Namely, it should kill you. Can cure light wounds a corpse all day; it doesn't much care.

Also, it should be of note that paladins are also immune to mundane fear. Technically, you can't even make an intimidate check against them. Yes, they are seriously unnatural and I also have trouble imagining how that can be portrayed with any pathos. But, there you go; that's the game we play.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by t-ice »

Zelknolf wrote: The question is what to do when you're so spanked that you should have died, but the ACR feels too bad about it to actually kill you and instead drops you to -6 hit points.
Yeah, and of course this does closely couple to the whole whack-a-mole issue. By simple statistics, whack-a-mole tanking is only possible because of the -6 floor for blows which by DnD should kill you before you hit the ground.

A morale modifier, though, bonus or penalty, isn't a fear effect.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Zelknolf »

It does take shaken off of the list, though; that's explicitly a fear effect.
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