(Lesser) Vigor

Scripted ALFA systems & related tech discussions (ACR)

Moderators: ALFA Administrators, Staff - Technical

User avatar
ElCadaver
Rust Monster
Posts: 1202
Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:22 pm
Location: Perth, Western Australia

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by ElCadaver »

How come every time people find smart ways to survive, it's called an exploit and squashed? I'm sure militant PC clerics sit around in the tavern brainstorming ideas of how to keep people alive longer in combat.

Walking around not taking damage should be an exploit. How about a HP 'leakage' script? That way, only those with constant extended lesser vigor can survive.
Image
User avatar
AcadiusLost
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 5061
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:38 am
Location: Montara, CA [GMT -8]
Contact:

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by AcadiusLost »

My thought had been to drop the effect when a PC goes unconscious; still makes it useful for between or during-combat use, but doesn't make it a guarantee of auto-stabilization. Currently any PC knocked into negatives while even a single point of Vigor/Lesser Vigor healing remains, will automatically recover with time, regardless (as opposed to players without it, who have to make a series of 10% chance rolls to get there).

With the attention diverter, I'd meant to make the mobs re-acquire downed targets several minutes after combat ended if they were still in the vicinity, to avoid the oddity of an hour of spawn sitting on top of a recovering PC, only to knock it back down once it recovered to 1 HP. The AI tweaking was a huge exercise in frustration for me at the time though, so never got around to it. Clearly since we've survived without it for so long, it's not a necessary add; especially for the lucky solo PC who makes all the rolls, I tend to want to see them live to fight another day instead of getting an anticlimax. *shrugs*
User avatar
Adanu
Head Dungeon Master
Posts: 1640
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2010 4:52 am

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by Adanu »

ElCadaver wrote:How come every time people find smart ways to survive, it's called an exploit and squashed? I'm sure militant PC clerics sit around in the tavern brainstorming ideas of how to keep people alive longer in combat.

Walking around not taking damage should be an exploit. How about a HP 'leakage' script? That way, only those with constant extended lesser vigor can survive.
In all seriousness, higher level spells have a *ton* of things about that allow far more healing than an extended lesser vigor, especially with stabilzation in. These are PCs we're talking about, it should be hard to kill them unless you're really going for them.

There are so many things that could be called an exploit in this game. This does not seem like one of them.
First Character: Zyrus Meynolt, the serene Water Genasi berserker. "I am the embodiment of the oceans; serene until you summon the storm." Zyrus: http://tinyurl.com/9emdbnd

Second Character: Damien Collins, the atypical druid. "What? Being a stick in the mud is boring. No pun intended grins"

Western Heartlands HDM: On break. PM for emergencies
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by Zelknolf »

To refocus re: Adanu. The usefulness of Lesser Vigor when persisted is an interesting topic, but not really one that I think should influence a decision for the immediate future. The highest-level character with the spell is about 46,000 xp away from us caring about it (provided that said character spends a feat on persistent spell-- and that may or may not happen. We'll find out if said character reaches level 12, I suppose), and our most-likely candidates for taking the persistent spell feat in the reasonable future either can't heal or didn't take the spell.

The ones who are actually using this in a way that was not planned for in the original design in play on live servers are low-level clerics (sometimes; clerics don't spend as much time on the floor), druids (often for a druid, but druids aren't the most common character class choice) and spirit shaman (... kinda often? They're rarer than druids, but the instances of its use like this are pretty spectacular). As has been repeated through our couple threads, lowbies spend more time on the floor (what with being lowbies).

I would give a nod toward AL-- I'd entirely forgotten about the behavior of the bleeding heartbeat (if it finds more HP than it expects, you stop bleeding and start recovering). I'd suspect that tech would need to shuffle over to the chalk board and rant like maddened cartoon scientists to make changes to the AI, but that could be something we talk about. We might consider a design for Vigor / Lesser Vigor / Regenerate wherein bleeding stops, slow natural recovery starts, and lesser vigor is dropped if you actually needed the damage cap, and to let it carry on as it wished if it did not. (i.e. if you would have died if not for our mercy, your regeneration just translates to not bleeding out and you need help to get back up. If you would have lived by pen and paper-- whatever, it's working as designed.)
User avatar
hollyfant
Staff Head on a Pike - Standards
Posts: 3481
Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2005 3:33 pm
Location: the Netherworl... lands! I meant the Netherlands.

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by hollyfant »

Altering the scripts to take the Vigor spells into account may be quite the undertaking. Especially when considering situations like it being applies after a PC falls unconscious, or when the original caster drops unconscious too, drops dead, or drops the connection (I've no idea what spells do in that situation).

It is quite conceivable that a Favored Soul or Spirit Shaman only has a Vigor spell to heal with, so any nerf (or "rebalancing" :roll: ) would have to be done with care.
User avatar
oldgrayrogue
Retired
Posts: 3284
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:09 am
Location: New York
Contact:

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by oldgrayrogue »

Can you script it so that any PC bleeding out who has lesser vigor cast on them is an "AI Event" that will cause the mobs to resume attacking and not ignore them? Seems to make sense ICly. Instead of being unconscious and just stopping bleeding on your own, you are being actively healed by magic pretty rapidly and maybe that would be noticed by the mobs? Just throwing it out there for consideration. This would make LV much less useful for legitimate efforts to heal party members though, so on balance I would probably just leave it as is and just deal with solo farmers in other non-coded ways -- assuming of course this is an exploit.
User avatar
kid
Dungeon Master
Posts: 2675
Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2009 11:08 am

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by kid »

no one WANTS to solo farm. I dont see why we feel such a strong urge to "deal"
with them. *shrugs* And at any rate even with vigor you still come back to life
an inch away from a mob that just killed you and will probably die again.
(even if you do have invisi)
So... I dont see whats the big issue here.
<paazin>: internet relationships are really a great idea
User avatar
Basilica
Orc Champion
Posts: 477
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:28 am

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by Basilica »

This would mean that having LV on means you're likely to get killed immediately. I'm not sure that's what is really intended.

I would be a little bit uncomfortable about trying to re-vamp the way AI targetting works for this. That is typically error-prone and hard to test outside of what players are experiencing in the wild (which isn't really the best thing for this sort of situation).
- Basilica
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by Zelknolf »

applies after a PC falls unconscious,
Sounds like a legitimate use of the spell. Healer heals downed guy. I wouldn't change it.
or when the original caster drops unconscious too, drops dead, or drops the connection (I've no idea what spells do in that situation).
Nothing happens, actually. We could make something happen if we really wanted to, I guess, but (Lesser) Vigor aren't a concentration-duration spells.
Can you script it so that any PC bleeding out who has lesser vigor cast on them is an "AI Event" that will cause the mobs to resume attacking and not ignore them?
My ambitious and creative spirit says "zOMG yes!" but the unflinching cold hand of pragmatism says "No, we really don't want to set up that kind of hooking." -- if we do tweak the AI for this, I'd imagine it would be to make hostile mobs mop up after the ALFAn version of a TPK (which would often be a TPKO without changes), and that would probably most-closely reflect what real people would do in a fight-- put everyone on the ground first, and then go back to make sure they're all dead.
t-ice
Dungeon Master
Posts: 2106
Joined: Fri Apr 17, 2009 6:24 pm

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by t-ice »

I'd imagine it would be to make hostile mobs mop up after the ALFAn version of a TPK (which would often be a TPKO without changes)
Also worthwhile to note that this only applies to the DM-less situation. If a DM was in charge of the mob, nothing prevents him/her from acting out the mopup. I don't think there's any need for mob AI to be able to figure to go at it automatically.

If AI would not ignore a downed PC who has (lesser) vigor on, and normally would ignore him, it would make vigors insanely suicidial to use in combat. If this was the case, I would want my PC to use his (will?) save to prevent a "friendly" cleric trying to pin a lesser vigor on him in combat. Or turned around, if I was playing a cleric of Shar, I might want to "help" "allies" with lesser vigors and gleefully let the party spread their possessions after they were killed :twisted:
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by Zelknolf »

The thought was to have the NPCs mop up the party regardless of any vigors present once everyone is down, as Acadius suggested was the original design (which was probably defeated by trying to generate the case for target selection-- which fails unless you make certain that the creature has exhausted its supply of active threats before finding inactive/ dying threats to kill or snack on, and can easily be the source of profanity. I'd likely put AI rewrites as somewhere between "hard-to-spot typo in a case sensitive string" and "segfaults" on the needtocussometer).
User avatar
CloudDancing
Ancient Red Dragon
Posts: 2847
Joined: Sun Jan 03, 2010 6:31 am
Location: Oklahoma
Contact:

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by CloudDancing »

Ithildur wrote:Persisted Lessor Vigor is valuable and potentially powerful, but don't Core clerics get stuff like Word of Recall as a lvl 6 spell to escape danger? Using 2 feats and a lvl 7 slot to persist lessor vigor doesn't seem too OP when you consider that (thankfully ALFA clerics can never Divine Metamagic Persist >.>)
I don't know why we are having this much discussion. It's not being used in-game and no one is exploiting. I would have never thought of it really. Playing a high level druid elsewhere, once you start getting Mass Cure spells it's pretty useless.

If we had 1 player "nigh impossible" to hit for 24 rounds, more power to them. Let the Dm deal with it and dispell via their NPC/hostile.

There is no need to babysit and worry about what "might" happen when useful things could be being implemented with all this energy.
User avatar
kid
Dungeon Master
Posts: 2675
Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2009 11:08 am

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by kid »

Cloud_Dancing wrote:
Ithildur wrote:Persisted Lessor Vigor is valuable and potentially powerful, but don't Core clerics get stuff like Word of Recall as a lvl 6 spell to escape danger? Using 2 feats and a lvl 7 slot to persist lessor vigor doesn't seem too OP when you consider that (thankfully ALFA clerics can never Divine Metamagic Persist >.>)
I don't know why we are having this much discussion. It's not being used in-game and no one is exploiting. I would have never thought of it really. Playing a high level druid elsewhere, once you start getting Mass Cure spells it's pretty useless.

If we had 1 player "nigh impossible" to hit for 24 rounds, more power to them. Let the Dm deal with it and dispell via their NPC/hostile.

There is no need to babysit and worry about what "might" happen when useful things could be being implemented with all this energy.
this.
<paazin>: internet relationships are really a great idea
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by Zelknolf »

kid wrote:
Cloud_Dancing wrote:I don't know why we are having this much discussion. It's not being used in-game and no one is exploiting. I would have never thought of it really. Playing a high level druid elsewhere, once you start getting Mass Cure spells it's pretty useless.

If we had 1 player "nigh impossible" to hit for 24 rounds, more power to them. Let the Dm deal with it and dispell via their NPC/hostile.

There is no need to babysit and worry about what "might" happen when useful things could be being implemented with all this energy.
this.
Is an incorrect assessment. We have logs and witnesses; it is being used.
User avatar
hollyfant
Staff Head on a Pike - Standards
Posts: 3481
Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2005 3:33 pm
Location: the Netherworl... lands! I meant the Netherlands.

Re: (Lesser) Vigor

Post by hollyfant »

Zelknolf wrote:it is being used.
:shhh: I've used it.
Locked