Changing the -6 Safety Net

Ideas and suggestions for game mechanics and rules.
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Rumple C
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Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by Rumple C »

Hey,

Could we change the -6 safety net?

The arguement for it is... it lets people react in combat when someone goes down.

It also stops a critical or a decent whack at low hit points from killing someone outright, which i dont think it a good thing.

...


Could we replace it with a function such as... When someone gets whacked into negative hit points the server auto pauses for 20 seconds to allow the party to change actions (then the server unpauses after 20 secs) This satisfies the arguement for letting the party react when someone goes down.

What it wouldn't do is allow the party to play "Whack a mole" where people are continually whacked to -6 then saved by other party members with a unrealistic safety net.

...

I feel like we have lost the feeling of fear at the stomp of giants, and the swing of a greataxe. - Between -6 caps, Max hit points, stoneskins, and optimised gear/builds.

This would do a great deal to restore it.
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Mikayla
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by Mikayla »

I love ya Rump, but honestly, you're insane.

ALFA is seriously lethal. I will not solo anything because ALFA is so dangerous. For some high-level PCs, raise-dead is an option, but I am a hair's breath away from 5th level and I don't have a magic weapon, don't have magic armor, and only have a little over a 1,000 gp. And it has taken weeks to get even this far. And you want to make things more lethal? And you want less Tavern RP and more adventuring? These things do not go hand-in-hand. Tavern RP is fun, provides drama and story, and ... rarely gets you killed (though it can - my latest library post describes an incident that easily could have led to death in a tavern). Adventuring is dangerous. Fun? Sure. But very dangerous. Maybe some high-level near-anime type folks don't fear giants, but the rest of us? Hell, we still fear dire-badgers (no exaggeration - we ran into 3 dire-badgers and fled the area). With perma-death and low wealth, one mistake means the loss of a character we have invested a lot of time and soul into.

ALFA doesn't need to remove the -6 safety net - that invention was one of ALFA's best. It encourages and rewards group play. Please don't remove it.

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Xanthea
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by Xanthea »

Every time you drop to bleeding randomly roll for a bleed cap between -1 and -10. Additionally make the maximum possible bleed cap equal to your level. So a level 3 can only drop to -3 where a level 10 risks getting the potentially fatal -10 bleed cap every time they drop to bleeding.

The roll cuts back on the (in my opinion) excessive danger posed by no bleed cap at all as you only have a 1/10 chance of an immediately fatal cap, and the level cap protects hapless newbies while gradually making it more and more dangerous for the high levels who can, presumably, take care of themselves.

And if you're doing this then also fix the bug where if you drop to bleeding, get healed, and then immediately drop to bleeding again, it removes the bleed cap.
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by SwordSaintMusashi »

Mikayla wrote: ALFA doesn't need to remove the -6 safety net - that invention was one of ALFA's best. It encourages and rewards group play. Please don't remove it.

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Adanu
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by Adanu »

I get the idea behind this... but this isn't PnP where people have minutes to react to things.

20 seconds won't mean anything if you're lagged, or you're being DMed and they unpause for whatever reason.
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by FoamBats4All »

What Mikayla said.
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by Zelknolf »

Data also says that perceptions of use of the safety net is vastly greater than actual use of the safety net.

But this line in the release notes:
Tech has added a standalone application, distributed to HDMs and any they delegate as log reviewers, to allow reviewers high-level review of their servers, with emphasis on identifying severe outliers in wealth, DM time, travel, or potential misbehavior (such as combat logging or self looting) at a glance.
Includes a readout for deaths, combat logs/ logouts while bleeding, and people hitting the safety net. It would be pretty obvious if people were actually abusing the feature-- I guess I haven't really been combing over it, because my job is to make the tools (and not to do anything about what they say) but there were, I think, a mighty two hits of the safety net over all of ALFA in the duration I was working on that, plus the 30 days it scans by default? Maybe 3. But it was over 153 characters, and there were more deaths than safety net hits. So.. y'know... that's a thing.
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by HEEGZ »

I like the Safety Net and wouldn't mind if it was actually improved to like -3 or something... :P
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by t-ice »

As I noted in Rumple's other "make ALFA more lethal"-system thread, the -6 cap could use tweaking so that a mount of CLW and Lesser Vigors aren't all that it takes to reliably fool death time and again.

Xantea's proposal has merit in it's elegance. But perhaps rather than poke small holes into the safety nets you might hit if unlucky, more RP would be had by dealing non-lethal longer-term consequences for getting whacked down to what would be death in pnp. So if the party of PCs get to a fight that they only win by whack-a-moling against the safety net, generally let them win that fight, but lose the war for the day. In pnp, assuming the fluffiest rules interpretation of revolving door afterlife, the long-term consequence of "caught by the safety net" is the permanent loss of one level. Generally one would presume the party also retreats to lick their wounds and raise their dead. We should at least have the generally retreat and lick their wounds part.

So someone saved from death by the safety net could, for example, have some of the following:
1) Down for the count for a longer time (perhaps also brought back up by (greater) restoration), regardless if hps are returned. (The issue here is with invalidating the party bravely running away tactic)
2) Hit with a negative level like energy drain effect (counterable by (greater) restoration)
3) Hit with ability damage (counterable by lesser restoration and up)
4) Hit with "secondary damage" (a minute or 10 minutes after they went down, as shock adrenaline fades), by either negative level, ability damage or both
5) Empty prepared/available spellslots akin to pnp raise dead

It might be an issue that high-level clerics can counter ability damage and level drain effects with spells, so it would actually get relatively harsher for low-levels. If so, perhaps it's possible to tech giving negative levels that won't go away until, say, 24 hours have past or a DM smacks you with the wand (to signify wounds sufficiently licked)? On one hand the consequences shouldn't be trivially countered by mid-level PCs (even lesser restoration would still be better than the current situation of lesser vigor ftw), but also should be able to be ICly overcome during a DM event if the "heroes must go on!" plot so requires. ICly resting 24 hours (or greater restoration for those high-magic-minded) sounds a plausible solution.

Emptying spellslots would hit higher levels relatively harder, and also hits primary casters who are commonly understood to be where the powah lies.
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by Zelknolf »

We're... getting into some pretty crazy territory with these proposals. Invent a new kind of effect (so that it doesn't get healed by the means we'd usually expect like effects to be healed) and make it persistent?

I dunno-- maybe we could just go with a little thing that actually targets the argued abuse, and strip (lesser) vigor upon hitting the safety net.
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by HEEGZ »

I haven't heard anyone complaining about our current script. Is this a high priority for a lot of folks?
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by t-ice »

Zelknolf wrote:We're... getting into some pretty crazy territory with these proposals. Invent a new kind of effect (so that it doesn't get healed by the means we'd usually expect like effects to be healed) and make it persistent?

I dunno-- maybe we could just go with a little thing that actually targets the argued abuse, and strip (lesser) vigor upon hitting the safety net.
Heh, well, it IS brainstorming, not actual proposals ;)

I don't think (lesser) vigor specifically is the issue, it's equally all hp healing spells that create the lovely whack-a-mole. It's cool if lesser vigor saves your life. But it's significantly less cool that there's zero consequence for doing it 10 times a day and just keep on going like nothing. As you said yourself some time ago, Zelk, by pnp the effect of -10 hp is death, which needs spectacular magic to overcome (and even still permanent consequences remain). Whereas our safety net converts that to an effect that can be overcome by a handful 1st level spells. Surely there is a middle ground that won't stop PC stories cold by death, but don't make a joke out of the "inconvenience living" -spell and the "giant great axe of criticals of momentary blackoutness"?

The thing where it gets more contrived is if we want a "consequences from saved by the safety net" effect that can't be trivially shrugged off by mid-to-high-levels but won't outright murdar low levels. Hitting someone saved from death by the safety net with a (straightforward?) nwn2-version negative level would already be a significant improvement imo.

On the higher level (of gaming), it goes to giving more options to adventuring (and particularly DMing) so that combat events have other possible outcomes than TPK or flawless victory. Which means some variation of the "buddies drag your debilitated arse back to town to recover" -outcome.
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by Matti »

The whack a mole effect is something I haven't seen that much of. If a character is brought down by enemies and lands along the safety net and another character spends a lesser vigor (which actually hasn't stopped the bleeding most times that I've used it) or a Cure Light Wounds then the combating enemies tend to shift their focus back to the downed character and down him/her/it again. So healing an ally that just got whacked has mostly been about healing as much as one can in a limited timeframe in order to give them a chance to actually survive.

The mechanical aspect of being whacked works pretty much as I would like it, and the safety net has provided time to save players and rp around the fact that they saw the light in the end of the tunnel (isch). The issue with being whacked time after time and just going forth in heroic fashion doesn't strike me as a feature that needs code-tweaking, but it does seem to fall into the rp category. Using real life pointers about saying hello to death time after time is somewhat hard to relate to in ALFAs setting, but taking into account that death and it's closeness is traumatic and the damage that brought you there should indeed be rp:ed.
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by SwordSaintMusashi »

The -6 cap is there to help in an online environment where instant reactions round by round are not going to happen, and I personally would not vote to see it gone.

We can, however, look at people who abuse it and handle it that way (the way most abuses of a current rule are handled in reality).

We have the technology.
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Re: Changing the -6 Safety Net

Post by Brokenbone »

I kind of like the safety net for most purposes, though death magic, as hated as it may be, is kind of not quite as fearsome. Bodak gazes you, oh a band aid will fix that. At that rate why not have the equally annoying petrification effects just be 2 minutes of stoning until someone gives you a band aid? I don't know, when a basilisk or medusa or something is MORE scary than some big honcho undead throwing around death spells, due only to the systems we have in place, something feels amiss.

I'm of mixed emotions about say, "massive" damage. Near death and then hit by like, a 50+hp attack of some sort... greataxe crit, lightning bolt, breath weapon, whatever. Maybe fair to make that a big scary, but is it worth bothering all the effort, maybe not.

I am not sure about home grown "IG after effects" of hitting the safety net, even something like "Fatigue" or "Shaken" or something being applied for a few minutes may be overkill.

Since however, this safety net is fully OOC, what if an OOC consequence tied to hitting it? Hurray, saved by the cap! And scripted loss of say, 50 or 100xp, that's a sting! Because frankly, you just got your ass beaten in battle (bad luck reasons or otherwise), although the rest of your comrades may still be killing things and while you're on the ground, little 1xp for this kill, 2xp for that kill, is coming due to being partied up. Some people seem to RP the idea of XP being some of your character's vitality, memories, life force, whatever (seen this applied by crafters in their RP, the idea of being shaken up and weary after blowing 100xp on crafting some item), could always extend that scene to feeling like you've been at death's door, and someone who was involved in a whack-a-mole like, multiple times in a battle, could come out of it really cursing their luck, sure the DM will reward 300xp at the end of a long crawl, but maybe you're the guy who also lost 200 during the course of some battle where you had some really bad breaks. The guys who didn't fall over nearly dead don't have that deficit to contend with. Anyhow, brainstorming is all, this -6 thing is an ALFA OOC invention, if people have problems on it, maybe OOC consequences applicable. Wouldn't have to be on the first fall-over either, could be second time you fall over within a one hour period or something, lose some XP. Again though all this needs work, and whether it'd enhance the game, debatable.

DMs could also adjust the "difficulty x hours" reward for someone who yo yo'd back and forth from death without scripting a thing. Just means you don't apply the same reward to whole party, you point at each PC for rewards, and remember the frail guy gets some slightly different math, since in your judgment they weren't overcoming a "serious" challenge at 60xp/hr, it might be knocked to an "average" challenge (40/hr) or even an "easy" challenge (20/hr), kind of the thing that our guidelines already encourage doing, though in the opposite direction, when there's a party of mixed high and low PCs. That is, some big hero and 3 newer adventurers stomp a kobold cavern, it might be a serious challenge for 3 guys, and a pushover easy challenge for the head honcho, different rewards could result if the DM has time to use the tools on an individual basis.
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