Thoughts of death (Where is thy sting?)

Ideas and suggestions for game mechanics and rules.
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Brokenbone
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Brokenbone »

*knocked over, loses 100xp* Oooh that stings!

I have no idea what home grown consequences oughta apply to a home grown system meant to cover some of the harshness of real time combat on a game whose inspiration is turn based. Important event you need to react to, wham you're at -6 which means a little shy of 24 seconds for other folks to act (24th second presumably being -10 and morgue port). Not quite a pause or conversion to turn based, but "here's your tiny window to do something about buddy getting KO'd."
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Zelknolf »

I'm not sure if that was intentional to demonstrate my point. If so, thankyou.

ahem

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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Brokenbone »

It was supportive of the point, yes.

Roger on 18 seconds only.
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Ronan
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Ronan »

I'd imagine a cause of TA's post is me screwing up and forgetting to roll to coup de grace on downed PCs, causing a PC to survive where they might not've. Won't happen again.

Yeah DMs can handle the floor however they want. This is trivial; DMs can do whatever they want with nearly anything. This doesn't mean we want to (handle the fallout), or have time to.
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StephenUmpf
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by StephenUmpf »

In my opinion, it is a combat injury. Hit them with points reduction in ability scores. -2 across all scores... you strength is sucked from you, you are slower to react (dex), you are weaker (con), you cant think straight (int/wis), and you are no longer inspiring the troops cause you just dropped like a stone (cha). This will impact HPs, speed, spells, skill checks..everything.

Make a rest the only way to get them back.

If you want, you can create a permanent negative to CON, but I wouldn't.

As outlined above, the floor is there for lots of good reasons, but abuse of the floor needs to stop. ((I will admit I have been guilty of it))

Freezing players in place will only result in more dying. Let them run off and let them lick their wounds in the back.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Twin Axes »

Ronan wrote:I'd imagine a cause of TA's post is me screwing up and forgetting to roll to coup de grace on downed PCs, causing a PC to survive where they might not've. Won't happen again.

Yeah DMs can handle the floor however they want. This is trivial; DMs can do whatever they want with nearly anything. This doesn't mean we want to (handle the fallout), or have time to.
No, no! It has nothing to do with any event or session in particular. It's based on my overall experience since returning to Alfa a couple of years ago, and I have thought about it for some time now. When my own PC goes down in a hail of blows, it feels like he's been pretty much obliterated...broken bones or heavy bleeding at the least. But shazzam, he's up and bouncing back into the ring with nothing to show for it, except presumably (but not necessarily) playing a little more cautious since he's likely pretty low in HP now. I have been in several battles where PC's have been downed and returned and downed and returned repeatedly, and I find it breaks immersion somewhat. If they limped a little it would feel more...I don't know, more simulationist, less gamist. I remember that in PnP, death felt a lot scarier than it does in Alfa at the moment.

The above just to clarify I have nothing against Njall :)

EDIT: Just to reiterate that my original suggestion does not directly concern the lethality of Alfa at the moment, I am fine with that being as it is. I like PC:s surviving more than they used to, soloing being discouraged etc. Rather it's about making it just a little more inconvenient to fall below 0 hit points, for gameplay reasons. Like a house rule. Hope that came across.

ALSØ ALSØ: As Ronan implies above, the coup de grace function does actually preserve the lethality per se to some extent.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Ronan »

Oh, it'd be helpful if the DM message accompanying the server pause alerted us as to whether or not the downed PC bounced off the floor or not.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Ithildur »

I really don't know whether using the term 'floor' for the maximum dmg cap is so helpful. :) It's kind of funny/appropriate but I wonder if it also causes some confusion from time to time in discussions. i.e. muddling referring to merely dropping to negative HPs and thus 'hitting the floor' from dropping unconscious, vs 'hitting THE floor' meaning you got hit for 400dmg or death effect but our -6 cap/floor caught you and saved you from insta death... Intuitively 'hitting the floor' sounds too much like a catchall 'you got hurt bad/dropped'.


Anyway... carry on.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by thinkpig »

IMO, rely on the floor at your own risk-- I have seen PCs die to DMless spawns numerous times when a second monster attacks in the same part of the initiative round as the KO-floor monster before it can "lost interest," instantly killing the player character. I have seen this be ruled tech rez some times but most of the time it is not a tech rez.

In fact, just yesterday morning I saw a player character hit the floor (multiveilantly), bleed to -8 over the spawn of two rounds, I hit him with cure light wounds for five damage, and he somehow kept bleeding to death and died despite the cure effect. Evidently you can still fail a check and start bleeding out again if left in the negatives by the one who stopped your bleeding.

What if you're fighting a troll, and the alchemist fire flask your buddy uses to make it stay down accidentally rewounds you and your buddy has a brain fart and you bleed out?

What if there's a game mechanic you forgot about? A few weeks ago I saw a monk PC bite it because she stood her ground firing a crossbow at low hit points, believing she would be protected by her deflect arrows power (need a free hand to use it). A pair of goblins nailed her with simultaneous ranged attacks sending her straight to Myrkul.

I have always taken the sketchiness of the mechanic combined with the fallibility of we players as a random device allowing a (limited but present) constant threat of death. I believe that this provides dramatic potential for fatality that colors immersion with its real and legitimate threat and regard it to be a valuable aspect of our game rather than a bug, and I think if we choose to regard it this way, it also happens to serve the purpose of punishing those who meta game the -6 floor occasionally when they have a spot of bad luck and get simultaneously attacked etc.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by Zelknolf »

The complexity thing is part of the circumstance, for sure; I might argue that folk not knowing what to expect causes a good deal of unfairness: folk who are supposed to be dead getting tech rezzed because they grumped at someone who didn't feel like fighting, or folk who are supposed to be alive staying dead because everyone present squinted at it and said "seems legit". Though I suppose this shouldn't be grand news from me-- I'd not have fixed anything with death, and wouldn't resist rearrangements of it in current state, if I believed that the extra personality of bugs was a net gain.


Also, sent to Kelemvor in ALFA. Myrkul died in the Godswar. (2e -> 3e transition)
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by thinkpig »

Zelknolf wrote:Also, sent to Kelemvor in ALFA. Myrkul died in the Godswar. (2e -> 3e transition)[/size]
Someday when Persephone bites it on BG you will see what I am talking about ;)
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kid
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by kid »

It'll be a tech death of course, and will prompt a quick rezz, but she'll get a glimpse at least.
Also, to summarize my thoughts on death i'd say...

We need a bit more of it. *shrugs*
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by oldgrayrogue »

Not sure I understand the whole debate about ability damage or being dazed etc after being healed from below zero HP. A PC with 1 HP is fully functional. From the SRD:

Injury and Death

Your hit points measure how hard you are to kill. No matter how many hit points you lose, your character isn’t hindered in any way until your hit points drop to 0 or lower.


Effects of Hit Point Damage

Damage doesn’t slow you down until your current hit points reach 0 or lower. At 0 hit points, you’re disabled.

At from -1 to -9 hit points, you’re dying.

At -10 or lower, you’re dead.

Disabled (0 Hit Points)

When your current hit points drop to exactly 0, you’re disabled.

You can only take a single move or standard action each turn (but not both, nor can you take full-round actions). You can take move actions without further injuring yourself, but if you perform any standard action (or any other strenuous action) you take 1 point of damage after the completing the act. Unless your activity increased your hit points, you are now at -1 hit points, and you’re dying.

Healing that raises your hit points above 0 makes you fully functional again, just as if you’d never been reduced to 0 or fewer hit points.

You can also become disabled when recovering from dying. In this case, it’s a step toward recovery, and you can have fewer than 0 hit points (see Stable Characters and Recovery, below).

Dying (-1 to -9 Hit Points)

When your character’s current hit points drop to between -1 and -9 inclusive, he’s dying.

A dying character immediately falls unconscious and can take no actions.

A dying character loses 1 hit point every round. This continues until the character dies or becomes stable (see below).

Dead (-10 Hit Points or Lower)

When your character’s current hit points drop to -10 or lower, or if he takes massive damage (see above), he’s dead. A character can also die from taking ability damage or suffering an ability drain that reduces his Constitution to 0.

(emphasis added)

So there should be no issue with rejoining the fray when magical healing gets you back to 1 HP or more, no? Now, if you want to RP being affected by almost dying or getting KO'd that's perfectly fine and makes sense, but I don't think coding a reaction is necessary or justified.

The solution to all of this IMO is to do away with the -6 floor. Now that we have the pause feature, can you just have a timed autopause whenever someone drops below Zero HP? Say for 20 seconds? If the PC is in combat in a group that gives enough time to heal. If the PC is in combat solo, after the pause ends then the normal death system applies and if they don't stabilize they are dead. If you get critted to below -10, your dead, period. There will still be a pause, but when the timer runs you just die.

This kind of system gives players a chance in real time combat to heal party members who get KO'd, which is what I thought the purpose of the floor was in the first place. But if a party member gets decapitated (ie critted below -10), so sorry, your dead.
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by HEEGZ »

OGR hits it on the head with the SRD references. I am fine with removal of the floor but I'm not sure its that necessary or popular. I haven't had a chance to see the new server pause in action to form an opinion yet. I definitely don't think we need to program in any new death systems though.less is more.
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kid
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Re: Thoughts of death

Post by kid »

If we didn't have the -6 floor there would be no debate.
The debate is at least giving some penalties when you're saved by the -6 and should have been dead by all means, (or maybe at -9? don't know) and on top of that you're back fighting the next round.

Doing away with the -6 floor would indeed eliminate the cause for this thread.

But I don't think that a vote for removal would go well. (I'll vote for it. My dude wouldn't be here at level 535835 if we didn't have a floor and that would probably have been for the best)

Ask PA to poll for removing the -6 and see what happens? *Shrugs*
(we all know the pros and cons, I do wonder how would people vote)
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