The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

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

Post by t-ice »

Blindhamsterman wrote: resulted in being in a down for the remainder of the encounter.

Problem is, by the knockout means, "out of the fight" also means "unable to flee". Which might not be such a good idea since it only encourages TPK or victory -plottage. Player to player loyalty is very often stonger than character to character would reasonably be.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Brokenbone »

Was thinking of this also because of the parallel Lesser Vigor discussion, what if this -6 system kicking in debuffed you completely for starters?

On the one hand, "boo hoo, I had a resist elements on and a lesser vigor and a bull's strength and a shield of faith and a protection from evil", which is kind of answered by "you can have a well buffed corpse or someone whose defenses have shattered, bleeding out." Choose life buddy!

That might be at least one meaningful downside to trying to jump back in a battle.

Since not everyone will be buffed to high heaven though, some other representation of "not going to be too useful in a fight" could come in the form of something like a -AB effect that maybe decays over time (or rest), and/or spell failure chances. Someone mashes you, and you stagger back up due to the good graces of a healer, well... maybe you're -10 to attack for 10 rounds. Then -9 for 10 rounds.... then -8, you get the picture. Or since downed spellcasters aren't going to care if they can't crossbow or mace someone at -AB, a memory wipe or "all slots spent" could be one avenue to go down, or "90% spell fail chance for 10 rounds... 80% the next 10 rounds... 70%..." all potential ideas. I'm sort of picking ideas like this because they do not encumber or otherwise inconvenience someone who has to run like hell (like a STR or maybe DEX penalty), and they sure don't stop you from using something like Invisibility potions to get outta there. Maybe crazy power spells like Heal or upper stuff on the Restoration front could instantly juice someone back to combat useful, don't know.

So yeah, anyhow, just ideas of debuff and "hampered combat abilities" thrown out there. -10's or 90% fails are just "sake of argument" numbers, as are the 10 rounds business... ten levels of recovery might be a bit much, maybe it'd be three steps instead *shrugs*
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by t-ice »

Brokenbone wrote: I'm sort of picking ideas like this because they do not encumber or otherwise inconvenience someone who has to run like hell (like a STR or maybe DEX penalty), and they sure don't stop you from using something like Invisibility potions to get outta there. Maybe crazy power spells like Heal or upper stuff on the Restoration front could instantly juice someone back to combat useful, don't know.
Yeah, funny thing is, the effects you cooked up are almost precisely the ones Negative Levels do for you (lose spells and AB), and functions to handle Negative Levels, removing them by spells included, already exist. Why re-invent the wheel? (Although negative leves do strip defenses some, in terms of hp and saves, which is not just bad considering otherwise tortoise-tanks wouldn't care. And you'd probably want some cap with these negatives, so that you dont die for being level-drained below 0.)

The important question with difference in opinion here seems to be whether penalties should last about as long as a typical encouter, or about as long as a typical session, without being healed by magic or rest. Though tools for DMs to either use longer-lasting penalties or not, regardless of which one is the death system default, do exist. (Cast enervation, cast restoration, force rest, etc.) But it of course passes more smoothly to be more lenient than default than to be more strict.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Brokenbone »

I suppose Negative levels do impact AB, saves, spell loads, everything! But not a lot, unless it's a lot of negative levels. Knock one level off a fighter, he loses 1 from AB, loses one hit die (though he's probably at 2hp whether it's 2 / 70 or 2 / 80, it's still 2). Is that enough? But yeah, I can see the "why reinvent the wheel" point. Yet still leaving open to question whether you need magicky restoration to get over the penalty, which lowbies will never be able to afford... or whether withdrawal and enough rest (or even just passage of time) should do it.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by t-ice »

Brokenbone wrote:... or whether withdrawal and enough rest (or even just passage of time) should do it.
Well I do think whatever penalties they are shouldn't be permanent, so that when you come back the next week for a new session, you'd have rested up. (Though something like 1 point / rest or IG day offline, like how ability damage heals by our system, might be swell. But I'd bet we already would have a quite smart system for negative levels in place, like we do for ability damage, no?)

Reason being precisely to not beat on lowbies severly. Highbies can afford a shot of Restoration, anyway.
Brokenbone wrote: Knock one level off a fighter, he loses 1 from AB, loses one hit die (though he's probably at 2hp whether it's 2 / 70 or 2 / 80, it's still 2). Is that enough?
One could tweak it to scale with current level, like give 1 + 1 more negative per every 5 (character level minus negatives). I suppose one could think this punishes hp too much compared to how it punishes AB. Still, as you say, it reduces max hp, which isn't so much about surviving this encounter (you're far more worried about current hp), but about getting back to full swing for the next one.

I suppose one can engineer the effects however complex, but tweaking details is details. Nwn2 negative levels seems about right.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Zelknolf »

As a nudge to t-eyes, we don't really have much of a system for ability drain v. ability damage v. magical penalties to ability scores v. negative levels. The basics exist, so we do have some sense of persistency, but the result tends to be closer to "If you log out messed up somehow, you log in messed up somehow, but the somehow before won't necessarily be the somehow after." Hollyfant has distilled a few describable bugs from it all, though it amounts to the way the original system gathers its information.

Sadly, the functionality we need to get at to improve such is made "available" to us by OE, but it's very poorly documented (even by the custom content community), so we'd need to go into a bonafide research phase to build out something more robust than what we have. It's also, unfortunately, not really research we can delegate: it's closer to "Tell us how this undocumented API handles these effects with their valid parameters." so anyone who works on it would need to know the basics of coding, and anyone who wanted to work efficiently would need to be at least a little good at it.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ronan »

Zelknolf wrote:Well, if we're looking for a ruling, I'd be the admin who says which things above are bugs, right? Tech owns the ACR, and this is pretty core ACR stuff.
Yes, though in the past DMs (and DMA? PA? I don't know) have not ruled floor failures to warrant tech rezes ("you're lucky its there at all, n00b", hence the OP and desire for admin clarification).

I still believe the ideal system would simulate > 10 negative hps available, though the tricky party would be getting this to work with heals as well as damage.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Blindhamsterman »

fwiw
Reason being precisely to not beat on lowbies severly. Highbies can afford a shot of Restoration, anyway.
certainly isn't true in many cases... sure, there are some high levels with shed loads of coin, there are also low levels that have been able to purchase 10+k items from shops...
One could tweak it to scale with current level, like give 1 + 1 more negative per every 5 (character level minus negatives).
no... just no. The penalty should be the same regardless of level, getting knocked down shouldnt become worse as a character becomes more skilled. Thats counter intuitive as generally the higher CR stuff that puts you in that situation has ways to ensure that getting back up suddenly 2-3 levels lower than you were a moment ago = death. Whereas lower CR stuff doesn't usually have that same ability beyond some bad luck on a characters part.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ronan »

Well unless we add something tremendously unpopular, negative levels do not result in any sort of permanent level loss (or permanent damage at all).

Any "KOed until fight is over" system, or even a "you now have up to 50 negative HPs to be knocked out in" would have to be accompanied by a "carry this knocked out dude" system.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by hollyfant »

:priest: Does anyone have a suggestion for a penalty that does not enhance the usefulness of Clerics even further?
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Zelknolf »

hollyfant wrote::priest: Does anyone have a suggestion for a penalty that does not enhance the usefulness of Clerics even further?
I didn't realize that making clerics burn up more spell slots to do the same thing made them more useful?
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ithildur »

Zelknolf wrote:
hollyfant wrote::priest: Does anyone have a suggestion for a penalty that does not enhance the usefulness of Clerics even further?
I didn't realize that making clerics burn up more spell slots to do the same thing made them more useful?
A party lacking a cleric currently can manage a situation where a tank gets cracked hard in the skull (i.e. critted to -11 hp but saved by the cap) by using stuff like cure items and pots, al beit manage painfully given how rare/costly potions above clw are in alfa. There are no potions (much less items) of Restoration in the game presently afaik (probably won't ever be, as it's a lvl 4 spell/nonstandard potion requiring a PrC to brew iirc).

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. [edit: probably going too far to say it becomes a mini Raise Dead]

Pretty good chance Viigas' sessions with us in the UD would not have been finishable (at least without a couple of Teleports to a temple and back) if this had been in. Whether all this is good or bad I really don't know; just that stuff that has no basis at all in RAW and NWN2 both needs to be looked at carefully (including the cap to begin with imo).

[edit2] Upon further thought the net effect that several folks are aiming for seems to be a combination of less lethality (-6 cap) in a permadeath real time system while still going for gritty consequences of taking a hit/spell that should've resulted in death. From that perspective it's something I think I'd be supportive of, for what it's worth. I'd personally still prefer things closer to RAW in general, but the NWN2 engine was never designed with permadeath in mind on top of it's many shortcomings.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Zelknolf »

I'm not sure I follow your argument. We have a state of clerics before such a change and clerics after a change. Before the change, there is less strain and competition for some of their class abilities, after there is more. Yes, PCs are the source of that extra strain / demand / competition / whathaveyou, but that's still manifesting as a new thing that's eating up your spell slots. 4th level ones, even; those are good enough to make the high-level clerics fill up their 5th level slots with them, too.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Ithildur »

Greater need/demand for new thing that's eating said spellslots (again, barring the rare high lvl pally or favored soul) ;)

If clerics were the only class that could cast cure spells, and there were no cure items in ALFA, they'd be that much more in demand/valuable wouldn't they? Regardless of what percentage of their slots were filled with cure spells vs other nice spells, or if spontaneous casting wasn't an option, etc.
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Re: The -6 floor: Desired behavior & tech rezes.

Post by Zelknolf »

I suppose I don't see why that's an argument against? It's one of those awesomely-harmonious changes where an overpowered class loses power and feels more useful. Those are super rare, and I thus want to jealously snuggle this one.
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