That's a great suggestion. Blast ye for making it AFTER it's coded the other way!
I think it'd be a fairly small change as the concept of bonus healing is already there. However, I suspect that part of the reason Ronan is thinking of moving away from bedrolls is b/c we have to check if the player possesses these items when attempting to rest. It adds some overhead to check inventory but this can of course be optimized.
However, that still leaves the issue of rest cycle. What should it be?
I like the idea of making the indoor rest cycle every 8 hours and the outdoor rest cycle unlimited but incurring a chance for a random encounter (and being interrupted of course) depending on location - each area could have its own random encounter rating or we just leave it up to spawns to wander about and interrupt players. So, if players don't clear an area or take a long time clearing one, there's a good chance of being interrupted by wandering monsters. Might be somewhat exploitable though if the terrain can be used to take advantage of AI but it's more "realistic" or at least less fabricated this way.
I see no reason you can rest ever hour outside. Certainly, there should be chances for random encounters. If we get really fancy, put a chance for a minor disease in cheaper inns.
Fionn wrote:I see no reason you can rest ever hour outside. Certainly, there should be chances for random encounters. If we get really fancy, put a chance for a minor disease in cheaper inns.
Did you mean "no reason you can't"?
Contracting a disease is in already. ATM, it's builder configurable per rest zone, so it's not necessarily restricted to Inns. The system assumes a rest zone is free of disease unless told what disease (ID) to apply and the DC of it.
I like the idea of making the indoor rest cycle every 8 hours and the outdoor rest cycle unlimited but incurring a chance for a random encounter (and being interrupted of course) depending on location
That implies I can rest only once per 8 hours in a nice comfy bed to regain spells, but for some reason can rest every few minutes on hard rocky ground. I see no reason why that would be true. It would certainly promote camping err.... camp spawns ;)
I can easily see that you would only be able to rest in rough areas with proper training or a Camp set up. Thus a bookish Wizard sleeping in the woods could only sleep once every 24, while a Noble Warrior would have a Camp set up where he could feel safe. Ranger/Druid types can, of course, make a Camp out of nothing (at least in terrains they are familair with).
Some of that is harder to code, and I am fine with leaving it as a flat 8 hours with builder configurable disease/encounter checks.
The timer exists more out of a sense for balance than for realism I suppose. Although, it'll take time and effort to make a trip to an Inn so then again, maybe the restraints are already built in. The risk to resting outdoors (random encounter) should offset any desire for doing so excessively, at least in theory, so there again restraints exist.
So in short, I can buy the argument that we remove timers altogether. I can also see rough terrain having an influence on healing rates and we can support that as a builder option on rest zones fairly simply. Presently, camps (or campfires) grant a rest bonus, they are not a prerequisite for healing altogether.
I like the 8 hour rest system to heal up. But basically I disagree that there should be an unlimited rest system outdoors if there is any extra healing. With this I mean, if a PC gets to rest every ingame hour (we are talking ingame or not?) and gaining health. The once per hour rest should, IMO, give all the healing a day's rest should give a PC.
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The 8-hours thing is there for balance of spell recover and such more than anything else, IMO. I didn't feel the inventory check for a bedroll was something really worth optimizing, after all rest events are pretty rare. I mostly just thought it was unnecissary. If we want to check for environmental things like tents, beds, rain, snow, etc, I think if we don't code them well they'll just get in the way. I've seen ALFA1's bedroll system get in the way far more often than I've seen it inspire any sort of meaningful RP (and why should elves or half-elves need a bedroll, when they usually don't even lay down to rest?).
Not saying the different tent, bedroll, bed, etc. options are a bad idea, but just that I think they should be done properly, or may not be worth doing at all.
Naturally the rest system wouldn't handle random encounters itself. For now I think making a pseudo-event would be best, something like AreaOnPCRest, and have it call that.
If we leave random encounters to wandering monsters, then we don't need to interconnect any systems at all. With the way spawning is being done now (from transitions vs from triggers), I see no reason why wandering monsters wouldn't suffice (bad AI not withstanding) to be honest. This is a benefit of the NWN environment we could leverage that PnP can't reproduce. Spawns wandering about also makes farming them extremely difficult. Anyone disagree?
As for the indoor rest cycle timer, seeing as how people will only be able to rest in SPECIFIC zones, isn't it unnecessary? It's not like vanilla NWN where players can drop and rest anywhere they wish in town or out. But I dunno. Maybe all of this is not enough to offset the potential balance problems.
There is another aspect to resting that I would like you to consider if possible.
Currently taking a rest brings you out of "stealth mode".
My own experience in RL of sleeping out is that if you have the skills you can find and set up your resting place so that you are extremely hard to spot. Of course, if you aren't bothered or don't have the right skills you are more noticeable.
I think it would be realistic to make resting IG similar to RL, and leave you in stealth mode if you are in that mode when you start to rest.
Snoring Moose wrote:There is another aspect to resting that I would like you to consider if possible.
Currently taking a rest brings you out of "stealth mode".
My own experience in RL of sleeping out is that if you have the skills you can find and set up your resting place so that you are extremely hard to spot. Of course, if you aren't bothered or don't have the right skills you are more noticeable.
I think it would be realistic to make resting IG similar to RL, and leave you in stealth mode if you are in that mode when you start to rest.
What do you think ?
I think "being able to find a hidden place to rest" and "stealth" are two very different skillsets.
A trained tracker/ranger type might have some innate skill to find a resting place where he/she might be less likely to be disturbed more than a stealth expert/rogue type.
But as a general point, I like the idea of a PC being able to take some IC steps when resting in order to lessen the risk of trouble during sleep such as camouflaging the site, picking a better location etc........................survival skill/ wilderness lore maybe?
For computed random encounter scenarios, a survival skill check to reduce the % chance of an encounter seems reasonable.
For wandering monsters, I think it would have to be implemented as HIDE/SPOT where the monster's spot DC is equal to the survival skill of the PC (instead of the hide skill). This might be quite difficult to implement though with the engine restrictions on rest + stealth.
If we have mobs wander around, and that happens to mean on top of campers, that implies to me a very long rest cycle. ALFA seems dead set against such.
If we have the encounter system generate mobs onRest, and you can rest at will, and the encounters in the area are trivial to your PC, that smells of farming. If we up it to be occasionally lethal to PC6 to discourage farming, then essentially nobody can sleep out.
Again, I see no reason why you should be able to (at will) gain spells, HPs, special abilities, and possibly unlimited spawns out doors, but not indoors. A flat 8 hours seems far more balanced to me. Use environmental effects and skill checks to modify healing rates, disease checks, encounter checks.
For the stealth, how about a Survival check to keep your native stealth bonus (or half)?
Oh I see. As it is now, the rest cycles are the same - 8 hours. The only time it bumps to 24 is if you are OUTDOORS and don't have a bedroll.
Coming back to blackwill's idea then, bedrolls and tents can be optional but if you have one you'll get a rest bonus. Players can then use them or not as part of their RP or otherwise, but it's not required to rest every 8 hours. The cycle would be a flat 8 hours, period. Sounds like that takes into account everyone's concerns and suggestions.
Rest zones also have heal bonus modifiers on them so builders can enhance healing rates in specific areas if they deem it appropriate (like at an oasis in the desert). For rough terrain, it's probably enough to simply not allow resting there and that too is in the builders control.
While we're on this topic, I should note that per canon, spells are only recoverable once per day, not per rest. I think Ronan favored making it per rest. Is there general agreement one way or the other?
As for "stealth" while sleeping, we're talking about camouflage, right? If that's the case, I think it should be tied to survival and survival only. I believe anyone can put ranks into this, but it's not a class skill for all classes, rightfully.
P.S. Rangers, Druids, and Barbarians would effectively get "bedroll" heal rates outdoors even w/o having one.
The semi-ad-hoc nature of ALFA means that adventures can start at any time, and unlike PnP, you mostly cannot just tell the DM "I prepare these spells in the morning". You end up needing to change your spell layout pretty quickly, and some DMs expect this. So I think spell regaining needs to be left at every 8 hours. And thats not counting the sheer amount of combat a PC can get into in 24 hours in ALFA.
Though, with automatic rest and a DM ability to flag a PC as restable, this would be more moot. But for reasons of balance against static content, I think 8 hours should be left for now. Thats probably something to tweak in beta, I guess.
Fionn, if someone is resting in an area with an active monster population, they should expect a possible attack (handled by the encounter/population system). If we have it interrupt their rest and maybe give them a small timer to rest again, I don't think any sort of farming would be an issue.
Ronan wrote:The semi-ad-hoc nature of ALFA means that adventures can start at any time, and unlike PnP, you mostly cannot just tell the DM "I prepare these spells in the morning". You end up needing to change your spell layout pretty quickly, and some DMs expect this. So I think spell regaining needs to be left at every 8 hours. And thats not counting the sheer amount of combat a PC can get into in 24 hours in ALFA.
Right on spot.
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