Changing the -6 Safety Net

[t-ice]

A change to a core system of ALFA is made when the system is adversely affecting the game itself.

It reads to me like Ronan is making a pretty convincing argument for how the floor adversely affects the game, with which at least I pretty much agree. After AC inflation the bonce-from-the-floor-fighting is the second biggest effect twisting the intended use of direct-fire mobs in the game. And direct-fire big meany monsters are what nwn2 handles the best and easiest.

I do think, however, that a "recovery time" where the floor is deactivated after a save would only lead to metaing, particularly metagaming by not playing until the floor is surely back, which is a loss to the community. The recovery should not be fully OOC, but should reflect IC injuries/shock etc. The IC recovery from a near death brush should be able to be comic book timed, too, and should not lead to saying to the player to "come back to ALFA next week". Something that effectily says If your life is saved by the floor, you cannot fight effectively until you rest" should be enough. (rest meaning rest according to our existing system). There is a multitude of technical options to facilitate it. (Is it hard to tech clearing all memorized spells and spells per day and give -10AB until a rest?)

This wouldnt' be that much affected:

It makes it near-impossible for PCs to die to most direct-fire mobs unless the entire party runs away or they don't have enough healing.

But it would force the party to retreat after a floor-balooza. Also it should make the PCs fear overwhelming situations more, bringing CRs more to where they should be for direct-fire mobs, since getting floored would remove the floored PCs fighting potential from the party even if that PCs life is saved. This makes it more likely the party loses the fight, and should instill some more fear to where it should be.

That way you couldn't use the floor as a combat strategy, but its life-saving potential wouldn't be much affected. You can't bounce from the floor fighting, but you can bounce from the floor fleeing. Best of both worlds.

[SwordSaintMusashi]

(Is it hard to tech clearing all memorized spells and spells per day and give -10AB until a rest?)

This wouldnt' be that much affected:

It makes it near-impossible for PCs to die to most direct-fire mobs unless the entire party runs away or they don't have enough healing.

But it would force the party to retreat after a floor-balooza. Also it should make the PCs fear overwhelming situations more, bringing CRs more to where they should be for direct-fire mobs, since getting floored would remove the floored PCs fighting potential from the party even if that PCs life is saved. This makes it more likely the party loses the fight, and should instill some more fear to where it should be.

That way you couldn't use the floor as a combat strategy, but its life-saving potential wouldn't be much affected. You can't bounce from the floor fighting, but you can bounce from the floor fleeing. Best of both worlds.

It would also make a situation where one unlucky PC gets floored then healed back more common, thus rendering that PC completely useless for an entire session. In addition, its creating a new system for a system that isn't malfunctioning in the first place.

No.

[Zelknolf]

Ronan-- I must've missed Ander's tech rezz (and there may be logging and/or parser problems in there; I think he's on the reports as still dead). So yeah, my numbers are off by one, and with last month as a reference, hitting the floor in party is slightly less grim (a third instead of half).

The rest I shug at. It's anecdote. We started logging this stuff so we could have data. Data is better than anecdote, and data looks like this is far from immunity to death while still blasting the majority of those ding dang dirty soloers. Mission accomplished?

Zelk: Hypothetically, would something like a 5 minute cooldown on the -6 cap after it fires once be possible, or is that a bit far fetched?

Possible, but we're in some pretty fragile code there. We'd have to test the balls off of it (and it doesn't have balls right now. We'd have to give it some balls so we could test them off).

That said, we currently do exactly the opposite: when you hit the safety net, you're immune to death from all sources for the next 2 seconds, to allow the AI to be shoved toward fighting people who are still threats to it-- a lot of the same stuff that Ronan's talking about with reaction times and NWN2's scheduling in there. In a sort of quirky way, that does serve as a proof of concept. We can set timers and make the rest of the logic work off of it.

[SwordSaintMusashi]

Zelk: Hypothetically, would something like a 5 minute cooldown on the -6 cap after it fires once be possible, or is that a bit far fetched?

Possible, but we're in some pretty fragile code there. We'd have to test the balls off of it (and it doesn't have balls right now. We'd have to give it some balls so we could test them off).

That said, we currently do exactly the opposite: when you hit the safety net, you're immune to death from all sources for the next 2 seconds, to allow the AI to be shoved toward fighting people who are still threats to it-- a lot of the same stuff that Ronan's talking about with reaction times and NWN2's scheduling in there. In a sort of quirky way, that does serve as a proof of concept. We can set timers and make the rest of the logic work off of it.

Then the next (and more important) question - as Technical Administrator, do you think that adding "balls" to the system to create a new system that would allow us to test on the newly created "balls" would be worth your department's time?

[t-ice]

(Is it hard to tech clearing all memorized spells and spells per day and give -10AB until a rest?)

This wouldnt' be that much affected:

It makes it near-impossible for PCs to die to most direct-fire mobs unless the entire party runs away or they don't have enough healing.

But it would force the party to retreat after a floor-balooza. Also it should make the PCs fear overwhelming situations more, bringing CRs more to where they should be for direct-fire mobs, since getting floored would remove the floored PCs fighting potential from the party even if that PCs life is saved. This makes it more likely the party loses the fight, and should instill some more fear to where it should be.

That way you couldn't use the floor as a combat strategy, but its life-saving potential wouldn't be much affected. You can't bounce from the floor fighting, but you can bounce from the floor fleeing. Best of both worlds.

It would also make a situation where one unlucky PC gets floored then healed back more common, thus rendering that PC completely useless for an entire session.

That PC by pnp rules would be dead. Instead she's now "unlucky" because she can't fight until the party rests? Resting and recovering is the least what the party ICly should do if they want their mangled companion back in the fighting ranks. If a DM is running the session, the rest is also just one click after the party emotes setting camp (or the DM can rule the injury is healed by a spell, heal check, etc). If the party ICly can't recover, then more than fair enough that their mangled member is out until they can.

By the way, to get the relevant data you would need to measure how the floor is affecting the behavior of DMs in what kind of things are being offered to our PCs as adventures (or even to DM activity and energy). And how it's affecting the behavior of players in what kind of static content they decide to take on. What happens with near-deaths is already skewed by players and DMs being aware of the system. Data is nice, but the risk is making you look at the wrong thing because it's one you can quantify. If a significant fraction of DMs on the ground are saying we're frustrated by the floor system, bushing it aside as "anecdotal" is hardly good for our game and community, is it?

[SwordSaintMusashi]

Not all DMs are saying its frustrating them: Some are, some are not. Thus, we rely on data.

And in that PnP game, for the rest of the session they have other options (play a NPC or what not for the rest of the session).

In this model, you would make a player ineffective for currently 5.2 REAL LIFE hours. Why the hell would you even play at that point?

[t-ice]

In this model, you would make a player ineffective for currently 5.2 REAL LIFE hours. Why the hell would you even play at that point?

Don't PCs log in with the "rest toggle" set to "can rest"? (Unless they were offline for less than one IG day and had just rested) So it'd only mean finding a place where you can rest. Mostly it's just "can't fight until end of this battle and should do some recovery RP". Unless of course you go back into danger and got saved from death twice during 5 RL hours, in which case ... yeah.

But it could really be 10 RL minutes incapacitated, and 90% of the purpose would be served. Main thing is that you can't bounce back from the floor fighting.

[SwordSaintMusashi]

In this model, you would make a player ineffective for currently 5.2 REAL LIFE hours. Why the hell would you even play at that point?

Don't PCs log in with the "rest toggle" set to "can rest"? (Unless they were offline for less than one IG day) So it'd only be finding a place where you can rest. Unless of course you go back into danger and got saved from death twice during 5 RL hours, in which case ... yeah.

They come in with the toggle set to rest, yes. This is assuming they did not rest for any reason before their DM sessions (to change spells, pray, or any multitude of reasons.)

Once again: No.

[Adanu]

That PC by pnp rules would be dead.

By PnP rules, DMs can also dictate XP gain, allow players to use NPCs for the rest of a campaign if their PC dies, and can give wealth as they see fit.

ALFA has none of these things.

Trying to make ALFA completely like PnP when two big systems of PC power (xp and gold) are so limited by design hereis impractical and would drive everyone away. Why play anyone if a sneeze will kill you?

[t-ice]

Well, at the risk of going back and forth, this discussion is certainly helping focus on the essential and crystallize the message:

Not being killed because of the floor is a good thing.
Bouncing back from the floor in a second and already fighting is an awful side effect of that, and it seems to be entirely circumventable. Regardless of the details of how.

[Zelknolf]

Don't PCs log in with the "rest toggle" set to "can rest"?

No-- they just get the benefits of a rest. If they can also rest on top of that, that's a bug. Should report that if you see it.

Then the next (and more important) question - as Technical Administrator, do you think that adding "balls" to the system to create a new system that would allow us to test on the newly created "balls" would be worth your department's time?

Given the listed goals of the system, the current measured performance of the system, and the current system's frequency of use, probably not. That might change if circumstances change, or we see actual evidence of contemporary abuse (everything is higher priority if tech can make a system that makes it impossible to get a certain kind of strike).

But for now, ACR_Candlekeep is a thing. The everything it implies is way more exciting than pretty much everything that everyone's talking about now.

[SwordSaintMusashi]

Don't PCs log in with the "rest toggle" set to "can rest"?

No-- they just get the benefits of a rest. If they can also rest on top of that, that's a bug. Should report that if you see it.

Then the next (and more important) question - as Technical Administrator, do you think that adding "balls" to the system to create a new system that would allow us to test on the newly created "balls" would be worth your department's time?

Given the listed goals of the system, the current measured performance of the system, and the current system's frequency of use, probably not. That might change if circumstances change, or we see actual evidence of contemporary abuse (everything is higher priority if tech can make a system that makes it impossible to get a certain kind of strike).

But for now, ACR_Candlekeep is a thing. The everything it implies is way more exciting than pretty much everything that everyone's talking about now.

Another hypothetical: On the scale of Trivial to Herculean, how hard would it be to take Death Magic off of the -6 Safety Net?

[Adanu]

Making death magic actually do what it's meant for I can get behind, seeing as the actual purpose of it is circumvented without a DM ruling otherwise.

That being said, PnP has no rules against bouncing back off the floor if you nearly die and going back into the fray. It's just monumentally stupid unless you know you're fine.

[t-ice]

That being said, PnP has no rules against bouncing back off the floor if you nearly die and going back into the fray.

Yes it has, it's called death. At least I am talking about saved from -10 by the -6 floor, any effects shouldn't be applied if you legitly drop to -5 (or even to -9 which is converted to -6). In PnP you would be bouncing back from death fighting. Casting time of raise dead / resurrection is 10 minutes, not to mention the side effects.

[Zelknolf]

Another hypothetical: On the scale of Trivial to Herculean, how hard would it be to take Death Magic off of the -6 Safety Net?

Saving Andromeda from the Cetus.