Goblin Squad Member
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When hit points are gone, characters should be unconscious and vulnerable to robbery. Death should require another blow or perhaps a bleed out...I've proposed this before and think it's a very good idea.
It only matters with very low level opponents, usually level one or level two. Once you get reasonably powered attacks you will find you go way below -10hp in one spell or attack (in 3.5 PnP my Paladin 15 did just under 500 HP damage on a crit with spirited charge)
Hence the Races of Destiny spell Delay Death, though even then you could still die if your party had insufficient ehaling to get you above -10 before the spell expired.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would love to see something like this! It would eliminate a bit of the grief from being robbed.
How so ? Dieing appears to have no negative effects other than either a walk back to the husk OR being robbed and having the remnants of your inventory destroyed. One or the other. Presumably if robbed while unconscious you will still lose your inventory.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For one thing it would save the trouble of a corpse run. There are many time I would rather wake up in my last current location rather then retrace my steps.
Well there is no need for a corpse run if the husk has been robbed, but yeah true it does mean you will wake up at the place of your demise ready to be attacked again or continue your resource gathering as the case may be.
Maybe it only prevents fatal attacks from certain humanoids, but not monsters? So a player might wake up naked locked (captured) in a cave or somewhere in the wild, while if your character is defeated by a monster, (s)he's likely to be consumed by the creature.
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Goblin Squad Member
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+100
It helps solve oh so many of the problems we are facing. It opens up the possibility of a "yield" mechanic. It helps differentiate between a beatdown and killing which is important when determining alignment.
Not accepting a yield is both evil and non-reputable. I think we have established that robbing is chaotic and killing is evil. Nothing new under the sun either, the GW2 dying mechanic is perfect and is a dead ringer for how it works in Pathfinder.
Characters are incapacitated for X amount of time. They can stabalize, someone can heal them and an enemy can "finish them off" during this time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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+100
It helps solve oh so many of the problems we are facing. It opens up the possibility of a "yield" mechanic. It helps differentiate between a beatdown and killing which is important when determining alignment.
Not accepting a yield is both evil and non-reputable. I think we have established that robbing is chaotic and killing is evil.
I definitely like the idea of a yeld command and the possibility of subduing an enemy/adversary without necessarily killing him. That would solve many issues about good player bein or not being able to attack enemies without changing alignment towards evil.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It might help the Paladins fight evil player characters if they stop short of killing them and stabilize them.
Conceivably. You know, beat them to a whimpering bloody pulp and then keep them from dying so they can feel it longer.
Keeps them from getting the kill flag.
Sure. Heal them back up enough so in humiliated fury they can initiate combat, get the flags, and then be dispatched.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It might help the Paladins fight evil player characters if they stop short of killing them and stabilize them.
Conceivably. You know, beat them to a whimpering bloody pulp and then keep them from dying so they can feel it longer.
Keeps them from getting the kill flag.
Sure. Heal them back up enough so in humiliated fury they can initiate combat, get the flags, and then be dispatched.
And stabilizing the evil char would be a good and lawful action and could prevent him from being affected by alignment shift. He is just showing mercy toward an evil being!
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Goblin Squad Member
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It might help the Paladins fight evil player characters if they stop short of killing them and stabilize them.
Conceivably. You know, beat them to a whimpering bloody pulp and then keep them from dying so they can feel it longer.
Keeps them from getting the kill flag.
Sure. Heal them back up enough so in humiliated fury they can initiate combat, get the flags, and then be dispatched.
Mercy is for suckers. No reason the game shouldn't reflect reality ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah sure, let's debate Paladins across THREE threads. LOL.
The quintessential LG hero is Superman. Superman seeks out evil and to defeat it. He does not have a badge or a warrant, but he does actively patrol to make "citizen's arrests". He always gives the baddies the option to yield and when they don't he beats them up and then turns them over to the authorities. He avoids the death of the villain even at his own peril.
All of this fits in with what RD has been saying, but it also sorely needs a yield mechanic.
As a future bandit/assassin, I will ask you to yield only once and that is before I initiate combat. If you do not, no amount of yielding after that will save you.
You will have one chance, and one chance only.
I believe it was Bluddwolf <sp?> who was saying that he wanted to play a bandit that was not wholly "evil". This would allow him to defeat and rob someone who would not give up their coin, yet stop short of killing them, thus not giving him an evil flag, just the chaotic flag for attacking first.
I like the idea of having this as an option. Especially with the death curse as it stands now :p
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm still lacking in seeing a non RP benefit to such a mechanic. There is no XP penalty for death, or really any noteworthy penalties. The 2 losses are
1. You lose your carried items and unthreaded gear.
2. You are sent back to your respawn point.
Vulnerable to robbery means 1. is still present.
With 1 present, 2 is made worse (Why would you want to get back up in dangerous territory without your gear, when you die you have the possibility of getting back to your gear before it is looted, if you lose that possibility, you should be rushing to somewhere to replace your gear before even considering returning to the area you died in last.
as well it opens up as mentioned other abuses. If you are rob/lootable at say a lesser stage, well then why wouldn't it just be used to extort more out of people. IE knock him out, rob, let him back up, kill loot.
If you add a window of immunity, then expect abuse in the other way. *friend knocks me out, steals something worthless, or gives back what he steals, get revived/healed, LEEROOOOOYYYY JEEEENNNKIIINS!
IMO the only more moderate death mechanic I can fathom. would be a means to return them to their spawn, with equipment in tact. Though I would personally say that the death mechanic already borders on too light, and may be bordering on not taking equipment out of circulation often enough. (90% of PVE deaths would likely end in no loss, the winning team in PVP scenerios (of say 5v5 etc...), would likely have no loss 70% of the time (as the survivors on the winning side would guard the corpse), and then in the losing side... 25% or so of your gear will likely be threaded. IMO the idea that the cost of death is too high and needs to be lessened, is just backwards to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm still lacking in seeing a non RP benefit to such a mechanic. There is no XP penalty for death, or really any noteworthy penalties. The 2 losses are
Two benefits I can see ...
1. When fighting a non-looting NPC monster that lost interest after you were knocked down you simply wakeup after it (hopefully) wanders off and can go on your merry way.
2. it may be a benefit to bandits hoping to take your stuff and avoid the evil tag.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm still lacking in seeing a non RP benefit to such a mechanic. There is no XP penalty for death, or really any noteworthy penalties. The 2 losses are
Two benefits I can see ...
1. When fighting a non-looting NPC monster that lost interest after you were knocked down you simply wakeup after it (hopefully) wanders off and can go on your merry way.
Sort of like... what already exists... IE you can walk to your husk, wait for the monster to walk away, collect your husk and lose nothing?
2. it may be a benefit to bandits hoping to take your stuff and avoid the evil tag.
But why should it avoid the evil tag... if it has the same penalty as death? If we allow the same reward as killing someone... then we give the bandits the full advantage of killing, but lessen their reputation hit? Why would anyone ever full kill then beyond petty revenge. If we are lessening the penalties to the killed by say not destroying what isn't used, then all we are doing is eliminating the intended item loss system corrupting the ability for the economy to flow as intended. If we do keep the intended item destruction system... then we are essentially offering killing, in a slightly worse form (Leaving the victim in a dangerous location instead of warping them to a safe location)
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Goblin Squad Member
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This could be an extremely wonderful idea, but if you would fall unconscious, you should have the option to "choose" death. Otherwise someone could render you unconscious, heal you, leave combat, rinse and repeat.
Yeah Mercy would have to be accepted by both parties. Not sure if the loser can ask for it or the winner can offer it or both.
What mechanic would be used at that point sounds like a crowdforging thread. Debuff? Combatants cannot fight each other for X time? Could go alot of ways there.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But why should it avoid the evil tag... if it has the same penalty as death? If we allow the same reward as killing someone... then we give the bandits the full advantage of killing, but lessen their reputation hit? Why would anyone ever full kill then beyond petty revenge. If we are lessening the penalties to the killed by say not destroying what isn't used, then all we are doing is eliminating the intended item loss system corrupting the ability for the economy to flow as intended. If we do keep the intended item destruction system... then we are essentially offering killing, in a slightly worse form (Leaving the victim in a dangerous location instead of warping them to a safe location)
They have already stated that the threading system will be tiered. Murdering should give you access to more stuff than subdual and robbery. Both actions should hit you the same in the Chaos/Law & Reputation scales. Mercy only helps on the good/evil scale.
So if you beat someone down and grant them mercy, without taking any of their stuff, and the vanquished character is of low reputation, your hit is very minimal and only on the Chaos & Reputation scales.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What about a the fight for your life system as seen in Borderlands 1&2. Could be used fairly effectively I think.
In Pathfinder when you hit zero you are incapacitated. You really can't do anything unless you stabilize and slowly get back up to zero. There are certain feats that can be used in this state. Half Orcs have a racial feat that is basically fight for your life, I think Rogues and/or Barbarians have something too.
But for the most part, you are out of combat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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seems like a lot of support for this mechanic.
it is way better to be knocked out and recovering in place then dead and running from a spawn location.
The mechanic for knocked out could be a timer, taking the straight line travel time from you closest spawn point, divide it by two and that is how long you stay in a stupor until popping back up.
This could potentially save you a lot of items. When you die, a few items can be looted randomly and everything not tethered is DESTROYED. With this mechanic you could be robbed for a few random items the same way but the untethered items would not be destroyed.
I do not understand the one person who doesn't see the non-RP benefit of this.
Plus, if you are knocked out, your friendly cleric can cast a heal on you to bring u back to 1 HP instantaneously instead of having to wait ill after the fight is over to cast a raise dead...
Am I missing something, wouldn't this mechanism always be better then straight out dieing?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like an support a separate kill command. I see it as having a number of uses and reasons to exists, not all of the pure RP.
As someone posted above, getting killed by an NPC is not always a death sentence. That bear might maul you, then wander off once the threat to it's home has been dealt with. A bit later you can revive and move on. The tension comes in that moment when they knock you unconscious - will they make the killing blow or not? Obviously the higher the value of the NPC, the alignment of the NPC and other factors would weigh into the likelihood of a spared sentence.
For PC interactions, it could be a good thing as well. A player running a bandit knocks you out, steals your stuff, and makes off. He gets flagged as an attacker and thief, but skips the murder charge, meaning you can't death curse him. (Perhaps the number or type of items available to be looted is lessened when unconscious vs dead as well?) It also gives players who are leaning towards good options - options that could translate for RP or real in game factors.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think being able to knock someone out is a good idea, but I don't think it should be automatic - if you engage someone in combat with deadly weapons, there's a good chance someone is going to get killed. Attacking someone shouldn't be free from risk of killing them, even if it's not your intention to do so. Of course you could use non-lethal weapons instead to greatly minimize that risk, but they wouldn't be as effective in straight-up combat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Am I missing something, wouldn't this mechanism always be better then straight out dieing?
Not always. Say I'm out in the wilderness with a group and something comes up and I have to log (or my ISP dies or whatever). So I come back and I'm stuck alone, and have to make it back on my own. So I start traveling back and get jumped by bandits, and instead of killing me they just incapacitate me, take some stuff and move along. This could happen multiple times (even with different groups of bandits so theyre not griefing) and I'd repeatedly lose whatever time it'd take me to either get back somewhere safer or find a nice NPC to actually kill me. Sometimes just cutting your losses turns out better!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think being able to knock someone out is a good idea, but I don't think it should be automatic - if you engage someone in combat with deadly weapons, there's a good chance someone is going to get killed. Attacking someone shouldn't be free from risk of killing them, even if it's not your intention to do so. Of course you could use non-lethal weapons instead to greatly minimize that risk, but they wouldn't be as effective in straight-up combat.
Indeed , as for example, if you score a critical hit in your last hit, your adversary's hp may drop too much to just cause him to be unconcious, he would be just dead.
If the defeated player's non-looted gear is not destroyed and they get to keep their teathered gear then they are able to keep adventuring and are only temprrarily inconvenienced. If the player gaines a new status, "Robbed" then the only way to get more gear for a certain amount of time is by killing them.
That way bandits don't have anything to gain by repeatedly robbing someone anymore than killing them, and the player doesn't get stranded in a dangerous place with nothing.
There should be a little ding on the G/E axis for stealing but not a huge one like killing someone.
There should also be less lootable gear, so you can get all the loot by killing someone, but its Evil, or you get 40% and it's only a little evil.
If you can let yourself die in the above situations you can avoid wasting time.
I like the idea of needing to be careful about killing an opponent if you don't want to. You may be going for a KO but if you do too much damage, you'll get a kill insteads
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the idea of needing to be careful about killing an opponent if you don't want to. You may be going for a KO but if you do too much damage, you'll get a kill insteads
So just lets keep that +5 "flail of head crushing" aside when fighting somebody we don't want't to kill ok? LOL
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Goblin Squad Member
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That way bandits don't have anything to gain by repeatedly robbing someone anymore than killing them, and the player doesn't get stranded in a dangerous place with nothing.There should be a little ding on the G/E axis for stealing but not a huge one like killing someone.
Here's the issue.
Why should robbing and then killing the person yield more, as that is the inevitable of the situation. People who want to kill will always rob first.
Secondly WHY should robbing be less in a game in which deaths only consequence is item loss. From the receiving end, the consequence is the same, thus from the dealing end, the consequence should also be the same.
Guess I forgot to explain that part...
You kill someone and get X amount of loot, get attack and murder flag and drop on the rep, good, and Law axes.
OR
you KO someone, get 40% of the lootable gear, attacker and thief flag, and a smaller ding to rep/good/law cause you didn't murder someone
- They can get up later don't loose their gear and get a "robbed" flag.
If someone kills them, even you, all penalties of murder apply in full, but you only get 60% of the gear you coyld have gotten.
The only reason you would Rob, then murder someone is to get even more Evil and Chaos and loose more Rep.
The "robbed" flag should last long enough for a player to get to a town and get back to 100%
So there's no incentive to commit both crimes, and there's a way to get healed from unconciousness, not be too evil a bandit, keep items.
So with that in mind what other problems are there?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Guess I forgot to explain that part...
You kill someone and get X amount of loot, get attack and murder flag and drop on the rep, good, and Law axes.
OR
you KO someone, get 40% of the lootable gear, attacker and thief flag, and a smaller ding to rep/good/law cause you didn't murder someone
- They can get up later don't loose their gear and get a "robbed" flag.If someone kills them, even you, all penalties of murder apply in full, but you only get 60% of the gear you coyld have gotten.
The only reason you would Rob, then murder someone is to get even more Evil and Chaos and loose more Rep.
The "robbed" flag should last long enough for a player to get to a town and get back to 100%
So there's no incentive to commit both crimes, and there's a way to get healed from unconciousness, not be too evil a bandit, keep items.
So if I have an ally "Rob" me, to give me the flag, then I take the gear back... I have immunity to death penalties for a while! Sweet!
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Take this for what it is worth....
I. For years I played where "death" is called at the end of the round. This provided me a buffer, but too oft made death seem less feared as the healer could always get to the bleeding character by then, at least most of the time.
II. About 6 years ago I switched to "death occurs on your count immediately following the death blow." And you know, players are very happy when the possibility of death is a reality
III. I would not mind a "step before death" mechanic. I've developed this idea: no matter what the damage of the last attack, the PC falls but bleeding stops at -CON. Thus allowing one last round for the PC to be saved if possible. The following round, on the dying character's count, he is dead. Unfortunately, while this mechanic looks good on paper and in theory of discussion, the mechanic doesn't appeal to me as much as a player or GM --- therefore I play Pathfinder RPG RAW.
You can implement any of these versions at your table --- it's your game after all.
Pax
Onishi: Not quite.
Now I'm not sure how you got being immune to death penalties while the Robbed Flag is active. When you are killed, you still only keep teathered items and all others are destroyed. But whomever kills you only gets 60% of the loot they would have had you not just been robbed.
You do have a good point. As mentioned up-thread the robber would get the thief flag, a hit to rep, and a hit to Law, while the hit to evil is lessened due to the lack of murder. Perhaps a portion of the items being destroyed upon falling unconcious in addition to a harsher penalty to rep would act as a better deterent to expliotation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Onishi: Not quite.
Now I'm not sure how you got being immune to death penalties while the Robbed Flag is active. When you are killed, you still only keep teathered items and all others are destroyed. But whomever kills you only gets 60% of the loot they would have had you not just been robbed.You do have a good point. As mentioned up-thread the robber would get the thief flag, a hit to rep, and a hit to Law, while the hit to evil is lessened due to the lack of murder. Perhaps a portion of the items being destroyed upon falling unconcious in addition to a harsher penalty to rep would act as a better deterent to expliotation.
What I am still missing, is an explanation other than "this makes roleplaying a character of type X not quite have the alignment I want it to have".
On paper, everything I am seeing, being incapacitated is as bad or worse for the recepiant than dying. It is just as much of a hastle, if not more than actually dying, and essentially is setting the character up to waste their time before they inevitably do die. (If not from you, then from some other threat they will likely hit in their half stripped extremely weakened state). Essentially they are forced all of the dangers and drawbacks of a corpse run, minus... actually having their corpse at the destination.
Instead of creating a mechanic that essentially does everything that death does, but is miraculously less evil because it doesn't have the word death attached to it, a more reasonable route to go by, would be to lessen the alignment penalty for death (of course such is somewhat imposible currently, because we have no clue of solid numbers, the scale could be anywhere from one kill shifts you into deep CE that you would have to attune for a year to get back to NN, to 400 PKs gets you evil, one kind act will switch you back to LG.
For robin hoods there already is a mechanic that theoretically could allow CG, or even LG. Stand and deliver, IE you ambush the caravans of the rich, threaten them for 1/4th the cargo they are delivering and take it. Under the current system I don't believe looting peoples gear is logically the primary function of PVP, even robbing, your success/fail rate would have to be 2:1 against people having gear equal to or better than yourself just to break even. (you win, you get say half of their unthreaded gear, so 25% gain vs what you've wagered, you lose, you lose all of your unthreaded gear, so say 50% loss there).
The key of PVP, and banditry is going to be the carts, which you most certainly can demand. Yes you will have to get your hands dirty and kill a few times in order for people to take you seriously. Obviously if you issue a stand and deliver, and one person says no, so you run away, nobody will ever take you seriously again. But the key is, if half resist, how often can you attack without turning out of alignment. That is a mystery we don't know.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Con 60 ?DDO has the, 0 = unconcious, -10 hp = death. Even tho characters can get up into the 1,000 range of hp. It seemed to work well most of the timeHow do you get 1,000 hit points?
A level 20 Barbarian could have 300+ but a thousand seems a bit too much.
And how do you achieve that exactly?
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Goblin Squad Member
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DDO has the, 0 = unconcious, -10 hp = death. Even tho characters can get up into the 1,000 range of hp. It seemed to work well most of the timeHow do you get 1,000 hit points?
A level 20 Barbarian could have 300+ but a thousand seems a bit too much.
DEVs handled some clues that the HP system is not going to be identical to PnP game sytem. They problably will ad at least x10 the original hps. I read it somewhere but can't remmenber exactly where.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do not have enough knowledge of the general death mechanics to be able to claim anything definite as to the potential merits of including a downed/incapacitated state.
Based on the assumption that raising dead (or other similar mechanic) would be limited to certain skill trees and not be a bread and butter skill for every player:
* group: in case the surviving members of the winning group (PVP or PVE) would not have the ability to raise their fallen comrades, downed/incapacitated state could give the group the possibility to recover and continue the mission without the need to regroup at the respawn / potentially dangerous or even impossible run back from the nearest respawn point
* solo: the possibility to recover without having to run back from the respawn point
* player decision: if the defeated player is not automatically killed, this allows the victorious player(s) to make a meaningful decision as to whether finish him/her or not
* as far as I can tell the potential negatives relating to the downed/incapacitated state could be mitigated by giving the downed/incapacitated player the option to immediately release to the respawn point
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Goblin Squad Member
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How do you get 1,000 hit points?
A level 20 Barbarian could have 300+ but a thousand seems a bit too much.
Not sure if you're talking about PFO, but here's where Lee talks about HPs.
From Goblinworks Blog: I Can See for Miles:
1) Characters ramp up in power very quickly initially, and slow down over time. Also a starting character probably has 500-600 hit points, meaning while a max level Barbarian (the hit point leaders) will have around 1800 (a max level fighter 1600, rogue/cleric 1400, mage/sorcerer 1200 though this varies as it is an open system and people can buy more if they want) it's not a vast increase. So the level differential you see in many MMOs is not going to be such a thing; a team of starter characters can kill much more experienced characters. NOTE: These numbers are likely to change, but the proportions will remain roughly the same.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How do you get 1,000 hit points?
A level 20 Barbarian could have 300+ but a thousand seems a bit too much.
Not sure if you're talking about PFO, but here's where Lee talks about HPs.
From Goblinworks Blog: I Can See for Miles:
1) Characters ramp up in power very quickly initially, and slow down over time. Also a starting character probably has 500-600 hit points, meaning while a max level Barbarian (the hit point leaders) will have around 1800 (a max level fighter 1600, rogue/cleric 1400, mage/sorcerer 1200 though this varies as it is an open system and people can buy more if they want) it's not a vast increase. So the level differential you see in many MMOs is not going to be such a thing; a team of starter characters can kill much more experienced characters. NOTE: These numbers are likely to change, but the proportions will remain roughly the same.
He said that ''people can buy more (hit points) if they want'' so is this for real money or what?