Incapacitate, Stabilize, Revive, and Coup De Grâce


Pathfinder Online

Goblin Squad Member

I'm sure a lot of people who played the tabletop or regular D&D know these terms. Or those of you who have played Darkfall you might be familiar with the terms kill, revive, and gank. Though there is no parallel to stabilize in Darkfall.

This proposal could be framed. As translating the table top kill mechanic into an MMO.

This proposal could also be framed as translating the Darkfall kill mechanic into the Pathfinder setting.

It is either and both at the same time.

Incapacitate

When your HP hits 0 you are put in a helpless state on the ground. You are unable to take any actions (Unless abilities are added that allow you to do so). From this state you will either slowly bleed to death or be able to revive after a certain period of time. Obviously in the tabletop you slowly bleed to death, in Darkfall it's been done both ways at different times. From personal preference I would say slowly bleeding to death was the better of the two mechanics both in PvE and PvP.

One essential competent of this mechanic is the ability to "release" from the incapacitated state. This allows a incapacitated character to let themselves to die to prevent incapacitation griefing.

Stabilize

If you slowly bleed to death after being incapacitated, stabilize would be a mechanic that stops that process, meaning your character would no longer be slowly dying but either paused between dying and healing or slowly healing.

This would probably be a function of the heal skill as well as healing magic.

Revive

This brings your HP back up above 0 allowing you to take actions again. In Darkfall everyone has this skill by default, but it could be made a function of the heal skill and healing magic within PFO. There are merits to both sides of that debate IMO.

Coup De Grâce

This would allow you to instantly kill an incapacitated player. It functions identically to the "gank" skill in Darkfall.

Why?

This allows for:

• Friendly duels and training exercises.
• A way to defeat opponents without killing them.
Simpler ways to rob people than SADs.

Goblin Squad Member

Not sure if you saw this, Andius.

There is currently a pre-death state in the game.

Goblin Squad Member

Are you familiar with Guild Wars 2? Because they pretty much have what you've described.

Goblin Squad Member

GW2 has a couple options when you've been downed/incapacitated. You can use a bandaging skill that slowly heals you until you revive or use 1 of 3 other abilities that attack a nearby enemy for marginal damage. If you succeed in killing an enemy with one of those abilities, it revives you.

Another player can assist in your revival by helping to bandage you up so you can get back on your feet quick.

An enemy player on the other hand can do a Finish Them action against you if you are downed. After a short channeling (which can be disrupted) they kill you off like a coup de grace.

Goblin Squad Member

I imagine it will be like the DDO system.

Goblin Squad Member

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What would be nice would be something like a quick-loot system vs. incapacitated/downed players. At this stage, no items are destroyed but rather a randomly generated set of 25% of carried (non-threaded) items shows up in a Loot window where someone could grab what they wished, be it all, none or somewhere in between. This represents a quick grab-n-go before the 'victim' is able to recover and not the full cavity search you may have time to perform against a fully dead foe.

This action would carry a lesser reputation penalty than full-kill. I think the full-kill loot was 25% destroyed and 75% lootable, so the reward is 1/3 of the full-kill option so rep penalty should be a base of 1/3 of the full-kill rep loss. Then you modify down based on whether you wish to see more of this behavior, proportionally. If I got my full-loot breakdown mixed up then we just need to change numbers but principle holds.

Goblin Squad Member

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I like the D&D/Pathfinder system Andius wrote about in the OP. I do wonder about how it will integrate into PFO. In a TT game, my paladin will stabilize enemy bandits dying at the end of combat (much to the annoyance of several party members) in order to show mercy and let the magistrates deal with them. Would this be possible in PFO? Will incapacitating a foe count as defeating them (from a mechanics standpoint), or do you need to finish them off for it to count?

Goblin Squad Member

TDA that is awesome. pure. awesome.

Goblin Squad Member

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Nihimon wrote:

Not sure if you saw this, Andius.

There is currently a pre-death state in the game.

No. I didn't. That's awesome to hear though.

Goblin Squad Member

Subdual. If we are talking about system for this for Pathfinder I believe the word would be a subdual system. And yes I could see it being used for a lot of reasons from non lethal robbery to sparing

Goblin Squad Member

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Subdual damage was in D&D 3e. In Pathfinder the term is nonlethal damage.

Edit: In fact, I believe it was changed to nonlethal in D&D 3.5.

Goblin Squad Member

NPCs automatically die if there hitpoints go below 0 from lethal damage right? But players I know can be incapacitated from lethal damage as long as they don't go over (or actually under) the maximum negative hitpoints.

The only real difference between lethal and non-lethal vs. a player is a player brought down by non-lethal damage doesn't bleed out.

I figured for now, things could work the same way, and there wouldn't be any real need to implement non-lethal damage at this point.

Goblin Squad Member

Why do NPC's have to auto die at zero? They could be incapacitated as well and receive help from other NPC's to get back on their feet.

Sovereign Court Goblin Squad Member

Cue classic Dragonlance arguments: do draconians blow up/turn to stone/whatever at 0 hp or -10 hp?

Goblin Squad Member

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Nightdrifter wrote:
Cue classic Dragonlance arguments: do draconians blow up/turn to stone/whatever at 0 hp or -10 hp?

0 when I played AD&D because we didn't have the -10 rule at the time. :)

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