Insta-heal potions

[Raghar]

what do you think of Kult: Heretic Kingdoms? Is it any good? I'm dying for a isometric RPG and the screens seem to show that the game would deliver. Sorry to derail...

DO it. While the character animation isn't that smooth, it's still fairly nice.

 

[DraQ]

Bump, for the Bump God!

 

[DwarvenFood]

bump approved.

Healing minor amounts of damage was less beneficial than waiting for larger amounts of damage to heal

1. How did it even work? Assume my character at full health gets hit for 2, then 4 damage. He has a healing item with 50% efficiency. First, assume he healed after each hit, first regaining 1HP, then 2HP - healing total 3HP of 6 damage inflicted.
Second, assume he heals only after receiving both wounds - he regains the same bloody 3HP of 6 damage inflicted at the same cost of 6 blood points.

What's. The. Fucking. Difference?

And no, I won't be downloading demos and shit only to check it out.

Well,

1. - Forget that heal efficiency. If you get hit for 2 and 4 damage - to make things easy u got hit for 6 HP. Let's also assume you have full HP. Now, if your HP potion heals 6 HP, you might want to wait for your total HP to actually drop the full 6 HP for the healing to be most efficient. If you swallow the potion too quickly, you will just heal let's say 2 HP. And then your HP will keep dropping 4 HP more.

This is a simple example, imagine in combat you will be getting hit more before the total (blood)damage has been deducted from your actual HP. So it is entirely possible to die even after the combat has finished. Imagine bleeding to death from some cut you have not treated on time.

It is quite an enjoyable game, more like Revenant and Dark Omen (or something.. the one with the sword that needs blood).

2. If delaying healing as long as possible is the efect of a system, the system is plain fucking retarded. No 'if's, no 'but's.
Normally, you would want to heal as soon as possible (unless you have no time to bleed), because untreated wounds degrade your performance and can make your condition deteriorate by bleeding, cascading damage or infection, while in the proposed system healing turns into some mentally impaired game of chicken with death.

If you find that convoluted or overly complex

Not overly complex, unnecessarily, bah - counter-fucking-productively complex. This added complexity doesn't amount to extra detail in simulation, it reduces the detail by actively making it fail to conform with simulated reality.
It's therefore and wrong.

Yes you want to heal as soon as possible, but with limited heal potions you might want to make the most out of them, right ?

I will not go more into it - for a hack 'n slash it was a refreshing thing to see, and way better than Diablo's *drink* *drink* *drink* 10 click / second system.

 

[DraQ]

But what about healing pots themselves? The concept is rotten at its very core!

 

[Goliath]

But what about healing pots themselves? The concept is rotten at its very core!

I agree. Never seriously thought about before, the whole concept is beyond silly and as a game mechanic it's questionable at least. I have just put "remove healing herbs" on my TO-DO list for Blood and Iron.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I think that healing herbs could be useful for slow healing during the campaign.

 

[DraQ]

I think that healing herbs could be useful for slow healing during the campaign.

I have nothing against slow healing, preventing infections, healing diseases and even miraculous magical means (obscenely rare and expensive), bottled or otherwise, allowing mortally wounded to recover instead of dying or allowing regeneration of lost limbs and organs, but none of these should be used on a field of battle and even with them it should take weeks to bring a badly fucked up character back to fighting condition.

Healing in battle should be pretty much limited to bandaging as long as you can buy yourself a while to stop moving around without someone trying to hack you to pieces.

 

[JarlFrank]

I think that the potions themselves aren't the only problem. The problem is also combat based HP, and huge amounts of them. Fighting should be about tactical positioning (flanking, taking higher ground, using the environment) and armour and dodging should be more important than hitpoints.

A toned down, slightly less lethal version of Dwarf Fortress combat with damageable armour would be awesome for an RPG. While nobody knows the exact mechanics of DF combat, I think it does have something akin to HP, which is blood. You have, say, 50 blood points, and wounds make you lose blood. If you lost all your blood, you're dead. But that's not the only way to die: critical strikes into vital body parts can kill you, too.

This would create lots of awesomeness in a tactical turnbased or even RTwP dungeon crawler. Your mage was hit by an arrow and is bleeding? Quick, bandage him before he bleeds out!
Your warrior has his left arm broken? Well, guess he won't be able to use a shield until we got back to town to fix it...
And damagable armour would also add to the challenge, because fuck, your warrior chick has so many holes in her chainmail that it starts looking like a chainmail bikini... which means that it's much easier to penetrate her armour now.

And there could still be spells to increase blood regeneration, close wounds or fix broken bones. Just no potions, and no "hack at enemy till HPs are at 0" gameplay.

 

[DraQ]

I think that the potions themselves aren't the only problem. The problem is also combat based HP, and huge amounts of them. Fighting should be about tactical positioning (flanking, taking higher ground, using the environment) and armour and dodging should be more important than hitpoints.

A toned down, slightly less lethal version of Dwarf Fortress combat with damageable armour would be awesome for an RPG. While nobody knows the exact mechanics of DF combat, I think it does have something akin to HP, which is blood. You have, say, 50 blood points, and wounds make you lose blood. If you lost all your blood, you're dead. But that's not the only way to die: critical strikes into vital body parts can kill you, too.

Well, some things can be modelled as linear scales - pain, fatigue, blood loss, various mental stats and so on. But a simple linear scale is completely inadequate for portraying actual structural damage and shouldn't be used for that - I think we can agree on this and call it a day.

This would create lots of awesomeness in a tactical turnbased or even RTwP dungeon crawler.

In about any game. Would RT, solo FPP RPG/crawl like Morrowind or Daggerfall not benefit from such system? Because I think it would, especially given how diseases already improved Daggerfall. Of course, having some sort of party or followers would help exploit the depth created.

 

[Johannes]

I don't really have anything against insta-heal (or health bars) as long as its use isn't tactically trivial, same as with anything else really. It's not a broken concept, just something that is easy to do lazily.

If combat consists of just shooting or hacking away while healing any damage that gets done of course that's lame. But if you have to play in a way that you get no hits in on yourself, isn't ideal either - if doing a mistake is lethal, the combat gets too binary, you either win or lose. There should be some ways to allow a comeback after taking a bad hit, but it should require more than just using an item and being back in the fight.

And definitely whatever healing methods the player can use, some enemies should use too. If such fight proves to be too drawn out with just going through the same motions, the mechanic probably isn't good.


Actually having to depend on some consumables, be they potions, stimpacks, bullets, whatever, has a positive effect of making combat cost you something. This forces you to pick your fights strategically a bit, to go in only on those that you think you will come ahead resource-wise - so you can't just beat the game by grinding on enemies who just give you xp and loot while you lose nothing in the process.



Realism is definitely overrated.

 

[JarlFrank]

This would create lots of awesomeness in a tactical turnbased or even RTwP dungeon crawler.

In about any game. Would RT, solo FPP RPG/crawl like Morrowind or Daggerfall not benefit from such system? Because I think it would, especially given how diseases already improved Daggerfall. Of course, having some sort of party or followers would help exploit the depth created.

Sure, it would fit just about any game. The idea of a first person RPG with the combat of Dark Messiah and a wound system like this gives me a raging boner (provided the content is also on an at least above average level of quality). For a party-based dungeon crawler it would not only fit, it would be HEAVAN. It's just what the genre needs - something refreshing to make fights more than just HP draining attrition fests. I think we agree on this point.

Also, locational damage could be graphically represented in detail, to make all the graphics whores fap to it. Too bad the current game industry doesn't even really care about graphics so much as making the game "accessible" and full of "dramatic" cutscenes, so a combat system that encourages using your brain instead of clicking one button and watching your character win, and which can be harsh on players acting stupid, would be laughed at by every publisher because it can't be sold to the retards.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

While we're getting boners off grievous injuries I would like to see someone make a Warhammer Fantasy RPG game. From the stories I hear that game does not fuck around.

 

[DraQ]

This would create lots of awesomeness in a tactical turnbased or even RTwP dungeon crawler.

In about any game. Would RT, solo FPP RPG/crawl like Morrowind or Daggerfall not benefit from such system? Because I think it would, especially given how diseases already improved Daggerfall. Of course, having some sort of party or followers would help exploit the depth created.

Sure, it would fit just about any game. The idea of a first person RPG with the combat of Dark Messiah and a wound system like this gives me a raging boner (provided the content is also on an at least above average level of quality). For a party-based dungeon crawler it would not only fit, it would be HEAVAN. It's just what the genre needs - something refreshing to make fights more than just HP draining attrition fests. I think we agree on this point.

Also, locational damage could be graphically represented in detail, to make all the graphics whores fap to it.

It would also be a great opportunity to make a natural use of physics engine, integrating presentation and mechanics to a degree previously unseen in a cRPG.

Yes.
YES.

Too bad the current game industry doesn't even really care about graphics so much as making the game "accessible" and full of "dramatic" cutscenes, so a combat system that encourages using your brain instead of clicking one button and watching your character win, and which can be harsh on players acting stupid, would be laughed at by every publisher because it can't be sold to the retards.

If combat consists of just shooting or hacking away while healing any damage that gets done of course that's lame. But if you have to play in a way that you get no hits in on yourself, isn't ideal either - if doing a mistake is lethal, the combat gets too binary, you either win or lose. There should be some ways to allow a comeback after taking a bad hit, but it should require more than just using an item and being back in the fight.

Not all hits are lethal. Even in real life, which is particularly unforgiving given complete lack of regenerative magic or even sufficiently advanced technology to make things fair for those who had lost an eye or a limb, there have been many warriors bearing many scars from their less fortunate battles. And many suits of armour bearing dents from hits that could have been avoided completely. There would still be a margin of error, just not arbitrarily large.

And definitely whatever healing methods the player can use, some enemies should use too. If such fight proves to be too drawn out with just going through the same motions, the mechanic probably isn't good.

Indeed. And there don't seem to be any actual uses of healing pots that wouldn't ultimately boil down to stretching battles unnecessarily.

Actually having to depend on some consumables, be they potions, stimpacks, bullets, whatever, has a positive effect of making combat cost you something. This forces you to pick your fights strategically a bit, to go in only on those that you think you will come ahead resource-wise - so you can't just beat the game by grinding on enemies who just give you xp and loot while you lose nothing in the process.

Resigning from insta-healing doesn't mean lack of consumable resources. You'd still have to think about armour repair, replenishing ammo, and post-battle medical attention.

You get best of both worlds - resource cost without an arbitrarily extensible margin of error and retardation of commonly available potion of limb regrowth (in a way the issue is similar to commonly available resurrection).

Realism is definitely overrated.

Fuck you. :D
Hard.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Potions that quicken blood regeneration and tissue healing? Fuck yes. Potions that immediately remove every wound and crushed bone you have on your body in 5 seconds? No.

If it's fantasy, the seconds doesn't really make that much less sense than the first. It's just a high level of magic. That it's less explainable in a technological sense than the first kind of potion doesn't mean it should be impossible; 'Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic'. Instant healing is so advanced that it's magic even by magic standards. But that just means it should be magic by magic standards in game as well.

If a single such potion existed in the entire world, a world filled with dozens of lesser healing magics and wizards and demons and magic swords and shit, it's not absurd at all. Even wizards should be able to say once in a while : "That can't possibly exist!" and be wrong.

The absurd part is the relative value of such a potion in most games. A potion that fixes you to full power instantly should be exceedingly rare, not something that you buy 50 of because it's more cost effective than trading in your steel plate armor for a mithril one.

Also, in your blog spiel, imagine the potion chugging warrior in a different context. The potions are in tiny metal flasks with cords on the stoppers to be easily yanked out. The warrior is covered in hideous scars from countless wounds, and barely defends himself at all, filled with so many healing potions he regenerates his wounds many times faster than a troll. He's not even drinking the potions to heal individual wounds, but to replenish the store of unused healing potion in his blood, balancing running out with having too much for his body to handle. His blood clots on contact with air instantly, he barely needs to breathe to maintain his endurance, and he can't feel pain at all.

Now, it doesn't fit with a potion chugging hack n slash game at all. Noble warriors of Diablo Clone n45 are just supposed to be awesome warriors, and the potions are an arcade gimmick. But the concept itself isn't bad. Would make for a cool enemy to fight, or a scene in a movie or book.

Entirely separate from the whole fluff/atmosphere based issue above is gameplay. This can be broken into many combat issues:

Fights where both targets statically hurt eachother are retarded because there's no player decisions to be made. Potions don't fix that because using the potion before you die is a no brainer. But they don't make it any worse either. Hitting attack + potion when your hp gets low isn't any worse than hitting attack until your target dies then resting for full hp.

The potential length of the fight is based on how many hits the player can take, but that doesn't depend on potions at all either. It's a matter of enemy damage vs either total player hp or player hp + available potions. It's just as lengthy if you scrap potions and have more Hp for the same fight. And length isn't necessarily bad anyways. Rather...

Pacing. Fights where the player always feels safe are stupid. So ideally, enemies should be able to kill you in two or 3 hits. A single hit is generally too extreme unless you have a party. However, this creates a problem in that these attacks will either be very easy to avoid, making for a tactically dull battle like killing radscorpions by stabbing them then backing up for 6 turns, or every battle will be very short and involve little player input. (Whoever fires his gatling gun first wins. Woo. Glad I picked improved initiative or there'd be a lot of reloading.) This is where potions actually help the gameplay, if the supply is limited. Battles can be long, drawn out affairs against an overwhelming enemy, but if the player simply has a giant hp pool, you won't give a fuck about any individual hit until the last couple, since you were never in danger of dying at the start. That would be a pacing failure. If, on the other hand, attacks do between 20% and 80% of your total hp, and the there are ones easy and difficult to avoid all along the damage spectrum, while you have a limited number of potions that heal you for all your health, there are two advantages. First, you're always in mortal one hit kill danger if your hp are below 80%, which they probably are. So the fight won't lose tension. Second, it adds to the tactical aspects, which currently consist of dealing damage, avoiding damage, and possibly conserving mana. Now you have two more layers: using potions efficiently instead of wasting them on every tiny attack (Or only using them on your most mortal wounds, however you see fit) and weighing whether it's an appropriate time to heal.

Take Monster Hunter as an example. There are several interesting scenarios that arise with potions:

The monster just knocked you on your ass and took three quarters of your health. You have major and minor healing available, with the minor being most cost efficient and less valuable in emergencies. Now, you can either drink a heavy potion right away, which will ensure your safety for at least one more attack, but the monster will probably get you with a follow up light attack that will bring you back down to half. So you'll be safe, but end up using 1 heavy and 1 light potion. Or, you can use a defensive move to try and evade his follow up attack. If you succeed you can safely drink 2 lesser potions, saving the heavy one for a real bind.

You're injured to one quarter health in a safe position and have 2 light potions and 1 heavy potion left. A light potion will heal you about 50%. Do you drink 1 light potion, trying to most efficiently ration the potions, or drink either the heavy potion or both light potions so you can risk attacking when you might get hit for an attack hitting you for 75%?

If you choose to heal to full, do you drink 2 light or 1 heavy? If you drink the light potions and get minorly injured again, you'll have to face the question of whether to heal with your last potion at 50% or wait till you're down to 25%. On the other hand, if you drink the heavy potion, if you get really slammed by something, you'll heave to drink twice in a row, and a lesser potion might not heal you enough in time to save you if you get caught in a bad position.

All of those are interesting tactical decisions that just vanish into nothing if the player simply has a large HP pool to begin with, like in a potionless game. In every situation where there was previously a skill testing question, there would now be nothing but returning to the fight.

I can't think of a situation where the reverse is ever true. If you simply convert the available stock of potions into Hp, how can it possibly make combat more interesting? And if you're going to only convert some or none of the available potion Hp into max hp, why not just make both potion and max hp smaller for the exact same effect, + tactical decisions as above?

This isn't to say potions should be in every game, since we don't need everything to be as complex as it can possibly be, but I don't see how you can argue Hp + potions is less complex than hp alone. Potions add options, they don't take them away.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'd like to generally replace HP with something more interesting, a more involved wound system. Also, clerics casting healing spells is much better than potions in my opinion - especially if you use the D&D magic system where you only have so many spells per day. Even in a mana-based casting system, it would be more interesting than potions. Having a healing spell and no potions basically means that you can only heal so many times during one fight, because spell slots/mana reserves are limited. So instead of buying lots of potions, you need to choose whether and when to use a healing spell, being well aware that, in a mana-based system, this might mean you won't be able to cast awesome spell of destruction in the next turn, or, in a D&D like Vancian system, that you have to sacrifice a couple of spell slots that could have been used for something different.

 

[DraQ]

If it's fantasy, the seconds doesn't really make that much less sense than the first. It's just a high level of magic.

It actually does. I'm not saying that this is an inherent trait to all fantasy, but fantasy traditionally sticks much closer to traditional narratives, it therefore makes much more sense for a fantasy to stick with those kind of phlebotinum that produce the least pronounced ripple effects capable of disrupting your traditional strands of narrative.
Same as with resurrection, ability to regrow limbs and repair severe organ damage multiple times per battle will wreak havoc on any sort of the story that might involve risk of dying of wounds, becoming a war-cripple and such.
Unless you really can and are willing to follow the implications of insta-heal potions to their logical conclusion, the latter is simply no-go.

'Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic'.

Any sufficiently advanced technology - or magic - will also wreak havoc on your faux medieval fantasy society, politics and warfare.

If a single such potion existed in the entire world, a world filled with dozens of lesser healing magics and wizards and demons and magic swords and shit, it's not absurd at all. Even wizards should be able to say once in a while : "That can't possibly exist!" and be wrong.

...but since such potions tend to not be singular major artifacts, the point is moot.

Also, in your blog spiel, imagine the potion chugging warrior in a different context. The potions are in tiny metal flasks with cords on the stoppers to be easily yanked out. The warrior is covered in hideous scars from countless wounds, and barely defends himself at all, filled with so many healing potions he regenerates his wounds many times faster than a troll. He's not even drinking the potions to heal individual wounds, but to replenish the store of unused healing potion in his blood, balancing running out with having too much for his body to handle. His blood clots on contact with air instantly, he barely needs to breathe to maintain his endurance, and he can't feel pain at all.

Again, are you willing - and able - to follow the implications all the way through?

Fights where both targets statically hurt eachother are retarded because there's no player decisions to be made. Potions don't fix that because using the potion before you die is a no brainer. But they don't make it any worse either.

Nor do they make it any better. They're just a completely redundant element that merely makes the boring fights longer.

The potential length of the fight is based on how many hits the player can take

Not necessarily. IRL it would be pretty much based on stamina and stamina represented as a linear scale is nowhere as jarring as similar representation of wounds.

It's a matter of enemy damage vs either total player hp or player hp + available potions. It's just as lengthy if you scrap potions and have more Hp for the same fight. And length isn't necessarily bad anyways. Rather...

Pacing. Fights where the player always feels safe are stupid. So ideally, enemies should be able to kill you in two or 3 hits. A single hit is generally too extreme unless you have a party. However, this creates a problem in that these attacks will either be very easy to avoid, making for a tactically dull battle like killing radscorpions by stabbing them then backing up for 6 turns, or every battle will be very short and involve little player input. (Whoever fires his gatling gun first wins. Woo. Glad I picked improved initiative or there'd be a lot of reloading.) This is where potions actually help the gameplay, if the supply is limited. Battles can be long, drawn out affairs against an overwhelming enemy, but if the player simply has a giant hp pool, you won't give a fuck about any individual hit until the last couple, since you were never in danger of dying at the start. That would be a pacing failure. If, on the other hand, attacks do between 20% and 80% of your total hp, and the there are ones easy and difficult to avoid all along the damage spectrum, while you have a limited number of potions that heal you for all your health, there are two advantages. First, you're always in mortal one hit kill danger if your hp are below 80%, which they probably are. So the fight won't lose tension. Second, it adds to the tactical aspects, which currently consist of dealing damage, avoiding damage, and possibly conserving mana. Now you have two more layers: using potions efficiently instead of wasting them on every tiny attack (Or only using them on your most mortal wounds, however you see fit) and weighing whether it's an appropriate time to heal.
blahblahblah HP blah HPs blah HPs HPs blah HPs

Ok, one request - could you fucking please get the fucking HPs out of your head for a moment so that we may have a meaningful discussion?
Because the retardation of healing potions is nothing but a direct consequence of retarded and piss-poor mechanics HPs are.

Details.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Jarl, are you familiar with the RIFTS system, where characters have SDC (Standard Damage... something. Vehicles and structures had MDC which were on a 1000 times bigger scale) separate from Hp, which are generally depleted first, with hp only being depleted after or from special automatically life threateninng attacks. SDC sort of represent stamina, armor, combat advantage, etc.

Should potions and similiar effects be able to restore that sort of thing in battle? The image of an exhausted soldier injecting himself with adrenaline, sugars and stimulants to keep himself going in a long fight hardly seems out of place.

An apt comparison might be someone who just lost a wrestling or boxing match. While they're in no condition to keep fighting, they're not exactly crippled either. Sufficient drugs (or magic) could remedy most of their fatigue, at least temporarily. A swordsman who's been fighting and defending himself from all the lethal blows while taking lesser unarmed attacks and over exerting/stretching certain muscles could be in the same position, even if he's fighting against other people armed with lethal weapons.

Secondly, for magical healing, shouldn't there be a limit to that as well? Is it any more sensible for someone to be healed from the brink of death 20 times by a cleric in the same battle than by potions?

Effects changing max Hp and granting temporary hp over max or for short durations seem vastly underused to me. There are a lot of things you can do with Hp because it simplifies things that simply don't get done. Trying to keep track of a gradually deteriorating wound on a detailed scale would be a lot of work without something that can be as finely measured as Hp. Having a character instantly go from able to walk to can't move at all is kind of retarded in some circumstances, and having a seperate state for each of those with their own rules for passing from one state to the next or skipping states or multiple states can be a nightmare to keep track of.

If you have 10000 Hp, you can break it into all sorts of different sections between perfect health and vegetable in an iron lung, which each having many grades within them. And you can apply Hp to multiple aspects of a character or object. A vehicle can have separate hp for it's wheels, drive system, controls, otherwise irrelevant armor, and the parts protecting the pilot. And I think it's cool to be able to keep track of it on a detailed scale, since some things should be vulnerable to a death of a thousand papercuts. Starvation or slowly bleeding out, for example, should very gradually weaken and incapacitate a character. Certain weapons might acidically burn away at armor gradually instead of busting through all at once on a lucky shot. This is a lot better than situations like in say Shadowrun, where you can blast something with a flamethrower 50 times for no damage, then get lucky on the next roll and melt it to slag in one go.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Ok Draq. We'll call them stamina points and they won't jarr your narrative sensibilities anymore. Now they aren't wounds, it's tiredness. We'll color the bar yellow instead of green, and when it runs out you fall down and the enemy stabs you to death.

Potions don't make fights longer. Enemy durability makes fights longer. If the enemy is going to survive you stabbing him 50 times (And for some enemies *cough dragons cough*, why shouldn't he, or there may be 50 enemies) it doesn't matter whether the player has potions or not if he's expected to survive that long.

 

[DraQ]

An apt comparison might be someone who just lost a wrestling or boxing match. While they're in no condition to keep fighting, they're not exactly crippled either. Sufficient drugs (or magic) could remedy most of their fatigue, at least temporarily. A swordsman who's been fighting and defending himself from all the lethal blows while taking lesser unarmed attacks and over exerting/stretching certain muscles could be in the same position, even if he's fighting against other people armed with lethal weapons.

Except having a lot of stamina left doesn't protect you from a failure to defend against a lethal attack.

Fatigue and HPs are very different things.

Trying to keep track of a gradually deteriorating wound on a detailed scale would be a lot of work without something that can be as finely measured as Hp. Having a character instantly go from able to walk to can't move at all is kind of retarded in some circumstances, and having a seperate state for each of those with their own rules for passing from one state to the next or skipping states or multiple states can be a nightmare to keep track of.

In a tabletop? Yes. But not in a cRPG. In a cRPG you have a computer to keep track of the mechanics.

If you have 10000 Hp, you can break it into all sorts of different sections between perfect health and vegetable in an iron lung, which each having many grades within them.

But you can't put, for example one eyed guy on this scale, along with a one armed guy, because having certain bodypart damaged doesn't imply completely differnet bodypart having been damaged earlier on. This kind of thing simply doesn't map onto a linear HP scale.

And you can apply Hp to multiple aspects of a character or object. A vehicle can have separate hp for it's wheels, drive system, controls, otherwise irrelevant armor, and the parts protecting the pilot.

You can do the exact same thing with characters and other living beings.

And it will be a step in the right direction.

 

[DraQ]

Ok Draq. We'll call them stamina points and they won't jarr your narrative sensibilities anymore. Now they aren't wounds, it's tiredness. We'll color the bar yellow instead of green, and when it runs out you fall down and the enemy stabs you to death.

What if you have full stamina, but the enemy suddenly crossbows you through the eye, bypassing armour and making shit out of your brain?

If the enemy is going to survive you stabbing him 50 times (And for some enemies *cough dragons cough*, why shouldn't he ...)

Because if you fuck up a vital part of anything really hard, anything will go down, while stabbing a dragon in the toe 50 times will only result in a limping, but very angry dragon that will shit on your party's charred corpses after the battle ends for extra expression.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, gameplay wise, being critically instakilled is retarded since it's non combat. But thematically, there's nothing wrong with allowing it in an hp system like fallout does. In fact, it's easier if you have a small sp pool relative to the effect weapons have on you. Then you can have things like a character low on stamina being instantly killed by an attack (Say, firebreath), while a character with high stamina uses some of said stamina to evade it.

Replace dragon with animated rock statue or zombie dragon if you want. There are some enemies that should only fall after many attacks if you lack an appropriately destructive weapon. I can destroy a car to the point of being undrivable with a sledgehammer, but I sure as fuck can't do it in one swing, regardless of how lucky that swing is. Aside from that, you skimmed over the bit about 50 enemies. I suppose one lucky swing is going to kill the entire castle garrison? Or do heroes never fight more than 3-4 enemies before having a chance to recover to full health in your ideal games?

>>Actual point ahead<<
There are going to be battles that last a long time some games. Battles like that are cool if done well. Having the player be potentially killed by being attacked and failing defensively twice in succession while still surviving more than 1 failure during a long battle is easily accomplished with potions or other resotrative magic. Other alternatives are some sort of quickly regenerating health/shield/stamina system (Derp!) or making every attack have a 1 in 50 chance of instakilling you. You got a 4th option?

 

[DraQ]

Well, gameplay wise, being critically instakilled is retarded since it's non combat.

Wat.

But thematically, there's nothing wrong with allowing it in an hp system like fallout does.

If you keep highest potential HP lower than highest potential damage of weakest effective weapon, yeah.

It makes for a poor damage model, since it lacks any actual detail, but it's at least mostly correct - it simply uses HP to calculate the chance a hit from given weapon will take you down and accounts for this chance rising if you're already wounded. Not if you know you *can* take a hit, because a probability of a hit, even from an airgun or the rustiest of daggers killing you should never be zero.

In fact, it's easier if you have a small sp pool relative to the effect weapons have on you. Then you can have things like a character low on stamina being instantly killed by an attack (Say, firebreath), while a character with high stamina uses some of said stamina to evade it.

But what if he fails?

In any case, even with relatively low HP range, such model is still very lousy due to lack of detail which makes for a boring combat and makes it largely a game of chance. As I said, good for a strategy, where you have hundreds to thousands of troops, excessively bad for an RPG.

Replace dragon with animated rock statue or zombie dragon if you want. There are some enemies that should only fall after many attacks if you lack an appropriately destructive weapon.

This kind of enemy is special, because it doesn't really have any parts that could be lethally critted. Actually it's the very thing about such enemies that should make them scary - it may be quite horrifying if you have to methodically break or cut them apart till they are physically incapable of doing you harm. And they don't tire.
It also doesn't quite work if they have HPs like everything else, rather than sharply contrasting from everything else on grounds of the combat mechanics. Yeah, I know that they can be blahblah immune to criticals, but it's still not the kind of the impact they should have.

I can destroy a car to the point of being undrivable with a sledgehammer, but I sure as fuck can't do it in one swing, regardless of how lucky that swing is.

Try to pop the hood open first. I think I would manage it.

Aside from that, you skimmed over the bit about 50 enemies. I suppose one lucky swing is going to kill the entire castle garrison? Or do heroes never fight more than 3-4 enemies before having a chance to recover to full health in your ideal games?

Ever heard of saying nec Hercules contra plures?
Because it perfectly describes such situations. It also helps balance high level heroes out, without retardedly high level town guards, numerous, but easily defeatable (in mechanics) force making heroes surrender and such.
If you're alone or with small group against an army, you try to bottleneck them and hope you can hold them one-on-one in sequence. And that they don't try to flush you out.

Epic heroes dickswinging armies to death while in their skivvies should kindly GTFO of my RPGs.

>>Actual point ahead<<
There are going to be battles that last a long time some games. Battles like that are cool if done well. Having the player be potentially killed by being attacked and failing defensively twice in succession while still surviving more than 1 failure during a long battle is easily accomplished with potions or other resotrative magic. Other alternatives are some sort of quickly regenerating health/shield/stamina system (Derp!) or making every attack have a 1 in 50 chance of instakilling you. You got a 4th option?

5th one - skill, tactics and avoidance of derping it out, if possible.

 

[Lord Rocket]

Bro what

The system you're proposing is way more arbitrary than any HP system, in which you at least have a good idea of how much more punishment your guys are going to take. In your model it's oops bad roll you're fucked. Add to that the fact that characters can be rendered ineffective by means other than death (warrior with one limb left, not that anyone's likely to survive that sort of carry on anyway) and shit can get real arbitrary real fast. Just like real life (I remember some cop getting shot with an airgun back in the old country and promptly dying. Cue moral panic lollerz), which is what you like, but face it, that sort of thing is on the bullshit side.

Sure you can talk about skill and tactics all you want but take a look at the PnP systems that follow your philosophy (Rolemaster is the ur-example) and see how that shit actually plays out.

sgc_meltdown: WFRP uses an HP system and is quite survivable. At least the first and second editions, don't care about the third.

 

[DraQ]

Sure you can talk about skill and tactics all you want but take a look at the PnP systems

There's your problem. PnP systems need relatively simplistic mechanics for purely technical reasons, limiting the possibilities greatly.
cRPGs don't need to, but, for some obscure and doubtlessly retarded reason, are still simplistic. Increasingly so.

It annoys me greatly.

 

[Lord Rocket]

I expect you'll find that keeping any system human-legible is going to greatly increase the chance of it making sense and being properly balanced. Humans do work on these things, you know.

Actually as a side note I'm annoyed at the way that PnP designers so consistently target 'cinematic' or higher-powered playstyles. I want a FATE variant designed to be 'gritty', for fuck's sake, while still preserving the cool stuff about the system. It's like they're admitting that PnP players are a bunch of power-tripping losers who need to be validated by their awesome characters. Some of us have pretty good lives and feel in control of their surroundings, more or less, and don't need to have their egos massaged, thank you very much.

Anyway back on topic. DraQ how do you propose to make a more 'realistic' game non-arbitrary? I mean on the system level, obviously, so don't say 'the player uses good tactics' like I suspect you're going to anyway.