HP-less RPG combat

[Damned Registrations]

Why not simply modifiers on the attack?

Dragons bites you, you roll your arm-one piece-likey saving throw, get a 19, +4 for your armor, +3 for your ahnold muscles, +3 for your magic ring of troll skin, and fail anyways because the dragon has very sharp teeth and could bite the arm off another dragon, nevermind your pussy little human arm, which would have needed to roll a 50 to stay in one piece.

 

[Assiduous]

Systems from two PnPs of my youth spring to mind. Common to both was that character progression was through skill progression. Weapon skills determined if you were hit or not, armor provided absorption of damage.

I.
In one the equivalent to D&Ds constitution determined hitpoints. You had separate hitpoints for different body parts and also a separate hp "pool". Hits landed on bodyparts deducting from the hp of the bodypart as well as from the main hp.

HP of zero in a bodypart voided the use of it, different implications for different bodyparts. Hp reduced to negative maximum amount ~severed the body part if it was from one attack, caused permanent damage/death if from consecutive attacks.
If the separate hp "pool" was reduced to 1 you became incapacitated, 0 unconcious, negative enough dead.

To determine what bodypart was hit you could aim for it before your attack roll (->reduced chance to hit) or it was randomly rolled if a hit landed.

Compared to D&D this is a bit more complex and interesting imo. As far as dice rolls go it took more time as you had roll to hit, roll to parry/block, roll to determine area hit.


II.
In the second one you had separate stats for bleeding, trauma and pain all divided into different levels of severity. Depending on the equivalent of a con stat you could take different amounts of damage before reaching the next level of severity.
Damage as well as body part was rolled and combined to give a final damage of each of the three types.
Reaching a more severe level of injury increased difficulty of skills. If enough trauma was substained or enough pain (from one attack) you had to roll for death through trauma or death through chock, respectively.

loads of loads of loads of rolls.


Using theses systems were quite fun for important battles as they were detailed and you didn't mind that they took time. For the "party against a hord of peasants" fights they were quite a pain.

D&D is a nice, simple system very suitable for storytelling focused PnP RPing, a bit boring for CRPGs though.

 

[Quigs]

The only game I can think of where something like this worked was Bushido Blade, a weapons fighter. There was no lifebar. A single hit to the head could kill you. A rapier stab to the leg would just send you down to one knee, crawling around. Hit to the arm would lower your defensive and offensive abilities. Fun game. Havent played it in years.

 

[avatar_58]

Why not simply modifiers on the attack?

Dragons bites you, you roll your arm-one piece-likey saving throw, get a 19, +4 for your armor, +3 for your ahnold muscles, +3 for your magic ring of troll skin, and fail anyways because the dragon has very sharp teeth and could bite the arm off another dragon, nevermind your pussy little human arm, which would have needed to roll a 50 to stay in one piece.

Yeah that would work.

 

[Raapys]

I don't want total realism in a game. I want a fantasy. I play games to escape the real world, so the more a game is like reality the less I like it in a manner of speaking.

Strange, I want exactly the opposite. In fact, my dream RPG is a game which is 100% realistic, where the NPCs think for themselves, the world responds realistically to the player's actions, etc.

Okay. Now please answer my question honestly - and make it a good answer, because I often wanted to ask it on the Codex. Last time I asked it people simply ignored it, either because they knew no answer or didn't want to give one. Here it goes:

If you really want a game like this, with the world responding, etc...

Why do you not play on a hardcore RP MUD/MUCK or NWN PW? With DMs and talented writers as players? You can do everything you want there: the NPCs - which are PCs played by different humans - react 100% realistically to your actions, you can shape and change the server with your actions, you have all the roleplaying you want there.

Because it's "LARP"ing? Hardly! Everyone plays their character according to their stats and if they don't they will quickly get banned, depending on how hardcore the game is. On Armageddon you get banned for even thinking about using the OOC command unless, say, your arm just got shot off offline and you need to quit during something very important.

So, why are you not playing those? They have everything you like. You could have your perfect roleplaying experience right now.

First let me just say that I've no experience playing online muds, and just a tiny bit of single-player muds.

However, I must confess I fail to see how those games are little more than today's MMORPGs . True, a mud probably offers alot more options, but that's traded with the lack of any real graphics engine, which in turn limits the feedback you as a player get. Neverwinter, which does have a graphics engine( however awkward ), is again back to the MMORPG stage of features; in fact it has probably alot less features than some MMORPGs( like my favorite one, Anarchy Online ) and also alot less players and content in general.

Graphics engines and features aside, when I say 'realistic' world I do mean realistic; let's see worlds where plants and trees grow, get cut down by woodcutters who try to make a living, driving their load into town and selling it off, gets picked up by builders who in turn construct things using the materials, etc., etc. Let's give the player the ability to kill off that woodcutter, sending ripples through the entire game world and its economy because of it. Perhaps another woodcutter NPC with ambitions paid you to do it, or perhaps you wanted to hire woodcutters and start up your own business? That's the level of world interaction and AI quality I'd like to see. And of course, none of this would be pre-scripted like in today's games.

This wouldn't work with only human players though, since I doubt you'd get someone to take up the role as a full-time woodcutter.

 

[avatar_58]

Graphics engines and features aside, when I say 'realistic' world I do mean realistic; let's see worlds where plants and trees grow, get cut down by woodcutters who try to make a living, driving their load into town and selling it off, gets picked up by builders who in turn construct things using the materials, etc., etc. Let's give the player the ability to kill off that woodcutter, sending ripples through the entire game world and its economy because of it. Perhaps another woodcutter NPC with ambitions paid you to do it, or perhaps you wanted to hire woodcutters and start up your own business? That's the level of world interaction and AI quality I'd like to see. And of course, none of this would be pre-scripted like in today's games.

This wouldn't work with only human players though, since I doubt you'd get someone to take up the role as a full-time woodcutter.

Why does it matter if it's prescripted? If there were hundreds of pre-scripted consequences like the ones you mentioned why would that be unsatisfactory? I personally think Ultima VII is one of the most immersive in terms of world interactivity. The way people move and have their jobs is great. However it's all heavily scripted. Does it matter whether a script tells that women to close the window when it rains, why must it all be dynamic?

 

[Imbecile]

It doesnt have to be dynamic, but in the same way that Oblivions levelled loot ruins any sense of reward, or exploration - simply knowing that you are part of a prescripted event makes it feel a lot more meaningless. One of the things I like about RPGs is feeling that you are experiencing something that relatively few other players have.

Thats why Half Life 2 feels only decent to me. I'm not the one making the decisions - the game is guiding me.

The perfect solution is a whole batch of mutually-exclusive scripted events, melded in with some dynamic gameplay, though Ive yet to see that pulled off successfully.

 

[Raapys]

It matters for many reasons. First, having those things pre-scripted the way they are in today's games would mean eventually running out of things to do. It would also mean an enourmous amount of work in the first place, especially with a huge gameworld( which is why huge gameworlds don't exist anymore in today's games; it takes too much work to fill them up with things to do ). It is also unlikely that you would be able to cover every single situation that may arise in the game with an appropriate script.

So by creating a perfect AI, i.e. one that thinks for itself, acts by itself, communicates with other AIs and the player without any pre-written dialog, responds to the enviroment around it, has needs like food/drink/reproduction/recreation/ambition, etc., and then placing hundreds, thousands, millions of such inside a realistic game world( of course, realistic doesn't necessarily mean a planet/world like earth ) where organisms grow, the landscape can be deformed, pollution can cause global warming, resources can be mined and turned into weapons of mass-destruction, TVs and space shuttles, etc... you would have what I would personally define as the perfect RPG.

Obviously this wont happen for, say, another 200 years or so.

 

[avatar_58]

To me I really don't care if I am the only one experiencing it, so long as it's a good experience. The best games I've found aren't even that dynamic, in fact some of my favs are terribly linear.

For RPGs so long as theres a good deal of off-the-beaten-path goodies and things to explore I don't mind so much if the story and choices are scripted in nature.

Theres a lot of unscripted things in Oblivion and it usually goes south pretty quickly (even if it is fun to watch, like random folks attacking guards)

 

[Imbecile]

To me I really don't care if I am the only one experiencing it, so long as it's a good experience. The best games I've found aren't even that dynamic, in fact some of my favs are terribly linear.

I know, I know. It just cheapens things a bit for me. I like to feel like I'm playing the game, and making significant choices as I go. Otherwise any monkey could be doing what I am doing.

Basically I'll always take multiple choices and good AI over a good linear game, mostly because it makes things far more replayable and also because it feels like i'm having a unique experience. (It makes me feel less like im wasting my time )

 

[Raapys]

There are no unscripted things in Oblivion( although there are, as you say, *unplanned* things ). What they call Radient AI is nothing more than a set of scripts each NPC have that gets triggered when certain conditions are met. I.e., character gets hungry, trigger the Eat() script. If he has no food, trigger first the GetFood() script, etc. Could have worked out well, though, had they put alot more effort into it, and made it less restrictive. In the game it's so restricted that you wont really notice any perceptible difference between Oblivion's RAI system and Gothic's normally scripted NPCs, except the occasional unexplainable fight between NPCs.

 

[Oarfish]

The rolemaster system was a decent hybrid, with a pretty pool of hitpoints that changed little with level increases to represent resistance to pain, blood loss and general stamina. 0 Hp meant unconcious, -something dead. Most combat against opponents without armour or that were otherwise mismatched would be resolved by criticals, quickly. Spacemaster was even more brutal, what with the sci fi weapons.

I think it is perfectly possible to make a DF like combat system work in other games. XCom would have played well without HP, given the lethality of most of the weapons in the first place.

 

[inwoker]

Didn't read the whole topic, just briefly.
Actually only topic name and some first posts.
omg, sometimes codex really scares me.

 

[Claw]

Thats why Half Life 2 feels only decent to me. I'm not the one making the decisions - the game is guiding me.

Yeah, that can be annoying. I don't mind being railroaded so much - although I'd appreciate a more freeform FPS - as when they control gameplay so tightly there is just the one way to proceed. Like in Episode 1, I actually killed the Strider at the end too early. No worries, where was another where that one came from. Also when rebels can't hurt the enemy you are supposed to fight with their weapons, not even with rockets.

 

[Disconnected]

Seems to me what most of you guys are after, is a combat system that eliminates the possibility of having fun battles, permanently punishes players for not legging it every single time, and generally kills the joy of playing hero.

If that's really what you're after, I'd suggest a very simple system would simply be to flip a coin for each participant. On heads, they die, on tails they become permanently crippled, fall unconscious, and if they're lucky enough to get rescued, spend the rest of their miserable lives begging for scraps & new wheels for their little pushcarts.

AD&D had a pretty good optional system for location damage. It was a bit cumbersome, but then, AD&D sessions require a DM & one of the things those guys do, is eliminating tedious shit. Anyway, that system allocated a percentage of a target's hitpoints to a hit location. Damage was subtracted from the total, rather than the bodypart, and effects went from a penalty to disabling. Without lasting effects. Items, gear & whatnot, could all be targeted, destroyed, removes & whatnot. Critical and unusual damage called for a system shock test to avoid loss of consciousness.

All in all, it's severe enough to make a handful of goblins dangerous to any party, removes the silliness of having a halfling just stand there smiling after getting hit over the head with a half a tree by a hillgiant, fast enough to be usable, and sufficiently benign to avoid killing the fun of combat. Sure, it's still abstract, HP based, and AD&D2ed, but who the fuck cares when it's fun & it works?

 

[Jasede]

Nonono, you're doing it wrong. A game isn't fun when there's not the chance that every single encounter ends with permanent death or at least permanent limb loss. It's just not fun and realistic and

 

[Zomg]

The scope of your imagination dazzles me.

 

[adron]

Nonono, you're doing it wrong. A game isn't fun when there's not the chance that every single encounter ends with permanent death or at least permanent limb loss. It's just not fun and realistic and

i find the combat in dwarf fortress fun and every single encounter can end in perma death or with limb loss.

 

[Raapys]

Again it boils down to picking the fights you know you can win. Obviously attacking a 50feet tall dragon with your Dagger +1 probably isn't a good idea if the game has perma death and limb loss.

 

[Disconnected]

Again it boils down to picking the fights you know you can win. Obviously attacking a 50feet tall dragon with your Dagger +1 probably isn't a good idea if the game has perma death and limb loss.

Way to misconstrue what I wrote.

The mechanics I was talking about has permadeath. What it doesn't have is mechanics for turning wannabe-legendary heroes into crippled beggars. And for good reason. Shit like that should always be a DM/player choice. Hardly anyone ever wants that sort of thing to happen, or have any fun with their character after it's happened. Games simply should not have an automated process for making players miserable.

There's a reason modern age games don't incorporate a percentage chance of getting run over when you cross the street. The reason is very simple: it's not fun. Nobody wants to be run over for no reason. It's just pointless penalizing of the player characters. Realism isn't an end, it's a means to suspend disbelief & maintain a basic level of consistency - like fulfilling player expectations that rocks have mass, gravity exists & such - beyond that, realism only serves to bother players with pointless, trivial & often dangerous shit for no reason at all.

 

[Jasede]

Those guys want a realistic chance of limb loss etc even in trivial encounters versus level 3 orcs, so every combat matters. Nobody will want to play this game though, apart from the four, five posters here who like that idea, of course.

 

[Disconnected]

I suspect they wouldn't want to play games like that either. Or is it some kind of virtual masochism thing?

 

[adron]

Jasede i think dwarf fortress has quite a few more players than 4 or 5.

 

[Jasede]

Dwarf Fortress is not an RPG though; it's a Dwarven Fortress simulator and your dwarves are expendable. They're not a PC you play for hours and hours. Unless you're talking about the half-baked adventure mode, but that's hardly what people think of when they hear Dwarf Fortress.

 

[adron]

on the contrary, i only ever play adventure mode which is an rpg.
re: half baked, the game is in alpha.
additionally, there is activity in the df adventure mode forum.
there are people enjoying this style of play.
each characters life enriches the game world. fun is not necessarily generated by one characters experience, especially when one characters death means a richer game world for your next character to play in.