Lethality in RPG's, which one do you prefer?

[ERYFKRAD]

AoD's is perfect as far as I am concerned.

Dungeon Rats, too. Longbowmen are as scary as hell, and rightly so.

Both count as the same game.

For that matter Hammer & Sickle is good too.

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

depends

 

[samuraigaiden]

High lethality is faster and more exciting.

 

[Daemongar]

I always thought it would add more danger to a game if you could die during character creation. You know, maybe put two diametrically opposed party members in the the group while creating a party of 6 or so. You come back from creating the 3rd character but have to start over because your main character was killed by the second character. Or better, the second character maybe turned out to be lying about their alignment when you created them and made off with your 100 starting gold or poisons you or something.

Couple of logistical problems tho: there is rarely a game anymore where you create more than one character at the start but I'm sure there would be a way to implement this without it being too weird.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

AD&D Wizard.

Low constitution.

Solo.

Dagger only.

takes one last swig from canteen

Let's bang, bitches.

 

[Lilura]

Well, you're better at the game than I was. X-COM Apoc fucked me over and did my head in. Amazing game, though.

Latest version of Dungeon Rats also almost broke me. But I got good at that one eventually.

 

[Lilura]

Were you playing TB or RT?

95% RT. In the alien dimension, squad got mobbed badly. Tons of shit zeroing-in map-wide with shields and cloaks. I didn't know about certain tech research either, so we got blown away. I basically hit a fail-state on Cityscape, too. Couldn't bring down some of the big UFOs that would facilitate the research.

And then when my DOS installation somehow became corrupted, that was the last straw.

Did you know they're doing an OpenApoc, like Open X-COM? Its gonna be so cool.

It's nowhere near playable yet. Buggy as hell and CTDs often. Hope they get there eventually, though.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

AD&D Wizard.

Low constitution.

Solo.

Dagger only.

takes one last swig from canteen

Let's bang, bitches.

Even worse, a spider.
I hear they die if you so much as step on them.

 

[mondblut]

I always thought it would add more danger to a game if you could die during character creation.

Megatraveller and Darklands come fairly close. I wouldn't be surprised if it is possible to die of old age in their character creators.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Even worse, a spider.
I hear they die if you so much as step on them.

Try your worst. Todd Howard protects all his children.

 

[Maxie]

AD&D Wizard.

Low constitution.

Solo.

Dagger only.

takes one last swig from canteen

Let's bang, bitches.

how's roleplaying a functionally disabled man any fun
I think you'll find your idea of entertainment in Dear Esther or the like

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Even worse, a spider.
I hear they die if you so much as step on them.

Try your worst. Todd Howard protects all his children.

If they're Todd Howard's kids, they'll be short when fully grown, so you can still step on them.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

how's roleplaying a functionally disabled man any fun

Only when we risk it all do we truly come alive, Maxwell.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Fairly lethal like in Wizardry 8.

Dungeon Rats was a bit too lethal, the problem is the game doesn't offer enough options for this level of lethality, short of making a better build.
Of course, once you restart and make the perfect builds/team, it's not too bad outside of a couple of battles and i like the combat.

In my opinion, a game like KotC 2 is better suited for high lethality because of all the options you have to deal with the enemies.

UFO was probably the most lethal game i've ever played, if it was released nowadays, 80% of the codex would burst in flames crying the devs are degenerates munchkins...

 

[DraQ]

High, close to RL immediate lethality, deferred lethality mitigated by healing magic/tech or making it more immediate.
Padding fights with HP walls is just that - padding. A 10' back and forth ending with spectacular fatality can technically be reduced to just that spectacular fatality.
Another problem is that most of the devs (at least RPG devs) seem blissfully unaware that applying the simple 'fix' of significant HP buffers tends to irreversibly break whatever aesthetics they were aiming for.

Aesthetics of modern-ish slugthrower combat with people hunkering down in cover and bodies getting torn by explosions or swiss cheesed by automatics, or of hewing limbs and lopping heads off with typical fantasy/historical edged weapons rely on their lethality and visible damage.
If you just give characters enough HP buffers to just stand in there in the open and absorb hits you replace your aesthetics with that of a nerf bat fight.

Now...

But what if we get damned by RNGesus?

But that's not a problem with lethality. That's the problem of insufficient control.
RPG does not stand for Roll Playing Game and role of RNG in them is not to provide the meat of the game.
It is to perturb outcomes so that successful tactics doesn't boil down to a single layer of everything going just as planned.
The role of RNG isn't to randomly kill you off if you do everything right.
It is to let enemy survive what should have killed them off and then to teach you hard way why contingencies are a good thing.

If you start with double digit HP the game has a problem.

Whether HPs are double digits, single digits or six digits is completely immaterial mechanically (though six digits would be retarded from UI perspective).

 

[Alex]

AD&D Wizard.

Low constitution.

Solo.

Dagger only.

takes one last swig from canteen

Let's bang, bitches.

*DM rolls dice*

You find a cat. It rushes for your throat.

Edit:

Sorry, forgot to ask, what is "A3"?

 

[Lilura]

Dungeon Rats was a bit too lethal, the problem is the game doesn't offer enough options for this level of lethality, short of making a better build.
Of course, once you restart and make the perfect builds/team, it's not too bad outside of a couple of battles and i like the combat.

Character build and party member complementariness are important, but so is precision in positioning, executing the correct attacks at key moments and anticipating several moves ahead. Almost every action counts.

The game is as hard as nails in its current form. 95% of BG2 "tacticians" wouldn't survive Nice Guy difficulty setting let alone solo Murderous Psychopath. I spent two hours on one battle, which reminded me of Silent Storm.

You can see in 1.13 settings that Jagged Alliance 2 AI could have been made mercilessly efficient, too, but the devs threw in some rando to its decisions. Which is why the AI oscillates between surprising us with its stupidity and intelligence.

 

[Lilura]

And a bit more on JA2 lethality... getting hit hurts, and impacts many aspects of merc performance. The more a merc bleeds, the less capable they become on the field, and they can also get permanently maimed. We can get a medic on the scene to patch them up, but the damage has already been done and they need rest to fully heal, which eats time.

If we insert ceramic plates into spectra vests and coat them with compounds, we can max our armor rating and soak up a few hits from middling calibre, but it's not always available. There is no super-tanking, per se.

Anyway, I really like the lethality in JA2. Especially heads getting shot off from long range, by rooftop snipers.

 

[Cryomancer]

"A3"?

ArmA 3. A game which tries to be a simulator. GM6 Lynx + APDS ammo can OHKill you behind two fortified walls at 1km+

 

[Tavernking]

but it never feels good to have your group wiped out because some goblin archer got a crit on your tank and killed them instantly or whatever. Unless the game has low RNG, which then I suppose it's on the player.

This is literally my game. Some promo I wrote ages ago:

RNGesus rules with an iron fist here. Even the mightiest of knights in peak condition can be instantly killed by a single lucky arrow, shot by a frail goblin who has never used a bow in it's life.

 

[JarlFrank]

I like high lethality because it gives tactical moves a stronger effect. Everything you do matters more. Running behind cover because your character dies after two bullets in the chest is a very important tactical move, but if your character can shrug off 100 bullets why spend the AP to run behind cover? It's not like staying out in the open is going to kill you, your HP are too bloated for that LOL. Same with enemies: it's satisfying to outflank and enemy and backstab him, taking the majority of his HP away in a single hit, or causing a crippling injury. But if combat has very low lethality and HP pools are huge, the only result of a succesful flank and backstab is... maybe taking off one tenth of the enemy's HP. Yaaaaawn.

I want my successful tactical maneuvers to be effective, and my mistakes to punish me. The higher the lethality, the more significant both genius tactical moves and dumb mistakes are. It's high risk, high reward.
Low lethality is low risk, low reward. It usually ends up being about whittling down HP pools over several turns/minutes while keeping your own pool up with healing items. It's very boring and tedious.

I noticed that I enjoyed Fallout 4's combat quite a lot at the start, when it was highly lethal and getting hit would take away a huge chunk of my health, but landing well-aimed shots at the enemies' heads or using explosives would also disable them in one or two hits. Then as HP scaled up much more quickly than damage, higher levels stopped being fun as it turned into a tedious grind: enemies now require a whole magazine to be emptied in their bodies, and my own character can take five deathclaw strikes without dying (and has so many stimpacks in her inventory, she can just heal up when the health gets too low).

HP bloat and low lethality leads to low risk gameplay where each encounter takes a long time, even if you do things completely right it takes several turns (or minutes in a real time system) to get through it, and even if you fuck up you have many chances of saving the situation because nothing the enemy can do is lethal enough.

I prefer high lethality in other genres too. Red Orchestra is one of my favorite FPS, and classic FPS also tend to have at least mid-high lethality: in Doom, most enemies are squishy against the big guns, and you yourself can get fried pretty quickly too if you allow those imp fireballs to hit you. Quake is more bullet spongey than Doom, but even there most enemies die quickly enough especially if you use a high damage weapon.

 

[Ismaul]

I like high lethality, but how high really depends.

In some systems, the lethality can't be too high, or you don't have time for tactics. D&D is like that. If you want the possibility for combos and party cooperation, enemies can't die in one shot. You need it so that there's a setup action that allows a serious or lethal blow.

Basically, the way I see it, the more lethal a system is, the more tactics move from in-combat strategy and actions that setup others, to pre-combat tactics where stealth, positioning, and choice of where to engage and how are more important.

 

[undecaf]

I preferer faster skirmishes over lengthy battles of attrition, but since I do prefer more abstract combat through RNG, I think there needs to be ”some” HP buff or other kind of system to compensate to support the abstracted hits and misses. Not too much lest it become just the sort of longwinded and often boring game of subtraction, but some.

 

[DeepOcean]

After Wasteland 3, let's say I'm not so confident about developers ideas about lethal combat, if you die in a single turn to both a Scorpitron and a random raider no matter what you do, what is the point?

 

[Cryomancer]

Then as HP scaled up much more quickly than damage, higher levels stopped being fun as it turned into a tedious grind: enemies now require a whole magazine to be emptied in their bodies, and my own character can take five deathclaw strikes without dying (and has so many stimpacks in her inventory, she can just heal up when the health gets too low).

Amazing post. I only wanna complement one thing

I HATE the system "potions/stimpacks/wathever" insta work and insta teleport to inside your body.

The best system is from Gothic 2 - RETURNING on hard difficulty. You press a button to drink a potion? The character has a actual drinking animation which takes time and after the potion is inside your belly, it slowly regen about 1% of your health/mana per second. The exception is the insta potion which only requires the animation but is extremely expensive, available in small amount per merchant and the recipes to make then not only require expensive reagents but also are behind the most terrifying optional bosses and fully mastery over alchemy.

let's say I'm not so confident about developers ideas about lethal combat, if you die in a single turn to both a Scorpitron and a random raider no matter what you do, what is the point?

Avoid being hit.
On D&D, drinking potions takes an action and is subjected to attack of opportunity. Which is great but instead of healing d10, it should heal d4 per round for few rounds.

In some systems, the lethality can't be too high, or you don't have time for tactics. D&D is like that. If you want the possibility for combos and party cooperation, enemies can't die in one shot. You need it so that there's a setup action that allows a serious or lethal blow.

Actually, you can have cooperation even with high lethality. For eg, the wizard can cast a area of darkness to make things easy for a rogue with nightvision to sneak into enemies, while a barbarian charges and so on.

You don't have a party vs a enemy. Even if your necromancer can OHK the enemy boss with a finger of death, the boss is not always alone.