Party members dying (or not) in combat

[Erebus]

In CRPGs, when a member of your party reaches 0 HP during combat, there are two possible consequences :

(1) The party member is actually dead and will remain so until you use magic to revive him.

(2) The party member is only unconscious ; he will stay useless for the rest of the fight but will be operational again after the fight is won.

(There's also an intermediate possibility, found for instance in Gold Box games and M&M : the party member is unconscious if he's at 0 HP or not too far below that, and dead if he has too many "negative hit points".)

I think both possibilities have flaws. Your party members only losing consciousness (and only for a short while) after being repeatedly hit by swords, burned by fireballs and bitten by giant spiders feels like a cheap and unrealistic cop out.
But, on the other end, death is ridiculously cheapened when you can negate it with a simple spell. Plus the existence of Raise Dead spells almost always leads to major incoherences with the story : Remember Jaheira's lame explanation for why she wouldn't even try to resurrect Khalid ? And why did Imoen never lose Bhaal taint no matter how often she died ? And why didn't Ammon Jerro even try to resurrect Shandra ? Etc.

Of course, death doesn't have to be reversible. In Fallout, your dead party members will stay dead (possibly in several pieces). But it can be frustrating for the player to see an interesting companion die for good and it's likely he will simply reload to avoid this unwanted event.

BaK found an interesting compromise : the party members who lose all their HP are only uncounscious, but they remain extremely weak for a long time after the fight, unless they can receive major healing. The problem of Raise Dead spells is thus avoided and, at the same time, the player will try really hard to prevent any of his PCs from falling to 0 HP.

What are your opinions on the matter ?

 

[Donkey Balls]

Not sure how I feel about this.

In DA:O party members (the PC included) "wake up" when combat is over. But this (along with auto-heal/mana refill) just removes the tedium between battles. No need to cast resurrect/rest/do other bullshit.

Seriously, who actually enjoys out-of-combat micromanagement in RPGs? Does casting a resurrect spell after a battle make you feel better?

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I rather like the guild wars (lolmmo) system of death. Every death lowered your maximum mana and HP by 15%. Classes with healing spells could spend a (valuable) spell slot for an infinite cast ressurection, but these were always slow and occupied the player during battle, could be interrupted, all that shit that made mid-battle ressurection a trade off. If your healer died, the only way to bring them back was through ressurection signets that cast much faster and can be used by anyone (still requiring a valuable skill slot), but would only be available once until you finished the mission/dungeon.

It gave a good system of tradeoffs with res (reusable but slow vs. quick but one-time vs. take no res and use another skill that helps you die less), didn't overly punish the single random deaths but most definitely punished constant deaths since enemies would start one-shotting your weakened characters.

Now, for a CRPG where the player has full reign over their party and has a turnbased system or RtwP, take the same system but just make it a bit more hardcore since the player is expected to be able to replay encounters and try out different tactics, while not needing to be able to coddle stupid people doing stupid stuff online.

Seriously, who actually enjoys out-of-combat micromanagement in RPGs? Does casting a resurrect spell after a battle make you feel better?

I don't think 5s to cast a spell every once in a while (if you are dieing every battle you SHOULD be inconvenienced) is bad. The problem is being forced to spend 10 mins running back to town or spending 5 minutes waiting for a character to regenerate its health.

 

[DraQ]

A hybrid of sorts.

Permanent irreversible death if the shit actually hits the fan, but with incapacitation/delayed death being more likely outcome than instant kill unless massive damage to head, neck or ribcage occurs.

Healing magic/sufficiently advanced technology (assuming it's not historical/modern setting) potent and essential on one hand, with ability to repair bodily trauma that would normally lead to death or permanent disablement and actually required to restore person's health in sensible amount of time, rare difficult and tactically worthless, on the other, requiring peace, and recovery time measured in days minimum and putting excessive strain on the person performing the healing.

Damage system not based on HP attrition as well as armour actually designed to prevent significant injuries should help, so would less psychotic mindset of the makers, resulting in less filler genocides and proportionally more less-lethal encounters when the combat actually occurs.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Either what goes down stays down or what Betrayal at Krondor did.

And that is, if someone goes down in combat, 'healing up' doesn't just take one silly medkit - it takes either a truckload of healing potions or constant resting for like two weeks, and before getting back to normal, the character is effectively useless.

 

[mondblut]

GB games and Krondor both handled it right. We need a hybrid of it, long-term weakness after unconsciousness and a possibility of true death on having enough negative hitpoints from bleeding/massive damage (as well as petrification, disintegration, instadeath spells...).

But as long as RPG parties of today are all about bedding "intricately written" NPCs, we won't see said NPCs die. Unless Sephiroth kills them in a cutscene, LOL.

 

[DraQ]

But as long as RPG parties of today are all about bedding "intricately written" NPCs, we won't see said NPCs die. Unless Sephiroth kills them in a cutscene, LOL.

Well, if we get consequences on their death that extend beyond "lol u fail reload?"...

 

[JarlFrank]

Unconsciousness at 0 HP. Death at -10 or -20 or something like that.

No resurrection. Live with the consequences of not protecting the weak party members.

 

[DraQ]

Unconsciousness at 0 HP. Death at -10 or -20 or something like that.

No resurrection. Live with the consequences of not protecting the weak party members.

HPs are bsb.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

A hybrid of sorts.

Permanent irreversible death if the shit actually hits the fan, but with incapacitation/delayed death being more likely outcome than instant kill unless massive damage to head, neck or ribcage occurs.

Healing magic/sufficiently advanced technology (assuming it's not historical/modern setting) potent and essential on one hand, with ability to repair bodily trauma that would normally lead to death or permanent disablement and actually required to restore person's health in sensible amount of time, rare difficult and tactically worthless, on the other, requiring peace, and recovery time measured in days minimum and putting excessive strain on the person performing the healing.

Damage system not based on HP attrition as well as armour actually designed to prevent significant injuries should help, so would less psychotic mindset of the makers, resulting in less filler genocides and proportionally more less-lethal encounters when the combat actually occurs.

 

[SuicideBunny]

depends on the combat system.
dragon age had really shitty tedious no-brainer combat, so the instant getting up was a good thing because it reduced the annoyance and tedium, but with a good combat system i would prefer what draq lined out.

 

[Cassidy]

Yes to full death as long as there is at least twice as much recruitable NPCs as the maximum sized party so it won't induce save/reload as much, and the PC should have the choice of killing party members when convenient or desirable too(why are the relationships always about dating sim shit instead of treason, power struggles and the sort of thing you'd expect amidst a bunch of mercenaries?).

 

[Mystary!]

I am too weak to resist reloading when things go bad. Playing ToEE atm and even with plenty of Raise Dead scrolls I just reload if someone dies. But often I know what I did wrong and that death could've easily been avoided. Only time I ressurected someone was probably when I had forgotten to save in a very long time.
Ironman might be the only solution to the magic of reload, but it's not without faults.

 

[Morkar Left]

Unconsciousness at 0 HP. Death at -10 or -20 or something like that.

No resurrection. Live with the consequences of not protecting the weak party members.

This.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Unconsciousness at 0 HP. Death at -10 or -20 or something like that.

No resurrection. Live with the consequences of not protecting the weak party members.

This.

Wasn't this the GB method. You could bandage a party member to keep them from bleeding to death.

Also rather liked the BG2 system of massive damage destroying the NPC beyond the point of resurrection.

 

[Black]

Unconsciousness at 0 HP. Death at -10 or -20 or something like that.

No resurrection. Live with the consequences of not protecting the weak party members.

 

[Mystary!]

That's how it is in toee, if you don't kill unconscious enemies they can get healed and get back up again, but enemy healers are uncommon.

 

[deuxhero]

But as long as RPG parties of today are all about bedding "intricately written" NPCs, we won't see said NPCs die. Unless Sephiroth kills them in a cutscene, LOL.

Which is a pitty, because Fire Emblem has some of the better written characters out there (most of them top anything Bioware has offered except possibly Jolee Bindo) and has permadeath* (and as you have to restart the entire level, it is more than just a reload)


*Well, 3 of the games allow resurrection once at the final level and a 4th lets you resurrect as long as you can afford the obscenely expensive (on a unit that has issues getting money in the first place) repairs on the staff that does it, but that's it.

 

[Shannow]

Really depends on the game (story driven, sandbox, simulation, action, etc). For simulation I'd probably go with semi-perma-death coupled with unconsciousness/incapacity/pain/fleeing/surrender/bribery/etc. Receive damage and you'll feel pain. Pain reduces the character's effictiveness and has a threshold before 0 hp that completely incapacitates the character. Loosing large chunks of hp at once or <0 stamina would also lead to unconsciousness.
So eg:
>80% hp: fine
<30% hp: incapacitated with various levels of weakness between those two. Pain-thresholds would also depend on stats like willpower and traits like berserker, etc.
Incapacitated enemies could be spared and they can spare you.
Ressurection would involve rituals cast by several powerful entities and expensive materials. Costing much in wealth and favours. No carrying around rods of res...
Oh, and TB combat since it offers enough control that deaths are actually your fault and don't just happen because you weren't in the mood to constantly babysit you moron companions.

 

[Sceptic]

<30% hp: incapacitated with various levels of weakness between those two.

In additions to its "death" mechanics (mentioned by OP) BAK had something similar to this. If you lost stamina you were fine. Once you start losing health skills and stats start going down, and will stay down until you heal. It was realistic in that you don't go straight away from fully fuctional to dead, and also death, while not permanent, is something you REALLY want to avoid since it takes either a long time or a LOT of money (and a temple) to heal an incapacitated member.

 

[DraQ]

I'd make pain separate scale and incapacitation threshold of pain depend on character's willpower.

Similarly, incapacitation due to raw damage should depend on endurance.

Of course, performance degradation is a must have, though I'd prefer to avoid oversimplified linear HP scale as a measure of character's overall state.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

How about have a game with the standard pay the temple 500 gold (or whatever) for resurrection, but put in another trade off. Something story related (LOL LARPFAG) that causes each Res to deplete some finite resource. That would explain why you band of adventurers saving the world have access to it while the general populace doesn't, and it would also have far reaching consequences in making the world more bleak as the system is used. Lo' and behold, at the end of the game you kill the big bad, but the world's source of (insert plot device here) is depleted, world is in worse shape, whatever.

 

[Azarkon]

Res on combat end is just a stupid fucking mechanic designed to make up for a stupid fucking system operating in a world with a stupid fucking premise.

Anyone familiar with the real world knows this fantasy crap about bands of heroes overcoming 9,573 superhuman monsters to save the village/city/kingdom/world/princess/themselves is bullshit. D&D tries to "insert realism" into this bullshit by making up an elaborate probabilistic combat system that comes down to "lol I rolled a 1 I'm dead," forcing a resurrection mechanic, which in CRPGs become annoyance (because you can't just tell the DM "and then we travel back to town and resurrect Bob"), which leads to player whining, which leads to the res on combat end mechanic.

 

[Mrowak]

<30% hp: incapacitated with various levels of weakness between those two.

In additions to its "death" mechanics (mentioned by OP) BAK had something similar to this. If you lost stamina you were fine. Once you start losing health skills and stats start going down, and will stay down until you heal. It was realistic in that you don't go straight away from fully fuctional to dead, and also death, while not permanent, is something you REALLY want to avoid since it takes either a long time or a LOT of money (and a temple) to heal an incapacitated member.

Yes, the system in Betrayal at Krondor was perfect. Not only it accounted for lowering your skills when your health dropped but also introduced a number of conditions (Near-death, poison, sickness, starvation) that could lead to perma-death, game over or stat damage. On the one hand, it punished inexperienced players severly. The healing cost was exceptionally high plus you had to make to the temple or get sufficient amount of magick potions in time [three days for near death]. Moreover, it encouraged player to think ahead of a time, make provisions (potions, food) and judge whether the next enemy is managable. On the other hand, as the game wasn't easy (at least for the first timer) it allowed for a safety margin where you could afford to have some loses provided that you could bear the costs.

I would love to see that system implemented in some modern game.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Res on combat end is just a stupid fucking mechanic designed to make up for a stupid fucking system operating in a world with a stupid fucking premise.

Anyone familiar with the real world knows this fantasy crap about bands of heroes overcoming 9,573 superhuman monsters to save the village/city/kingdom/world/princess/themselves is bullshit. D&D tries to "insert realism" into this bullshit by making up an elaborate probabilistic combat system that comes down to "lol I rolled a 1 I'm dead," forcing a resurrection mechanic, which in CRPGs become annoyance (because you can't just tell the DM "and then we travel back to town and resurrect Bob"), which leads to player whining, which leads to the res on combat end mechanic.

That's why I'd like to be able to command units of followers, mercenaries, etc. in CRPGs.