RPG gameplay elements/habits you don't understand

[Citizen]

Hate the camping\resting mechanic of the D&D-based/inspired games. The strategic and resource management depth it adds is minimal, just a boring waste of time + encourages restscumming to replenish party resources (HP and spells). RoA and Kingmaker at least feature some duty planning for party members to make it less boring, but it only works for the first 5-10 times and then it dissolves into a slog just as in other games

Honestly wish the party-based RPGs just tied your party HP and spells to individual encounters and only left camping as a way for party to skip nighttime and get ambused by mooks in random encounters (which is the only fun thing about resting in RPGs)

 

[JarlFrank]

Speaking of respawns, I hate it when games let you casually (and canonically) revive dead characters. The only time I've seen this work is in Darksouls, where it's a major aspect of the game's lore. Amulets of life-saving or something else appropriately rare also works.

But if it's just some service the church offers for 1000 golden pieces, the implications are too great. I don't understand how you can have a service like this exist and everyone still acts like death carries the same weight as does in real life.

Yeah resurrection is something I have a huge problem with, especially when I write my own shit. I usually cut it out of every setting I work on because it introduces so many plot holes.

The king was assassinated! Okay, so what? He's the king. He has a treasury in the millions. Just send a bishop to rez him and he'll be back on the throne in no time.
Someone was murdered and we don't know the culprit! Okay, so what? Call a cleric to resurrect the dead guy, then we'll ask him who the murderer was and we'll find the culprit in no time.

Other powerful magic is also problematic. Things like "create water" or "create food". There's a draught in the country, so what? Call a bunch of clerics to cast create water on the fields. There's a famine in a small village? Send a bunch of clerics to create food there.

If death, famine, disease can all be defeated by magic (and usually create food and heal disease aren't even that high level magic spells), a lot of plot points fall flat. When your game has a murder mystery but 1000 gold at the temple resurrects anyone, you can just carry the corpse there and ask the resurrected guy who killed him. When your game has a famine but there's food creation spells, you could just cast goodberries - a level one druid spell - until the entire town is fed. Here's what the spell does: "Up to ten berries appear in your hand and are infused with magic for the Duration. A creature can use its action to eat one berry. Eating a berry restores 1 hit point, and the berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day."
And since it's a level one spell, a mid-level caster has enough casts per day that he can create 30 or 40 of these things. That's 40 people fully fed for a whole day, each day. Famine gone.

A lot of crisis situations can conveniently be averted by casting common spells. And yes, even resurrection is a common spell since usually temples are run by high level clerics who can cast at least one resurrection per day.

Most games just ignore the existence of these spells for plot reasons. So why include them in the first place? They're terrible spells that rape the logic of the setting.

 

[DraQ]

Yeah, who can resist getting the most out of a deal.

I love point allocation system because I can minmax like hell after I get familiar to it. I also hate it after a while.

I hate point buy system because they are restricted as all hell. Yet I love it after a long time minmaxing.

Point buy isn't the problem though some randomization may still make things more interesting.
The problem is that there are stat that are clearly optimal to put points into and max out and ones that need to be avoided.

You can speak the same about BG/IWD/PST games. it's more a matter of game content (more quest and content use this stat) than a matter of mechanism (minmax vs pointbuy).

PST is pure point buy.
BG is roll for point buy AKA the worst of both worlds.

 

[Strange Fellow]

resurrection

Most games just ignore the existence of these spells for plot reasons. So why include them in the first place?

Because scrounging up the money for a resurrection or hunting for a scroll or whatever is a lot more fun than reloading.

 

[Citizen]

PST is pure point buy.
BG is roll for point buy AKA the worst of both worlds.

Isn't point buy the system where the stats cost more and more points as they go up? In bg 1 stat = 1 point IIRC, it's NWN games that have an increased stat point price as they grow

I might be wrong tho

 

[DraQ]

Someone was murdered and we don't know the culprit! Okay, so what? Call a cleric to resurrect the dead guy, then we'll ask him who the murderer was and we'll find the culprit in no time.

Even necromancy can be a problem in such cases, though it allows existence of the profession of necromancer investigator which is cool.

Most games just ignore the existence of these spells for plot reasons. So why include them in the first place? They're terrible spells that rape the logic of the setting.

At least you have to give credit to DOS2 where assassin sent after Red Prince (possible companion or PC origin) was given instructions regarding preventing resurrection.
Few games even acknowledge dead coming back to life in them.

Though, unless you specifically want to explore the consequences it's best to keep resurrection, food creation and mass curing of diseases out of games.

If you want combat to be brutal but characters to have staying power then make incapacitation easy but actual death much harder, and give means to save wounded or dying characters rather than dead ones. It also makes for more interesting gameplay because severely wounded character is much more fragile and urgent than a corpse in a wheelbarrow.

PST is pure point buy.
BG is roll for point buy AKA the worst of both worlds.

Isn't point buy the system where the stats cost more and more points as they go up?

No, point buy is a system where you buy stats with points.
Just that.
Anything else is implementation detail.

 

[JarlFrank]

resurrection

Most games just ignore the existence of these spells for plot reasons. So why include them in the first place?

Because scrounging up the money for a resurrection or hunting for a scroll or whatever is a lot more fun than reloading.

Permanent death but reaching 0 HP doesn't immediately kill you (think D&D's 0 HP is unconscious, -10 is death) is a much better and more believable system.

I always reload when characters die anyway, because I hate the concept of resurrection that much

 

[CryptRat]

/I love point allocation system because I can minmax like hell after I get familiar to it. I also hate it after a while.

I hate point buy system because they are restricted as all hell. Yet I love it after a long time minmaxing.

Point buy isn't the problem though some randomization may still make things more interesting.

Yes, exactly that, at the beginning of the game you want to decide what each character in your party will do while efficiency can be a bit randomized. Old D&D with roll stats and pick class is a very good implementation of that, a mage cast spells and can be more or less good at that, same for a rogue and lock-picking, a warrior can have small malus or bonus in defense and so does a mage but a warrior can wear a big armor while a mage can, and HP gain follows a similar pattern, ...

I'am not saying following this idea (important choice + some randomization) is mandatory nor that D&D or classes at all are the only possible implementation of this idea, just that it's a good idea and D&D a good implementation of it.

I think another example is that things like resistance to the different elements may as well be randomized, you want to determine what a character will do, but when it comes to weaknesses directly choosing may be weird and it can be more fun to have them randomized among your party and having to adapt to those.

I don't think any randomization is needed during the game though', first and foremost because the more choices when levelling-up the better so randomization is automatically more boring.

 

[Citizen]

No, point buy is a system where you buy stats with points.
Just that.
Anything else is implementation detail.

Does that mean that all existing RPG systems are point-buy? Apart from stuff like morrowind maybe, where stats grow with skill usage, you always get some sort of points/experience/oddities/whatever to transform them into stats. What's the alternative then?

 

[Strange Fellow]

resurrection

Most games just ignore the existence of these spells for plot reasons. So why include them in the first place?

Because scrounging up the money for a resurrection or hunting for a scroll or whatever is a lot more fun than reloading.

Permanent death but reaching 0 HP doesn't immediately kill you (think D&D's 0 HP is unconscious, -10 is death) is a much better and more believable system.

Okay, but you do realise that's the exact same thing only with a different label, right? Sure, it's still better, but it's also much less common than the boring binary positive HP = alive, 0 or negative HP = dead implementation. Resurrection at least avoids this every time. You can put as much complexity as you want into it regardless of whether you call it resurrecting dead characters or curing unconscious ones (or you can have both, like D&D), but the former option has a better baseline, and since designers often don't put any effort into this stuff, the baseline is usually what you end up with.

 

[JarlFrank]

resurrection

Most games just ignore the existence of these spells for plot reasons. So why include them in the first place?

Because scrounging up the money for a resurrection or hunting for a scroll or whatever is a lot more fun than reloading.

Permanent death but reaching 0 HP doesn't immediately kill you (think D&D's 0 HP is unconscious, -10 is death) is a much better and more believable system.

Okay, but you do realise that's the exact same thing only with a different label, right? Sure, it's still better, but it's also much less common than the boring binary positive HP = alive, 0 or negative HP = dead implementation. Resurrection at least avoids this every time. You can put as much complexity as you want into it regardless of whether you call it resurrecting dead characters or curing unconscious ones (or you can have both, like D&D), but the former option has a better baseline, and since designers often don't put any effort into this stuff, the baseline is usually what you end up with.

The issue is, resurrection creates massive worldbuilding problems while helping out a knocked out character does not.

Also, if you do it right, a knocked out character can be killed if enemies keep attacking him or he's within the effect range of an AoE spell (this can happen in ToEE, for example) so once a character from your party is downed, you actually have to consider him in your tactics (don't throw a fireball where it will hit him) whereas dead characters can be ignored on the battlefield.

It wouldn't even require that much work - just a simple pulling animation - to allow other characters to drag a wounded char away from the frontline, adding an additional tactical element to dealing with downed characters whom you don't want to die permanently.

 

[Citizen]

The issue is, resurrection creates massive worldbuilding problems while helping out a knocked out character does not.

Ressurection mechanic breaks the consistency of the setting, but it doesn't make gameplay any worse. Arguably it even helps by minimizing the need to savescum and adding an interesting challenge of rescuing your deceased party members. And since it only affects the setting of the game and not the gameplay itself, it can be fixed by some additional game lore explaining it.

The simplest solution I can think of is some sort of explanation why only your party can ressurect, and the general population of the world can't. "Oh wowzers, our party stumbled upon a mystical artifact while looting the treasure from the ancient tomb! It bonded their souls together! Now they can't die until they save the world and ask the gods of this realm to lift the curse!"

 

[CryptRat]

Okay, but you do realise that's the exact same thing only with a different label, right? Sure, it's still better, but it's also much less common than the boring binary positive HP = alive, 0 or negative HP = dead implementation. Resurrection at least avoids this every time. You can put as much complexity as you want into it regardless of whether you call it resurrecting dead characters or curing unconscious ones (or you can have both, like D&D), but the former option has a better baseline, and since designers often don't put any effort into this stuff, the baseline is usually what you end up with.

No, I don't care at all about the plot thing, but it's not the same, battles are more fun when you often finish a battle with several unconscious characters and you don't need any expensive resource to heal them, this should not replace resurrection when resurrection is a thing, resurrection should be an additional mechanism you may really have to use after fighting a dragon (reloading won't work, the dragon makes massive damage often killing the characters) but not after fighting goblins (reloading will work, a character probably took a critical hit exactly when he was low in life and then he died instead of getting unconscious) and it should be expensive.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The issue is, resurrection creates massive worldbuilding problems while helping out a knocked out character does not.

Resurrection doesn't have to create problems, it'd only create problems if it was poorly implemented or explained.

• You can't resurrect someone dying from old age.
• Resurrection should be either taxing for the mage/cleric or requiring expensive ingredients, i prefer the former though, fuck spells ingredients! Taxing could mean a temporary loss of attributes for the caster, like -1 CON & - casting related stat for a certain time, according you can't spam rest to bypass it, it could work like buffs in some games not being cancelled by rest, it only fades when fighting and not staying idle.
• That way, not everyone has access to resurrection and some spells, poisons or tricks could prevent resurrection.

 

[Citizen]

• You can't resurrect someone dying from old age.

• Resurrection should be either taxing for the mage/cleric or requiring expensive ingredients, i prefer the former though, fuck spells ingredients! Taxing could mean a temporary loss of attributes for the caster, like -1 CON & - casting related stat for a certain time, according you can't spam rest to bypass it, it could work like buffs in some games not being cancelled by rest, it only fades when fighting and not staying idle.

• That way, not everyone has access to resurrection and some spells, poisons or tricks could prevent resurrection.

But if your party of murderhobos can access the needed resources\magic for ressurection, then many other people in the gameworld can do it too. It would basically mean that in this setting the wealthy/royalty/aristocracy/powerful magicians can only die from old age and not in battle or assasination attempt.

That should greatly affect the world because many aspects of social life and culture would be revolving around the idea of ressurection - conflicts between the wealthy and the poor who can't afford the ressurection of their family members, or the juridical system, where the murderers are sentenced for lifetime labor sentence in the goldmines to pay for their victim ressurection rituals, or the world where to ACTUALLY murder someone you have yo resort to some weird occult methods that prevent ressurection, or else they will be just ressurected in the nearest temple and witness against you. All the settings that feature cheap and affordable ressurection are completely ignoring the effect it would have on a society

 

[V_K]

resurrection

Most games just ignore the existence of these spells for plot reasons. So why include them in the first place?

Because scrounging up the money for a resurrection or hunting for a scroll or whatever is a lot more fun than reloading.

Permanent death but reaching 0 HP doesn't immediately kill you (think D&D's 0 HP is unconscious, -10 is death) is a much better and more believable system.

Okay, but you do realise that's the exact same thing only with a different label, right? Sure, it's still better, but it's also much less common than the boring binary positive HP = alive, 0 or negative HP = dead implementation. Resurrection at least avoids this every time. You can put as much complexity as you want into it regardless of whether you call it resurrecting dead characters or curing unconscious ones (or you can have both, like D&D), but the former option has a better baseline, and since designers often don't put any effort into this stuff, the baseline is usually what you end up with.

You could have a wound system like in DAO / Drakensang / Voidspire - nobody dies unless in a TPK, but downed character get significant long-term debuffs after the battle. This way you get some consequences for the character getting knocked out, but no need for resurrection.
Or you could have resurrection in settings where clerical magic is unreliable, like TDE or Uukrul - this way resurrection won't create plot holes because it's the gods who decide whom to resurrect and whom not, and their will is unpredictable.
Or you could have a setting without stat bloat where hiring a new character in place of a killed one is a viable approach.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Citizen I thought i had this covered in my third point ...

 

[Citizen]

Citizen I thought i had this covered in my third point ...

Well, a loss of 1 CON point by a caster won't prevent the aristocracy of the world to be ressurected by well paid clerics who are more than glad to give up some CON points for the coin. Even if the ressurection is SOOO TAXING that no one will perform it by their own will, the wealthy would force divine magic users to ressurect their own with some good ol' dungeons & tortures (that's a cool idea for a fantasy setting btw, divine magic users are being held captive by the elites as the human ressurection machines, even tho the process is extremely painful/taxing for the caster)

You are trying to say that if the ressurection is harder to perform then it doesn't affect the world around your party, but it's not like this. The society where the ressurection ritual is affordable enough to be performed by a party of adventurers would not live by the same rules the society without ressurection does. Why would your party even scavenge for gold in dirty-ass sewers? They could just make a big coin by provoding the ressurection services to the elites of the world

The "ressurection is done by the gods, so only your party on a holy quest can get ressurected through cleric's powers and not the general population" theme is good enough to keep the setting consistent

 

[Darth Canoli]

Dude, do you have to be so obtuse, do i have to draw lines for you?
Of course it implies one caster can't chain ressurect, the debuf is just the gameplay counterpart for one resurrection, it could pile up, add permanent debuf if you use it too much in a short amount of time, could be impossible if the caster isn't at 100% of his capabilities, etc.

And i think you missed the third point again.

 

[Citizen]

Of course it implies one caster can't chain ressurect, the debuf is just the gameplay counterpart for one resurrection, it could pile up, add permanent debuf if you use it too much in a short amount of time, could be impossible if the caster isn't at 100% of his capabilities, etc.

Useless discussion

 

[Citizen]

As I said I have nothing against ressurection from the gameplay perspective, it's actually a nice and fun mechanic to minimize savescumming. And as a proud combatfag I don't care about the consistency of the worldbuilding enough to see the lack of it as something gamebreaking (as long the setting is atmosperic/cool).

But if we are going into the details of worldbuilding, the ressurection in ANY FORM would greatly affect the world the game takes place in, no matter how hard is it to perform (unless it's some sort of mega ritual that is extremely hard to perform and requires a one-of-a-kind ancient artifact only usable once, but that's not the case in BG/Kingmaker/etc where you just casually use a scroll or pay a cleric 1000 shekels)

 

[octavius]

resurrection

Most games just ignore the existence of these spells for plot reasons. So why include them in the first place?

Because scrounging up the money for a resurrection or hunting for a scroll or whatever is a lot more fun than reloading.

And if you're a real badass you edit the spell so that it costs 5000 gold instead of 100.

 

[JarlFrank]

The "ressurection is done by the gods, so only your party on a holy quest can get ressurected through cleric's powers and not the general population" theme is good enough to keep the setting consistent

Not if your setting doesn't feature gods who directly meddle in the affair of mortals.

 

[fantadomat]

resurrection

Most games just ignore the existence of these spells for plot reasons. So why include them in the first place?

Because scrounging up the money for a resurrection or hunting for a scroll or whatever is a lot more fun than reloading.

And if you're a real badass you edit the spell so that it costs 5000 gold instead of 100.

Or press CTRL+R

 

[V_K]

Things like "create water" or "create food". There's a draught in the country, so what? Call a bunch of clerics to cast create water on the fields. There's a famine in a small village? Send a bunch of clerics to create food there.