RPG gameplay elements/habits you don't understand

[Gangrelrumbler]

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

There is another way. Make resurrection more taxing not on the caster, but on the people being brought back to life. The more powerful you are the easier it is to bring you back. Old DnD editions and early Wizardry games had % chance of resurrection, based on condition/vitality. If you add character level and age to the mix keeping people who should be dead in their graves shouldn't be hard.
Young, fit adventurers with years of battle experience and magical powers are easy to bring back over and over again, while commoners and nobility are more likely to not survive the resurrection process. And if you need to kill someone who should theoretically qualify to be resurrected, just say that resurrection didn't work this time. Murder victims are weak commoners, nobility is full of pussies, politicians are too old. And of course if villain need to assassinate someone who should be able to get resurrected 100% of the time there can be in-universe ways of preventing them from getting back. Sure theoretically now player characters can also be lost forever due to simple bad lack, but it's fine Dying should be dangerous and players should try to avoid it at all price.
Typically replacing dying with being knocked out is a perfect solution, but the downside is that now nobody can die in combat, sine they won't be able to be brought back. So no killing spells, no poison, no poison gas, no killing gaze, no vorpal blades etc. Basilisk that "knocks you out" with his gaze is just silly.

 

[JarlFrank]

Typically replacing dying with being knocked out is a perfect solution, but the downside is that now nobody can die in combat, sine they won't be able to be brought back. So no killing spells, no poison, no poison gas, no killing gaze, no vorpal blades etc. Basilisk that "knocks you out" with his gaze is just silly.

Why?

You can have knockout at 0 HP, and permanent death if HP fall even lower. Some powerful abilities/spells/whatevers can kill a character before he goes KO.

In a game with lots of available companions like Baldur's Gate 1, that wouldn't be a big issue. You can take the death of one companion, just recruit another.

Also basilisks turn you to stone, the reversal of which requires a stone to flesh spell.

 

[V_K]

no killing spells, [...] no killing gaze, no vorpal blades

And good riddance.

no poison, no poison gas

Poison could be reimagined as a long-term debuff, a-la Realms of Arkania's diseases.

Basilisk that "knocks you out" with his gaze is just silly.

Petrification could be the same as death in everything but name. Stone-to-flesh spells don't create plot holes the same way resurrection does.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Achievements. Completely meaningless, designed for retards who cannot go for five minutes without a pat on the back. They only serve to cover how shallow and generic the actual game is by constantly distracting you by handing out shinies.

I still remember the first "achievement unlocked - kill 10 wolves" or something forced in my face years ago. Wtf. Was that a quest I did not know I had? Nope, nothing in quest log. No exp gained. Nothing in inventory. No acknowledgement by any characters. Nothing.
After looking thorough everything for a few minutes I had to conclude that it really serves no other purpose than to stroke egos.

Definitely this. Most recently Secret World had shit like this. I understand why a MMO would have that but I don't have to like it. Achievements are bad in any game really. They are usually half-baked due to being forced onto the developer to come up with something cool. When you constantly are earning goodies and achievements and this other collectible thing here and there - it all blurs together causing you to turn your brain off and stop caring.

 

[mondblut]

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.

How about being more inventive with plots and not just rip evening news and hollywood with some orcs and dragons loitering on the background?

If your "crisis situation" can be averted with a common spells, make a crisis situation which can not.

 

[laclongquan]

Resurrection mechanism is a beloved PnP feature.

So god help you if you remove it from games.

Because cheap spell has the storyfags up in arms, and expensive spell has the gameplayfags up in arms.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

JarlFrank
If the death effects are irreversible everyone will just reload the game once it happens. If resurrection spells are available but hard to obtain players might decide to live with it.
I'm all for the separate knockout status when your HP reaches 0, I'm just what games like Dragon Age did where nobody dies during the combat, and everyone magically wakes up if you manage to win. Especially since there are many things that are supposed to kill you, not knock you out or drain your HP to 0.
Now, not giving resurrection to players is another issue since it means that they will just reload every time someone dies, making the game more frustrating.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

There are a few things players do (and developers implement) that I don't get.

Recently saw some youtube vids on Fallout games and the guy who talked about them played New Vegas and Fallout 4 with companions following him everywhere. And I just don't get it. Having followers in first person RPGs is lame as fuck, all they do is cramp your style, especially in something as clunky as Bethesda's Fallouts where they only get in your way when you wanna shoot at the enemy.

I don't get the appeal of having companions in first or third person action RPGs, yet devs keep implementing them and players apparently like it. New Vegas, Skyrim, Fallout 4 all have companions. Elex has companions. Chances are, if you play a modern action RPG there are companions you can recruit to follow you around.

Everyone hates escort quests, but companions in those kinds of games are cool? How? It feels like having a constant escort quest character tagging along with you. You have to babysit your companions to make sure they don't suicide themselves and it just makes the game more stressful and annoying. There are zero gameplay benefits to having an uncontrollable AI companion tag along with you in an action RPG. You can't coordinate your attacks with your companion in most of these games, so it's not like you can involve them in tactical approaches. Once the enemy spots you, your companion's AI will just derp out and go on a frontal attack, and if you don't want him/her to die you have to also run forward and do your best to prevent the enemies from killing the retard.

I'll never understand the appeal of companions in action RPGs.

Are there any features/habits in RPGs that you don't understand the appeal of?

Companions are not such a big deal. It all depends on how they work. In FNV their role is basically that of a mule. You load all the shite that you don't want to carry on them.

The things I personally do not comprehend at all are:

1. fascination with "loot". Every enemy must drop something that you must pick up. Every box contains shite that you the player must slurp to feel "empowered". Why can't the game just implement a "search" check that allows the player to *quickly* find non-trash in a room? Also, most places should not even have anything useful.

2. Magical trinkets: You play a D&D based game and are showered by magical stuff from day one. What is the appeal of that? Especially, +X items? They are mathematics and completely boring. The habit associated with this is a constant demand for "itemization" which boils down to PoE like the design of items where everything is equally pointless. What gives? Should you not rather ask for more unique, rare items that obtained in thematically correct places? Or that you can craft from rare finds?

3. Inventory: People try to cram everything they find in it. Instead, inventory should allow a *very* small allotment of items that you can meaningfully carry alongside your armament. What is the purpose and utility of carrying 100 spears of lightning? The problem is directly related to the points above.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Who forgot to feed ERYFKRAD again ?

 

[Silly Germans]

How does Resurrection work in PnP ? Aren't there causes of death that deny
resurrection afterwards ? I only know how the games handle it and in BG II
Jaheira says that she can't revive Khalid for some reasons. Is this valid in PnP
or was this made up for the game ?

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

How does Resurrection work in PnP ? Aren't there causes of death that deny
resurrection afterwards ? I only know how the games handle it and in BG II
Jaheira says that she can't revive Khalid for some reasons. Is this valid in PnP
or was this made up for the game ?

It depends on the edition. In ADnD your standard raise dead spell can only bring back someone if you have a complete body, the number of days the guy has been dead cannot exceed priests level, and there is a percentage chance based on condition on the spell not working. So if Khalid had some parts missing or had been dead for more than a month bringing him back would be unlikely.
However once party gets access to resurrection which is higher level version of raise dead or a wish spell they should be able to bring him back, unless his soul was unwilling/unavailable.
Higher level spells could solve many of the party issues like letting Aerie get her wings back.

 

[NJClaw]

How does Resurrection work in PnP ? Aren't there causes of death that deny
resurrection afterwards ? I only know how the games handle it and in BG II
Jaheira says that she can't revive Khalid for some reasons. Is this valid in PnP
or was this made up for the game ?

Every resurrection spell has some requirements that restrict its usage: to cast Raise Dead you need the entire body of the target, while to cast Resurrection a small piece is enough.

However, since D&D is a very free-form game in its nature, the real limits of those spells are completely up to the players: you can decide that certain spells or rituals make it impossible to bring back to life someone. Generally, here and there in the handbooks there are examples of things that prevent resurrection (usually, it's stuff that somehow irremediably damages the soul of who's dying).

 

[laclongquan]

I always think the condition of whole body is more logical, while the "a piece" condition of resurrection is sloppy. It means the latter spell are going to regenerating a new body from that piece, a fully different spell tack on to that one~

 

[Quillon]

FUCK MAGIC

 

[NJClaw]

I always think the condition of whole body is more logical, while the "a piece" condition of resurrection is sloppy. It means the latter spell are going to regenerating a new body from that piece, a fully different spell tack on to that one~

The difference in PnP (at least in 3.5) is that Resurrection requires a costly material component (10,000 gp), while Regenerate (the spell that regrows limbs) is free.

 

[DalekFlay]

Every resurrection spell has some requirements that restrict its usage: to cast Raise Dead you need the entire body of the target, while to cast Resurrection a small piece is enough.

However, since D&D is a very free-form game in its nature, the real limits of those spells are completely up to the players: you can decide that certain spells or rituals make it impossible to bring back to life someone. Generally, here and there in the handbooks there are examples of things that prevent resurrection (usually, it's stuff that somehow irremediably damages the soul of who's dying).

I get that managing limited spells and scrolls is part of the strategy in D&D type games, and limping back to town with two dead party members creates unique challenges. However in general I'm much more interested in mid-battle challenges than post battle management. In general I'd probably make resurrection during combat much harder than it is in most CRPGs, and resurrection after battle much easier than it is in most CRPGs. Though I understand and enjoy both approaches.

 

[DraQ]

Regarding resurrection and so on:
It's actually pretty hard to immediately kill a human(oid). It's actually much harder to instakill someone than to put them out of the fight. It's actually pretty silly to just have fighting shape and dead states and adding 10HP buffer below 0 on top of that is not much of an improvement.

Ideally there should be multiple largely independent components to character's state without even going into detailed wound systems:

• Character could be conscious or not
• Character could be ambulatory or not
• Character could have use of their arms or not
• Character could have working senses or not
• Character could be incapacitated by pain
• Character could be incapacitated by morale failure (in multiple different ways)
  
• Character could have altered states of consciousness
• Character's state could be stable, improving or deteriorating for a number of reasons (poison, blood loss, shock, vital system damage)

So you could have, for example:

• A blinded guy with broken arm - won't put up a fight or even escape on their own, but can walk
• Unconscious, but stable/improving guy - can be dragged away and should just recover in time or with right care
• An injured, bleeding guy with broken legs - can't move or really fight and will die if left on their own, but might still try to shoot some ranged weapons
  
• A poisoned guy who will die on their own and is hallucinating
• A dying guy with caved in chest or maybe a guy's decapitated head - will irreversibly die in minutes, more if chilled down, a corpse unless you know some way of putting them in stasis AND have access to tech or magic to restore them to function (a large AND prosperous kingdom *might* have a guy who can do stuff like that - maybe he can do that given some favours, because you are not going to have enough money to afford paying for that - quest opportunity?)
• A guy with caved-in skull - get that shovel ready
• A pile of ash - already pre-cremated for you!

Incapacitated character shouldn't be dramatically easier to immediately kill than a fighting one. The difference (like coup the grace mechanics) should be more reliant on being able to perform unopposed attack with an appropriate weapon (suited for type and size of creature attacked) and should quite reliably put character in dying state (regardless of whether character was incapacitated before, apart from incapacitation preventing defense), but even that should often not kill character outright unless it's something like stabbing/shooting brain through the eye or crushing skull.

After battle the wounded would need care and rest making party vulnerable (else their state could deteriorate).
Already deteriorating characters would need immediate care before they died. Bringing different kinds of injuries back from the brink of death would require different levels and kind of magic. Injuries would cause stat penalties (which might be permanent or not, without player having this information, but with likelihood of recovery depending on speed and quality of care), permanent bodypart injuries (lost limb or eye) would require rare and expensive means to fix (somewhat short of what is needed to restore decapitated head), but might also open some alternatives - like having artificer (or cyberdoc, depending on setting) make an artificial limb or eye (of quality depending on their skill and resources) that might have its own advantages and disadvantages, and could make a talking piece (opening new opportunities).
Scars might reduce your comeliness but should make a talking piece too.
Hell, having buried a companion might open quest opportunities and make a talking piece.

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)

Consider it a roleplaying opportunity where you get to bury your companions and gameplay opportunity to try out some other ones.

Typically replacing dying with being knocked out is a perfect solution, but the downside is that now nobody can die in combat, sine they won't be able to be brought back. So no killing spells, no poison, no poison gas, no killing gaze, no vorpal blades etc. Basilisk that "knocks you out" with his gaze is just silly.

Hence the idea is not replace dying, it's to add buffer states between combat capable and dead and make them interesting.

Poison is typically not instakill, most of the stuff either doesn't kill you immediately or should be prepared against beforehand.
For example Perseus didn't really Leeroy Jenkins the Medusa hoping for petrification not to proc, did he?
Besides, petrification is already super-convenient as it already stabilizes the victim in one of the most permanent ways possible.
If you don't succeed in bringing the affected companion back, maybe your grandchildren will.

JarlFrank
If the death effects are irreversible everyone will just reload the game once it happens. If resurrection spells are available but hard to obtain players might decide to live with it.

As if everybody didn't do that already.

If you don't want players to reload make reloading costly or unavailable (or add incentives to persevering in the face of adversity).

 

[DraQ]

Why can't the game just implement a "search" check that allows the player to *quickly* find non-trash in a room? Also, most places should not even have anything useful.

Morrowind had detect magic and detect key spells.

They didn't cover all things you might have wanted to find, mind you, but most good stuff was placed sensibly or purposefully hidden.

Skyrim (at least reqtified) has fairly predictable container contents, so you don't end up rummaging through all the sacks and barrels unless you are specifically after food or a few common ingredients.

Inventory: People try to cram everything they find in it. Instead, inventory should allow a *very* small allotment of items that you can meaningfully carry alongside your armament. What is the purpose and utility of carrying 100 spears of lightning? The problem is directly related to the points above.

Reqtified Skyrim again - has rather limited inventory.

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?

Rolling for stats.

You can also combine, for example in Daggerfall you use point buy, then roll for stat bonuses on top of that, then may have some leftover points to distribute after roll.

Or you can go full retard like BG, where you technically roll for stats, but can then freely redistribute the points so in the end you are actually rolling for point pool and keep re-rolling until you get suitably large sum.

 

[DraQ]

Ideally you should be forced to do some nasty shit at some points merely to not game over but what kind of nasty shit would vary depending on circumstances, build and player's choices.

Depends on how much you like grimdark stuff. As someone who does not like this kind of things, and that's only my own taste, I hate to have to do nasty shit for non-evil reasons (I know we're talking about mass murder simulators but anyway). Fighting against some wanna-destroy-the-world evil guys and their minions is 100% fine to me, but if I get to choose between different sides to work for then I'd rather have everybody you can work for be a bastard (like some crazy megacorp leader) and the jobs being about slashing other dickheads so that's it's cool, not cringy. I hate edgy moral choices such as choosing which group of kittens (you can replace kittens with civilians if you want) to work for, slaughtering kittens because they're contagious or choosing between saving a child or his mother or which of the two poor pacifist towns will get running water or such stuff. I want this kind of stuff to be reserved to evil parties so that I can skip it myself.

There is nothing more grimdark than 100% feel good genocide sims.
Fake heroism also feels worthless and tastes like ash if there is no risk of failure or price to pay (and price to pay by hero just before end credits roll has little impact on player most of the time, because it does not cost player anything).

Besides, this kind of stuff can (and should) be well integrated.
Say, you have been framed and are pursuing a BBEG and run into a bunch of guards who are genuinely convinced that it is you who need to be stopped - do you try to defuse the situation knowing it will cost you time and people out there lives, maybe will end up with some of your party members dying before you get the hostilities to stop, or do you cut a bloody path through the guards?

Do you kill an innocent who risks ruining your plan to infiltrate BBEG's base?

Etc.

If I want a feelgood game (and I might) I don't end up playing a cRPG that will end up with hundreds of kills under my belt.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Besides, this kind of stuff can (and should) be well integrated.
Say, you have been framed and are pursuing a BBEG and run into a bunch of guards who are genuinely convinced that it is you who need to be stopped - do you try to defuse the situation knowing it will cost you time and people out there lives, maybe will end up with some of your party members dying before you get the hostilities to stop, or do you cut a bloody path through the guards?

Do you kill an innocent who risks ruining your plan to infiltrate BBEG's base?

Etc.

BG1 already had that sort of moral conundrum, near the beginning of the game you run into a flaming-fist mercenary who thinks that you're a fleeing criminal and wants to arrest you. You can either diffuse the situation and get some xp, or you can simply attack him and get some free full plate armor, which is pretty hard to get at this point of the game. I always chose to kill him.

If I want a feelgood game (and I might) I don't end up playing a cRPG that will end up with hundreds of kills under my belt.

There's no better feelgood game than an RPG where you endup with hundreds of kills under your belt. M&M 6-8 are one of the best feelgood games out there.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

If you don't succeed in bringing the affected companion back, maybe your grandchildren will.

-Man, where did you found this rad statute standing in your kitchen?
- My great grandfather was an adventurer and brought it home from one of his dungeon expeditions. He died two years later, the statue is a family heirloom now.
- So cool!

 

[jac8awol]

Something that really bugs me is where they try to cater to diplomacy, stealth and combat at the same time but the systems don't integrate well and it feels like you are missing out on most of the experience. Example, Tides of Numenera, I had a talky character so I didn't have to engage in much combat. But the game still had itemization geared towards combat, so all the consumables I found were health potions, weapons and cash. But I never needed to use any of these things, or to buy new equipment, so it was all pointless.

Either take combat out and make it an adventure (eek) or make it combat focused like the tried and trusted D&D formula. Best itemization and consumable experience I can think of is Swordflight, the fanmade NWN module that Lilura recommended a while back. That was truly excellent, you have to use everything you find and you barely scrape by. Extremely satisfying.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

If you don't succeed in bringing the affected companion back, maybe your grandchildren will.

-Man, where did you found this rad statute standing in your kitchen?
- My great grandfather was an adventurer and brought it home from one of his dungeon expeditions. He died two years later, the statue is a family heirloom now.
- So cool!

The plan will work if a statue is a woman. Horny teens in fantasy worlds probably mass cast stone to flesh on everything with tits.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Something that really bugs me is where they try to cater to diplomacy, stealth and combat at the same time but the systems don't integrate well and it feels like you are missing out on most of the experience. Example, Tides of Numenera, I had a talky character so I didn't have to engage in much combat. But the game still had itemization geared towards combat, so all the consumables I found were health potions, weapons and cash. But I never needed to use any of these things, or to buy new equipment, so it was all pointless.

Either take combat out and make it an adventure (eek) or make it combat focused like the tried and trusted D&D formula. Best itemization and consumable experience I can think of is Swordflight, the fanmade NWN module that Lilura recommended a while back. That was truly excellent, you have to use everything you find and you barely scrape by. Extremely satisfying.

Why not make itemisation work for diplomats as well? In Disco Elysium you could change your clothes to up your social stats. In magic-rich settings you could have enchantments improving your speech, glamours, etc. In no-magic settings, fancy clothes could improve NPC reactions to you, though I don't think you can do much to improve skills like speech or barter without feeling gamey. In sci-fi settings you could have all kinds of implants or brain-software to help you with this.
Another approach is something that Ostranauts is trying with their "social combat", i.e. turning conversations into kind of fights - I'm looking forward to trying that system out.

 

[Norfleet]

The plan will work if a statue is a woman. Horny teens in fantasy worlds probably mass cast stone to flesh on everything with tits.

You know, I'm very curious...What happen if you cast stone to flesh on something that is legit a statue? Does it turn into a critter-shaped blob of quivering, undifferentiated meat, or does it actually become a body of the thing that the statue was of, with structural components like bones, muscles, and organs? Is it alive but braindead, or merely just dead? How dead? Could the organs be sold on the black market?