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What is the point of low lethality?

Cryomancer

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Oblivion is the most iconic example, on normal, at lv 40+, with maxed STR, magically enchanted daedric warhammer, maxed blunt weapon, some mobs like Xivilais can soak 50 hits. Each lv up of the player gives + 12 hp to a Xivilai but each lv up from the player hardly gives +1 damage and has a hard cap. Believe or not, this ultra powerful spell which deals dozens of times more damage than any spell that exists without spellmaking can't kill certain creatures at high level. It deals 28x more damage than a fireball.

2LZ0W9t.png

Daggerfall had a spell capable of OHKilling the enemy.

6EzghNK.png

source : https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Destruction_Spells

On many modern games with disintegrate spells, it only deals damage in a beam. On Arcanum it was right. It could be used even to disintegrate objects in the world, like doors, windows and safes. Imagine if in a Star Trek or any SCI FI series, they develop a weapon who launches a "disintegration beam" and that weapon is said that can disintegrate steel like it is nothing, only to hit multiple times the MC or a villain without disintegrating him with no explanation. Silly right? Why people accept this on video games? 2E also did it right. Or the target resisted the spell or is dust. Ghosts and other incorporeal creatures has no "matter" to be disintegrated hence are immune to the spell. If cloudkill insta kill weaklings on D&D novels, it should OHK on D&D games(computer or not). Before the balancegs say "it is op", no it is not. Enemies use it against the player. For eg, players on M&M can do shit like cast meteor shower, fly and cast finger of death to OHK enemies? Yes, but enemies uses this spells against the player. Every "non worker" demon is a master of fire magic and can cast meteor shower and similar high level fire spells in the player while he is immune to his damage; I OHKilled my own party by misjudging the distance when casting Dragon's Breath and it was cool. There are a dungeon full of undead cyclops and with traps that casts cloudkill and finger of death on kingmaker. Every spell, weapon, superpower or wathever that a PC can cast, a NPC can cast.

Low lethality just takes out all of the tension of the game. Believe or not, I had a fight on BG3 which took 1 hour and 13 minutes. It is slow as Wizardry 8, another turn based game with low lethality and very slow animations. Watching the same animation over and over and seeing over and over the same animation is just boring. 90s RPG's like Dark Sun : Wake of The Ravager has a way better turn combat. The animations are fast and can be skipped, not mentioning that few creatures can survive a hit by a buffed half giant gladiator. Some games are great DESPITE the low lethality like Fallout New Vegas, but FNV would be better with 4~5x more lethality. If a securitron with 25mm grenade launchers was actually dangerous. The low lethality also makes slow to reload weapons with few capacity like the double barrel shotgun worthless. At least FNV made armor absorbing by a flat amount, contrary to BUGthesda's games, so repeating high caliber guns like the Brush gun(.45-70) is good VS larger animals and the anti materiel rifle can outDPS a 9mm SMG vs heavily armored enemies. You don't have fast firing weapons being the best in any situation. Sadly the game has a minimum damage, when hitting a securitron with a .22 LR pistol should deal 0 damage.

9k2R4DN.png
 
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Butter

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AAA devs err on the side of low lethality so that their retarded sausage-finger players don't immediately die. I don't know if we've ever seen it in an RPG, but there is definitely a point at which you have too much lethality. Consider a hypothetical game in which everyone dies in one hit. Your healing spells are completely worthless, and melee fighters always die before getting in range. You want a goldilocks zone of medium lethality that allows for more strategic variation but isn't mind-numbingly boring and tedious.
 

Cryomancer

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Consider a hypothetical game in which everyone dies in one hit. Your healing spells are completely worthless, and melee fighters always die before getting in range. You want a goldilocks zone of medium lethality that allows for more strategic variation but isn't mind-numbingly boring and tedious.

There is any CRPG where it happens?
 

Tavernking

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Consider a hypothetical game in which everyone dies in one hit. Your healing spells are completely worthless, and melee fighters always die before getting in range. You want a goldilocks zone of medium lethality that allows for more strategic variation but isn't mind-numbingly boring and tedious.

There is any CRPG where it happens?

My game is pretty high lethality where everyone has 3 hitpoints and each successful hit takes away 1-3 hitpoints. Healing spells are rare.
 

buffalo bill

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Consider a hypothetical game in which everyone dies in one hit. Your healing spells are completely worthless, and melee fighters always die before getting in range. You want a goldilocks zone of medium lethality that allows for more strategic variation but isn't mind-numbingly boring and tedious.

There is any CRPG where it happens?
Angel of Humanity mode in Doomrl
 

Rafidur

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Tactics Ogre is a good example of a game where lethality is too high. There's dozens of classes and monster types, but if you're using anything but archers you're gimping yourself, as they can kill everything else before it gets in range to do anything.
 

Tyranicon

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There's a real argument to be made that realistic melee combat, especially if you're dealing with shieldwalls and shit, does actually have really low lethality with the vast % of casualties only being inflicted during a rout.

But of course, the easier and more accurate answer is that devs want to reach the casual audience.
 

Cryomancer

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Tactics Ogre is a good example of a game where lethality is too high. There's dozens of classes and monster types, but if you're using anything but archers you're gimping yourself, as they can kill everything else before it gets in range to do anything.

Have anti archers tactics. Shield walls, casters that can create fogs and so on. On GURPS Technomancer, a .338 lapua magnum rifle can OHK 6 times a player character with average damage a mile away. Spells that obscure vision are amazing VS marskan, the strategy on GURPS is all about avoiding being hit, not soaking more damage. I an not saying that a .22 LR rifle should kill a guy on FNV char wearing power armor, but a street dog surviving a 12 gauge buckshot round, followed by a 12 gauge incendiary "dragon breath" round is silly. Legionaries soaking 2 .45-70 rounds in his head is also silly. I can get super mutants being ultra resistant, but not regular humans.
 

Takamori

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Pacing, gameplay approach if you want something more casual friend, dictate a gamefied approach instead of a realistic approach on the game. Several excuses for low lethality, but its not something that will dictate if the game is good or not. You can have a high lethality game with a dogshit system as a good system for low lethality.
 
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That's nothing the best is when you have a spell that actually kills an enemy in one hit but all the bosses or high level enemies are completely inmune to it
 

Cryomancer

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a good system for low lethality.

Name one please. Cuz the BEST RPG's are high lethality. It applies to TT and CRPG's. Just compare GURPS, D&D 2e with D&D 4e. And it doesn't apply only on RPG's. ArmA 3, Red Orchestra and insurgency >>>> Overwatch.

Knight of the Chalice 2 gets pretty damn close.

Now I wanna play it even more. Why Pierre doesn't put it on GoG/steam?
 

Tyranicon

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a good system for low lethality.

Name one please. Cuz the BEST RPG's are high lethality. It applies to TT and CRPG's. Just compare GURPS, D&D 2e with D&D 4e. And it doesn't apply only on RPG's. ArmA 3, Red Orchestra and insurgency >>>> Overwatch.

Knight of the Chalice 2 gets pretty damn close.

Now I wanna play it even more. Why Pierre doesn't put it on GoG/steam?

Coming soon on GoG: https://af.gog.com/game/knights_of_the_chalice_2?as=1649904300
 
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Roguey

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Oblivion's just incompetently tuned. :M

On many modern games with disintegrate spells, it only deals damage in a beam. On Arcanum it was right. It could be used even to disintegrate objects in the world, like doors, windows and safes. Imagine if in a Star Trek or any SCI FI series, they develop a weapon who launches a "disintegration beam" and that weapon is said that can disintegrate steel like it is nothing, only to hit multiple times the MC or a villain without disintegrating him with no explanation. Silly right? Why people accept this on video games? 2E also did it right. Or the target resisted the spell or is dust. Ghosts and other incorporeal creatures has no "matter" to be disintegrated hence are immune to the spell. If cloudkill insta kill weaklings on D&D novels, it should OHK on D&D games(computer or not). Before the balancegs say "it is op", no it is not. Enemies use it against the player. For eg, players on M&M can do shit like cast meteor shower, fly and cast finger of death to OHK enemies? Yes, but enemies uses this spells against the player. Every "non worker" demon is a master of fire magic and can cast meteor shower and similar high level fire spells in the player while he is immune to his damage; I OHKilled my own party by misjudging the distance when casting Dragon's Breath and it was cool. There are a dungeon full of undead cyclops and with traps that casts cloudkill and finger of death on kingmaker. Every spell, weapon, superpower or wathever that a PC can cast, a NPC can cast.

Josh Sawyer said:
Take something like the classic spell Disintegrate from A/D&D. In older editions, this was a total win/loss spell. If the target failed the save, it died, flat out. People effectively used this as an effective degenerate tactic against many difficult enemies in Infinity Engine games. The first spell cast would be Disintegrate. If the target made its save, the player would just reload and try again.

With Disintegrate reworked as a spell that does a large amount of damage on a failed save and a decent amount of damage on a successful save, it's no longer an all-or-nothing spell that encourages save scumming. The effects are still variable, the results of the save still matter, but it's one check that's normalized with many others during combat. The more the randomized checks of combat are normalized, the more the player's specific character strategies and tactics matter.
 

Cryomancer

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Josh Sawyer said:

Sorry, but magery is awful on all sawyer games. Spell fixes is a must have on NWN2.

You often fight against multiple enemies and you can't use this spell against then all. The unique moment which I save scummed in a 2e CRPG adaptation was in the underdark of dark sun : wake of the ravager. And yes, his idea is awful. His spells resembles far more 4e lackluster spells than 2e spells. Look to 4e disintegrate. It in text transform "flesh and bones in a puff of gray dust". In gameplay, just deals a little of damage, and somehow is evocation. WTF?

w6IZaCA.png
 

Roguey

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It in text transform "flesh and bones in a puff of gray dust". In gameplay, just deals a little of damage, and somehow is evocation. WTF?

That's needlessly dumb, but that's the explanation. Devs who don't want the sting of sometimes-nothing spells or a reliance on the crutch of an instant win against any particular opponent.
 

Butter

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Disintegrate was designed for TT. In a CRPG where people can savescum you should design your systems differently. Save or die is completely retarded in that context, and that has nothing to do with high/low lethality.
 

Cryomancer

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Devs who don't want the sting of sometimes-nothing spells or a reliance on the crutch of an instant win against any particular opponent.

Don't include a sci fi weapon, spell, superpower, mutation, or wathever called "disintegrate" unless it will actually disintegrate stuff.

Disintegrate was designed for TT. In a CRPG where people can savescum you should design your systems differently. Save or die is completely retarded in that context, and that has nothing to do with high/low lethality.

If the game proposal is to be a TT adaptation, it needs to be like the TT game. Look, DDO is not even close to be a good adaptation of TT rules. It even has cooldowns and mana bars instead of vancian magic system. But there is a lot of OHK spells on DDO. My first death on DDO was in a quest about getting 3 tomes in a place full of undeads and I died to Phantasmal killer on the final dungeon room. Was my fault for not being prepared. Scrolls of deathward are cheap and few monsters tries to dispel this type of defense. Now DDO has a hardcore league, where you only have a single chance and takes a very long time to reach high levels on DDO. If you don't like the idea of the risk of losing a high level character to a RNG based OHK spell, don't play HC.

You can design a game where save scumming is not allowed. But Temple of elemental evil allow you to save/load even mid battle. Give the freedom to the player, if he wanna to save scum, is his problem.
 

Tweed

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Sorry, but magery is awful on all sawyer games. Spell fixes is a must have on NWN2.

You often fight against multiple enemies and you can't use this spell against then all. The unique moment which I save scummed in a 2e CRPG adaptation was in the underdark of dark sun : wake of the ravager. And yes, his idea is awful. His spells resembles far more 4e lackluster spells than 2e spells. Look to 4e disintegrate. It in text transform "flesh and bones in a puff of gray dust". In gameplay, just deals a little of damage, and somehow is evocation. WTF?

Ironically I used a spell almost exactly like that to kill the last boss in Knights of the Chalice 1 (not 2), I was just looking to do some damage and I got him with a 2% chance.
 

mondblut

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Josh Sawyer said:
Take something like the classic spell Disintegrate from A/D&D. In older editions, this was a total win/loss spell. If the target failed the save, it died, flat out. People effectively used this as an effective degenerate tactic against many difficult enemies in Infinity Engine games. The first spell cast would be Disintegrate. If the target made its save, the player would just reload and try again.

The problem with disintegrate and other save or die magic is that everyone worth casting this spell upon is guaranteed to be immune against it. Egads, why would you want to prance into the final battle and end the superboss with a single silly spell? Noo, boss battles should last for hours with the mandatory "this is not even my final form" trope, anything else would be anticlimacteric or whatever. And against mooks, that's a waste of slots better spent on something more reliable and AOE (AKA fireball).

Why blame people for reloading when this is the only way to make these spells remotely useful? Designers should stop being such pussies mortified at the thought that crafty players would pwn the pride of their monster fleet too easily.
 

Cryomancer

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anything else would be anticlimacteric or whatever.

On Dragon's Dogma, you can kill the final boss of the non DLC with Maker's Finger. DD has the best longbow of fantasy RPG's. On most games it is a "trash" weapon.

At 1:13


boss battles should last for hours with the mandatory "this is not even my final form" trope, anything else would be anticlimacteric or whatever.

On Dark Sun : Wake of the Ravager, I OHKilled lv 25 Drakes with OHK spells. On Baldur's Gate 2, you can finger to death even a demon lord on the underdark. OHK spells only become worthless on Throne of Bhaal. And you don't need to save scum on this games to have a good OHK chance. For eg, a "trigger" with lower resist + lower resist + greater malison, in the hands of a specialized necromancer can give 65% chance of Firkraag failing his save against the FoD if the malison is on, 45% if it isn't. Combined, that's a 64% chance of failing his save. Then it's 95% to beat the remaining magic resistance with the FoD, for an overall 60.8% chance of the two-round kill. Obviously that strategy requires a high level character with access to high level spells, but you got my point.

wSBlumc.png

Ironically I used a spell almost exactly like that to kill the last boss in Knights of the Chalice 1 (not 2), I was just looking to do some damage and I got him with a 2% chance.

LOL. That is cool IMO.
 

Takamori

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On Dragon's Dogma, you can kill the final boss of the non DLC with Maker's Finger. DD has the best longbow of fantasy RPG's. On most games it is a "trash" weapon..

I was gonna mention Dragon's Dogma as a good RPG with low lethality and very lenient with how many consumable you can have. Shadowrun I don't remember you having a stroke during any combat .
FNV we could have a discussion thats a refurbished system from what bethesda garbage did, but honestly IMO they did a good job from what they had in hands and actually gave a Fallout twist it was missing.
 

Cryomancer

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Dragon's Dogma as a good RPG with low lethality and very lenient with how many consumable you can have

Yep. But IMO Dragon's Dogma is much better on the hard mode. Where a cyclops with a flaming gigantic club can OHK you at mid levels with no problem. My greatest problem of DD is that consumables takes no time to eat, I can press the menu, the game's time freezes and insta eat a lot of things to heal my hp and stamina instantly, The game should require a eating/drinking animation.,
 
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Generic-Giant-Spider

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With Disintegrate reworked as a spell that does a large amount of damage on a failed save and a decent amount of damage on a successful save, it's no longer an all-or-nothing spell that encourages save scumming. The effects are still variable, the results of the save still matter, but it's one check that's normalized with many others during combat.

How to take something with flavor and make it another boring "it does damage" spell.
 

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