Critical Injury & Death Penalties

This came up in my Health & Healing thread and I thought it deserved it's own discussion and I'm very interested in how both PvErs and PvPers respond..

Now before I throw the basic idea I do want to stress that I am suggesting that these penalties be very small so that nobody feels like they have to interrupt their adventure or PvP time to seek immediate cures. But I think this would add a very interesting element to combat in general.

So the basic idea is this.. when you receive a critical hit.. there would be a very small chance that you receive a slight but cumulative debuff reflecting the type of injury sustained. For example..

Head injury -1 Int
Body/Arm injury -1 Str
Body/Leg injury -1 Dex

Those are just some examples.. others might be slightly reduced regen.. such as a head injury incurring a -2% focus regen or an arm injury might incur a -2% weapon speed debuff.

Likewise death penalties would be the same but probably longer lasting.

Some other ideas that have come to mind.. include blurred vision, slowed movement, ringing in the ears.. there are all sorts of interesting things you could apply.

These would naturally all go away with time on their own but could also be cured with life magic or non-magical healing.

Again.. the idea is these would not be serious enough to interrupt your PvP or adventuring.. I want to stress that. But if you let injuries build up over a long period of time you will want to find a healer.

 

I like the idea also of your character gaining scars over time, especially if you've suffered major injury (ala Dragon Age / Elder Scrolls). The penalties from combat should not be permanent, but as stated, should require a skilled cleric/healer to remove the disfigurement.

 

As long as it weren't too intrusive/cumbersome, it might be fun? If I get the same effect constantly or it happens to stick too often, it might start feeling like a pain in the posterior rather than a fun mechanism. Like nausea in Minecraft, it doesn't harm you but it can be annoying if you have it on you constantly (kind of makes you nausea RL too) cuz nothing you can prevent you from getting it again immediately after curing it. Maybe a CD on each effect or something?

 

I like the idea of scars but that's very different tech and would be a lot harder to implement. Still I think it's worth pushing for.

 

Sounds like a series of 'debuff' spells that otherwise are mostly available only through chaos/juxtapose. Just positional.

Seems logical that a critical hit would score some effect other than just a little more damage, so I like this idea.

 

I'd say so long as the cool down isn't obvious to the player it's an interesting idea. Also there could be a cap on how severe injuries could get depending on how it's all balanced.

 

Um - - you do understand these are already there, but they are the attackers choice when they use certain spells or special moves.

Bludgeons - Knockback (chance to stun basically give 0 dex for a while)
Ranged - Blinding shot (actually says lowers dex)
Earth Quake - Stun
on and on

Now if you are saying the game shold check and see if the hit is to the head or other areas - that is WAY to complicated to even think about.

 

1: Those aren't critical hits and only last for a few seconds.. nor are they cumulative.
2: It wouldn't need to check to see where an attack hit.. it would just apply a random debuff. ie Head injury blurred vision 5 minutes or something. There's no need to actually try to actually try to determine a hit location.

I'm talking longer lasting, cumulative and random minor debuffs on critical hits and as death penalties.

 

Yea... In minecraft, the paperdoll shows arrows sticking out of the toon after fighting an archer. Perhaps our avatars can show various damages until the small debuff disappears. (Which begs the issue, why can't we pull up the paperdoll of others in game?)

 

I like @Bowen Bloodgood idea. It makes anything more roleplaying and also realistic at the same time. Would be cool to see as well the crippled leg or arm when checking your character.

 

Another excellent suggestion. Some points i'd like to highlight and taking things from this thread (bring it up once it's a shameless plug... bring it up twice it's just for exposure! )

So the way it is stated in the OP it sounds like every critical has a chance of being critical as well, so a critical critical inflicts an injury on the opponent. I like that, as it gives players a compelling reason to play with critical characters. "doing more damage" it's just a matter math... but inflicting wounds/reducing the max life of the enemy until he heals is another option that may make players say "omg i want to do that", and in a classless system, having attractive mechanics in all directions is one of the best ways to make the game attractive overall. What I'd like to see a critical impact reducing the opponent max life and then, each critical having a chance of inflicting some kind of wound that debufs your enemy to an exent.

On the other hand there's the acumulation/annoyness. I think that as long as it is a combat induced effect people may deem it as part of the game, but all this is pointless if we don't have different means to put our character back to shape, at least temporary. The things discussed in the non magical healing thread are a must before talking about this, and then some way for the Life spells to mitigate the effect of injuries (or removing them completely as a high spell) so you don't make people highly dependant on a single skill.

We also need to think that people not interested in raising healing or Life magic, so as first i'd keep my suggestion that in towns, you have increased health regeneration and a passive effects that makes you recover your injuries. For those in a rush, maybe a npc service of injury healing is needed (moderate high price so there's room for player healers to offer their services and charge for them - player driven economy yay!) and for those moments when you're in a pinch, i'd also put in an item that allows the non skilled to override the penalty from injuries completely for a short time or to an extent during a longer time.

Regarding the way injuries are applied, i'd limit the max amount you can debuff the enemy stats via critical (there's a limit on how badly your leg/torso/head can be injured while you're still standing) and also, reducing the chance of suffering an injury of the same kind for each injury of the same kind you've suffered.

 

As a PVEer, I don't mind the idea for myself personally. It may affect my choice of build in future, though. Currently I am a mage wearing cloth, and though I do have healing spells, they are low level (in the 20s), and I usually don't have them in my combat deck. I prefer to flee a battle and regain health in non-combat mode off in some remote corner. Needless to say, I die a lot. If I have to worry about cumulative debuffs upon death, I imagine I would do one or more of the following to minimize the risk of death:

• Give up the mage build
• Wear plate
• Include levelled up healing spells in my combat bar
• Completely avoid areas containing spiders and fauns (which prevent me from fleeing)

 

Some perspective should be put here... atm cloth survivability is low, and for what i've heard mage builds lacks power, so i don't think it's fair to evaluate a system that's being imagined against something that's currently flawed. I do agree that we still need to reach the point were cost of dying can be properly applied because with no balance, applying something like that right now would only go in detriment of the builds that lacks survival, and that's not cool, so even if this was already programmed it shouldn't be tested still.

Instead of focusing in how this could go against your current build because you currently die a lot (unintended) i think it's better to think "if everything were working as intended, how this could hit me?". Because of characters like yours (assuming they have the survivability they deserve) i suggested this

I'm sure that what's intended with this suggestion is to make the game more interesting, not to narrow down the effectivity of classes. As part of the proposal in the OP is stated that the injuries can be inflicted by critical effects so it's also interesting to think how it could work in a fire mage with all its DoTs (Guessing you're still playing fire maybe i'm wrong...). Should DoTs also apply injuries? if affirmative, should the chance be applied per tick or per spell use?.

That's the most interesting past of this for me; how this could extend the options a player has while planning the build of his character. Currently criticals are just something mathematically convenient, but introducing chance of additional effects per critical makes those attractive! With this, a fire mage build with criticals could be (even more) awesome. You could even have a spell in the Fire tree called cauterize that harms you but has a chance to heal a couple of injuries)

Bottom line is, choices should always be promoted, and the inclusion of new mechanics should be considered assuming that all choices are viable (because that's what's intended)

 

I would hope such a feature wouldn't require you to change your play style overly much. Part of the idea is that there is only a chance of injury.. so any cumulative effect serious enough to really start effecting your performance in a meaningful way should (in theory) take a long time before you really need to start looking for healing.. and even low level healing should help mitigate their effects..

However, I also believe death should be meaningful. Personally, I hate dying simply out of principle. It annoys me and it feels like failure. I will try to avoid it regardless of the penalties.. but for most it seems death is only meaningful when it has some bite to it. Right now it does not.

 

Oooooo magical crits.. that could get interesting. Just speaking of fire.. inflicting burns seems the obvious type of critical. Air might be a challenge.. cold could induce frostbite though.. I'm sure there is something for everyone..

 

Injuries could be repaired by going to a hospital (NPC cured). That way nobody is forced to take a spell to fix it.

 

I think we suggested that in the health & healing thread.. though probably more generically. Yes NPC healers should always be an option. Also, you could say that 'rest' such as spending time on a lot or in a non-PvP town in general might speed up recovery slightly. Rest offline could speed it up more significantly though going to the healer would be the most expeditious remedy.

 

As long as injuries don't happen very often.. I would love to see something like this implemented.. the penalty for dying right now has me literally dying and reviving constantly against a tough foe until that foe dies.. and that is a strange mechanism to allow.

I wouldn't want to have to run to the healer 5 times a day is what I'm saying.. maybe once a week... I guess that all depends on how often I get in the way of an enemy's swing...

 

Precisely the idea.. you'd want to seek a healer after you were done adventuring or PvPing.. with cumulative effects being both minor and random chance you shouldn't feel forced to interrupt your combat time.. but still want to seek a healer during your regular down time. But then you wouldn't want to abuse death mechanics either.

 

I agree 100%, and think this is a fine way to limit my death abuses lol We need this.

Imagine too, that a tougher foe would have more crippling hits than a regular enemy... preventing me from being so reckless.