Chance for Incapacitation

People will hear "incapacitation" or "downed state" and think about GW2's system, but this is not what I propose.

When your health runs out, it would be interesting to sometimes fall to the ground wounded instead of instantly perishing, depending on the final blow delivered. Taking a hard hitting axe to the chest, depleting your health, would be very much a standard death. If your health is whittled down to empty through tiny hits or poison, perhaps you merely fall to the ground incapable of fighting or performing any actions until you bleed out or possibly bandage your wounds very slowly, assuming you are left alone.

What this might do is open up several new dynamics to gameplay. It could allow other players to be able to heal you without having to resurrect you if they catch you in this condition. It could also change the PK dynamic if a thief wishes to incapacitate you rather than kill you for whatever incentives that may bring. The strategy of hitting lightly vs heavily or poisoning to not immediately kill targets could become a playstyle some wish to follow. A highwayman but not a murderer for example. Violent crimes do not always result in death.

A hearty fighter may have a larger window to be incapacitated rather than killed immediately due to high survivability skills or stats. When fighting in a group, this would be desirable as the fighter could be healed by anyone rather than needing a full rez from someone who can do it.

All in all, just another layer to the gameplay onion, providing more options and more realism to the experience. I always hated being near death and taking a needle to the toe, keeling over dead. Lesser finishing blows should have a more realistic outcome that can also add strategy and depth, without being overpowering or unfair.

 

I like your idea. I hope certain weapons like a battle axe or a two handed sword could have the ability to do this type of thing at a higher rate like a special ability. If it doesn't kill you ought right maybe it could in capacitate you if you're within 10hp or something. Waiting for a head removing final blow or mercy.

 

This is something that was common in Bioware's NWN via a Hardcore ruleset by the community.

Basically when killed you can take damage in the negative. At -11 HP you were dead, but between 0 and -10 you were "bleeding". While bleeding, based on your Constitution, you have the change to recover. So every round you would do a DC check and if you failed you lost 1 HP, but if you succeeded you would "stabilize". Once stabilized you had a "chance" of gaining 1 HP every round instead of loosing (with a chance of going back into a bleeding state as well). Once you reached 1 HP you would stand up and be on your own.

This was a great system. If you were at 1 HP and took 12 damage you were dead, but if you were at 10 HP you had some chance to survive. This also gave people a change to save you, or survive on your own. Smarter enemies would still come in to pick you off while you were bleeding, but dumber ones would leave you alone allowing recovery time. Of course, not that standing up with 1 HP in the middle of a hoard of wolves was any better.

I think adding some barrier at the verge of death would be a great idea in SOTA. This slows down the battle and adds additional strategy. It allows for parties to recoup and can provide some surprising "tide-turning" events to every encounter. However, one thing I never liked about the NWN system is monsters NPCs did not follow the same rules. I think it would be nice to need to stab the fallen just to make sure they were dead before you left them to your back.

 

This doesn't need to happen at 0 hp. You could simply get weaker as you're being hacked apart.

 

@Primerib

The bleeding system in NWN used 0 hp because it was an aftermarket script created by a community member. Because the base game only allow firing to 3rd party scripts after 0 hp was hit, this is why it was implemented this way. Obviously with SOTA they can build this into the engine, so they could use any threshold they want.

I was just using the NWN system as an example because it handled the OP's situation very nice from a "process" perspective. As long as something like this exist, I have no problem where this happens at 0 or at a % of health or whatever.

HP 0 is just an expected limit. I think it is important for the player to know when this is going to happen. As HP 0 is "death" this is something people already have in mind, but as long as someone knows that at x limit you are going to become a limp noodle it doesn't matter what the threshold is. You just need some potion swig reaction time.

 

I'm willing to concede that someone fighting is so full of adrenalin that they can be at half health without too much noticeable effects. But anything below that, I just would like to see their motor skills, etc. degrade heavily.

I suppose WoW simulated this by giving a lot of classes special finishers to use on targets under 20% or so.

In Neverwinter as your health goes down you can see the screen sort of red and flashing like you have blood in your eyes and you're heart is racing.

It just seems silly to me to have someone with a sliver of health hit a potion and run off.

 

PrimeRib, imagine if the guy has 4 or 5 kickstarter accounts at immortal adenturer level, with different email accounts and then he trades all the immoratality fruit to one account.

Then the person could be down to 5% of his hitpoints then pop back to full health 5 times before you can kill him. Then after planting the seeds he will have another 5 full heals the next day. What if somebody aquires 10 of those? Impossible? I don't think so.

 

The immortality fruit could always be set to be unique, or only one in your inventory at one time.
Or it could be set to not be usable while in direct 1v1 PvP if that was the concern.

As was mentioned here:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=non-lethal-combat-sparring-duels-and-yielding

My preference would be for a system that utilizes multiple 'downed' states, such as:

Stunned
Prone
Unconscious
Bleeding
Critically Injured
Dead
Dismembered

or some combination of those.

It really would add quite a bit more choice to combat for direct PvP as well as allow far more variety in NPC AI behavior.
A simple example is, if you're out hunting deer, and a deer gets a lucky kick to your head, it seems reasonable once you're unconscious, the deer could disengage from combat and run away. Some time passes, you recover, and get another chance.

Sure, you were incapacitated, but depending on who/what is attacking you, there's no reason to die 100% of the time. If you tie the virtues into the decisions (both for and against) made during these various stages of interaction, it has some real innovative potential as a mechanic. Also, other interactive mechanics such as conversations, (both social and political) could utilize such a mechanism, with differing states for winning or losing.

 

I like this idea but there's a few issues. First, most games that do have a system like this (though in PvP) offer the option that is basically "give up and respawn." This gets clicked 95% of the time. It's the easiest and fastest route. Next is the problem that if you're incapacitated, how can you bandage yourself. I could only see this system viable and used the way you describe in group situations, where a group member would pick up a fallen ally, to save a mage/healer having to resurrect the individual.

Now, what would be more awesome, is if you go incapacitated and you get picked up, you have a temporary injury that slows you down until the combat ends and you can be properly healed. Like if I'm incapacitated and picked up, lets say I suffered a concussion, and that would last until I can be relieved of it after combat. Leg injuries, arm injuries, etc. It's the trade off for not dying.

 

@Isaiah
Why would you allow that fruit to work during combat? Agreed, that would be game breaking and should never happen.

gw2 downed stat was interesting. But seemed almost OP. The first one downed often had the advantage.

But I generally like the thought of a "finisher" type move that can be used against a defenseless player. This would be like a thief backstab from AD&D. ofc, is able to counter if, they should have a pretty clean shot.

 

Why prolong your death? I'm just gonna kill you anyway

Older RPG's (Wasteland) had a system like this.

The original way death was handled in Wasteland: Unconscious, Serious, Critical, Mortal, Dead. If you can't/don't heal teammates before they die then that's on you.

But that was with a Party of 4, so two members might continue to battle and the one with Medic Skill would try to improve the condition of the injured. The greater the Medic skill, the better chance of improving the condition (even more severe injures). During one of those states, that character could not do anything.

If you could get the character back to unconscious, then you just had to let time pass till HPS went back to 1 and consciousness. The Other conditions needed Medical attention immediately or as time passed, the condition would get worse.

You could have conditions without losing consciousness, with each having a different effect / debuff.