Injuries

Some sort of injury system would be nice and could potentially add a lot of richness to combat.

The idea is this: during a particularly hard fight, you may suffer an injury to a particular bodypart. If it's your sword arm, you suffer attack penalties. Head, your accuracy falls and maybe ability to use active skills falls.

These injuries shouldn't just be random - either certain attacks, or maybe all attacks, hit a particular body part. That body part accumulates damage, and that leads to various debuffs when that body part has been hit enough times.

Certain skills either direct your basic attack towards certain bodyparts, or directly do damage to certain bodyparts, so you can use this in a strategic way. Fighting a mage? Bash their head so they have more trouble concentrating on casting. A swordsman? Go for the sword hand - or, maybe, the shield arm to lower their defense. Scared your enemy might run? Go for the legs. Want to run? Go for the legs! You have to make decisions based on what you think will give you the biggest advantage.

Injuries can accumulate and persist directly after combat, making healing even more important.

I like the richness and strategy this can bring to combat, but one additional perk is it takes care of what I always think is an awkward issue in RPGs - in most RPGs you can still for some reason hit just as hard when practically dead as when you were completely healthy.

 

I like the idea of injuries. They should be harder to heal than normal damage so a healer is required and should take a longer time for you to recover. Of course the problem would be that everyone would target your legs. In NWN certain classes could do "Called Shots" with a choice of slowing an enemy or reducing their attack damage (legs or arms).

I also like the idea of illnesses that could work the same way. Stay out in the rain you get sick. Realms of Arkania had some nice mechanics; however, the game quickly because a Rest management task. Have the same guy stand watch or gather herbs and you got sick. Didn't collect herbs? Oops, no way to cure the sickness.

However, if those little touches are added without too much in the way of monotony it can really add some realism and unpredictability to the world. I love games where things happen and you just have to run away.

 

I have a couple of questions

1. How am I supposed to select a body part?

2. After combat, how am I going to look at the condition I am in?

I like the concept. seems very reminiscent of Fallout, but without vats

 

@Strongsquirrel1

1. I would see you having skills called Target Legs, Target Arms, Target Head, etc. Of course without more examples of how combat will work this is hard to visualize, but I would think these would be cards in your deck so to speak.

2. This could be be done by some status text that floats up occasionally ("Your arm is injured"), or your character could limp or clutch an arm. However, these special animations may be too much to add on EP1 if it not already being planned. Obviously if there is a character sheet page you would see it there too. I imagine there will be status effects, so this would be no different than those.

 

@Strongsquirrel1 - Good questions, I specifically left it pretty vague because I have no idea what combat is going to be like, or what would be easiest and most reasonable to be added. So, some possibilities (though this isn't necessarily how I think it needs to work, just throwing ideas out there):

1) Selecting a body-part to attack could EITHER be a direct effect of a skill - for example, headbutt always does damage to your opponent's head - AND/OR there could be skills you use to direct your default attack (and maybe other skills) towards a specific body-part. So a skill like "Aim Head" would cause you to attempt to do all damage to the head, though of course not every hit will land right where you want. So after using "Aim Head" (oh, please call it something better than this), your normal sword swing will attempt to hit the head, and if you use "Bash" (one of your warrior skills), you'll attempt to use that on the head, too. Or maybe aiming only effects the default attack, or only effects skills. Whatever makes the most sense and is easiest to balance.
This all really depends on how much of a role we/devs want this system to play in combat - does every attack have the potential to injure, or only a select few? There are a lot of different degrees to how deeply integrated this system could be.

2) To look at what condition you're in: For severe injuries, it should be evident just looking at your character (a limp, or holding an arm). If it can be done without being too cumbersome, a little stick figure with various parts coloured green (uninjured) to deep red (very injured) would be useful to have up during combat. But there should also be quantitative info on some sort of status screen (things like "Right arm injury: 50%" etc.)

 

@Alayth: I've been thinking, on the things you mention I think would be better as passive skills, you get from a skill tree. These skills would only work mattering on range, and would have a increase chance in causing that type of damage.

As for your condition, I find your character acting differn't based upon an injury better, since we all know that RG does not want to hold our hand while playing, so I don't think that he would opt for the color stick figure

 

@Strongsquirrel1 - Hmm, making it a passive is interesting. Of course, that would take the strategy aspect out of it. But maybe you could assign a passive to your rune-set, so, for example, your offensive runeset had you passively aiming for the shield arm, and your defensive rune-set had you passively aiming for the sword-arm. I think that could work, though I think having it as active runes (that basically change what you're passively aiming at) would add more to combat.

I agree that character acting different would be better from an immersion perspective, and RG wants the UI to be uncluttered. Maybe only seeing your character getting injured would be the default, but you could optionally give yourself a little paper-doll with the green to red limb info.

 

@Alayth: the reason I think it should be passive is to stop the spamming of highest dps, and to have minimal interface. I think RG has talked about having people buff up before combat, could work with the runes.

I know RG has made a reference to a deck of cards, it could be one of those cards that is randomly drawn. Its just hard to guess how to implement it, when we don't know how we will do combat

As for the paper doll, could be enchanted like a voodoo doll, however it would take an inventory space, or add weight, mattering on how they do carrying items.

 

I like the idea of passive. Stack your deck with the Limb Trimming skill and you can percent chance to injure a limb or may cause damage to a limb that would add up to make it injured.

In NWN the Called Shot would frequently be spammed and the effect was cumulative, so it could be a bad situation if the spammer had a really good hit chance. It only took a few good hits to either keep you from getting away or causing any damage.

 

Add in fatality graphics when a player is hit with a fatal blow depending on the weapon/magic being hit with would determin the type of fatal blow graphic, like if I was hit by a lightning spell I get engulfed in electricity and fall to the ground burning.

 

I think something like this could be implemented into the skill system fairly easily... Called shots and such may be a little overboard.

As an example, a successful hamstring/tendon slash type attack could cripple your targets leg (movement speed) until they receive some type of out of combat first aid, magical healing or rest. Maybe some armor types or agility could prevent injuries?

It seems to fit with the reactive combat style they are thinking of implementing, and this would help balance it out for PvP. A highwayman may slot various crippling attacks, and very few high damage abilities. This would help them to immobilize an undefended enemy, however it may be of less use when fighting a knight in full plate armor (Other than perhaps running away)
If you were to slot many high damage attacks, your opponent may be able to just run away from you as a cripple would have less of a chance of showing up.

 

@Strongsquirrel1 - the "deck of cards" idea is what I'm referring to when I say runes - the way Chris was talking about it was the "deck of cards", in game, is a stack of runes. I'm assuming that the card idea is how combat is going to be implemented. As far as I know, all active combat abilities will be like this, so it seems natural to stick these sorts of abilities in as active runes. The way combat is going to work at this point, there is no worry about spamming.

@Grimkor - Yes! I think this would be really cool for PvP.

 

Sounds like fun at first.
But after having a hard time with all your wounds it could get old.

Here is your controls once injured.
Good luck
http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html

 

@jondavis: player could learn basic fist aid like in scouts. A scout knows how to fix a broken bone, dislocated body part, and much more so you can get out of the woods ect. and to a real doctor

 

@jondavis - hahaha, I love QWOP.

Seriously though, I think you bring up a legitimate concern, there would have to be a way to heal injuries so they don't add up ridiculously quickly. I imagine injuries wouldn't be extremely common, mainly coming out of hard battles or after lots of medium-difficulty ones in a short period, but you still don't want to be crippled and just have to go back to town every time you get into a hard fight.

Obviously healers of various kinds should be able to heal injuries, but this would make it annoying for non-healers who want to do some soloing. It wouldn't be hard to throw in consumables that heal injuries without requiring a healing skill, so this is probably the best way to deal with it.

 

The way I would view this working is it will become annoying, and you'll basically work towards keeping yourself at maximum health all the time.. turns into a healing game instead of combat.

I'd say the idea has some merit, for realism, but game play would suffer too much.

 

Yea I just don't understand how you handle injuries.
Maybe someone can explain more.

Do your controls go bad when injured?
Does your vision get blurred?
Does your face or body start dripping with blood?
Does it look like your limping around?
Does it look like you get sick or like your going to faint?
Are injuries different then health?
How long does it take to heal a broken arm?
Can I go on fighting with a cast on my arm and leg?
Do I need to learn how to fight with both arms in case one arm gets broke?
Will the doctor be the most wanted player in the game?
Is this what a hospital would look like?
http://uo.stratics.com/pics/corwynevilmages.jpg


But if it works, yea use it.

 

@Sir Mishri - I don't really understand why the immediate assumption is that you'll work towards having yourself at max health all the time. Could you explain?

Maybe an elaboration on my part could help: I imagine each body part having basically it's own HP (in addition to your overall HP). Your limbs will probably stay at full health for easy fights, take a minor beating in medium-difficulty fights (meaning after a few of them in a row without rest, you might be at risk for an injury), and you might expect an injury to occur from full health if it's a particularly difficult fight or if you're opponent's strategy revolves largely around trying to cause injuries. Injuries would probably come in gradations (minor, moderate, severe), with penalties differing at each level. But they wouldn't be terrible to heal (either use a healing spell, healing skill, consumable, or just wait, just like you would for normal HP).

In other words, I expect the utility of healing, and the time spent on it, to be a bit higher with an injury system, but not absurdly higher.

@jondavis

I don't know how, exactly, all this would be implemented, but if you want my opinion on what should be done (in order of your questions):
no
no
maybe for head injuries, but that's up to the graphics team
I would like this for leg injuries
I would think that would go more with low hp than a specific injury
yes, overall HP still exists, this is just adding a dimension to "health"
depends on the method. If just waiting, a while, on the order of minutes. If you're GM healer, seconds.
yes, but at a penalty
interesting idea, but it would probably complicate implementation, so probably no
healing will be valuable due to this, but not overvalued, since consumables and time could heal injuries too
probably not, since the graphics will likely be better than UO