Crew deaths in boarding fights and Berath's trial?

[yorname]

I' ve turned on Berath's trial for quite some playthroughs and never lost any crew members in boarding fights. They got knocked out, sure, but never permanently died like companions (if I don't revive them). This run after a few fights though, almost all the crew died. What's the rules for this? Are they supposed to permanently die like this? Or there's something wrong with my past playthroughs?

[rjshae]

Yes I had crew members die on my latest play-through. I suppose it provides an added incentive to avoid boarding actions against tougher opponents, as well as to hire new crew mates.

[omgFIREBALLS]

7 hours ago, rjshae said:

I suppose it provides an added incentive to avoid boarding actions against tougher opponents, as well as to hire new crew mates.

That's one way to look at it. Another is "if they're going to permadie, why can't I tell them to stay out of the battles".

[rjshae]

9 hours ago, omgFIREBALLS said:

That's one way to look at it. Another is "if they're going to permadie, why can't I tell them to stay out of the battles".

Because "metagaming"? From one perspective the NPCs are a gaming resource, which sometimes get expended. What this did for me is provide an incentive for a party member to intervene when an NPC gets in a bad tactical position, which is probably a more realistic behavior.

[thelee]

i noticed crew/party members dying in berath's challenge relatively recently ("relatively" like at some point in 2023 i think).

i suspect mostly that you/we didn't notice before, because typically you can end up with tons of crew and when they die their loot is pretty crappy so in the post-ship rewards screen you don't notice any obvious tells. it was only obvious to me because after a boarding encounter i noticed some very familiar gear, and it was because a level 4 aloth got wrecked and dropped whatever gear i had put on him at the digsite way back 1 and then i started paying way more attention to everyone during a boarding encounter.

i do think it is an interesting dynamic, in line with the theme of berath's challenge. since discovering permadeath during boardings i make sure to either avoid boardings or level up my party members/crew members.

[omgFIREBALLS]

3 hours ago, rjshae said:

Because "metagaming"?

Fair. I will accept a deal of them staying out of battles period, regardless of Berath's Challenge.

You know, I am the captain. I'd punish them for their insubordination, but given they're dead all I can do is ask Berath to give them a miserable next turn of the Wheel.

[thelee]

actually i was revisiting something and - are we sure that crew (not benched party members) are in fact perma-dying in boarding encounters? i have a note in my guide explicitly saying crew members don't permadie, and i don't think i would've written that without testing.

edit: is it possible that they're being gibbed and that's causing the permadeath?

Edited January 18 by thelee

[omgFIREBALLS]

21 hours ago, thelee said:

edit: is it possible that they're being gibbed and that's causing the permadeath?

Could be, because I think I've had Edér (as an outside-party deck battle participant) permadie in a ship battle with no challenge active. Might have been gib, because with my parties I can't really suspect friendly fire.

Edited January 19 by omgFIREBALLS

[thelee]

yeah gibbing is weird (annihilates the corpse, which might affect the game's ability to rez them later). Normally party members can't get gibbed, but if you do get annihilated otherwise (disintegrate from enemy cipher) they disappear from your party and you can't res them.

i wonder if ship boarding assists--because they're not in your party--can get gibbed (regardless of being a crew or companion) and that can (unintentionally?) cause permadeath.

[omgFIREBALLS]

Perhaps the solution then is to simply disable gibs. Not like they carry any advantage anyway.

[Boeroer]

Gibbs are mechanically disadvantageous.

[omgFIREBALLS]

5 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Gibbs are mechanically disadvantageous.