Door slamming - with a twist

[Woldan]

So, a question that just crossed my mind, will we have door-slamming in PE?

Door slamming = Your party is critically wounded and the fight doesn't look good for you? Simply retreat to the next room and shut the door, the stupid AI wont be able to open it or they open it but you close the door again before anyone gets in (DAO) so you can heal everyone, cast protection spells etc.. 

That was possible in BG, BG2, IWD,  IWD 2 and to an extend in DAO. 

Not that I ever used this tactic of course.... *cough* ....   

But here is the twist, a rogue or a mage should be able to lock doors to block enemies using magic or a specific skill (Mage: casting something like a rune of repulsion on the door) enemies with high strength like giants or beasts should be able to plow through doors that have been locked that way.

Thoughts? Suggestions? 

[Tamerlane]

I remember Ultima Underworld gave you spikes you could use to nail doors shut. Don't think I ever used them anywhere but to kill the peaceful goblins early on.

 

Alternately: raptors. Raptors everywhere.

Edited April 20, 2013 by Tamerlane

[Woldan]

Alternately: raptors. Raptors everywhere.

Damn, thats much better than my idea which involved teleporting rats...

[Lephys]

I'm pretty sure at least one of the devs has specifically stated that they're planning on making the P:E AI smart enough to follow you through an unbarred door.

 

BUT, I like where your idea is going. It led me to another, piggy-back idea.

 

What if Rogues can set up traps WITHOUT arming them (so you could rig up a door that you think you MIGHT have to retreat through)? Then, the party could fall back through the specified doorway, with the Rogue arming the trap as everyone else hurdles through and closes the door (or maybe the arming isn't actually complete until after the door is closed, depending on how the trap works *shrug*). Anywho, now, it's not that the door is preventing them from getting to you. It's that when they try to simply open the door (or force it open, etc.), boom goes the trap. Maybe it's an acid trap, or maybe it's a concussive trap? Who knows... but that would buy you some time to focus on recovering and/or preparing to re-engage the foes. AND, it would make traps a lot more useful than "OMG OMG, quick, try to set up a trap now that they're chasing us and are about 20 feet away! Maybe they won't see you setting it up, and they'll just run into it anyway, even though you just finished setting it up and turned to run a mere 5 inches from the nearest foe!"

[Woldan]

I had pretty much the same idea when I was writing the first post here, I was thinking about grease or smoke traps that can be quickly deployed and armed or a bag of caltrops that slow down your foes. 

[Keyrock]

The best solution would be to make the enemy AI smart enough to try to pick the lock or break down the door if you locked it.  Then it would be a pick locks or strength/break doors check, just like it would be for one of your characters.  In the case where you don't have a rogue to lock the door, or simply don't have the time, it would be cool if you could place a strong and heavy fighter directly in front of the door.  He would be effectively barring the door shut (assuming it swung in that direction) to prevent enemies from opening it.  Then it would be a strength vs, strength check to see if the enemies can force the door open.

 

As an aside, one of my favorite tactics in previous games was, assuming I can spy a room of enemies without them noticing me, to have my rogue open the door then jump out of the way.  My mage, who was lined up to have a clear line of sight through the doorway into the room, would cast Cloudkill, or something like that, into the room.  The rogue would slam the door shut, place a trap just outside the doorway, then retreat to the rest of the party and take up position ready with a missile weapon.  Anyone that survived the cloud attack in the room burst through the door to stumble into a trap.  Anyone left after that got several arrows, crossbow bolts, and sling bullets lodged in them for their trouble.  Good times.

Edited April 20, 2013 by Keyrock

[Woldan]

I used a similar tactic in BG2, my rogue in stealth modus would open the door and check for enemies, then get back to the door, mage casts Otiluke's Resilient Sphere on him, then casts Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill and a few fireballs into the room. Fighters with bows and mages or priests with slings would volley-fire those still standing and/or trying to get past the rogue to death.

 

And I like the idea with a strong party member blocking the door, though I would make all doors swing both ways to keep things simple.

[AGX-17]

I used a similar tactic in BG2, my rogue in stealth modus would open the door and check for enemies, then get back to the door, mage casts Otiluke's Resilient Sphere on him, then casts Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill and a few fireballs into the room. Fighters with bows and mages or priests with slings would volley-fire those still standing and/or trying to get past the rogue to death.

 

And I like the idea with a strong party member blocking the door, though I would make all doors swing both ways to keep things simple.

We already know that all doors in P:E will be double-hinged for convenience.

 

Firstly: Slamming a door is closing a door forcefully, not locking it or barring it.

 

There's no way you could possibly lock every door in the entire world; after all, you'd need every key to every door, and if every door has a lock, that's a lot of goddamn keys. Not to mention doors that happen to have bars or deadbolts that just happen to be conveniently open for the player to run into and block behind them. Doors in this context tend to exist in design purposes to block the player and/or NPCs' views, and doorways to act as chokepoints, which is already where traps naturally would be placed to delay enemies. Sticking a tank character in front of a wooden door isn't going to increase the DT of the wooden door. There's not much/any balance if you get a free panic room/roadblock for every instance of a doorway in the game. It makes sense if you've got your player house or stronghold or whatever under siege, but not as a universal gameplay mechanic.

[Tsuga C]

There was always that cleric spell in D&D, Guards and Wards, that allowed you to shut the door behind you and rest/heal with the spell pulling guard duty for the night, but I'm against being able to simply lock the door when the bad guys are well aware of where the party went. Now if I'd had the opportunity to cast Mass Invisibility and then have the party slip away to a distant store room or alcove in a cave, then this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

[Nonek]

Reminds me of old Gandy trying to hold the door against Durin's Bane in Moria, could make for an exciting flight scenario, or as others have mentioned use hold portal or wizard lock on any portal while the party rests in a makeshift camp.

 

Edit: If doors and gates were strategical points of focus, with limited durability, there might be good reason to preserve said portals in case of emergency and avoid breaking them down. Rather than arbitrarily making that door invulnerable (to your rune carved axe of major thumping,) make it a strategical choice, perhaps with patrols upon finding said damaged door alerting the entire complex as well.

Edited April 21, 2013 by Nonek

[TrashMan]

Depends on the doors too.

 

How thicks are they adn from what material?

 

Thick english oak? Yeah, that will take a lot of chopping to get trough.

Stone? If you want to ruin your axe, go ahead

Steel? Hahaha

[Lephys]

There's no way you could possibly lock every door in the entire world; after all, you'd need every key to every door, and if every door has a lock, that's a lot of goddamn keys. Not to mention doors that happen to have bars or deadbolts that just happen to be conveniently open for the player to run into and block behind them. Doors in this context tend to exist in design purposes to block the player and/or NPCs' views, and doorways to act as chokepoints, which is already where traps naturally would be placed to delay enemies. Sticking a tank character in front of a wooden door isn't going to increase the DT of the wooden door. There's not much/any balance if you get a free panic room/roadblock for every instance of a doorway in the game. It makes sense if you've got your player house or stronghold or whatever under siege, but not as a universal gameplay mechanic.

 

 

Clearly, there would be a range of opportunities, anywhere from "We don't really have a means of holding this door shut" to "We can bolt this door, and our burly tank can hold the door against being bashed open for at least 10 seconds" to "We actually have the means of barring this door against pretty much anything for a while if we so choose."

 

And yes, when you happened upon a situation in which you needed to buy some time or get away from a particularly dangerous foe, and there happened to be a quality door there (or something you could use a Hold spell on, or an alchemical grenade-pouch of instant-setting JB Weld, etc.), it would be pretty convenient. I don't see a world devoid of happenstancical convenience being a very interesting or believable world. So, yeah, it's probably best to keep it somewhere between "nothing is ever convenient" and "everything is always convenient."