Critical hits and permanent effects

[Ibisshagrat]

I'd like that sometimes critical hits mean a "permanent" effect, like a scar, a missing finger or eye, a leg injury and the like. Some of this effects could be heal with powerful magic o healing skils,

 

On the other hand the most severe may be permanent, but it's consequences may halved with the appropiate means.Other ways to make not all severe injuries permanent would be healing them with a mission (to recover a very strange and rare herb that grows in a certain place, or finding a long lost legendary healer,...), or using some items that are limited (meaning that you have to decide using it in one injury or in another). This could also affect to NPC members of the party, and the main character could heal them easier.

 

That could mean that a NPC of the party must retire eventually due to his grave wounds, but since there are more NPC who may substitute him it doesnt mean that the rest game is affected. This would encourage that more NPC are used during the game and make each encounter more intense.

[Jobby]

There aren't to be all that many NPCs in the game insofar as i can remember, although you can create more in the hall of adventurers they wont have any "character". 

This is due to the additional character development/content as opposed to games like BG1.

I'm all for injuries/curses/diseases that require a bit more than a heal spell though, Arcanum had scarring that reduced your beauty stat and required a doctor to heal, Fable had something similar though it was purely cosmetic and couldn't be removed as i recall.

 

I think quest related healing would have be a scripted encounter (vampirism in BG2) .

 

To summarise I agree and it would be cool to march your limping staggering party back to town but severe permanent injuries might be a bit much given the limited number of NPCs, I'm not inherently opposed but I would like it to be an option if it was included.

[rjshae]

That type of system would probably only be viable for trial of iron mode. Even the relatively lightweight weapon repair mechanic proposed by the developers received vocal opposition, so this would likely meet a similar fate.

Edited January 17, 2014 by rjshae

[Gfted1]

Isnt there a similar system already in place? Iirc, when you lose all your Health and "die", you wake back up with some "disability" that can only be rectified by going back to a rest spot.

[Lephys]

I'm very fond of the idea of critical hits bestowing effects. Kind of lends variety to criticals, instead of just an all-encompassing "you hit them really, really damagey-like!". However, with how healing and all that works in PoE, I'd recommend temporary things, like "You got a critical hit, so now the target is going to suffer bleed damage for 3 seconds," or "the target also got knocked down/stunned."

 

I'm even open to a stat affecting that, along with other factors, such as weapon-type, etc. Nothing super complex. Just... a crossbow bolt probably wouldn't produce a stun, as much as a more blunt-force trauma would.

 

I'd like that dynamic, though. Extra effects from crits, versus sheer extra damage from crits.

 

But, permanent effects and the flexibility of critical chance with different builds (via DEX/Accuracy) tend to conflict a little bit. Anyone with low defenses who happened to encounter a high-DEX enemy would have to not only contend with the critical-hit damage, but also some permanent effect for every critical hit.

 

There are only so many individual factors you can have working towards your necessity to stop what you're doing and retreat to the nearest rest spot just to progress forward, and, unlike in other games, we've already got finite, non-replenishable (except via resting) Health.

 

Just my thoughts. (Again, love the idea of critical effects, though, just not their permanence, at lest for this game.)

[Jobby]

As long as we don't devolve to Arcanums "Critical miss and a broken arm to boot" that was insta-reload rage for me lol.

Edited January 18, 2014 by Jobby

[Ibisshagrat]

I'm very fond of the idea of critical hits bestowing effects. Kind of lends variety to criticals, instead of just an all-encompassing "you hit them really, really damagey-like!". However, with how healing and all that works in PoE, I'd recommend temporary things, like "You got a critical hit, so now the target is going to suffer bleed damage for 3 seconds," or "the target also got knocked down/stunned."

 

I'm even open to a stat affecting that, along with other factors, such as weapon-type, etc. Nothing super complex. Just... a crossbow bolt probably wouldn't produce a stun, as much as a more blunt-force trauma would.

 

I'd like that dynamic, though. Extra effects from crits, versus sheer extra damage from crits.

 

But, permanent effects and the flexibility of critical chance with different builds (via DEX/Accuracy) tend to conflict a little bit. Anyone with low defenses who happened to encounter a high-DEX enemy would have to not only contend with the critical-hit damage, but also some permanent effect for every critical hit.

 

There are only so many individual factors you can have working towards your necessity to stop what you're doing and retreat to the nearest rest spot just to progress forward, and, unlike in other games, we've already got finite, non-replenishable (except via resting) Health.

 

Just my thoughts. (Again, love the idea of critical effects, though, just not their permanence, at lest for this game.)

Not all cri hits should be "permanent", the idea of effects like just the additional damage, bleeding, stun, perception penalty and the like should be the rule, and grave and very grave injuries the excetion, maybe 10-15% of critical hits.

[Lephys]

Not all cri hits should be "permanent", the idea of effects like just the additional damage, bleeding, stun, perception penalty and the like should be the rule, and grave and very grave injuries the excetion, maybe 10-15% of critical hits.

I still say any is too many. In this particular game. It's a matter of there already being "permanent" effects from reaching 0 Health (being maimed), and of a chance that a chance-based occurrence will just stick you with a horrid wound right out the door... Imagine if you reach a story segment where the previous rest point is inaccessible (cave collapse, etc.), and the very first enemy that's not even a threat to you, combat wise (some easily little minion) scores a lucky critical that gives your character a bleeding wound until you rest again. Now, you've got about 5 or 6 encounters to push through to get somewhere where you can rest again, and you have to do it all whilst ticking away Health? *shrug*

 

I suppose it does depend on the specific effect. I mean, Fallout did stuff pretty well (arm wound, penalty to DEX (AGI in Fallout, I think), head wound -- penalty to Perception/INT, etc.). So, yeah, I dunno. The fact that it's chance means that you don't wanna make it too extreme, because it can already be SUPER horrible or easily shrug-off-able, just depending on when you happen to befall such a thing (because of chance).

[AGX-17]

I'd like that sometimes critical hits mean a "permanent" effect, like a scar, a missing finger or eye, a leg injury and the like. Some of this effects could be heal with powerful magic o healing skils,

 

[...]

 

That could mean that a NPC of the party must retire eventually due to his grave wounds, but since there are more NPC who may substitute him it doesnt mean that the rest game is affected. This would encourage that more NPC are used during the game and make each encounter more intense.

Or lead to save-scumming because a lucky roll by an enemy results in your favorite character suddenly vanishing from the game without even having the courtesy to bleed to death.

 

I think the basic idea here is already well-covered by the difficulty levels with permadeath active.

Edited January 21, 2014 by AGX-17

[Tamerlane]

I think the core thing here is that PoE isn't a survival simulator and it isn't trying to be. It handles injury to a certain degree in order to support strategic planning and light resource management over the course of an adventure, nothing more.

[rjshae]

I think the core thing here is that PoE isn't a survival simulator and it isn't trying to be. It handles injury to a certain degree in order to support strategic planning and light resource management over the course of an adventure, nothing more.

 

Well put. I think that general notion can apply to a number of fine-grained details being suggested in this forum...

[Azmodan]

IMHO - Permanent effects that impact parts of the anatomy will be tricky to justify, unless the game includes targeted attacks.

 

In games like Fallout and Arcanum you could aim at a particular part of the body, however the gain for targeting parts of the body other than the head was minimal - as your role as the PC is to kill the opposition, not slow it down by breaking kneecaps. The trade-off of reducing your chance to hit for an almost guaranteed mega-critical (head goes 'splode) is a bit of a cheat, especially against higher-level-characters. e.g.:

If I can ordinarily only hit a higher level character on a 17-20, with 19-20 being critical hit territory, then targeting the head, and increasing the difficulty to 19-20 is not a huge sacrifice, given that an attack on the head is an assured critical. i.e. I don't have to "confirm" my critical as would normally be the case, all I have to do is hit to get a critical.

My chance of scoring a new-fangled "mega" critical goes from 1 in 10 (19-20 trigger) times 1 in 5 (17-20 confirm) (2% chance for those not mathematically inclined) to a simple 1 in 10 (10% chance, because targeting the head is automatically bad). This is a huge bonus.

 

When the AI targets your body parts - and you get a broken leg as a result - sure it seems "RPGey"

The downside of this, is that the AI would then be "stupid" to try and do anything other than targeted head-shots, which would result in the most grievous injuries.

 

If there is no anatomical targeting, then the assignment of broken bones becomes a bit arbitrary and grievous wounds (e.g. missing eyes), significantly mid-dungeon, become a cause for quick-load. 

If grievous wounds can be fixed by:

- a low-level healing spell, then that makes grievous wounds a waste of developer time to implement

- a restoration spell (a medium level spell), then that's one of your characters wasting spell levels to make the game less punishing.

- a trip back to town / consultation with a master healer, then this is a pace-breaking punishment (you're half-way down a dungeon, and you know there's going to be at least 1, possibly 2 more "boss" level battles, so you now have to go back to town to get the eye on your rogue and the right hand of your mage regrown).

 

In conclusion:

If the permanent effects as a result of critical hits apply to PC's party - the AI would be stupid not to try and deliberately screw you, making every encounter more frustrating, rather than more fun. Deliberately? Well yes - because an AI that bases it's decision on mathematical tables, which as demonstrated above are skewed towards targeting the head, should only ever pick the most high-damage strategies, rather than randomly determine its attack pattern.

If the permanent effects apply only to the enemy, then the PC's party would be stupid not to only target the head.

If the permanent effects are hard to get rid off, more often than not the quickest resolution would be a quick-load.

Edited January 22, 2014 by Azmodan

[Lephys]

^ I agree with everything, except "obviously head-shots would be the no-brainer."

 

Example: in Fallout NV, deathclaws were pretty scary until you had super-badass stuff. I won't say "the best," as I can't prove there's not a better one, but a REALLY good approach to use against them was to take out a leg (which generally took several shots). Because, the problem with them was that it was really tough to do enough damage to them to stop them before they speedily leapt upon you and mangled the ever-living crap out of your corpse. Thus, crippling their ability to move quickly and leap was much more advantageous than just the immediate damage boost from head shots.

 

Conclusion: "What does more damage?" is not the only pertinent question to ask when devising battle tactics.

 

Excellent points about wounds in relation to called shots, and healing, etc., though.

[AGX-17]

^ I agree with everything, except "obviously head-shots would be the no-brainer."

 

Example: in Fallout NV, deathclaws were pretty scary until you had super-badass stuff. I won't say "the best," as I can't prove there's not a better one, but a REALLY good approach to use against them was to take out a leg (which generally took several shots). Because, the problem with them was that it was really tough to do enough damage to them to stop them before they speedily leapt upon you and mangled the ever-living crap out of your corpse. Thus, crippling their ability to move quickly and leap was much more advantageous than just the immediate damage boost from head shots.

 

Conclusion: "What does more damage?" is not the only pertinent question to ask when devising battle tactics.

 

Excellent points about wounds in relation to called shots, and healing, etc., though.

F3/NV=Apples, F1/2= Oranges. A combat encounter with Deathclaws in F1/2 is fundamentally not the same scenario. By the way, have you ever heard of sneak attack criticals and sniping? That was the ideal (as in most effective,) method of dealing with Deathclaws (and pretty much everything else,) in 3/NV.

 

Deathclaws always closed to melee range in F1/2 unless you devoted all your AP to running away (and you'd need a lucky god**** roll to take out a Deathclaw's leg in one shot before they could reach you,) and even then they'd still catch up if you had a character with low AP. Once they've closed the distance there's no benefit in shooting their legs anymore, as the scenario it's intended to prevent has already occurred. If they're at that range your chance of hitting them in the eyes is maximized, as far as range-dependent penalties go, and aiming for the eyes has the highest critical threat range of any roll, so there's no reason not to unless you're wearing APA, carrying a Gauss Pistol and want to show everyone who's the boss by shooting all the Deathclaws in the groin.

Edited January 22, 2014 by AGX-17

[Lephys]

Yes, I've played all the Fallout games (even Tactics).

 

And no! Wow! What are sneak attack criticals and sniping?! *gasp*

[Azmodan]

I thought of another thing that makes permanent effects a chore, rather than a benefit:

 

Described above are what happens when you take an arrow to the knee, sternum, left buttcheek etc. on a critical (targeted anatomy)

What about magic? The trouble is - with fireballs, lightning bolts, cones of cold etc... the spell does total body damage (unless you are standing behind 1/2 or 3/4 cover).

 

This to my mind means that if the warriors, rogues and even clerics get to mangle bones and gouge out eyes, then mages do not get to do this.

There is no system of "criticals" for spells. A reflex saving throw might mean that you only take 1/2 damage, but it is not uncommon for the party "tank" to soak in fireballs as a matter of course. Additionally - the whole point of some spells is to decrease stats (these can also be called curses, de-buffs in other games). If a warrior can now debuff an enemy through the joy of statistical probability, then why bother with curses and de-buffs?

Additionally with spells that have a somatic component, mangling a wizard's hand means that their chance of spell failure nears "absolute". This again is a problem for the PC's party. Low level monsters would then neutralise your spellcaster, leaving you to take another trip back to town to regrow a hand.

 

 

Now if this all sounds exciting, do note that the AI is the primary beneficiary of statistical probability, and that its the PC's party who will be grinding out whatever counts for restoration spells to overcome permanent de-buffs.

Edited January 22, 2014 by Azmodan

[Ibisshagrat]

The idea of the post at least when I started wasnt related to called shots. Just that critical hits may cause effects that arent just damage, like they hit your eye, less perception, leg injuried -25% movement; finger crushed less attack, bleeding you lose some hp per second, and so on. Few of these effects maybe hard to recover from, needing hard to obtain items or miniquests, or something different to a spell that the party have.

 

As some people said, 'semipermanent' shouldnt be something usual, or it would be boring and a chore, I agree. But if it happened eventually, it should give more deepness in my opinion, or as someone said, in an ironman mode.

[Azmodan]

Hi Ibisshagrat!

 

If the effects wear out at the end of the combat encounter and reset the party status to normal, then yes, for the duration of the combat encounter it might be somewhat interesting to see the additional tactical layer, significantly if you are playing on harder difficulties.

 

But if these effects are permanent, then this becomes a statistics game - and a restoration grind, where the AI, against a mid-level party can use many lower level enemies (e.g 5 melee orcs and 10 ranged kobolds), to press the attacks targeting a character's role-specific anatomy, debuffing this character until an artificial hurdle is overcome (e.g. time-wasting town trip).

If these were my orcs and kobolds, I'd mangle the enemy party mage's hands, the rogue's eyes and the monk's legs, thus slowing down their ability to explore the dungeon.

 

Now the down-side of these effects if these only lasted until the end of the combat round:

if you are familiar with DnD, you will know that spells debuffing stats are found typically at 2nd to 4th level. Spellcasters, even in DnD, do not grow on trees.

And significantly with these spells, you get a saving throw against their effect.

Therefore, including an effect which mechanically carries the debuff of a spell, on a statistical roll, neuters the need for those spells. Now every kobold, rat and goblin get to be a perfect spellcaster 1 in 20 attacks against you.

 

I could then make a room - with 40 rats, 40 ranged goblins and a major demon that would enter the combat on the 3rd turn, by which time, your mid-tier party of 6 would be a band of cripples, that I would then proceed to mop up. Your spellcasters can no longer cast spells because their hands are mangled, your rangers are blind, your monks have their feet chewed off by stat loss etc.

 

Under normal rules - the above menagerie of flesh would do some damage as "noise" while the party would be prepped and ready for the real combat against the Demon.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I can't say that I care fo this suggestion. While I loved the wound system of the FATE RPG, it's a flexible system which only lends well to tabletop RPGs. I am a player that prefers my RPGs grity and survivalistic, but I have long since accepted that P:E is not intended to be that--which I am completely fine with. I may still push for verisimilitude in many ways, this sort of thing feels overboard for the genre. After all, there is always Wasteland 2.

[Walsingham]

Interesting idea. But ultimately this penalty for being hit and hurt will nudge players towards high agility, high armour characters. Otherwise all those inevitable biffings they get as lvl 1 goons will dog them for the rest of their careers.

[Lephys]

I'd actually like to see temporary (maybe until the end of a given encounter?) effects, but have them be conditional rather than just "if you get a critical hit, bad things can happen." Like... maybe using a blunt weapon against an unarmored opponent allows for a chance to break a bone or something (resulting in slow/disarm/stun?). I dunno. I just think that, if anything, it should be a tactical consideration, rather than just a passive chance. With the above (albeit terribly simple and crappy) example, at least you could say "Hmm, if my unarmored guy gets hit by THAT particular blunt-weapon-wielding guy, he runs the further risk of being further effected." Then, you have to weigh the benefits of getting that particular character near that guy, versus the detriments of possibly suffering an additional effect that you otherwise wouldn't even have to worry about. Rather than "I hope no one gets hit, and no random additional effects proc on lucky hits!" There's not really much you can do about that, because you're already trying to get hit as little as possible. That's an inherent aspect of surviving combat. Thus, the addition doesn't really affect the "how" of your approach to combat. It just makes you cross your fingers.

[Jobby]

I like that idea, to add to this perhaps you want to keep your high dex low con theif away from the dagger/rapier wielder who can cause bleeding damage which would be more significant to a low con char than a high con char, etc..