frontliners, rangers and resting

[mrmonocle]

Okay, the current health mechanic is flawed imo because only frontliners suffer from it while rangers are always healthy, when it's time to rest it's actually fighter's time to rest, while clerics mages and rangers can go on.

 

If the devs insist on health why not make it shared somehow or let it be drained not from stamina loss but from encounter threat rating or continuous ability usage or something other folks here might come up with.

[AdaMusic]

If the devs insist on health why not make it shared somehow or let it be drained not from stamina loss but from encounter threat rating or continuous ability usage or something other folks here might come up with.

 

No. Just no.  

 

The current health mechanic is not flawed. Fighters are supposed to be able to take a beating while mages and rangers need protection.

[Forkedman]

@AdaMusic - I think you misunderstood what he was saying.

 

With the current mechanic fights/frontliners are the only reason the party actually needs to rest and rest far too often. Their ability to take a beating in combat is fine. Their loss of health after combat is not.

 

With the current mechanic the party doesn't need to rest because everyone is running low, the party is forced to rest because the frontliners are losing large chunks of HP (not stamina) after every fight. It doesn't make you push your party to the limits, it instead cripples 1/2 of your characters and leaves the rest virtually unaffected by moment to moment combat unless something goes seriously wrong. 

[mrmonocle]

@AdaMusic - I think you misunderstood what he was saying.

 

With the current mechanic fights/frontliners are the only reason the party actually needs to rest and rest far too often. Their ability to take a beating in combat is fine. Their loss of health after combat is not.

 

With the current mechanic the party doesn't need to rest because everyone is running low, the party is forced to rest because the frontliners are losing large chunks of HP (not stamina) after every fight. It doesn't make you push your party to the limits, it instead cripples 1/2 of your characters and leaves the rest virtually unaffected by moment to moment combat unless something goes seriously wrong. 

Precisely

[Sonntam]

And what would you like to see implemented to combat that? Remove health damage from frontliners or make ranged characters forced to rest more too?

[AdaMusic]

@AdaMusic - I think you misunderstood what he was saying.

 

With the current mechanic fights/frontliners are the only reason the party actually needs to rest and rest far too often. Their ability to take a beating in combat is fine. Their loss of health after combat is not.

 

With the current mechanic the party doesn't need to rest because everyone is running low, the party is forced to rest because the frontliners are losing large chunks of HP (not stamina) after every fight. It doesn't make you push your party to the limits, it instead cripples 1/2 of your characters and leaves the rest virtually unaffected by moment to moment combat unless something goes seriously wrong. 

 

I don't think I mistunderstood. Why is that a problem? How would you change it?

[Greensleeve]

By changing the Stamina:Health ratio? Instead of 4:1, make it 6:1 or something?

[Tartantyco]

This is not a problem at all. The reason why the healthy party has to rest because the fighter is low on health is because he absorbed all the damage that the rest of the party would have taken. You are also ignoring the fact that abilities are recharged on resting, so it's not just because the fighter is low on health.

[AdaMusic]

This is not a problem at all. The reason why the healthy party has to rest because the fighter is low on health is because he absorbed all the damage that the rest of the party would have taken. You are also ignoring the fact that abilities are recharged on resting, so it's not just because the fighter is low on health.

 

Exactly. I have no idea why this is seen as a problem.

[mrmonocle]

This is not a problem at all. The reason why the healthy party has to rest because the fighter is low on health is because he absorbed all the damage that the rest of the party would have taken. You are also ignoring the fact that abilities are recharged on resting, so it's not just because the fighter is low on health.

Wrong, the abilities are recharged after the encounter, not on resting.

 

Imo, the most obvious and least work demanding solution is to increase health/stamina ratio for melee classes and make it worse for ranged, a fighter should look like 300 heath/100 stamina while a wiz should be the opposite 30 health/100 stamina, thus poeple will care more not to expose rangers to damage.

[AdaMusic]

 

This is not a problem at all. The reason why the healthy party has to rest because the fighter is low on health is because he absorbed all the damage that the rest of the party would have taken. You are also ignoring the fact that abilities are recharged on resting, so it's not just because the fighter is low on health.

Wrong, the abilities are recharged after the encounter, not on resting.

 

Imo, the most obvious and least work demanding solution is to increase health/stamina ratio for melee classes and make it worse for ranged, a fighter should look like 300 heath/100 stamina while a wiz should be the opposite 30 health/100 stamina, thus poeple will care more not to expose rangers to damage.

 

 

Can you explain why the current solution is a problem? 

Edited August 19, 2014 by AdaMusic

[mrmonocle]

It is a problem because you have to waste camping supplies on 1 character, not on the entire party and it doesn't feel right. In BG it was the other way around, 1st you were out of abilities and spells, then out of health and then it was obvious you should rest because every character in the party was spent. Here the fighter is spent, everyone should stop, massage his feet, tell him a tale, pour him a glass etc.

[AdaMusic]

It is a problem because you have to waste camping supplies on 1 character, not on the entire party and it doesn't feel right. In BG it was the other way around, 1st you were out of abilities and spells, then out of health and then it was obvious you should rest because every character in the party was spent. Here the fighter is spent, everyone should stop, massage his feet, tell him a tale, pour him a glass etc.

 

OK so you basically feel like it breaks immersion having to rest while only one character is "tierd"? But isn't that how it is in "real life"? You wait for the "weakest" (the injured)? I mean, you can skip resting and waiting for him/her to heal, but that would be dangerous. I feel like thats pretty immersive.

Edited August 19, 2014 by AdaMusic

[mrmonocle]

Except that here you wait for the toughest

[AdaMusic]

Except that here you wait for the toughest

 

No you don't. He/she is injured and temporarily the weakest.

[mrmonocle]

@ ADAMUSIC Judging by the absense of the backer badge you didn't play the beta, play 1st, comment after.

[Tartantyco]

"Wrong, the abilities are recharged after the encounter, not on resting"

 

No, they're not mrmonocle.

[Uomoz]

Also, that's the problem of a party based on a single frontliner. Of course he/she needs a lot more attention, where in a party of multiple melee the aggro and the damage can be easily distributed. In the end though, the average damage taken per fight would be aproximately the same. So the system is basically perfect as it is.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Uomoz

[Quietwulf]

I tend to go back to first principles with this kind of stuff.

 

What kind of decision / game play experience are we trying to convey with this mechanic.

 

What is the "point" of Stamina / Health? From a moment to moment game play perspective.   

 

Does it lead to interesting choices?

Does it lead to creative adaption?

Does it require well though out strategy and planning?

 

Because as it stands you have the following situation;

 

1. Font line fighters are taking a lot of health damage per fight.  Damage that you can't seem to do much about through mitigation.  You can restore stamina, you can't recover health.

 

2. This quickly leads to fighters running out of health, well before the rest of the party does.  This is functionally no better than having to rest every time Wizards ran out of spells in the BG series of games. With the exception being...

 

3. You are limited to the number of times you are allowed to rest.  Thus, you are in a forced race condition.  You have to complete the exploration of a zone *before* you run out of rest stops.  On easy, you get 3 rest stops.

 

4. Which leads us to what I believe most players will do to get around this limitation.  Save scrubbing.  Attempt encounter, see how how well you can limit health damage.  Won the encounter, but took too much health damage? Reload, try again.

 

Nothing about the above situation seems interesting or challenging.  It seems tedious and overly complicated. 

 

Perhaps someone could highlight what the original design goals behind health / stamina were to begin with?

[Billy O]

Another thing to remember is that we have seen a very small percentage of enemy types thus far. To assume that ranged characters will almost never take damage seems flawed.

[Billy O]

Perhaps there should be a higher damage threshold for health than stamina.

[Forkedman]

Can you explain why the current solution is a problem? 

 

 

Removes the incentive for a melee heavy party. With the current system you're better off taking a party that is ranged/magic focused with just one or two tanks. Or potentially removing tanks from your party entirely depending on how strong CC ends up being in the final game. A party with few or less tanks and more CC is less rest dependent than a party that focuses on melee. If the only reason you’re having to rest is because the inability of your tank to survive another encounter, the system encourages you to bypass tanking/melee role as much as possible and thereby allow your party to make more progress with less resting.

 

It doesn’t currently suitably punish failure to control the encounter. In fact it's the opposite, it punishes you (in the form of more forced rests/less progress) for trying to control the encounter with your tank. You're far better of using mages/priests to root/hold the whole encounter while you nuke/range it down from afar. 

 

With the current system it might even be preferable to take more hits as a more squishy class and save your tanks overall HP for more challenging /later fights.

 

And it doesn’t suitably represent the wear and tear of battle on anyone other than your melee characters. Your mages and archers, presuming proper tactical approach don’t suffer from combat. They don’t tire (bar a few per rest abilities) the same way melee characters who take the brunt of the damage do. On top of this it encourages save scumming to minimize damage to your tanks while maximizing your damage output. A set of bad rolls could potentially screw you for the rest of your exploration of an area/force you to return to town while 80% of your party are still perfectly viable. That doesn’t make for a fun mechanic.

 

You mentioned in a later post that it adds to immersion. Gotta say, I couldn't care less. I'm playing for fun. Not immersion and this currently isn't a fun mechanic at all. It just encourages people to 'game' the systems. 

 

Both of Mrmonocle’s suggestions are good ones.

 

A party pool of tiredness/fatigue that is an aggregate of things like damage taken(tanks), spells cast (casters) attacks made (damage classes) would make a lot more sense and allow for a more balanced load out of classes.

 

Or simply upping the stamina/health ratio for melee tanks and lowering it for squishy classes would also make sense. 

[Answermancer]

I don't necessarily disagree that this might be a problem (I don't feel confident enough to say either way yet) but some of you are really ignoring that plenty of the powerful ranged classes need to rest to get their abilities back.

 

SOME abilities are per-encounter, but most of the more powerful ones are per-day. So saying things like "an all ranged party with CC will be better because they can CC all the things, never take damage and never need to rest" is not accurate, because they will run out of decent CC abilities and have to rest to get them back.

[Cabamacadaf]

I think the problem is that often melee characters run out of health much quicker than casters run out of spells.

[Forkedman]

I don't necessarily disagree that this might be a problem (I don't feel confident enough to say either way yet) but some of you are really ignoring that plenty of the powerful ranged classes need to rest to get their abilities back.

 

SOME abilities are per-encounter, but most of the more powerful ones are per-day. So saying things like "an all ranged party with CC will be better because they can CC all the things, never take damage and never need to rest" is not accurate, because they will run out of decent CC abilities and have to rest to get them back.

 

Perhaps I overstated things. My main point was that the ratio of running out of spells to running out of health is totally out of whack in my opinion.