On Healing: a New Idea

[Elerond]

I never get why I can run around in those games and murder people as long as a quest is tied to it or its a random encounter. Do the guards think "nevermind thats a quest target, lets look in another direction"? Like those two bandit groups in dryford, you can kill 5 people in nobody bothers.

 

You can kill anybody in Dryford village and only ones that may care are those that you attacked. 

 

Although when you think it, only armed parties in village are bandits, aristocrat elf and his guards, cultist (which live under the village) and your party. So there isn't anybody that would have great motivation to challenge party of armed thugs that have just killed another party of armed thugs.

[archangel979]

 

 

Ouch! That's bordering on the bizarre, Infinitron.

 

JESawyer

"In those cases, combat will likely be tuned for a "full-bore" party. It's easier to make strategic adaptations if you fail a fight and can immediately change the party's loadout, but such fights will have a heavier emphasis on efficiency and tactical precision."

 

This is really bad news for diversity, surprises and exploration in general. PoE will become weird in this way.

Leader in your party: "We're in a town now. Beware, all enemies here are better than dragons in caves 3,000 feet up Ominous Mountain or the lich lord in Untergang Crypt. See, that thug by that barrel there. He has wrestled a frost giant to his knees with a secret finger grip."

 

A CRPG of this kind shouldn't ever has to resort to that kind of predictability just in order to save a flawed resting health/stamina system. 

 

I'm actually speechless right now. I'll have to get back on this.

 

 

Sometimes games have to be designed to emphasize fun over balance. Whowoulddathot?

 

It is not about balance but world immersion. In this case, these battles might break immersion but if it is done well they might not. If every random bandit ambush is harder than wilderness encounters with monsters than it will be a problem but if quests are like in BG2 and BG1 where you invade wizard towers and fight their guards and them, it will be OK. 

[PrimeJunta]

@Indira I certainly hope there will be "spike" difficulty in P:E -- but that has nothing to do with how areas are balanced overall.

[piercehead]

I think this is a case of mountains and molehills. So they're going to balance town encounters as if you'd got all your abilities and resources available? So what.

 

"a heavier emphasis on efficiency and tactical precision"

 

That stands to reason, and does not suggest to me that all fights in towns will be much much harder than anything else. Obviously it's something that needs a balance, and that's something that they'll do on a per-encounter basis like the rest of the game.

 

As to the fact that it's being done because of another game mechanic that's in the game? That's the way it is. Sure they could scrap the rules on resting and healing and getting spells back...or they could just tune a few fights.

Edited September 11, 2014 by piercehead

[IndiraLightfoot]

piercehead: I agree, and I've soften up a bit on this issue, as long as combat in town isn't always amped-up-fighting mode on. 

[PrimeHydra]

Much has been said of the dualistic nature of the health system in this game: health vs stamina, how healing only replenishes stamina and how resting is needed to restore health. This seems a bit counterintuitive to me: magic and medicine can only rejuvenate your energy, but a good nap at an inn heals all wounds? That seems like the reverse of how things should be.

 

You've hit upon the crux of the confusion: Health and stamina should be reversed. It makes no sense that healing spells restore stamina, while sleeping is the only way to heal.

 

When my character's portraits start going red, it's an alarm. I immediately think "damage". They're trying to evoke Baldur's Gate with this image. Why switch it around?

 

Health should be restored via healing spells and potions, at is always has been in RPGs through the ages. I understand the intent of their design with this dual resource. It's simply backwards.

 

Stamina should deplete with travel and exertion, as it did in Baldur's Gate, requiring rest to restore. It's the natural limiter on the adventuring day. In the BG games you had a little "weary eye" icon; in PoE it's made quantifiable with a stamina bar. Bravo, except--what, that little green bar next to my character is the health bar? Their portrait is half-crimson due to loss of stamina? So confuse.

 

I'm not sure we need to complicate the picture further with temporary heals/band-aids. That's trying to make health act more like stamina, when your initial instinct was correct--health should be stamina, and vice versa.

Edited September 12, 2014 by PrimeHydra

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Obsidian wants to keep restorative magic out of the player's hand. With D&D and Forgotten Realms, no hero should ever really expire but from old age or an irretrievable corpse. I understand their reasons to use a health/stamina system as a way to have things both ways, but there are some issues that arise from it.

 

I think the most problematic ingredient within the mixture, is that attacks will almost always do a small amount of damage. Having one or two defenders is not very adequate, as they either require heavy support from expendable abilities to mitigate damage--lest those same defenders burn out quickly. Rotating characters is not even very effective at keeping your warriors from being the limiting reagent to your adventure, as many of those classes are not designed to handle sustained damage efficiently.

 

I don't think that it is correct to totally eliminate genuine healing though. You may have to let the genie out, but you can still keep it tethered. Just have healing magic be of a higher level to keep it scarce with a real opportunity cost. Furthermore, just concoct some in-game reason about the difficulty of binding souls, and how only the gods yet know the secret to successfully binding souls to produce genuine life. I really think that would go a long way to mitigate the aforementioned problems with health/stamina loss.

[archangel979]

They added Health/Stamina to force players to use new resting mechanics. And they needed because they added many encounter abilities that can be used all days long even after you spent some of your daily abilities. It is a simple as that. 

[Captain Shrek]

Obsidian wants to keep restorative magic out of the player's hand.

 

 

I am sorry but this is a pretty retarded way of doing it then. The easiest way would have been to simply make it damned hard to get:

 

1) Make the spell immensely hard to learn: Is actually reasonable as the kind of effect you need and the disinclination of people to spread it.

 

2) Make it ingredient based: And make that ingredient damed hard to find.

 

3) Make players pay XP for healing: Lol, yup. Like that's ever gonna happen...

 

Instead if they made a HP/Stamina system, then I would sadly say that then the designers need a new set of frontal lobes.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

There are hundreds of ways they could introduce health healing into the game. One example could be, at this stage in time in the world of Eora and through animancy or whatever, they stumble onto how to heal health during the game. At the moment, we have Gatorade sports drink potions to heal stamina.

[archangel979]

If they ever plan on increasing adventuring day best way would be to add daily resources that heal health (cleric, druid, paladin and chanter could be prime candidates but they could give Vampire spells to wizards and ciphers as well). 

 

This way players could have more control on when they rest and not just it being decided on damage mitigation. 

 

J.E.Sawyer announced that Health/Stamina is going to be changed a bit to be more intuitive for players, I also hope they do little balance changes so you don't need to rest as much.

Edited September 12, 2014 by archangel979

[Mr. Magniloquent]

 

Obsidian wants to keep restorative magic out of the player's hand.

 

 

I am sorry but this is a pretty retarded way of doing it then. The easiest way would have been to simply make it damned hard to get:

 

Well, it's not just the player's hands. That's actually secondary. They want restorative magic out of the setting. The ability to heal solves a great deal of problems in the world--imagine that! Adventuring becomes an extremely dangerous line of work, and the mysteries of life and death remain obscure. Healing bodies verges on and temps power over life and death both conceptually and functionally. If you can close a wound with magic, why not regenerate a limb. If you can regenerate whole limbs, why can't you restore a body to life? It's the slippery slope argument which risks demystifying PoE's magic, deities, and cosmos. They would like to avoid that for the time, I believe.

[Gfted1]

Sure, but a good nights sleep does that anyway.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Sure, but a good nights sleep does that anyway.

 

Understood and agreed. I imagine that they felt that slope to be less precarious whilst emphasizing the old convention of inns being the hub for adventuring.

[Seari]

They could've just made it that healing magic only works on fresh wounds or something, like resurrection in dnd?

 

edit: I understand what they're trying to do, it's not a bad idea, it just complicates a lot of things.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Seari

[archangel979]

Now that I think about it more, the system is like 4e D&D a lot. In 4e everyone can heal itself outside combat with his own Hit Die (in effect a random health pool). But healing spells are not free but use the target's Hit Die. Once you are out of these Hit Die you need to rest to get more. No other way around it. So these Hit Die that cannot be replenished but with rest are equal to Health in PoE. And when someone heals your Stamina with a healing spell and you get damaged more you lose more Health which is like losing Hit Die in 4e due to being healed. 

Also the adventuring day in 4e is based around 4 encounters on average. Sounds familiar? :D

 

Only difference is that 4e version of PoE Stamina does not regenerate fast after combat but in 4e you get hit less so it does not need to. 

[morhilane]

 

Also the adventuring day in 4e is based around 4 encounters on average. Sounds familiar? :D

 

That's not a 4e things, my 3.0E DnD Master Manual also suggest 4 encounters per adventuring days (aka each normal difficulty encounter should take about 25% of the party resources).

[archangel979]

 

 

 

Also the adventuring day in 4e is based around 4 encounters on average. Sounds familiar? :D

That's not a 4e things, my 3.0E DnD Master Manual also suggest 4 encounters per adventuring days (aka each normal difficulty encounter should take about 25% of the party resources).

yes. But 3.5 didn't have encounter powers or short resting between encounters. You could make single encounters that used up most party resources.

[morhilane]

 

 

 

Also the adventuring day in 4e is based around 4 encounters on average. Sounds familiar? :D

That's not a 4e things, my 3.0E DnD Master Manual also suggest 4 encounters per adventuring days (aka each normal difficulty encounter should take about 25% of the party resources).

yes. But 3.5 didn't have encounter powers or short resting between encounters. You could make single encounters that used up most party resources.

 

 

My point is that DnD recommendation of 4 encounters make an adventure day has nothing to do with 4e existing. In fact, they probably balanced the mechanics in the 4e based on that many years old recommendation.

[Elerond]

 

 

 

Also the adventuring day in 4e is based around 4 encounters on average. Sounds familiar? :D

That's not a 4e things, my 3.0E DnD Master Manual also suggest 4 encounters per adventuring days (aka each normal difficulty encounter should take about 25% of the party resources).

yes. But 3.5 didn't have encounter powers or short resting between encounters. You could make single encounters that used up most party resources.

 

 

My point is that DnD recommendation of 4 encounters make an adventure day has nothing to do with 4e existing. In fact, they probably balanced the mechanics in the 4e based on that many years old recommendation.

 

 

Blog post that ponders quite deeply D&D's four encounters per day philosophy.

http://harbinger-of-doom.blogspot.fi/2012/01/encounters-per-day-design.html

Edited September 12, 2014 by Elerond

[Seari]

Why does health and stamina have to be affected by damage (ratio) at the same time? Why not when stamina is depleted you take health damage? This is how I thought it worked when I first saw the health/stamina system. Or if that goes against the spirit of the idea or whatever, why not have health affected only when stamina is low, maybe under 50% or 30%? This would increase the adventuring day and make the system more intuitive overall IMO.

[Captain Shrek]

Why have stamina at all? At this point it has absolutely no meaning. The only graceful thing to do is now to drop two health bars to one and name it stamina. Take penalties when it drops below certain value, if you really want. Even then it would be unnecessary. 

Edited September 18, 2014 by Captain Shrek

[Seari]

The point is that stamina can be restored(healed) while health cannot, due to lore reasons I think.

[Captain Shrek]

The point is that stamina can be restored(healed) while health cannot, due to lore reasons I think.

Yeah. That is why I mentioned that HP should be renamed to stamina to satisfy the lore fiends. 

Edited September 18, 2014 by Captain Shrek

[Matt516]

Just wanted to point out that the issue of strategic resources being functionally infinite when in a city is hardly a unique feature of the health/stamina system. Making city encounters a bit harder is an attempt to mitigate that issue - but the issue itself isn't the fault of the health/stamina system, it would happen in any game with strategic resources when fighting in the place you replenish those resources. Stop pretending that this is some revolutionary problem caused by the HP system...