Leftley wrote:

Well, I certainly must apologize for not reading your post carefully enough--I was rather busy at the moment and that particular detail slipped my notice.

Thanks.

But that aside, all I'm saying is that it's not an innovation particular to Baldur's Gate

Which would be why I said:

I do find it interesting that Baldur's Gate, using the real D&D rules...

Let's make a deal on the forum:

If someone says, "X game does it this way", try making a few little assumptions:

- Unless they have proven otherwise, assume they are not an idiot.

- With the above assumption, unless they explicitly said otherwise, assume they didn't also mean to say "And X is the ONLY game that does it this way".

- With the same above assumption, unless they explicitly said otherwise, assume they also didn't mean "X is the FIRST game to do it this way".

- With all that in mind, make a post that actually adds to the discussion by providing detail about other games or the history of a feature or whatever, rather than removing value from the discussion by filling the conversation with inaccurate statements.

One of the reasons I tend to stay out of most involved online discussions is that half the responses to my posts make one of the above assumptions and take a point to the extreme that I can't possibly have meant, then respond to that extreme as if I'm an idiot, even though I never meant it or even said it.

That gets tiring.

Shadowdarke wrote:

Alathon wrote:

Hmm, been tinkering with a Called shot - Random limb cutting system.

Problem is in player input, and combat speed. I can think of a couple of things.

You get to do 1 called shot a round, and then you go after that limb(this would be interesting, tactics to disable certain limbs depending on the situation, if you know its a fast runner, and can call for help easily by running, disable its legs, etc)

Or
You get 1 called shot per combat(one region to go after(lower body, central body, upper body)

Or
I make limb cutting depending on random rolls between the oponent, the attacker, the fighting skills they each have, and then what "style" they are using(if fighters, different styles make for different openings, and might allow easier access to higher/lower body parts)

Any thoughts or comments appreciated

Alathon

Chaosium had an interesting system for limb loss. I'm not sure how many of their games included it, but it was in the Elfquest RPG.

Your hit points were divided between your various body parts. When a body part is reduced to 0 hp, it's useless (each body part had different effects on the player when "numbed"). Additional damage just makes it harder to heal. If someone can do twice the body part's damage in a singe shot, it was severed or otherwise mangled beyond repair.

Since elves in EQ were fairly small and frail, Elfquest was a bloodbath with limbs flying every battle. It's a good thing I allowed more healers in the group than there were in the graphic novels to reattach limbs.

I'm considering a similar system (with hopefully less mangling) for a project of mine. If you are interested in more details from the Chaosium system, I can look them up tonight after work.

Sounds very intesresting, if you could Id like it a lot. My game would be a bloodbath this way, and my elementalists would bea little overpowered. "Cast Shivs Inferno on Player1, 350 damage, 6x what the bodypart attacker hits has, boom, off with the legs/whatever" hehe. Up for tweaking I guess

Alathon

Did I say it sounded like a nice system?

Leftley wrote:

Well, I'm running out of time here and, being a fantastically dense person, I still don't have any idea as to why you're so pissed.

Supply more content-filled messages like that one, and fewer that say "that's a gross exaggeration", and you won't have to worry about me being pissed!

Foomer wrote:

Mostly I dislike not being able to tell the difference between "Near death" and "Mortally wounded" or other such messages, without some kind of guide to tell me... I'm just guessing otherwise.

You are mortally wounded. You are wounded to the point where your death is all but sealed. You are ****ed. If you need a number to tell you this, well, I have one word, 'teenybopper'.

Foomer wrote:

Mostly I dislike not being able to tell the difference between "Near death" and "Mortally wounded" or other such messages, without some kind of guide to tell me... I'm just guessing otherwise.

Then thats because of bad designers. You should clearly be able to tell the difference between these two. Also, too many different ones confuse someone. You shouldnt have 30 different. In my game there will be 3 levels of mortally wounded(each removing more and more abilities), and 5 levels of health. Perfect, Scratched, Wounded, Badly Wounded and Mortally wounded(the 3 msgs). Ontop of that theres a helpfile on the hp levels etc

Alathon

Botman wrote:

Leftley wrote:

Botman wrote:

Foomer wrote:

Mostly I dislike not being able to tell the difference between "Near death" and "Mortally wounded" or other such messages, without some kind of guide to tell me... I'm just guessing otherwise.

You are mortally wounded. You are wounded to the point where your death is all but sealed. You are ****ed. If you need a number to tell you this, well, I have one word, 'teenybopper'.

There are a lot of games out there that really don't have any particularly concrete order of health-level wordings. You learn the bottom end of the scale pretty quickly, but it's still annoying--is "fairly injured" better or worse than "moderately wounded"?

I was about to say something like "well thats just poor design then", but I see Athalon has already said that exact thing, hmm.

Thats Alathon to you, Bomtan

Ath..bah now you messed me up too!

Or you could do as Eric Idle suggests, which is exactly the opposite:

So, remember when you're feeling very small, and insecure,
how amazingly unlikely is your birth...
and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'cause there's bugger-all down here on earth!

I believe the hit point system is a good system, regardless of the statements stated in the orginal post. These games that i make are mostly fantasy, and offer some sort of realism, but i dont think i would as far as to ditch the entire HP system.

I do infact, have a system that is similair to the one mentioned within the orginal post. Where as if you wear enough armor, you will become "invincible", but i have balanced the items to not give you as much defense, since it can add up rather quickly. Also, you can only have a whole amount of 100 hit points at any given point in time. Meaning if you get to the point where you are as strong as you could be, you will have 100 strength, giving you 100 hit points. The more objects, spells, and weapons that hit your body, the more hit points you will lose if the armor is not able to fully protect you from the blow.

Basically, you could say that my armor system is protecting you from a certain amount of damage done to you. If you have a 5 defense shield, and a rat has 6 attack, the rat will do 1 damage to you, taking 1 hp from your hit point stat. Max hp changes along with your strength, raising the amount of HP you can possibly have.

Its a basic system i must admit, but it allows me to create unique items, which seems to be what many players want. A player likes to have that special bow, and likes to know that he is the only player that has it.

Anyways, I will probably never leave the HP system, and i will probably give it little change, since i am a fan of the old rpg stuff. HP is an easy way to get a battle system up and rolling, especially if you dont have that much knowledge in the battle system area, which im quite the opposite i might add.

Concluding, Hitpoints is here to stay, for me at least. Its an easy way to get things rolling, and saves time from figuring all kinds of mathmatical calculations/equations and randmoning of damage inflicted apon humans and monsters.

Yes i agree that the arrow should do different damage each time it is shot at its target, and should miss quite alot, also if a metal chest is worn, the wooden arrow shouldnt penetrate that armor, but then again, the amounts of programming that would take a long time to get anything done, producing lots of bugs if you didnt know what you were doing, and again would be time consuming.

Another argument is the AIM issue, of how good a weapon's aim is, which can easily be determined if the game is 3D, relying souly apon the player to aim the weapon. Such as shoothing a gun in a first person shooting game, you are required to aim it just right. And if it was an RPG, you would probably want to factor in the wind speed and curve of faulty or broken arrows that can occassionally break when you fall or drop some of them.

The master rpg would do this and much more, but i've yet to see this greate creation, maybe one day eh?

--FIREking

FIREking wrote:

I believe the hit point system is a good system, regardless of the statements stated in the orginal post. These games that i make are mostly fantasy, and offer some sort of realism, but i dont think i would as far as to ditch the entire HP system.

I do infact, have a system that is similair to the one mentioned within the orginal post. Where as if you wear enough armor, you will become "invincible", but i have balanced the items to not give you as much defense, since it can add up rather quickly. Also, you can only have a whole amount of 100 hit points at any given point in time. Meaning if you get to the point where you are as strong as you could be, you will have 100 strength, giving you 100 hit points. The more objects, spells, and weapons that hit your body, the more hit points you will lose if the armor is not able to fully protect you from the blow.

Basically, you could say that my armor system is protecting you from a certain amount of damage done to you. If you have a 5 defense shield, and a rat has 6 attack, the rat will do 1 damage to you, taking 1 hp from your hit point stat. Max hp changes along with your strength, raising the amount of HP you can possibly have.

Its a basic system i must admit, but it allows me to create unique items, which seems to be what many players want. A player likes to have that special bow, and likes to know that he is the only player that has it.

Anyways, I will probably never leave the HP system, and i will probably give it little change, since i am a fan of the old rpg stuff. HP is an easy way to get a battle system up and rolling, especially if you dont have that much knowledge in the battle system area, which im quite the opposite i might add.

Concluding, Hitpoints is here to stay, for me at least. Its an easy way to get things rolling, and saves time from figuring all kinds of mathmatical calculations/equations and randmoning of damage inflicted apon humans and monsters.

Yes i agree that the arrow should do different damage each time it is shot at its target, and should miss quite alot, also if a metal chest is worn, the wooden arrow shouldnt penetrate that armor, but then again, the amounts of programming that would take a long time to get anything done, producing lots of bugs if you didnt know what you were doing, and again would be time consuming.

Another argument is the AIM issue, of how good a weapon's aim is, which can easily be determined if the game is 3D, relying souly apon the player to aim the weapon. Such as shoothing a gun in a first person shooting game, you are required to aim it just right. And if it was an RPG, you would probably want to factor in the wind speed and curve of faulty or broken arrows that can occassionally break when you fall or drop some of them.

The master rpg would do this and much more, but i've yet to see this greate creation, maybe one day eh?

--FIREking

I agree with some of the things you say, but note this. You say new systems is time consuming etc etc. Well of course, making a game IS time consuming, your not going to get out of that. HP system does NOT mean its not complicated, I use Health and Spirit, and my battle system takes into account a LOT of things. SPells on you, AC, Dex(adds to dodge/parry/proc(weapon auto spell/skill) chance), Str(More str, more damage (something like 1.5% per 2 str)), etc etc etc. Anyways, to make it short - HP does in NO way mean something is made simple. I also have to say some of the things you say are so hard to do, might be (although time consuming) not all that complex. My system figures in if the weapon is rusty, damaged, everything up to stance and grip on the weapon factors in how you hit.

Alathon