Genuinely Spurious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 5:21 pm
gedweyignasia wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 4:09 pm
Genuinely Spurious wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 4:00 pm
Will level restrictions on areas be lifted as well as the loot in the chests? Sure they could choose to continue adventuring, but they won't get anything the way it's set up.
To be clear, this is a
penalty for dying, not an incentive to die or a mechanism that allows characters to scale their build down to grind more content by dying.
To be clear, I was asking a question. Not asking for your snarky comment. You just said in your post that folks will need to take on a lesser challenge while the penalty is active. Just how are they supposed to do that with no content to take on. It's a legit question. How about dropping the attitude?
Even in epics where the penalty is strongest, there's a wide range of challenges, ranging from the nigh-unassailable (Mount Speartop, Skull Gorge, Land/Wagons Ho, Forgotten City, Wilds Descent) to the virtually-trivial (Frost Giant Keep, Cloud Peaks lich cave, Reaching Woods, Oghrann, Duergar Compound). Presumably if your whole party gets wiped out (which is, occasional bugs notwithstanding, the only way you can get a penalty unless you're too impatient to get pulled out of the Fugue), it will be at the high end of their performance envelope, which still leaves them with things to do.
Furthermore, depending on how reckless they were the first time, it's possible that they might be able to
go back to the same area, just playing it more carefully or bringing along a few new allies. A 4-level drain (the highest Minor Recovery can go, from level 25 onward) and -2 to ability scores is going to make a dent, but it is not going to leave a character hopelessly combat-ineffective unless they were barely capable of fighting in the first place. (To recap, the combined effects here are -5 AB, between -1 and -4 damage per hit, -1 to -2 AC, -30 maximum HP, -5 to all saving throws, -4 to caster levels, between -5 and -7 to spell DCs, and -11 to all skill checks. The harshest hits are to DC casters and sneaks because BioWare made some weird choices when implementing negative levels, but martials will generally just be slowed down, and a mixed party will mitigate the harsher penalties.)
Alternatively, they can spend up to half an hour talking in an inn or wherever. I don't really see much snark in Ged's post, especially when I also read the part you omitted from your quote:
gedweyignasia wrote:I want to reiterate:
With regards to our death system, I think this will be a good change that encourages players to RP the possible negative consequences of adventuring, rather than RPing around those consequences. While a debilitated PC might continue adventuring, they'd be more conservative in the challenge they take on, possibly bring allies, etc. Or they might choose to convalesce in safety. Either way, having the character actually live out that experience in the server encourages players to expand on a part of their character that they might ordinarily not give as much thought to. Showing some vulnerability can create a lot of depth and help characters connect with one another better.
Aspect of Sorrow wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 5:37 pm
Anecdotal, but so far the people that I've partied with who have a slew of alts in their repertoire aren't incentivized to log into an alt due to the recovery malus, they're more frustrated that they can't continue on the character they made a decision to play and have to idle out the timer because they died to something like a frost giant's multiple critical in the same attack. They're in a party already, they're already stocked, they're already to go.
These statements seem either mutually inconsistent, or misunderstanding the system. If they died in a party, they probably won't get into Recovery unless the whole party collectively screwed up, because the surviving party members will bring them back. And if the whole party did get wiped out, then that is definitely a noteworthy event, and they can discuss their offscreen escape and their mistakes, so as to avoid repeating them again.
I'd understand if you omitted the "They're in a party" bit, but I see TPKs as an avoidable edge case.
Most deaths in the history of BG doesn't get much than a one-liner response, if that.
Continuing off my edge case comment above, TPKs that the party subsequently proceeds to
completely ignore are so far off the bell curve that any marbles they drop won't roll away. Deaths? Sure. Party wipes? Never seen it.
The online requisite to the timer is something I disagree with. XP loss is a frustration for pre-epics, and I think this system takes it in a better direction, but it doesn't feel complete.
Development, you have an opportunity for a gold sink for removal of the malus so that the epics can continue on about their day in game, but don't take advantage of it - leaving something of a stale taste for those that have to loiter, and if they were in a party, chances are they played a role that hamstrings the party from continuing. A player's time and options needs to be better considered, that's all that's asked. Scale the malus removal cost appropriately to the loot CR of the area they're in.
This feels interesting, we could use some more gold sinks... but it has to be hefty enough to outweigh the probable profits of the adventures they'll immediately rush back into. Would people really be willing to pay somewhere on the order of 1-2k per minute to circumvent Recovery?
