Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Here's an idea:

What if when character is killed, instead of having pay xp price there was an option to sit in the fugue for N minutes and then get resurrected at no cost.

For example, 5 * Character level minutes. Or 10 * character level minutes.

Could also be 60 + 5*character level minutes.

That's with ECL, of course.

Could also become available after certain level.

Yeah, I would prefer that, just leave the character sit in fugue while I go do something else. Instead of having to grind the experience back up.

It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure how I feel, since it encourages playing multiple characters (switching when you die) - but really, that's only if you're soloing/stingy. So at the least I have no reason to argue AGAINST this change.

It's not a bad idea. I find myself not feeling strongly for nor against it.

Sun Wukong wrote:Yeah, I would prefer that, just leave the character sit in fugue while I go do something else. Instead of having to grind the experience back up.

Yeah.

Also, 5*class level will be 1 hour 40 minutes for level 20, while 10 * class level will be 3 hours 20 minutes. If it is 60 + X* class level, it can be made bigger.

Penalty for dying is still intact, and if they're in a hurry, they can eat xp loss.

I think it would be cool.

I certainly don't like the current death mechanics either, but it's poor design to add any kind of incentive for players to leave their character AFK for any amount of time. Better to strike them with some sort of penalty, or impairment, that allows them to continue to play the game, and even RP out the situation better than today. IC consequences that can be played out.

Even better if it gives the player (optional) avenues to overcome the impairment. Like, pay a priest for a restoration, or seek out the location of your death to reclaim your soul, sacrifice a gnoll cub, etc.

dedude wrote:I certainly don't like the current death mechanics either, but it's poor design to add any kind of incentive for players to leave their character AFK for any amount of time. Better to strike them with some sort of penalty, or impairment, that allows them to continue to play the game, and even RP out the situation better than today. IC consequences that can be played out.

Even better if it gives the player (optional) avenues to overcome the impairment. Like, pay a priest for a restoration, or seek out the location of your death to reclaim your soul, sacrifice a gnoll cub, etc.

My idea was to make the player log off or switch characters, and not loiter in the fugue.
The cooldown would persist through server reset.

"I'll stay here and rethink my life choices" option could also remove the corpse from the world so they won't be sitting for 6 hours waiting for a raise. Or you could boot them.

The reason for that is that currently in cas of messup where lose something like 2500 xp as a result, it is very likely you'll log off anyway.

The penalty in the proposed scenario is that you can't return to the world and have to take a break unless you're okay with losing xp.

I think that the point of death system on an RP server should be in two points - first to dissuade players from doing stupidly haphazard stuff with their character leading to the character death in the first place and second to dissuade them from running straight again into combat, because what sane person would want to go try die again right after they went through an experience like that? For example on one server I have seen this implemented by giving players debuffs to AC, AB and Spell Failure for RL hour due to the fatigue of being brought back to life. As for the first point, they had you lose half of your consumables and chance to loose a wand with the highest circle spell because they get damaged when your body's torn apart by some monster . I think that was actually well thought out.

So in epics you can earn about 1,500-2,000 XP per hour if you are out killing monsters in grind mode (obviously less if you're adventuring and taking your time). Standing around RP'ing you can earn roughly 500 - 600 RP per hour in my experience, depending on how active you are in whatever conversation or activity is taking place. So such a mechanic wouldn't by any means make death easier, so I like the idea. Though I would rather it does encourage staying in the fugue rather than logging a different PC. Logging a different PC is not really a penalty at all and staying in the fugue while catching up on Hulu or Netflix...or doing laundry, what-have-you allows for the possibility that another adventure will happen upon you and take pity/raise you. I don't see something like that as a poor mechanic, I see it as offering players a reward for staying in Fugue and allowing for the opportunity for others to 'save' them, creating an RP opportunity.

My suggestion would be to either persist corpses at location through reset, or if that is not possible then if a crash/reset occurs their only options become to wait out the rest of the required time in fugue or go ahead and eat the penalty. Dedudes ideas are far more interesting to me then a penalty that equates to requiring 1 or more hours (2 hours if you're level 29) of grinding to get back to where you were. Though it would be nice if it required a PC Cleric to cast the requisite spells after a PC death I realize that is an unrealistic expectation since some play in time zones where something like that wouldn't be feasible. The penalty should be pretty major, like level drained by 1/6 character level, maybe suffering from penalties to all stats of 1d4, maybe even apply greater bestow curse effect to the PC. The penalties should definitely persist through rest and it would be nice if one or more of the (lighter) penalties required a PC Cleric (or UMD I suppose) to encourage the RP angle rather than just paying 'x' gold to an NPC Priest. In any case I imagine you could set the penalties to fade over time, making the PC good as new after a 1d4 hours.

Oh actually got reminded of another system that got implemented instead of XP loss on one server. If after death you got brought back to life by NPC, your character got an imaginary XP pool, say it would be 100/level, they didn't loose any XP but had to fill the XP pool in a way that any XP they gained half went to character and half to the XP pool until it got filled so they would need to earn on 4k xp to get back to normal on level 20 but they earned 2k actual XP for the character too and to support players in RPing after death RP xp was rewarded in full to the pool and to the character...though the RP xp there was substantially higher than here.

dedude wrote:I certainly don't like the current death mechanics either, but it's poor design to add any kind of incentive for players to leave their character AFK for any amount of time. Better to strike them with some sort of penalty, or impairment, that allows them to continue to play the game, and even RP out the situation better than today. IC consequences that can be played out.

Even better if it gives the player (optional) avenues to overcome the impairment. Like, pay a priest for a restoration, or seek out the location of your death to reclaim your soul, sacrifice a gnoll cub, etc.

I like Dedude's idea.

Either have the option to pay XP, or to be afflicted with a temporary affliction preventing adventure. Affliction could either be or not be removed by either a cleric or a wizard. Might have to make a check to ensure the PC cannot remove their own thing, to encourage/enforce RP with another person.


Encouraging a person to switch characters on death or to log out should not be pursued. It would reduce the amount of RP available for others.

i like these options provided so far. i am a glutton for punishment, so bare with me.

- i like the xp pool/debt idea. would consider (x)xp/level but i think a better course would be to have it set at 2000xp or something.
- while the debt is in toe you have a penalty that acts similarly to a level drain or gr.bestow curse. this penalty is unremovable.
- once the debt has been paid, a restoration or like spell can remove the affliction.

chad878262 wrote:So in epics you can earn about 1,500-2,000 XP per hour if you are out killing monsters in grind mode (obviously less if you're adventuring and taking your time).

It really depends on your build though. I have one epic level character that can't earn squat by killing in grind mode.

chad878262 wrote:I see it as offering players a reward for staying in Fugue and allowing for the opportunity for others to 'save' them, creating an RP opportunity.

I'm unsure whether you like it or disilike it. If you dislike it, turn it into "boot character from the server for X hours". Meaning the timer doesn't go down while the fugued character is active.

In case of "debt pool", the pool should be zeroed upon server reset, and should affect combat xp only. Otherwise it would be no different from losing xp.

NegInfinity wrote:.
In case of "debt pool", the pool should be zeroed upon server reset, and should affect combat xp only. Otherwise it would be no different from losing xp.

actually no. the debt pool would counter any offender that is unafraid of death because they just got a new level.

NegInfinity wrote:I'm unsure whether you like it or disilike it. If you dislike it, turn it into "boot character from the server for X hours". Meaning the timer doesn't go down while the fugued character is active.

I like it...

chad878262 wrote:So such a mechanic wouldn't by any means make death easier, so I like the idea. Though I would rather it does encourage staying in the fugue rather than logging a different PC.

My point was much like Hoihe's (perish the thought! ) I don't believe it is valuable to the server to encourage people to log off or switch characters on death, would rather it be something to encourage them to wait it out, based on the possibility they might get raised and, if not at least they know after X amount of time they will come back to 'life' without the XP penalty.

NegInfinity wrote:It really depends on your build though. I have one epic level character that can't earn squat by killing in grind mode.

Fair enough, my point was really just that if you are level 29 (for example) it's likely going to take you at least an hour and a half to 'make up' the lost XP from death penalty. Requiring the PC to stay in Fugue for a greater or at least equal amount of time to the amount they might earn grinding is a fair trade. It may encourage players to hang out in the fugue and possibly get raised by a player, thereby having an RP opportunity to whatever player/group finds their corpse. Of course, if you are in the ** level zone you can earn as much as 5K per hour in certain zones thus making waiting around a losing proposition for anything besides RP, which is maybe enough?

Yeah thats what I want in a game... not being able to play it... Id MUCH prefer to lose some xp and and get back to having fun... I cant spend the little time I have to play ... not playing