DEATH ISSUE

[The Explorer]

SnorriHT as a newbie one of my Chars gets knocked on their rear on a regular basis, I would have quit playing let alone just logged out if that was the case here. It's disappionting when my char loose here but it is supposed to be a game therefore fun I don't play games to get stressed out. The crashes, lag and bugs are stressful also have been the cause of many lost battles but I just remind myself these are things our wonderful DM's will fix in time.

[SnorriHT]

Wyvern,

You are right. A PW is about having fun, and my misguided goal was to prove to myself to that I can make it on a hardcore world. I'm happy for the experience, but I don't think I'd ever play on a hardcore world again.

The explorer,

I'm a newbie as well mate
And like you, my frustration is with the NWN2 design decisions and bugs, not with Dasaria II.


Back to the topic:

IMHO the death system is balanced as it is. RPing the death is a great idea, but I find it a bit hard to RP a death that was caused by NWN2 bugs.

[muletang]

So is chewing with your mouth closed, but I don't slap people for that and then chase them out of the room

hah, my Das boards quote of the week.

I usually just *stands up shaking*, *pukes* "uurrrrrg, what happend there?" or..
*lies on the flooring fitting slightly*..etc

[Alander]

As for the Fugue Plane - I agree , it's a bad idea.

I played on LP MUD ( multiplayer text game - for those who didn't know) once. There was a real perm death system implemented. That mud was a place for hardcore rpers though. I agree that there's no place for such things on Dasaria.

I wrote my post to discuss something else : calling death a different name, you know. I thought that all of us would agree that it's a good idea.

After reading one of your posts I understood one thing though. Power gamers , players who play on Das only to get higher lvls are hardly ever logged on to forums

In conclusion, I see no point in creating such posts here ;] My mistake!

best regards,
Al

[catar4]

Kossar never died (even though he did have to respawn some times).

When he dies, he says he got a beating or was knocked uncounscious. And when he kills named NPCs he always says he gave them a nice beating to put some iron in their heads ... cause he expects to meet them again.

I thinkthe Gods favor Kossar since he never got to died from one of the regular beatings he receives.

[Evelond Formos]

I'm sorry if this is an example of animal cruelty to a horse, but I'd like to bring it back up. While I see no apparent problem; I -do- think Death could be made a little more IC.

In the nature of not ENFORCING roleplay, players can be given an option that they can change at any time by going to an Inn or Temple:

Choice 1: Keep the standard death and respawn system; respawn at the Inn if in Cear, or at the beginning of the dungeon you died in.

Choice 2: Leave your corpse as a placeable in the "real world" and have your character enter the fugue plane. You have the option of respawning in the fugue plane for no XP penalty, but only after thirty seconds, and all your items remain on your corpse. You would respawn at the graveyard in N. Cear. Of course, a nice fellow might raise you, then you'd get all your stuff back. The whole meeting your own corpse thing might be a little odd, though. That would need to be worked out.

Choice 3: Go to the Underworld, where you get to keep all items and XP, but you have to do a specific quest to bribe Peralia to release you. Your corpse, although devoid of items, would be left in the "real world". With this corpse a party member might animate you, making you undead, but with limited control, unless the animator releases you. You would, of course, get undead effects. To prevent abuse of this, a penalty is suggested. Once a quest is completed you'd respawn at your corpse.

While I understand this is not a priority, if the Powers that Be agree with any/all of these ideas, I'd be happy to take out the time to script it myself, and make the areas required, for options 2 and 3.

Just my two cents,
~Evelond~

[Vahene]

Choice 3: Go to the Underworld, where you get to keep all items
and XP, but you have to do a specific quest to bribe Peralia to release you.

I like this part of #3, I'm not too hip on #2 but probably because I used
to play EQ for years where there was a timer for you to get back to your
corpse. If you were in a hard to reach/quested area, and couldn't get
back, you lost everything - which was a large pain in the rear.

I like having to barter with Peralia, and I would go even further, to add
that if you had some sort of quest system in game with each diety (even
the heretical ones), you could bribe your own diety for favors with
Peralia. I don't know how that could be stored, though.

K

[Ramblinwomble]

Choice 2: Leave your corpse as a placeable in the "real world" and have your character enter the fugue plane. You have the option of respawning in the fugue plane for no XP penalty, but only after thirty seconds, and all your items remain on your corpse. You would respawn at the graveyard in N. Cear. Of course, a nice fellow might raise you, then you'd get all your stuff back. The whole meeting your own corpse thing might be a little odd, though. That would need to be worked out.

I've wearing my been there tried that t-shirts today. This one ranks up with fugue plane for me. It's my stuff, I worked for hours for it, and having to run back neked through bandit infested hills got old real fast.

Choice 3: Go to the Underworld, where you get to keep all items and XP, but you have to do a specific quest to bribe Peralia to release you. Your corpse, although devoid of items, would be left in the "real world". With this corpse a party member might animate you, making you undead, but with limited control, unless the animator releases you. You would, of course, get undead effects. To prevent abuse of this, a penalty is suggested. Once a quest is completed you'd respawn at your corpse.

In principal this sounds great, but after the third or fourth death of an evening I found it got old. All it was doing was taking time away from me doing what I wanted to, a time out if you like. Now if there was a permanent DM tied into a chair pocessing the gods as necessary then maybe it would be fun for longer, but with pick option 1 - 3 conversations not so.

Mind you, the idea of letting players decide their own "death" setting is a nice one.

[Alander]

Good work digging up the post that I wrote like few months ago

[TheSilverHammer]

From an in-game point of view, respawning is hard to explain, and saying "Knocked out" isn't any better.

Lets say that you are in the middle of the Kalem dungeon and you are "Knocked out". Why did you live? Why didn't the rogues gut you like a pig? You just killed a bunch of them.

What if you were in the crypt under fuller's house? If you were, "Knocked out" why didn't the ghoul decide you were going to be a delicious snack? Why didn't that necromancer guy go, "Jackpot!" and the next thing you know, you are his new favorite undead minion?

So saying knocked out isn't very realistic either. It will just become a cliché term like asking how many seasons someone is. I hate that one, lets just call levels levels and not come up with some lame 'arrpee' euphemism.


There was a PW called tiegle manor in NWN1, and I wrote some areas for that game. This one area was called "The grave yard". It was meant to be a diablo like experience and was swarming with undead. You could easily run from one bad guy and attract 5 others. Undead respawned in 5 minutes so you could also find your way out blocked. This zone was on a hard-core server and had the fuge plane (which I hated). I knew the zone was very dangerous and wanted to give the players a break.

So I created a church in the graveyard that was safe and it was patrolled by a celestial avenger. I set up a script such that when a player was about to die, an event would fire causing the avenger to summon the player who would then heal / cure them as well as 'raise' them if they died (for some reason I could not guarantee he could summon you in time). I set this protection to work on players level 6 and under (the target for the zone). So technically, the players never really died here unless they were above the level limit. From a story point, that is how I handled that problem. I know the players loved the zone (it was the most popular area on the server) and they were still afraid to die (xp / gold penalty was still assessed).

In a world where there is no perma death, I would either make it an 'accepted fact' just like saying some words and wiggling your fingers would cause a ball of fire to shoot out or come up with an in-game story reason you do not die that is plausible.

I think in a world with a lot of political maneuvering with various gods vying for power, you could do a lot by tieing each player to his god. The PC has a purpose to fulfill in the world and his god will not let him truly die until that role is fulfilled. PCs become proxies for the gods to persu their agendas. It would be a cold war, where the gods never fight directly, but through mortal factions. Kind of like how the USA and Russia propped up various third world governments and rebel groups to server their own purposes.

So when a PC dies or is about to die, he teleports to his home church (which might be very far from where he actually was, thus making death even more inconvenient) and restored to full health. Of course there is also a fee of some kind and you could even have some kind of faction or standing with the church. If you have good faction, then you get a 'free rez', but this lowers your faction. The church has the god's agenda in mind and will give you some quests which can raise your faction.

This could all lead to a lot of RP and PvP. For example, new characters have no god faction (except for maybe priests and paladins). If someone recruits you into a church, that is worth big faction points. If you can get someone to convert from one church to another, that an even bigger bonus. Other faction quests can range from the mundane, kill 10 lesser undead (skeletons / zombies ) for good aligned gods, up to kill a follower of X (or X, Y, Z).

I do not know how important gods are in Dasaria. I know some players are big on Lochwar, but how involved are the gods themselves? Do they have an active interest in meddling in the mortal affairs of men? If so, this could be a long-term plan in the world of Dasaria, to make church / god factions, make a death system centered around them, and make a bunch of quests that intentionally cause conflict between players.

Ultimately, you could say you 'died', but like everyone else, your god wasn't done with you yet.

[broncoblitz]

I swear to god Eve, by bringing up this topic again a change to the phrase may be necesary to "Beating a dead Eve"

[Minuvas]

I just say I barely escaped with my life, or was beaten badly.

Simple enough, you obvious CAN'T say you were killed (Unless your god loves you THAT much he feels the need to divine restore you multiple times), or unless you never plan to login again .

[Alander]

I wrote this post on MARCH. Please, stop bringing up posts again and again. The death issue was discussed many, many times and it seems nothing will be changed for now.

Maybe after the campaign is launched someone will try to do something with this, who knows. As for now, let's close this topic...

BR,
Chris

[TheSilverHammer]

Thread necromancy is truly a black art.

[Trinn]

RP'ing deaths in quests etc, I've always tried to avoid saying 'I died like, 3 times' and instead say something along the lines of 'They beat me back repeatedly, until I had to just give up'

And things like the fuge plane, I'm with you on that Wyv. The worst death system I came across was in Arabel, Great RP but terribly harsh death penalties.

Ive always disliked the fact you actually loose XP, The system I like best is the one from City of Heroes / Villains (anyone play it?) where you recieve XP 'debt', in effect you gain XP half as quickly for a set time, multiple deaths increase the time you gain XP half as quickly. I've wondered if a similar thing could be done where instead of simply adding to the time you spend getting xp at 1/2 rate, you could make multiple deaths add some 'XP Debt' and also decrease the rate you gain XP even further, say from 1/2 to 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 etc..