SCS inherent difficulty

[Jarno Mikkola]

In fact there are negative hp's in the vanilla game to be more precise. It's just that everything from zero to -10 and beyond is considered dead dead in IE games, unlike pnp, making death (and hence rezzes) FAR more common in the IE games than pnp.

Well, if we give a 'bandage spell' for the main character, it perhaps would work... the spell would revive the target to have 1 hit point, then perhaps cast a Hold spell on him/her for a turn or 6, and then the target would take 11 hit points damage... so you would have to heal him during the time, or the char gets chunked.

[Demivrgvs]

In fact there are negative hp's in the vanilla game to be more precise. It's just that everything from zero to -10 and beyond is considered dead dead in IE games, unlike pnp, making death (and hence rezzes) FAR more common in the IE games than pnp.

Actually in PnP only characters between -1 and -9 hit points are dying, while character at -10 and beyond are really dead.

 

That being said, I don't like using Raise Dead myself, but I don't think there's anyone who would take on the task to implement the change you're asking for, as due to engine limitations I'm quite sure it's far from being doable without issues.

[DavidW]

In fact there are negative hp's in the vanilla game to be more precise. It's just that everything from zero to -10 and beyond is considered dead dead in IE games, unlike pnp, making death (and hence rezzes) FAR more common in the IE games than pnp.

Well, if we give a 'bandage spell' for the main character, it perhaps would work... the spell would revive the target to have 1 hit point, then perhaps cast a Hold spell on him/her for a turn or 6, and then the target would take 11 hit points damage... so you would have to heal him during the time, or the char gets chunked.

 

That was the kind of workaround I had in mind, yes: make the character unable to drop below 1 hp, then hold him.

 

But:

 

- what happens if someone attacks the "down" character? Is he still incapable of taking damage? (in which case an awful lot of AI will get terribly confused) Or does the no-damage effect somehow have to be removed again?

- how about spells that kill directly, without reducing hit points?

(etc - this isn't meant to be exhaustive)

[Jarno Mikkola]

Well, if we give a 'bandage spell' for the main character, it perhaps would work... the spell would revive the target to have 1 hit point, then perhaps cast a Hold spell on him/her for a turn or 6, and then the target would take 11 hit points damage... so you would have to heal him during the time, or the char gets chunked.

That was the kind of workaround I had in mind, yes: make the character unable to drop below 1 hp, then hold him.

Hmm... in my solution the spell would be a player activated, so the character would actually drop below the 1 hp... but revived back for a while, so he can be healed over the death-line.

So mine wouldn't confuse the AI at all, unless you wish to confuse them with a zombie.

[Ithildur]

In fact there are negative hp's in the vanilla game to be more precise. It's just that everything from zero to -10 and beyond is considered dead dead in IE games, unlike pnp, making death (and hence rezzes) FAR more common in the IE games than pnp.

Well, if we give a 'bandage spell' for the main character, it perhaps would work... the spell would revive the target to have 1 hit point, then perhaps cast a Hold spell on him/her for a turn or 6, and then the target would take 11 hit points damage... so you would have to heal him during the time, or the char gets chunked.

 

 

No, not chunked; chunked is death beyond rezzing via massive damage, they should not get chunked by bleeding to death slowly, merely die normally.

 

Demi, yes I know the pnp rule, you die when you get to -10 or lower. I'm saying that the IE engine considers everything between and including 0 to -10 as dead.

 

Bleeding to death can be implemented by using a poison effect, perhaps.

 

I don't know enough about the details of how the game engine handles 0 to negative HPs translating to death, but IF some of it can be altered it's a whole different ball game with various options.

 

What about something like this: upon receiving dmg that drops their HP anywhere from 0 to -9 (the game does keep track of this amount as can be seen from NI on a dead party NPC),

 

1. character's HP gets calculated to a temporary amount which equals 10 + (current HP amount),

2. a sleep/unconscious effect with accompanying sprite animation (like from falling to a sleep, powerword sleep or Command spell) is applied

3. a poison like effect kicks in which keeps adding dmg (1/round by default).

 

The poison effect and the unconscious state ends as soon as the character's (temporary) HPs total 11 or more (ie a healing spell is cast on the character), and the temporary extra 10 HPs are taken away.

 

ie khalid has 13 hp, gets hit for 14 dmg... his hps are at -1, and he drops unconscious, and starts bleeding/poison effect, but not before his HP total is brought to 10 + (-1) or 9 HPs temporarily. So he has 9 rounds before he hits 0 HP and truly croaks/needs a rez (same as per pnp if he'd been bleeding from -1 HPs, 9 rounds before he croaks), 9 rounds during which hopefully his wife runs over and casts at least a cure light wounds on him (8 hp of healing) bringing him to 9 +8 = 17 temp HPs which is enough to revive him, but with the 10 temporary hps instantly taken away, he gets up with 7 HPs, which is the correct total after the spell. (-1 hp +8 cure)

 

One problem obviously is if he takes heavier dmg and say drops to, -8 HPs or -9hps. then he'd be unconscious with 2 or 1 temporary HPs (and two or one round for someone to save his hide) and 'bleeding'; a cure light is cast on him which brings him conscious with 10 or 9 HPs, but once the 10 temp HPs are taken away, he'll be dead. Somehow a script would need to be implemented that adds 10 temporary HPs if the currect actual HPs are 0 to -7, and adds a slightly higher amount if the dmg is more extensive, because of the set amount of the lowest form of cure spell in the game being 8.

 

It's not perfect obviously and doesn't cover all the rules of bleeding in pnp, but I don't think a full implementation of every option of stabilizing a character from PnP is necessary; the fact that BG simplifies cure spells to set numbers rather than variable amounts actually simplifies this as well. I also like the fact that this would make having healers in the party that much more important.

 

spells that insta kill or a fallen character getting hit again would just be very bad luck, no bleeding for the spell anyway in pnp. Most DM's would not have monsters going after an unconscious character while there are other enemies alive and about, unless he was being evil... this could be scripted around I suppose (alter monster scrips to make them like Ease of use Party scripts prioritizing active targets first; what is the vanilla/default behavior of monster scripts vs unconscious foes anyway?) but I could live without it; the above would at least give a small chance for that fallen character to get revived without cheesily resorting to a cheap rez as soon as they hit 0 HPs, and with anywhere between 1 to 10 temporary HPs while unconscious, it's possible that even if the stupid monster is swinging at the fallen character that he'd last a round or two (if lucky) while his partymates kill that monster off and revive him.

 

Thoughts?

[DavidW]

Sorry to disappoint, but you basically can't do any of this. Death (including dropping of all items and removal of most effects) is hardcoded to kick in at zero hit points.)

[Ithildur]

Sorry to disappoint, but you basically can't do any of this. Death (including dropping of all items and removal of most effects) is hardcoded to kick in at zero hit points.)

 

Not surprised, but what did you have in mind then when you mentioned something aboutmake the character unable to drop below 1 hp, then hold him..?

[DavidW]

Sorry to disappoint, but you basically can't do any of this. Death (including dropping of all items and removal of most effects) is hardcoded to kick in at zero hit points.)

 

Not surprised, but what did you have in mind then when you mentioned something aboutmake the character unable to drop below 1 hp, then hold him..?

 

Well, it's easy to put an effect on a creature so they just can't drop below 1hp, but that doesn't seem to be what you mean.

[Ithildur]

Sorry to disappoint, but you basically can't do any of this. Death (including dropping of all items and removal of most effects) is hardcoded to kick in at zero hit points.)

 

Not surprised, but what did you have in mind then when you mentioned something aboutmake the character unable to drop below 1 hp, then hold him..?

 

Well, it's easy to put an effect on a creature so they just can't drop below 1hp, but that doesn't seem to be what you mean.

 

Right, the min1hp amulet I'm guessing? If I understand you correctly, the problem is that whatever triggers that effect to kick in would have to occur when dmg taken drops HPs to 0 or less, but because of the hardcodedness, when HP drops below 1 death the charcter is already very much dead and nothing can circumvent that; is that about right?

 

Maybe when character drops below 1 hp he's instantly 'rezzed' and made unconscious with 1 hp, is that along the lines of what you were thinking? I still would like to see some kind of bleeding out with chance to be revived by others per above rather than effectively being immortal with 1 hp.

[the bigg]

Everybody in the party has 10 HP over the D&D limit (we'll assume that non-party NPCs don't deal with bandaging). Dplayer*.bcs will apply unconsciouness and bleeding damage effects when you have 10 HP or less and remove said effects if you get back to 11 HP or more; all party NPCs get an unlimited number of 'apply bandage' innates that removes those effects and brings NPCs back to 11 HP. Apply less or more workarounds depending on how sophisticated you want to be with edge cases. Serve cold.

[Dakk]

Confusing, at first no doubt, with the extra hitpoints - but as a solution it's elegant!

 

Dplayer*.bcs will apply unconsciouness and bleeding damage effects when you have 10 HP or less and remove said effects if you get back to 11 HP or more

Fixed typo.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Yes, it would work... but how much lag would it cause? And Ascension64 has to re-write the BGT hit point check, again. :p Could this cause errors in game?

[the bigg]

That's why I said "Apply less or more workarounds depending on how sophisticated you want to be with edge cases." - which includes doing trickeries with scripts to account for the increased totals.

 

I'm pretty sure this would be pretty much lag-free - it's four checks per party member per AI cycle (two GlobalGT() checks, two HPGT() ones), and the engine runs some tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) checks per cycle in the largest SCSII battles.

[Ardanis]

If anything, it will affect the effectiveness of Power Word spells.

Additionally, enemies may keep attacking 'dead' chars, while in reality they shouldn't be.

 

I'm afraid, cheating death is better to be left untouched. Personally, I rather to struggle against odds than suffering unevitable bugs that any possible implementation will introduce.

[Ithildur]

If anything, it will affect the effectiveness of Power Word spells.

Additionally, enemies may keep attacking 'dead' chars, while in reality they shouldn't be.

 

I'm afraid, cheating death is better to be left untouched. Personally, I rather to struggle against odds than suffering unevitable bugs that any possible implementation will introduce.

 

It's not a 'cheat', it's trying to make the game closer to pnp and make dime a dozen raise dead/resurrections less common/necessary. Try playing TOEE sometime to get an idea of how it's supposed to work.

 

As wonderful as the IE(and NWN 1/2 too) games are, this element, along with a few things like FR elves being of Greyhawk height/description has always confounded and puzzled me about Bioware's decision.