Lethality in RPG's, which one do you prefer?

[Cryomancer]

Basically, Time to Kill/Time to die on average. On Tabletop games, GURPS has the highest lethality IMO. A .338 lapua magnum rifle has enough damage to kill the average player a couple of times and has a range consistent to IRL ie - extremely far alway. D&D 4e is probably the lowest lethality game, with some humans able to sustain literally hundreds of ballista shots at higher levels.

On CRPGs, most 2e D&D adaptations, from the Gold Box to BG1/2 has relative high lethality but not as much as GURPS. The mmos with few old school exceptions seems to have very low lethality. Enemies can to soak multiple hits and even with critical, OHKilling near impossible in normal situations. The concept of lethality also applies to other game genres. For eg, Red Orchestra and ArmA are high lethality games. Overwatch as most hero shooters is a low lethality game. Battlefield 1 is in between.

The lowest lethality in a SP game that I saw is Oblivion in higher difficulties on higher levels.

That said, which one do you prefer?

 

[Tyranicon]

I prefer lethal combat, but also ones that make sense.

Fighting a perfectly normal rat should not be lethal. Fighting an elite military unit who happens to have the best gear available on the planet should be.

Games that treat both encounters as the same depending on arbitrary level systems can fuck right off.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Maxie]

is lethality mitigated by stats or gimmick
in an RPG where in-game character aptitude is more relevant than real life player skill, whether your dude dies or doesn't die ultimately is caused by either of the above - your stats granting you greater survivability or your meta-knowledge making you predict and react to gimmicks

 

[Cryomancer]

Fighting a perfectly normal rat should not be lethal. Fighting an elite military unit who happens to have the best gear available on the planet should be.

Think on "average". Eg - IF we are talking about IRL, 556 rifles and 9mm pistols would be heavily used in USA.

 

[Tyranicon]

Fighting a perfectly normal rat should not be lethal. Fighting an elite military unit who happens to have the best gear available on the planet should be.

Think on "average". Eg - IF we are talking about IRL, 556 rifles and 9mm pistols would be heavily used in USA.

Unfortunately, the problem with high lethality combat that also has RNG is you can get wiped by some lucky/unlucky crits.

Which is also the case in real life I suppose.

 

[V_K]

Really depends on other factors. If RNG has as much weight as it does in DnD, I'd prefer to have an HP buffer to offset the randomness. Ditto for real-time skill-based games since I suck at those. But an ideal situation for me in a turn-based RPG would be low RNG/high lethality.

 

[CryptRat]

Quite easy to get unconscious, hard to die is my favourite, so that encounters are meant to go on even when some characters are disabled but death is still a big thing. Very strong enemies (one dragon) should kill your characters but other enemies (a horde of goblins) should not unless they're making critical hits at the wrong time.

 

[buffalo bill]

IRL, as in Infra Arcana or Cataclysm DDA or NEO Scavenger

 

[Gargaune]

In principle, I think I prefer high lethality on both sides, but it varies a lot with the game... I'd probably say I enjoy higher lethality in Action-RPGs than I do in CRPGs, I like playing DX on Realistic but I'm happy with Kingmaker on or around Normal.

while one is roll d20, 1-4 you die?

There's difficult games and then there's difficult DMs.

 

[Reality]

If you start with double digit HP the game has a problem.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

AoD's is perfect as far as I am concerned.

 

[octavius]

I prefer lethal combat, but also ones that make sense.

Fighting a perfectly normal rat should not be lethal. Fighting an elite military unit who happens to have the best gear available on the planet should be.

Simulations that treat both encounters as the same depending on arbitrary level systems can fuck right off.

 

[Takamori]

Well usually I expect a good challenge with high lethality that will dictate stuff like resource management, party positioning, which combats you are gonna pick and so on. Though not so much on IRL levels, usually games that go through this route they rely on the high difficulty and end up not putting much content given you will spend most of your time trying to breach through early game.

 

[curds]

Depends on the game.

In general I think higher lethality = better.

On the other hand, getting one-shotted in BG or IWD at low levels is frustrating because it's so dependent on RNG; sometimes there's nothing you can do about it but reload and hope the roll is better this time.

 

[Ol' Willy]

High letality and tools to survive the RNG or bad luck is the perfect solution.

 

[mondblut]

High lethality in AD&D games? Lethality to whom? Enemies, yes. The party? Git gud, LMAO.

Also, I didn't notice enemies in Oblivion to be any harder to kill than in any other game.

 

[Luka-boy]

If you die in the game, you die in real life.

 

[Funposter]

I said "high" but I also think that the categorization of the chosen games is verging on random. I like high lethality with some room for the player to make a mistake or two in a given encounter.

 

[Cryomancer]

Also, I didn't notice enemies in Oblivion to be any harder to kill than in any other game.

Not harder, booooring.

Doubt? Try to fight a Xivilai at lv 40+ in max difficulty and see how many hours take to kill him.

I like high lethality with some room for the player to make a mistake or two in a given encounter.

What when the game punishes you but the cost of trying again is not that high? Some people say that it encourages sace scumming.

 

[Lilura]

Lethal: Jagged Alliance 2, X-COM Apocalypse

 

[Lilura]

High lethality in AD&D games? Lethality to whom? Enemies, yes. The party? Git gud, LMAO.

OP may have meant in comparison to >=3.x. Though of course, we need to add lots of qualifications. It depends.

Also, I didn't notice enemies in Oblivion to be any harder to kill than in any other game.

They're not until the level scaling spirals out of the realm of reasonableness. When the player character has plateaued out at its core combat focus, but the enemy keeps getting spongier and starts wielding enchanted weapons. So basically, the game gets harder, or more tedious, at about 30th level. But especially at 10th, assuming a decent build, it's a cakewalk.

 

[Poseidon00]

I want my RPGs to be so lethal and so realistic 30% of my created characters die as soon as I start the game because they died of disease before they were 5.

 

[Lilura]

AoD's is perfect as far as I am concerned.

Dungeon Rats, too. Longbowmen are as scary as hell, and rightly so.

 

[Pocgels]

I like low times to kill, generally. But it can make fights very swing-y and depend on a single hit or single failed saving throw or whatever. Which is good for skill games like shooters or Mount and Blade, but it never feels good to have your group wiped out because some goblin archer got a crit on your tank and killed them instantly or whatever. Unless the game has low RNG, which then I suppose it's on the player.

You can still have both, though. Making it easy for characters to go down but harder to kill, like cryptrat said. Or an injury system like in Silent storm, so taking a hit is still very punishing but not a reason to immediately hit f8.