What is the point of low lethality?

[Desiderius]

More time for your greater skill to prevail over steep odds.

 

[Cryomancer]

i hate most when shotgun to the face does less dmg than to the torso due to less pellets hitting their target

And I hate when you can only use buckshot.

12 gauge shotguns are a very versatile weapon and you can use all types of ammo. Any game with shotguns should include at least birdshot, flechette, buckshot, dragon's breath and slugs to not mention exotic ones. In a post apocalyptic world like new vegas, you should get things like EMP shells, poisoned flechette and radioactive shells

Even worse when the game goes "generic pistol ammo" and "generic smg ammo", as if you could't use a .45 ACP round in a .45 ACP submachine gun and in a .45 ACP pistol, but could pick the .45 ACP round of a Tommy gun and put in a 9mm SMG. and somehow, a sniper rifle in .308 is different than a """assault"""/battle rifle in the same caliber. As if a scoped rifle can't be in any caliber from .22 LR to 14.5x114mm and a AWP and a KSVK uses the same ammo.

but low lethality can be fun due to 'war of attrition' type battles.

It can be implemented by giving lots and lots of armor. For eg, on a AD&D game, I don't expect that a lv 15 half giant gladiator buffed with spells would be unable to OHK a goblin. But if a lv 4 fighter is trying to kill a death knight with unholy aura, buffed by stoneskin, mirror image and so on, he would take a very long time to kill the enemy death knight.

You can put heavy armor(historical), magic(fantasy) or deflector shields shields(sci fi) to make enemies take more time to die. But making a low level, unarmored goblin able to soak 3 shots of a arbalest is just ridiculous. BTW, Arbalests can kill big wild animals in a single shot IRL. Low lethality can be non immersion breakin when you have reasons that make sense in the fictional universe to why the enemy can soak so much damage.

PS : You are the unique guy that I saw praising SCL here.

 

[Fluent]

More time for your greater skill to prevail over steep odds.

indeed. and also opens up aspects like enemy "phases", such as boss phases using different tactics at different points in the battle (in my SCL example, the undead priest teleported to different spots on the battlefield based on how much damage he was taking, and introduced different summons the further his health depleted.)

It can be implemented by giving lots and lots of armor. For eg, on a AD&D game, I don't expect that a lv 15 half giant gladiator buffed with spells would be unable to OHK a goblin. But if a lv 4 fighter is trying to kill a death knight with unholy aura, buffed by stoneskin, mirror image and so on, he would take a very long time to kill the enemy death knight.

You can put heavy armor(historical), magic(fantasy) or deflector shields shields(sci fi) to make enemies take more time to die. But making a low level, unarmored goblin able to soak 3 shots of a arbalest is just ridiculous. BTW, Arbalests can kill big wild animals in a single shot IRL. Low lethality can be non immersion breakin when you have reasons that make sense in the fictional universe to why the enemy can soak so much damage.

PS : You are the unique guy that I saw praising SCL here.

SCL is a very fun game for me, I find it has enough story, loot and character customization to be quite satisfying for my needs. On Hard difficulty you really have to build a synergistic party and pay attention to your loot and builds to succeed. I've died quite a few times and things can get scary if you don't act in a tactical manner. In short, I do really enjoy it.

As for armor, sure, I see your point, but I don't find a goblin soaking an arbalest blast to be a big deal to me. In SCL, goblins and regular skeletons do have boosted HP and can take several hard hits from my party, but it doesn't reduce my fun by any metric. In fact, it makes the battles more challenging and requiring more tactical use of skills, scrolls and potions. It makes the battles more like a war where u can suffer bad rolls and still succeed with overall smart usage of your resources. And goblins pose a threat as taking time to soak up damage while the harder enemies are attacking u as well (snipers in hard to reach spots, a shieldbearer whacking away at your tank, an enemy mage casting magic missiles while u deal with the goblins, etc..) In short, it matters more if the combat and systems are designed well for what they offer, rather than a game having to have high lethality to be fun. Just my 2 cents. I appreciate the response! <3

 

[DraQ]

Yep. This is why Sword Coast LEgends is so good and Temple of Elemental Evil so bad /sarcasm
(...)
I play RPG's to get myself immersed into another fictional world and game mechanics should help with it(2e) not be a block in it(4e).

Way to completely miss the ENTIRE fucking point.

PnP RPGs and cRPGs are subject to completely different limitations and are completely different animals as a result.

Unique to PnP is the role of GM. GM enables the rules to be very open ended. Players (or GM himself) often decide to do something not covered by the rules and it's up DM to either find a way to feed it into the published ruleset, improvise ad hoc system or just adjudicate without, because the entire GM's brain is also part of the actual rules. This is pretty much the entire charm of PnP RPGs, that they can handle pretty much any action players can come up with because they are interpreted by the GM who can understand them.

Conversely, cRPGs can't accommodate anything that hasn't been explicitly defined. It just doesn't exist. Their rules are inherently closed-ended.

OTOH PnP and cRPGs also differ in that PnP rules need to be simple and quick. They need to be handled quickly by a bunch of slow humans and this also includes them being easy enough to memorize at least well enough to know what to roll and calculate and why. cRPGs don't have that issues because they are not running on a human. They are running on a very fast electronic retard who can do all the number crunching it is told to no matter how laborious, complex or unintuitive it might be and can do it even tens of times per second if needed. This may actually allow offsetting the main disadvantage of cRPGs using emergence if the world and the rules that govern it are defined meticulously enough, but that puts design goals when making a PnP and cRPG rulesets pretty much in direct opposition to one another.

Porting one to another directly will simply cripple the end result, by making it subject to limitations of both media but not allowing it to harness the strength of either.

If anything that was the main problem with 4e - it tried to make the ruleset more videogame-y (MMORPG-y, actually, which is only made shittier by MMORPGy rules already stemming from past translations of PnP RPG rules to computers) while still keeping it simplistic.

The only one who could possibly want that would be corporate exec who wants a broadly appealing product that can be easily licenced to both markets.

And save scumming is affecting you whether you want it or not.
Unless you are always playing a complete ironman, you are scumming to some degree, and even if you didn't the lack of clear cut line between scumming and non-scumming means that the games you play are designed around scumming as a fact of life.

 

[Cryomancer]

cRPGs can't accommodate anything that hasn't been explicitly defined. It just doesn't exist. Their rules are inherently closed-ended.

Of course. Nobody is saying that a spell like wish can be easily ported into a CRPG. But you can do a adaptation respecting the limitations of the technology and have a "wish list", just like dialog is much more open on TT RPG's than in video games. Polymorth other in a TT game, can have "N" uses that can't have on a electronic game. For eg, on a one shot of 3E Dark Sun, I used polymorth other to make a templar who was trying to arrest our party and sentence us to slavery to become a slave. He could appeared some campaigns later wanting revenge in higher level. A situation like that can't occur in video game, unless is heavily scripted(sadly we din't continued playing dark sun, I miss my 12th level preserver transmuter)

But my point is that the best TT adaptations are the most faithful ones.

• Anyone here would say that Sword Coast Legends is better than Solasta : Crown of the Magister?
• That generic wow clone : D&D edition(neverwinter mmo) is better than NWN1 + NWN2?
• That NWN2 + Spell Fixes is not better than vanilla NWN2?
• That "warriors of the waterdeep" is better than Dark Sun : Wake of the Ravager and Dark Sun : Shattered Lands?
• That Temple of elemental evil is not a great game?

Those games aren't exactly like on P&P but are good adaptations. You need to be faithful in adapting a thing from a media A to a media B. It applies even to books into series. Game of Thrones was far better while was more faithful to the books. And even on anime, nobody likes the filler arcs. Strategic Simulations Inc has dozens of games proving that with minor adjustments D&D rules can work in a PC.

And save scumming is affecting you whether you want it or not.

Save scuming is like "failed a save, will reload", not like "I an dead, lets try again with a different strategy". Even games unrelated to P&P like Might & Magic VI, allows you to save scum the game. It is not a excuse to make awful adaptations.

 

[Neki]

Every non action rpg game should have the Neo Scavenger damage system.

 

[the mole]

if oblivion is harder than morrowind does that not make it more hardcore

 

[the mole]

if you want to raise lethality in first person rpg games

you have to drastically increase the amount of enemies

I ran into this problem somewhat in fallout new vegas with project nevada

in general it's too easy when enemies have less health because I can abuse ai from out of their view distance and kill them one by one and I'm also str8 rippin at shooters

the increased npcs and creatures mod was good for that honestly, I turned it to the absolute max which is maybe 3x the npcs and creatures per encounter, I don't remember

it still feels realistic but there isn't any number bloat

I'm pretty sure mods for oblivion make it less number bloated, like oscuros

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

If only there were an existing table-top RPG with a morale system that could be adapted for the purposes of CRPGs.

Unfortunately programmers have to deal with questions like "What happens to the enemies after their morale fails?" which has answers that are more complicated than "you fight everyone until they're dead" unless you're making a game where the battle-space is separate from the exploration-space, in which case, it's pretty easy (but few wrpgs are made like that now).

Perhaps it would be possible to include de-spawn zones for enemies on big Cyceal styled maps?
For example, if party encounters wolves, routing doggies could run to nearby edge of forest where they have designated exit zone.
Similarly orcs could have appropriate evac zone, boat, cave etc.

That convention could even be played with; for example case where enemies start to fall back, but they have nowhere to run so they could go berserk when they "realize" dire situation they're in.
Or some could just try to beg for mercy.

Routed enemies probably should give XP same as kills and they could drop some of their equipment when fleeing.
There could be goodies that player only gets from kills; for example Hat of Gonzales the speediest ratling bandito of the wastes can only be obtained if you manage to actually catch that slippery bastard.