Closed Discussion: Bleedout

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Maiyannah
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Closed Discussion: Bleedout

Post by Maiyannah »

Hi all,
This is a system I have the broad strokes of already implemented, but I wrote it in a way I can make easy changes to.

In normal NWN, when you die, you die, but this doesn't follow the sourcebooks in P&P - where instead you have a bleedout instead.

Right now it is coded as follows:
  • When "killed" you are reduced to either 0 or -1 hit points.
  • If you are reduced to 0 hit points, then you are unconscious, and will respawn on the next "tick" of the script.
  • If you are reduced to -1 hit points, then you are bleeding our and will probably die.
  • At -10 hit points, you die.
There are two considerations not yet implemented:
  1. There are presently no recovery rolls.
  2. Death by massive damage is not implemented.
Neither of these are terribly hard to implement, but I wanted to solicit opinions on what we think of this system in general, whether we should allow recovery (this is optional in the P&P rules), and whether we should implement death by massive damage.

In terms of recovery, I think it should be possible, but I would probably make fortitude bonuses have more of an impact on the roll than they would in normal P&P rules (1d100+fort versus 90), as Martials I feel would generally be more resilient and able to recover, and that would give them a little more even footing versus the spellcasting classes that so quickly outstrip them.

In terms of death by massive damage, I think this should be implemented but perhaps just give you a scaling less amount of health to recover in, rather than be instadead (ie, say if you died 80 over your hp, you start at bleeding out -8 rather than -1.) This would mitigate the dice just taking the piss sometimes somewhat.

What do you think?
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wilkins1952
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Re: Open Discussion: Bleedout

Post by wilkins1952 »

Personally I think starting bleed out at -1 going to -10 before death is a good idea, However I think that the Roll should be something along the lines of 1d50 + Fort with a DC of 40+ to recover Rather than a 1d100 given that often times when traveling in a party, Going into bleedout generally gets you revived within a few rounds. And this would help when traveling with a sub optimal party. Though it's not going to give you an advantage on clearing more content.

As for massive damage I think either increasing the DC of you recovering or starting the rolls higher up both are a good way to do it. Perhaps even add some Malus to Strength/Con/Dex if you do go down due to massive damage until the PC rests.
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon."
-Terry Prachett
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Maiyannah
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Re: Open Discussion: Bleedout

Post by Maiyannah »

wilkins1952 wrote: Wed Jun 14, 2023 11:01 am Personally I think starting bleed out at -1 going to -10 before death is a good idea, However I think that the Roll should be something along the lines of 1d50 + Fort with a DC of 40+ to recover Rather than a 1d100 given that often times when traveling in a party, Going into bleedout generally gets you revived within a few rounds. And this would help when traveling with a sub optimal party. Though it's not going to give you an advantage on clearing more content.
I'd probably do DC 45 if we had 50, so the "squish" is even, and then count fort the same since its the same as having doubled Fort on a 1d100 roll. This seems fair, and keeps the numbers down, though we'd have to watch for high fort players.
wilkins1952 wrote: Wed Jun 14, 2023 11:01 am As for massive damage I think either increasing the DC of you recovering or starting the rolls higher up both are a good way to do it. Perhaps even add some Malus to Strength/Con/Dex if you do go down due to massive damage until the PC rests.
I think the way to keep this fair is to have it just put you down further into the -1 - -10 range than -1, unless it truly is more than like 90 hp over your HP, which basically represents either we fucked up designing an area pretty bad, or the player is doing something vastly over their level.

To keep people from scumming the recovery system, I'd suggest any time they go under -8 or so, they get an incurable "Wound" effect that they need to recover from. In a third party campaign setting I played once, they had a table of different wounds and recovery times you rolled on, with the curative magic you'd need to restore someone who had one. It makes it harder for people to "scum" exceptionally high areas, so long as we keep it to a low enough dip into recovery time that you don't get them all the time - and having greater danger does reinforce the gothic horror setting.
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wilkins1952
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Re: Open Discussion: Bleedout

Post by wilkins1952 »

Yeah that sounds good and I mean even with high fort Assuming that we just use the Base Fort before modifiers, The save to recover would at most be a 50/50 chance (Assuming all 10 rolls) and I mean if someone has gone that hard into con. Then I think thats fair. They have given up some stuff elsewhere.
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon."
-Terry Prachett
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Maiyannah
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Re: Open Discussion: Bleedout

Post by Maiyannah »

wilkins1952 wrote: Wed Jun 14, 2023 12:02 pm Yeah that sounds good and I mean even with high fort Assuming that we just use the Base Fort before modifiers, The save to recover would at most be a 50/50 chance (Assuming all 10 rolls) and I mean if someone has gone that hard into con. Then I think thats fair. They have given up some stuff elsewhere.
It's easy to code it in such a way that we can change the DC, or even add modifiers. So it shouldn't be a big concern, we'll just have to watch it, and tweak accordingly.

One idea is to increase the DC based on number of wounds you already have, though my concern with that is it may exponentially decrease survivability if you're really unlucky - or if the party cleric is one of the dumb types who constantly raise people with just a couple HP to spare.
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wilkins1952
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Re: Open Discussion: Bleedout

Post by wilkins1952 »

I think Wounds being a Binary debuff is fine enough to push people to retreat and rest for a little while if some of the party do go down. Too much stacking could lead to it being more frustrating than anything else.
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon."
-Terry Prachett
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Maiyannah
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Re: Open Discussion: Bleedout

Post by Maiyannah »

wilkins1952 wrote: Wed Jun 14, 2023 12:54 pm I think Wounds being a Binary debuff is fine enough to push people to retreat and rest for a little while if some of the party do go down. Too much stacking could lead to it being more frustrating than anything else.
I think I would have specific ones that can add up (giving you a "gimme" freebie pass if you roll the same one twice), but for the purposes of the recovery malus, only make it consider whether you have 0 wounds or 1 wound or more.
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Maiyannah
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Re: Open Discussion: Bleedout

Post by Maiyannah »

I'll make a separate thread for the discussion of this Wounds mechanic.
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Maiyannah
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Re: Open Discussion: Bleedout

Post by Maiyannah »

So a basic implementation of bleedout will be going live in the next patch, along with the initial hub.

However, in testing it, one thing I notice is that enemies will still keep stabbing you when you're down. I'm a bit on the fence as to whether this is desirable, so I thought I'd open discussion on that related topic.

So the question is: should monsters keep attacking a downed PC?
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wilkins1952
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Re: Open Discussion: Bleedout

Post by wilkins1952 »

Largely against this cause it will lead to some situations where the Downed PC might die instantly especially at higher levels Not to mention I can see a few situations where this might be able to be exploited to cheese encounters. Not that I'm against people using mechanincs to their advantage this seems a little too over the top.
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon."
-Terry Prachett
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