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My vision of a perfect CRPG
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RPGDot Forums > CRPGs General

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Priest4hire
Head Merchant
Head Merchant




Joined: 08 May 2002
Posts: 52
Location: Slocan, BC
   

I think the basic problem with the HP system as many games use is that it causes the game to become one long war of attrition. With each battle wearing down your party until you can recharge and go at it again. Thus the battles are often less dramatic struggles of life and death and more fairly banal battles of HP erosion. Some games are so bad you can almost work out the HP/MP loss mathematically; as in 15% per dungeon level.

This tends to lend into the tendency for all CRPGs to be hack & slash at their core. Often the battles are the game, with the story and character interaction a nice but minor addition. Kill, level, phat loot, rest up and repeat. With the sheer bulk of combat it's not surprising games tend to make characters into superhumans.

Personally, I'd like to see less combat, but have each battle be more important, and more deadly. Battles that are nothing more than another 10% off the HP bar aren't memorable. They are just filler material. What's epic about fighting another bunch of miscellaneous minions who pose no threat? The thrill is in battles where things are but a razor's edge from death. Obviously you wouldn't want to fight the typical thousands of battles that way. But if there were fewer battles, but each one counted both in the story and in terms of lethality.

Shadowrun, the P&P RPG, has an interesting system. There are no hit points as such, but rather a damage bar. The bar has 10 slots for stun and 10 slots for physical. Damage is done as one of for levels. Light, Moderate, Serious, and Deadly. They represent 1, 3, 6, and 10 slots respectively. So a single Deadly wound would puts you down. All character have the same number of slots. It's in damage mitigation that you see a difference. Things like your Body rating, your armor, various skills, and such can mitigate the damage, pushing it down levels. Just as certain skills or action be the attacker can push the damage up levels. Thus, even a punk on the street is a threat with a gun.

The CRPG Darklands also had an interesting approach, where you use Strength and Stamina for HP. So that as you take hits you get weaker, and even after you've advanced quite a bit you still aren't superhuman. Since skills go up, but stats generally don't.

On the whole though I believe that games should move more towards damage mitigation as opposed to these crude massive hit points/ battles of attrition systems that they use now.
Post Thu Aug 14, 2003 7:20 am
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Stranger In A Strange Land




Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia
   

quote:
Originally posted by Priest4hire
Personally, I'd like to see less combat, but have each battle be more important, and more deadly. Battles that are nothing more than another 10% off the HP bar aren't memorable. They are just filler material. What's epic about fighting another bunch of miscellaneous minions who pose no threat? The thrill is in battles where things are but a razor's edge from death. Obviously you wouldn't want to fight the typical thousands of battles that way. But if there were fewer battles, but each one counted both in the story and in terms of lethality.

Shadowrun, the P&P RPG, has an interesting system. There are no hit points as such, but rather a damage bar.


I quite agree with you here but I'm not sure this is a fault of hit points. Isn't this a matter of design and balance? Isn't the Shadowrun system described (I haven't played it), just a different way of representing hit points?

It seems to me the key difference described is that a 'critical' hit can cause instant death; there's no reason why a standard hit-point system can't do the same thing if the damage a critical hit causes is high enough.

Don't get me wrong - I agree with the sentiment of having less but more meaningful combat. I'm just not sure that having damage mitigation necessarily produces a better result than the opposite. Can't it potentially lead to a situation where combatants either can't hit or don't do any damage, which sounds just as boring?
Post Thu Aug 14, 2003 10:12 am
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Priest4hire
Head Merchant
Head Merchant




Joined: 08 May 2002
Posts: 52
Location: Slocan, BC
   

quote:
I quite agree with you here but I'm not sure this is a fault of hit points. Isn't this a matter of design and balance? Isn't the Shadowrun system described (I haven't played it), just a different way of representing hit points?

It seems to me the key difference described is that a 'critical' hit can cause instant death; there's no reason why a standard hit-point system can't do the same thing if the damage a critical hit causes is high enough.

Don't get me wrong - I agree with the sentiment of having less but more meaningful combat. I'm just not sure that having damage mitigation necessarily produces a better result than the opposite. Can't it potentially lead to a situation where combatants either can't hit or don't do any damage, which sounds just as boring?


Sure, after all you have to show damage somehow. I think the key difference is that the bar is always ten slots, and that a deadly or 2 serious wounds would will kill anyone period. Deadly wounds aren't critical attacks per say. There are weapons in Shadowrun that do deadly damage as their base damage. Though obviously rare. Handguns are usually moderate and rifles serious.

The way damage mitigation works in Shadowrun is that for each 2 additional successes the attacker makes, the damage is bumped a catagory. For each 2 successes the defender makes the damage is lowered one catagory. It's probably important to note that as you take wounds you also recieve negative modifiers.

For example, let's say you had an Ares Slivergun. Against an unarmored target the gun would be 9S. The number is the target number that the defender rolls against. If you were to make a total of 2 net successes over the defender he would recieve a deadly wound. Tie and he recieves a serious wound, and so on.

The possibility that no one could hit eachother exists, but it's ultimately not likely. And no matter what, ten light wounds does the job. With melee attacks it's possible but also not likely to have a stalemate. In Shadowrun melee, the attacker and defender make tests and the winner is the one who gets an attack through.

So the key with a damage mitigation system is to make it so that it will tip one way or the other for sure. In a computer RPG you oculd perhaps make a system where the combat starts to lean towards one side or another. That as you fence your balance shifts one way or the other, and that as a result the one who is losing starts taking negative modifiers, until the battle is resolved. The advantage of mitigation is that once things goes, it goes quickly. There isn't the slow driving down of some monsterous HP bar. An attack gets though and that's it.
Post Thu Aug 14, 2003 11:25 am
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