Suggestion: crippled Head not lethal

[Aluminumfoil]

Instead of having a crippled Head result in death, I propose that it force the player to Sleep (getting knocked unconscious) for a certain amount of time. Obviously if the player was in combat at the time, sleeping for an hour while zombies are chewing on you will still result in death, but this might be significant for blood-loss related damage, accidents (vehicles, explosions…) fights where you have allies with you, etc. If you live long enough to regain consciousness, you could suffer various penalties for your concussion and/or fractured skull until your head recovers from Crippled status, like periodic vision and hearing problems, fainting spells, nausea, pain, extreme vulnerability to getting knocked out again, etc…

Basically what I’m saying is that my terrible demise should be drawn out and agonizing and filled with false hope, rather than a nice clean “you died, try again.”

Overflow damage is already redirected if it hits a crippled limb, right?

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Along similar lines, could there be an ability to nonlethally disable NPCs if you use unarmed or something like that? Maybe using the same script that reanimates zombies, and having NPCs drop an “unconscious body of X” that will reanimate in a certain number of hours, if you “kill” them with unarmed attacks?

[EkarusRyndren]

I feel this would be something worth adding alongside the “Broken VS Gone” idea that floats around every time someone speaks of damage… But it’s a neat idea none the less.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

+1

Wait, are tazers functional? Never got around to trying one.

[KA101]

Last I knew, overflow damage was not redirected.

As for the main point: you’re the same poster who wants mutations to be accessible, I believe? Making death long and drawn-out seems counter to that from my perspective.

[jimboblordofeskimos]

Wait, are tazers functional? Never got around to trying one.

Amazingly functional, with an extra battery mod they hold 1000 bats at 1 volume.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Amazingly functional, with an extra battery mod they hold 1000 bats at 1 volume.

[Aluminumfoil]

Tazers work and are really useful for characters who are bad at melee. They stun your target for a couple turns, enough to get a few hits in or reload.

[infectedmochi]

I like your idea, though we should still keep the death by head damage. If the damage done reach the first threshold you will be knocked unconscious. If it overflow to the second threshold you will die regradless.

[latogato]

Or maybe we need a liberal crime squad like hp system, which is something like that:

There is only one “hp”, not one for each body parts.
Head and body damage gives the full damage, limb damages halved until the damage is lesser than actual hp, so the character can not die because he suffered 1000 hp damage on his arm. Bleeding should be more likely, so he can bleed to death.

“Strength” gives threshold for each body parts.
If a damage exceed this threshold something nasty happens, like lost an eye, a lung etc. Maybe it is a bit overkill here, a limping, broken (and severed) limbs would be better.

[Aluminumfoil]

Maybe something like this?

let He = current hp of head, Bo = hp of body, Ra = hp of right arm, etc

HP = He + Bo + Ra + La + Rl + Ll - Overflow

Overflow = HOverflow20 + BOverflow15 + RaOverflow + LaOverflow +RlOverflow + LlOverflow

Display HP as a health bar above the other health bars, but you can’t heal it directly.
Body part is crippled if it reaches 0. Player dies if HP reaches 0.

So, you can still die if your arm gets shredded for hundreds of damage, but you’re much more likely to die from taking a bunch of damage to your torso or head.

[Rivet]

Your head is one of the most vital parts of your body. Making it so taking full head damage doesn’t kill you not only goes against C:DDA’s basic health system, but also common sense.

It’s ridiculous. You want to shoot a NPC in the head and do 300 points of critical hit damage and them to shrug it off?

[infectedmochi]

I think it would work better if we have different damage threshold for being knocked unconscious and outright dying.

[moist_zombie]

I like passing out from trauma. Simulated trauma is preferred, but I’ll do it in reality if I have to!

[Aluminumfoil]

[quote=“Rivet, post:11, topic:4113”]Your head is one of the most vital parts of your body. Making it so taking full head damage doesn’t kill you not only goes against C:DDA’s basic health system, but also common sense.

It’s ridiculous. You want to shoot a NPC in the head and do 300 points of critical hit damage and them to shrug it off?[/quote]

Please read what I write before criticizing it. The only person in this thread who has suggested head damage would be shrugged off is you. Assuming hp of 80 per body part, getting shot in the head for 80 damage would knock you out*, at which point you’re going to die anyway if you’re still in combat. Going off of the incorrect assumption in my initial post that overflow damage was redirected, getting shot in the head for 160 damage would instantly kill you. Going off of the numbers in the post directly above yours, getting shot in the head for 80 damage would knock you out and getting shot in the head for 100 or more damage would instantly kill you.

A threshold level on the existing health bar would also work. I’m having trouble seeing how that would be integrated with the existing gui, but if it could, I like the idea of it. Although I do like the idea of being able to eventually die from arm and leg wounds if you take enough damage, which I don’t think would be easy to do with a threshold model.

*Since so far as I know NPCs can’t sleep, NPCs would probably need to just die at 0 head hp until the game can support sleeping NPCs.

[Rivet]

I did read your posts. I wouldn’t be responding if I hadn’t. Please don’t assume that I haven’t.

We have no damage overflow, so it doesn’t redirect to the body. The closest we have is bleeding wounds which subtract from the torso.

And taking that level of damage to the head currently annihilates the head. Downgrading from head turns into bloody shrapnel to head is concussed and sore is a massive change to the damage system, and getting knocked unconscious by it comes nowhere near making up the difference.

And dying simply because your arm got hit over and over again makes no sense either. Eventually it may be a mangled piece of meat which causes you to swiftly die of exsanguination, but it makes no sense for a zombie biting you repeatedly on the arm to cause you to die of direct wound trauma like injuries to your head or torso can cause. The location-based health system we use is here to avoid using a nebulous overarching damage-value system that reduces the hero to a bag of hitpoints.

I do see one way that your health bar idea could be very cool: we could add a hidden statistic to track the amount of blood left in your body, so as to avoid the wound trauma to the torso thing we have now. It would be an overall value that can’t be replaced via medkits, but rather time. Well, time and possibly through sealed prepackaged saline bags to a limited degree.

[PogoMarimo]

That’s a great recommendation, for the independent blood tracking. You can introduce blood packs as well to replenish your blood reserves (As well as use them for bait for certain monster types). Require first aid at level 3 to operate a blood pack. Maybe you could even fill up your own empty blood packs with a high first aid for use in an emergency situation.

[JanBlair]

Why are we making death more complicated….? Head goes to 0 you’re dead. If you want to add unconsciousness make it fatigue related.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Yar, actually if we want realism…head trauma causing unconsciousness is entirely a Hollywood contrivance. In reality, if you take a head injury and lose consciousness, the time spent unconscious is usually proportional to BRAIN DAMAGE received. You try to knock someone out- that is, you want them out for more than a few seconds, and you’re more likely to kill them.

You want someone unconscious for an extended period of time, you need drugs.

The cases in the OP can happen however, and semi-permanent brain damage following an accident would be !!FUN!!.

[JanBlair]

It’s not that I am opposed to unconsciousness, I think it sounds like a fine idea. Perhaps from blood loss? Like if you take so much damage within a period of time, it results in trauma to the body?

I just don’t think it would be wise to make dying any harder. This is a roguelike after all and I already have trouble dying unless I act suicidal. You can sleep overnight and almost fully heal. If we change the health system in Cataclysm, we need to make it harder to survive.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Heh, you know they have a solution for that: the Hardcore trait. And you get free points too.

On thresholds: set the threshold for unconsciousness to any attack that puts head health between 10 & -10. At that point you have a chance to lose consciousness & gain BRAIN DAMAGE, the chance increasing the lower you’re brought.