Broken bones!

[The Lonely Hunter]

A friend sent me an artical about an admin from another game talking about their combat system. In it he talked about how you can injure limbs and the effects they had and I think this is a pretty cool idea.
Given you can just emote having a broken limb now I think to back it up with code would be pretty cool.

Perhaps you get a grevious wound on your leg during combat, for a time you would suffer agil and movement penalties. Maybe your arm nearly gets hacked off, now you can't use anything in that hand for awhile.

Anyway, just some ideas to throw around.

[Pale Horse]

I think the reason that this might not have been added into the code for combat is that the admins want such an occurance left up to the players involved.  As pointed out, if you recieve a grevious wound during combat, you can emote that the blow broke, severed, mangled or crippled that limb or place on the body.  Haveing a broken or severed limb hard coded into the game would, IMO, detract from the RP of the game more then it would add to it.

Now I'm not saying that good RP could not come out of such a situation.  If the player behind the pc suddenly recives a message that says that due to the massive amount of damage done to their arm, that limb is now crippled, I think that the player would find some enjoyment (or scream bloody hell) in takeing this further.  Unfortunatly, crippled limbs tend to be permanent, so haveing a penalty added to movement, carrying capacity, ect. for a certain length of time after would not be fitting with the overall feel that the game creates.

Although, I can see that haveing such a thing hard coded would keep many a twink from takeing massive amounts of damage in battle and still keep swinging that double-bladed obsidian axe as if it were a toothpick.  If anything, it would be a constant reminder for the rest of us that we do indeed have something wrong with our characters.  I for one will admit that I tend to ignor the condition of my character when he/she has wasted a great deal of his/her movement poitns, hp, stun, ect, and haveing just that little extra to remind me of the condition of my PC would, IMO, be great.

[John]

Would you like to post a link or the actual article? I for one am curious.

I like the idea, but IMO there are things that would need to be implemented before this was. These things include being able to aim for a body part and the code remembering which body parts are attacked and you not being able to be killed by being continuously stabbed in the foot, among other things.

It's a good idea, but the battle code is rather simple, so it needs to have other things implemented before you do this, sort of like you need to walk before you can run.  :wink:

[crymerci]

I came to Armageddon from a game that had specific body-part wounds. Frankly, I like Arm's current system better. It requires you, the player, to make a choice about how badly you're wounded...whether it's scratches and bruises or a gushing wound or broken bones.

Also, the thing about making wounds specific is that you don't just have to change the combat system, you have to change healing mechanisms as well.

[creeper386]

Well, I had a character a month or two ago, and in a sparring accident lost a good major use of one of his hands, and it ended up changing his routine and he ended up using different means for combat.

I acctually prefer RPing as to hard coded things, just because it won't happen as much. If you put it into hard code, it'll be like the stain code but worse, everyone well be running around with broken limbs and everything.

When it's RPed it may not happen much, but I think more comes from it when it doesn't happen constantly as opposed to happening all the time.


Creeper who isn't opposed to it, but is.

[swordmaster]

I came to Armageddon from a game that had specific body-part wounds. Frankly, I like Arm's current system better. It requires you, the player, to make a choice about how badly you're wounded...whether it's scratches and bruises or a gushing wound or broken bones.

Also, the thing about making wounds specific is that you don't just have to change the combat system, you have to change healing mechanisms as well.

i rather think that its kinda dumb if you can choose how wounded in rl if a giant beetle thing pinches youre arm you couldent say now im not that wounded i think we shouldent be able to choose how wounded we are whatsoever?

[Fedaykin]

You're as wounded as you are really, and thats determined by the ammount of HP you lose in combat.

However, while this sort of code whould certianly be a neat addition, the problem is this is a game.  If people get perma-injured all the time, it might deter people from playing.  Also, I don't believe alot of people who want to log in and enjoy themselves are going to want to log in to play out an injrued character forced to do very little.

Perma-injuries are better off left to the players.  Its fun to play out now and then, but I'd rather make that choice than have the code make it for me.  I haven't seen too much problems recently with people not RPing out their injuries, so I don't think it is really needed.  Sure, there is the occasionaly newbie who will sit in a tavern crafting while he's near death, but sometimes we need a little comic relief, heh.  Besides, handling those sort of people and watching the imms do something about them as well can be very fun

[Angela Christine]

Frankly, I like Arm's current system better. It requires you, the player, to make a choice about how badly you're wounded...whether it's scratches and bruises or a gushing wound or broken bones.

i rather think that its kinda dumb if you can choose how wounded in rl if a giant beetle thing pinches youre arm you couldent say now im not that wounded i think we shouldent be able to choose how wounded we are whatsoever?

You don't choose how much wounding you get, your hp damage makes that clear, but you do get to decide how to RP it.  It is possible code-wise to heal very quickly, so if you don't feel like RPing out a crippling injury you can RP that it was a collection of flesh wounds and you are a little stiff and sore for a few days.  On the other hand, if you want to play out that your leg was broken, you can emote hobbling around with a crutch and being out of action for weeks.



Once I was riding a kank when a nasty scrab jumped out and hit me twice, instantly doing 70 pts of dammage (out of a possible 82 hp).  Luckily I didn't fall off my kank, and I was able to ride back to town before colapsing inside the gates.  Since one of those blows was to my neck, I decided that the thing had damned near decapitated me.  I bought a bandage to wear around my neck, and deliberately did not sleep enough to heal completely.  I then hung around a tavern in poor condition for a few days, unable to speak louder than a rough whisper.   After a couple RL days I let myself heal, and I gradually had my voice change from a whisper to a grating croak.  I emailed to get a scar added to my neck (so I could take off the bandage) but died in an unrelated incident a RL week later.  That was sad, I never got to find out if she would eventually have gotten her voice back to normal or not.

It was fun.  But I wouldn't want to be forced to roleplay out that sort of invalid role everytime I had a character involved in serious combat.  Military groups could be nearly crippled if every serious injury meant the code forced the wounded into weeks of recuperation.  Realistically, a baddly broken leg could take a year of physiotherapy before it was 100%, if it ever got back to 100% at all.  A head, neck or back injury?  Forget it, without magickal intervention you are screwed.  Like perma-death it would force realistic consequences, but some people don't enjoy roleplaying out invalidism so they would probably not log in much until they healed, or commit suicide so they could get a new, uninjured character.  At time in my RL I have had to spend weeks in hospital with nothing to do, it is dull, and after a day or to roleplaying it would be deathly dull too.  In fact, in Zalanthas it would be even more dull since they can't watch tv or read to pass the time.  Bleh.

Sure, in real life your degree of injury isn't optional.  You don't get to say, "I don't feel like being confined to bedrest for the next 6 weeks, so it turns out this is just a bad bruise."     But for playability there is some wiggle room in Armageddon.  You can easily keep track of the location of major hits and play out an injured arm/leg/wrist/etc. but you aren't forced to do so.

AC

[Bestatte]

I was really annoyed when I fell from a height and was unconscous, and woke up with NO idea what parts of my body were injured.

All I knew was that my HPs went from 0 to 40-something and back down to 0 for a long time, and eventually went up high enough that I could move again.

What I'd love to see, and I posted this somewhere else around here..is actual body parts indicated in injuries. Not just in the emits that happen when you get hurt, but also in the "look character" command. So and so has a broken arm, a gaping hole in his chest, etc. etc. As you heal, the various injuries disappear, and healer characters would have more "oomph" to what they can do with their bandages.

[Delirium]

I figure falling off the Shield Wall, you're going to break something. So I emoted having a broken leg, and boy was it a pain in the ass. She died shortly after though, so I never even got to let it heal. Pft.

[creeper386]

You also got to think, that game time goes by extremely fast. Along with like in earths history, broken limps tended to be deadly, but cracked or bruised bones wasn't a big deal. So, either someone would be permanently injured, or they'd be healed enough so that by the next time they log on they are going to be going alot better.

I've severally bruised and possibly cracked my ribs in real life, for about the first 3-5 days it really affected me, past that I was doing pretty good except being sore, now I was pretty young and heal fast, but I was also a complete wuss, I probably could have been going alot sooner if I was acctually used to or could deal with the pain.

Along with I said and what AC said. I think these type of things are better left to RP because then they may be rare, but then they are normally played alot better, since people get older when they log off, I don't see why major injuries wouldn't heal, it'd be a pain, if people only long in every couple days they could be injured for a year or more, and if people healed while offline, I could see people not playing much, which would be more IC then the injury taking alot longer, because in places where doctors don't exist, people tend to curl up someplace until they die, or heal up. To let people see you weak means death.


Creeper