What I've decided on:
1) Limited, time based resting system dependent on in-game difficulty. I have to say, Trinity really opened my eyes on that one. There will, of course, be some players that exploit the system, but I imagine they will be few and far between. And, honestly, exploiting such a small system means they still enjoy the game and want to see the rest; I can live with that circumvention.
2) Monsters can attack the player. There are two checks, however, involved. The party--companions included--make a survival check to see if the monsters find you at all(the idea being that a good survival skill means the party "covered their tracks" or something like that). If they succeed, no monsters attack. Failing that, though, there is a listen check. If the party fails this, the monsters have "snuck up" on the party and the battle starts with everyone knocked down for 3 seconds. This last part is rather painful, indeed, but I think it encourages a frugal party.
3) Monsters are not infinite. Areas can be cleaned out of opponents, so to speak, so "safe zones" can be created by the player. This can be tiresome and dangerous, but the option is there.
4) If you're ambushed, the next rest is guaranteed to be safe. This is totally illogical and, honestly, downright silly, but I once was "interrupted" 6 times in a row(I will not name the mod which did this). Needless to say, a slight shift in design seemed prudent.
Now, this is not a fascinating update. My reason for posting this is to elicit feedback from others modders(we've all been down this road at least once). I'm interested in hearing ideas/criticisms from others and seeing if I might make this a more robust, attentive system.
8 comments:
thjere are issues with resting systems as you touch on. But on balance I like them for the one thing they do bring to NWN2 from D&D - balance. A lot of the claims I see about mods being easy can be solved by putting in proper resting restrictions. If you rest after every encounter as i think some players must, then you lose the tactical element of D&D that I love. There's more skill involved in knowing you have to make it out of a dungeon with only the spells and HP you have left. SOme of my most memorable moments playing have been holding on to that last sleep spell until I know the party can make it out to somewhere safe to rest.
I'm going for limited resting areas that can be used unlimited times. I'm not going down the wandering monster route yet I fear that can add more annoyance than fun sometimes but i'm open to it
Hi Chaos Wielder,
You know me and my systems. ;) And you knew I'd be drawn into this one. :)
First off, like Wyrin says, I too (at the moment) am steering away from random encounters during a rest, but that is because of every other aspect of my resting system .... which I will probably do a blog on this week if nothing else comes to mind. ;)
First off, my rest system breaks down into two: Resting & Waiting. Any resting at all cannot be started if monsters are nearby. (Further reference to "resting" will now be to the sub-section of resting and not to the overall rest system.) Waiting passes time (to nearest dawn or dusk), whereas resting does not actually pass any time (*) but does regain HPs and spells ... but not always.
(*) "Morphed Time System" (see blog if I write it).
Even to be able to rest requires food (or the new Create Food & Water spell). No food, you can only use the wait option. Waiting occurs party wide, resting is personal. Waiting can be done at any time, resting only every 8 hours for individual players and their associated PCs.
Even if the PC rests, missing spell books or holy books will prevent spells from being learned. Furthermore, environmental factors will affect the amount of spell learning possible. (There are new feats and spells to help with this.)
HPs are also not all fully recovered on a rest, but only at a given rate based on other factors.
Furthermore, there is a VIGOUR system built behind all this that alters according to how much rest you do (or do not get) and is subject to whether there are enough food rations to go around.
Poor vigour means a drop in stats (as D&D rules tired/exhausted). No food and the PCs can also suffer from hunger ... which can be kept at bay with survival skill.
As far as I know, this is the most comprehensive rest system out there. :) Initially, it will appear a large hurdle to overcome, but as the player grows familiar with the system, then they can try to overcome the issues at hand with things like the "food & water scroll" and new spells and feats to overcome environmental issues to allow good learning and a healthy recovery from resting.
Add to this time-dependant scenarios and hopefully, simply being able to hot the "rest" button to completely fix the party will no longer be an option. For the unprepared, it will be possible to die from attrition when travelling across an overland map. :)
It was extremely hard work to get to work, especially with other systems involved, but I hope the result will be very much worthwhile.
I just wish my area designs were as good. ;)
Did any of that offer any inspiration?
Lance.
Hi Chaos Wielder,
Actually, I found an old blog post that covered some of what I said:
http://worldofalthea.blogspot.com/2008/02/resting-passage-of-time.html
Cheers!
Lance.
Hi Chaos Wielder,
Here are another couple of posts I made talking about the Vigour system:
http://worldofalthea.blogspot.com/2008/04/hunger-vigour-system.html
http://worldofalthea.blogspot.com/2008/04/vigour-resting-charts.html
NEW "REST" FEATS:
http://worldofalthea.blogspot.com/2009/11/room-at-inn-economy-and-rest.html
Cheers!
Lance.
Wyrin,
I agree. Resting after every encounter is the quickest way towards "cheese" and a general feeling of disappointment in a mod. I think your system will do fine--it will encourage players to go through a dungeon/scene in one 'run', perhaps conserving spells.
Lance(yikes, giant comment!),
Well, you're going for a more "hardcore" approach than I am, but I think it fits the different tones of the mods. I wish to create a mood of "danger", or something like that, in the swamp; you wish to have a realistic(?) view of adventurers, thus taking many of the applicable rules and moving them into NWN2. When looked at in that way, it's amazing both can even be called "rest systems" as they help the tone/direction of the mod.
Now, I would have a wait option but I'm trying to create a sense of urgency(in some cases, you're companions don't even want to rest, so it's not just to the player--it looks like you have individual choice as well, but I might have misinterpreted your post). So, again, it's an issue of tone rather than anything else.
I am intrigued about the spells not necessarily coming back with resting. How are you handling that? It's more than likely a complicated system, but I'm very interested to hear(it doesn't look like your linked posts cover this, so I hope to hear back on that).
Hi Chaos Wielder,
I suppose I am a little hardcore. ;) Although, I hope players will adapt and soon learn how to overcome the "problems" with play as another puzzle to they have to overcome.
Preventing (all/some) spells on resting was a complicated task to pull off. I did take one "liberty" with the campaign and that was to assume only holy books or spell books prevented any/most recovery and poor environments prevented some recovery. The books are only associated with clerics and wizards, and so only affect them or any PC multi-classed with them.
In a multi-class PC, the governing class is the class that requires the book. So, a cleric/druid would not recover *any* cleric spells (other than orisons and some domain spells), and furthermore, prevent the druid class aspect also recovering spells that were "shared" with the cleric class. That was the only assumption I made, which fitted well with my design anyway, but did, of course, make the coding simpler.
With this assumption in mind, I could simply loop through the spells 2da removing spells for a given class after the PC had rested. There is more involved than that, but a lot of code is very specific to the campaign and not easily removed without careful attention and a dedicated scripter disecting from it what they need.
There were some coding issues to do with spontaneous spells, but the overall result was good. :)
This area of coding was one of the largest pieces I had to cover and often ammend due to a number of other systems (like time, death and travel) coming into play.
I just hope the end result is all worth it.
Lance.
So, it's more like you're letting the player have all their spells back and then removing the ones you don't want? A nifty system, I must say.
Hi Chaos Wielder,
Yes, that's it! :)
In the case of environmental restrictions, the limitations are random. And in such a case, the PC has the choice to rest again (after allowing more time to pass) to learn the ones they failed at last time. More time representing the extra time it took to learn the spells in the current environment. :)
Lance.
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