Update - Raising the dead

[One Two Three Five]

Easy raises up till level 10 sounds pretty nice. Gives you time to learn the game, learn to judge Arelith Difficulty, make a cleric friend or six..

[Seekeepeek]

The main reason people didn't want to party with my kensei back when it couldn't use raise scrolls.
was kinda i often had to run all the way to Wharftown with a corpse on my back to ask random people for a raise often.

However. How many altars Arelith has for a free raise death is a variable parameter. One could have altars around every corner in low lvl dungeons and fewer at epic dungeons. if it's a variable parameter, then it can be fiddled with so that everyone is happy eventually, even if said adjustments may take a while.

My humble conclusion is that it's worth a try and is better then the previous system.

[Marr]

Still not seeing a list of the Server-Altars that people can use the free raise at...which would be handy to know.

[Lorkas]

Some of them are in places that should probably be FOIG, Marr.

The less FOIG ones (i.e. the ones in major cities) would probably be Cordor's temple, Bendir's temple, Brog's temple (actually, did these ever get made permanent?), Wharftown's temple, the temples inside and just outside Myon, the Great Grotto temple, and the temples in each of Andunor's districts.

The locations of any other altars you find (and there are a lot more--I can think of a mid-level dungeon that has 2 or 3) should probably be spread in game rather than on the forums.

[Rwby]

I quite like Peppermint's suggestion, with the proviso I'd probably restrict it to Scolls, rather than Hardcast cleric raises.

[Peppermint]

A fair point! I'd probably compromise by making the maximum level to be raised equal the caster level.

Ergo, Raise Dead scrolls would cap at level 9, but a pure cleric could raise upward to level 30.

[Ebonstar]

It's no secret that I really dislike this change to the Death system. I'll run through the problems I have with it.

1) It makes clerics invaluble to a party. Not 'important' not 'useful.' Absolutely invalube. No class should be 'mandatory' to adventuring.

2) Low level (pre level 9) groups have almost no way of raising their dead mid adventure. Even if they have a cleric, the cleric won't have raise dead. I doubt low levels would be able to afford 10k for a scroll. That just leves alters.

3) Getting the body -to- an altar, just to continue, could be a major pain in the backside. People were complaining about the 20min pvp wait for respawn, wait until they experience the 30min+ wait to be dragged to an altar. A delay that won't just effect the dead, but also the other party members. If you have a limited time to play, like real life obligations, such delays could ruin a trip for you too, even if you're not the one who died.

4) Altars in Dungeons – 'Oh Auril, after slaughtering 1000 of your high priestesses, I, Joe, Priest of Kossoth, ask you to raise our Elven friend who has fallen by uh... your hands actually!' - yes, good IC sense that. Great.

5) After large pvp battles, unless the winning, surviving side has a cleric, then chances are the majority of the dead are going to be just left to rot (at best) or simply beheaded. No 'easy' raises for you any more!

6) Also again, without a cleric, any capture rp may well involve a good long wait in the fugue whilst you are dragged elsewhere. To be fair this isn't neccesarly a huge change, but it is something to consider

7) Parties can no longer afford to be inclusive to all sorts. It used to be that a high levelish group could drag along a mid level, or even a low level, just for the fun of the RP. Alas again, unless there is the mandetory cleric, this will simply mean that the low level dies, looses a tonne of xp, and gets left behind.

8) Want to join a Dm quest at a low level? BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah right! DM quests tend to end up a bit vicious to players because, unless they are specifically tailored for low levels, it's high levels that rule the roost. Now DM's running 'open' quests, must either put up with only spawning goblins for level 30's, or will have to accept that your level 6's will simply not be able to get involved, because anything you spawn will kill them, and, again 'unless there's a cleric' they will simply die, and be removed entirely from the quest.

9) Parties cannot be made on the fly any more. Again you either need to have a convenient cleric, or it ain't happeng. Those people who have fun grinding cliques can quickly have this one guy roll up a cleric, and Yay! They're away! People who try to gather groups via rp however, may find themselves lost in the cold.

10) What happens if the Cleric is the one that dies in the adventure? Again unless they've popped 10k on a scroll and given it to someone else – the trip is basicaly over.

11) Want to play a Cleric for the roleplay? To do neat things around Cordor? Be prepared to be peppered with requests for adventure constantly as people seek you for simply being a Res Bot..

12) Want to level super fast? Play a cleric. Everyone will now need you to adventure with. And this is good right? Because for a long time the mantra of any change was, 'Yes but how does this improve clerics...?' They're such a weak, underpowered, wallflower class that really needed this boost.

13) It is now officialy better to solo in most circumstances. Again unless you have a cleric, the chances are if you character dies in a group you will be re-spawning. (It's that or delay the entire group and gaze out at nothing for ages.) So if you're going to have to respawn anyway, why not just Solo? You get to keep all the gold if you survive, you do it on whatever time scale you can afford. It just makes more sense.

14) Arelith dungeon balance is often a little mean. The last adventure I went on, someone died twice to an electric trap we couldn't even see or detect. Monsters have ridiculous power levels to cope with the fact certain people are just very, very good at this game and thus need a challenge. But it means the less power built people, and/or those who arn't as good in pve, get left behind. That used to mean that we just lost a bit of xp to our deaths, didn't level as fast, all good. I honestly don't begrudge this much. However now it literally means 'left behind.' I rarely get invited to dungeon crawls, and when I do it's almost always because I provide fun rp, rather than much mechanical use. Now I anticipate that I won't get invited to any, being just a lump and a hinderence to any party I join. And even if I do get invited, again – 'unless there's a cleric' I will probably die mid way through, and have to end pre-maturely anyway.

15) Have I said again how baffled I am that this change has made Clerics so utterly invaluable? I mean really? I like Clerics, but so much of what I'm saying here comes down to 'You need a cleric to adventure.' 'You need a cleric to capture people' 'You need a cleric to be able to make roleplay groups on adventure.' I'm really not one for mechanical balance, I rarely start yelling 'zomg such and such is overpowered' but this truly does make Clerics ridiculously OP. An utter essential for any adventuring. And as this server is supposed to be mostly about action and adventure, this seems somewhat unfair.

16) This is really just a big 'screw you' to those people who make adventuring parties out of In Character friends. Who don't have lots of time to play, due to RL needs. Who don't have power builds. It won't force people to roleplay death better, it'll just make death more of a kick in the teeth and an inconvenience. I don't often adventure, but I do love it. I very rarely dislike changes as much as I dislike this, but this will likely prevent me from adventuring in the long term, and if/when I do it will be because I have friends playing clerics whom I can contact on skype/Discord to beg to help me level. Because that's how this is going to work from now on. Not naturally meeting characters up and going on fun romps, but quick ooc meet up so grab xp.

this can all be answered in one simple phrase, and one that has been overlooked for years.

Parties must be cautious. They must use tactics and think beyond rushing into a group of red hostiles.

This change brings more of a PnP flavor to adventuring, and I 10000000% approve!!

[OverTheSeaToSkye]

I am completely behind Yma.

[Cortex]

Good to remember that not every person is a pro MLG player nor do they want to/can be one.

[susitsu]

Some points that I think are extremely important are the ones that pertain to time constraints and how it hurts players who can only get on for a specific and limited slice of their day,

[Septire]

Some of my thoughts:

1) I can't really figure out how the praying at altar thing is support to work from a UX perspective. Do I drop the body next to me and pray or does it need to be in my inventory? How long do I need to pray? Is there some sort of indicator I'm missing? I have no clue if it's chance based or what, the interface and feedback needs work.

2) Removing raise and res scrolls is fine by me. My only issue here is how it hurts casuals. Might be a good idea to raise the floor XP of mobs from 1xp to 3-5xp, or at least revisit the XP algorithm so it is not be as steep dropping off. I'm not playing optimal build right now and I can feel the pain of trying to solo and not running a crit-city build. It would be nice if I wasn't totally screwed unless I find a discord group to grind with.

3) lol at the raise scroll portion. Book of Souls farming never looked so good. I assume that these items still function without a piety cost... it's probably an oversight that these books are pretty common. FS is looking lucrative as well, wish I had made one. As for selling raise scrolls and res scrolls not being affordable or viable, it never really happened before either. If it's not a viable money-maker, don't bother with it, no harm no foul.

4) I'm not in favor of reverting scroll behavior because the root issue the change is trying to address is in everyone and their mother being able to raise people back from the dead should PvP break out, or should someone die in a dungeon. Death should be serious, I'm happy that clerics are useful for this. As for -subdual, I'll get to that in a sec.

5) Mob balance is long past due for a revisit, most mobs are too strong as is. There's still some outlier class combinations that are just too strong compared to their vanilla counterparts, but it's a topic for another day. Suffice to say that mobs could use a second pass by Cortex or someone who wants to work with creatures; the problematic classes should really be addressed after the fact, we've been power-creeping a lot lately and need to take it a step back and look at why mobs were buffed up in the first place.

6) On subdual: There's two things at play here that are governing subdual. One is the playerbase's desire to resolve conflict without sending someone to the Fugue. From an RP standpoint, you may not want to kill someone, just subdue them. That way, death can be taken seriously because there are alternatives that exist. With the way dirty fighting and the penalties and weapon restrictions work, it may simply be too dangerous (or expensive in the build) to capture or subdue someone than it would be to just kill them outright. That's one side of it, and I see where you're coming from, I really do.

The other side is the concern that if we give players a hammer, everything is going to look like a nail. If you can resolve problems without killing players or actually killing someone in PvP, do you need to wait 24 hours before conflict again? If I can justify subduing someone as a character rather than kill them, it achieves the same feeling of winning without having the moral quandary of being a murderer. Plus, I don't even need to use a scroll, so it's cheaper to subdue someone and have them stand up in a few moments, arena-style. On top of this, it becomes easy to say, "Well look you didn't have to respawn so you have no mechanical reason to be complaining about being subdued" even if the subdual itself was reckless or with minimal RP before PvP. The problem of wanton PvP would be under a different name; it makes PvPing someone to 0 HP more desirable with less bad feels associated with it. The concern then becomes, Is subdual going to cause players to PvP more often and see that as a good solution, rather than taking text-based approaches or even relenting when the target is at Badly Wounded or actually type out "Stop! I yield!"? My answer here is: Probably, yes. The community argued for a subdual system to provide an alternative to killing a player, for immersion. You now have it, but you complain your AB penalties don't allow you to fight competitively and on par with someone who is out to kill you. It makes me wonder if dueling to the pseudo-death would become more commonplace, if sending someone to the Fugue would just become the new corpse-bash, and corpse-bashing would be a declaration of OOC war and deemed totally over-the-top unnecessary evil.

Now, with that said, I think the current penalties remove subdual as a viable option if someone is really trying to kill you. I am also concerned about pridegaming. I think that the best option would be to change the way subdual works. Change it so that a fatal strike drops the character into an unconscious state. The character is then rendered immortal for 6 seconds (1 round), meaning they can't be completely killed should a second or third attack come in on a flurry. After that 6 seconds, attacks will kill the target. If the target is not dead at that point, they will die in 10 rounds like normal if they are not healed. This will allow mages and other classes to subdue without a penalty. BUT, with this said, I really want to keep an eye on how players might abuse it, and go after the players that use subdual as an excuse for wanton PvP. Any tool can be misused, but I don't think it's fair to gate out the rest of the community that is using it properly over the actions of a few. I would treat subdual like any other PvP scenario, and reporting on PvP treating subdual just as seriously as if the person had been killed. I also think that subdual death should count for the purposes of the 24 hour rule, and follow-up capture RP would have to be very carefully conducted. You see, I don't feel that a player who is angry that they lost should be able to walk away from a successful capture and deny the captor just as I feel that a PvP death should not be simply ignored if it doesn't fit in with a player's self-written narrative for their character. However, I also worry that some players push post-PvP RP too far in an attempt to further humiliate the character in an attempt to rile the player.

So, it ultimately comes down to the admins on this one, because there's no clear-cut right or wrong direction on subdual. The best case scenario is that the players use the tool the way it was designed to be used, but there are some members of this community who have a notorious behavior of misusing the features for personal gain. My belief is that rather than taking it away for everyone, take it away for those who abuse it, and treat players on a case-by-case basis.

[Yma23]

Just to bring one quick point up.

I actually don't have a huge issue with the xp loss of respawning. Honestly, I would be a lot happier with the situation if, say, for double the xp loss you could respawn at your body. That way I can continue my fun roleplay and interaction with my fellow party members on a fun romp. No seriiously. That's really all there is for me. I actually enjoy the roleplay of going out adventuring with friends. This really interferes with that. It's honestly not about the xp, it's about having the fun adventure.

[Marsi]

this can all be answered in one simple phrase, and one that has been overlooked for years.

Parties must be cautious. They must use tactics and think beyond rushing into a group of red hostiles.

This change brings more of a PnP flavor to adventuring, and I 10000000% approve!!

This epitomizes the pro-update argument. That you, as a player, are called upon to treat death with due gravity. I don't believe mechanics can truly shape unwanted player behavior at all to be honest, but the real problem is that it's hard to respect PC life when the server doesn't.

Whether adventuring or DM questing, even the cold, tactical mind will find their character dead in an instant because of poor balance, poor path-finding or just the antiquated game mechanic of "HP" in itself.

What I'm saying is, if the players are to take death seriously, and for it to be fair for them to be so harshly punished when their characters die, then it needs to be more difficult for them to die. I'm not entirely sure how the -10 HP thing works, but there needs to a very solid middle ground of unconsciousness between life and death.

Bleeding out happens far too quickly, if at all. On POTM Ravenloft, the punishment for death was severe. You'd lose your equipped weapons (switching them out wouldn't help you) and a bundle of XP. But from what I remember, you'd have this prolonged period of unconsciousness. Bleeding out happened slowly (likely based on CON score dice rolls), and while you always had the choice to "let go" if you knew there was no help coming, it was very rare that a party would miss the window of opportunity to save their comrade. That's how it should be, in my opinion.

[Septire]

I'd be more inclined to make the bleed-out system a bit more fair for being KO'd in PvE than to revert scrolls entirely. Some intermediate item to revive downed players that aren't healing kits though, otherwise it would be trivialized and few players would likely die from PvE with how -guard works currently.

[Mr_Rieper]

I believe in some versions of the PnP game, the "unconscious/bleeding out" HP threshold is 10% your maximum health. At one point past that, you die. So if you have 240 health, you'll only die at -25 HP.

I believe somebody else once mentioned that it would suck waiting to recover from -49 HP, or something like that. Easily fixed if you regenerate 1% of your health while in recovery. Then it's the same amount of time.

Of course we have ability to subdue now. But it would be cool if it was more difficult to be killed outright by something. Though, it doesn't help the low levels, where you arguably die the most.

Some intermediate item to revive downed players that aren't healing kits though, otherwise it would be trivialized and few players would likely die from PvE with how -guard works currently.

Magical defibrillators .

[Seven Sons of Sin]

My question is, how hardcoded is the -10HP = Death thing? This has been changed in Pathfinder and 5th Edition to take into account a character's Constitution score. Sometimes it can be very difficult to get to a fallen party member because pathfinding mechanics can be really frustrating, especially around doors and hallways. Maybe could we consider changing this, if possible, to allow party members more time to reach their party member and stabilize them?

... also, how possible is it to make a -stabilize command? That if you're in X radius of a party member, you can make a Heal check, and if you make it, they stabilize? Because I think at the moment, unless you heal them back to 1hp, your party member will continue to take -1?

If not, it would still be a cool mechanic, to reflect what you can do in PnP.

I mentioned this earlier in the thread also, Septire and Marsi. I'd be very interested to know what is the flexibility in the parameters around unconsciousness!

[Septire]

It's flexible enough to do the aforementioned change, I believe.

[Mr_Rieper]

You should totally do that. Have the "unconscious" HP amount use your CON modifier. Then have the amount you regenerate when you stabilize to use this CON modifier as well, so you aren't waiting an eternity to die/heal when nobody is going to rescue you. Alternatively you could just type a command and give up on life.

[susitsu]

@Septire

In regards to subdual, I assure you that absolutely no matter what is done to subdual, people who aren't interested in roleplaying are not going to use it.

"Corpsing" is a common term in the PvP heavy community.

Subdual will only ever apply to those who want to keep roleplaying. There should be zero restrictions, whether it be a mage's elemental or even hellball that reduces your HP.

[Peppermint]

I'd tend to agree with susitsu. Penalties/restrictions do not make sense on a tool that exists just to further RP.

AFAIK, Arelith might well be the last remaining server without a full-featured subdual mode (i.e. ours is quite limited). IME on these other servers, abuse tends to be quite minimal, if it exists at all. A lot of the fear and hubbub is just that: fear and hubbub. As it turns out, griefers aren't really interested in abusing you by using subdual. They tend to be interested in abusing you by, y'know, killing you.

Given that limited subdual has existed for some months now without incident, it might be time to revisit the issue.

[One Two Three Five]

I'd tend to agree with susitsu. Penalties/restrictions do not make sense on a tool that exists just to further RP.

AFAIK, Arelith might well be the last remaining server without a full-featured subdual mode (i.e. ours is quite limited). IME on these other servers, abuse tends to be quite minimal, if it exists at all. A lot of the fear and hubbub is just that: fear and hubbub. As it turns out, griefers aren't really interested in abusing you by using subdual. They tend to be interested in abusing you by, y'know, killing you.

Given that limited subdual has existed for some months now without incident, it might be time to revisit the issue.

Yeah, this is basically correct on other servers and, frankly, Arelith. If someone decides to ruin your fun time, they'll do it by shooting one line of text and dropping you while you're typing.

[Septire]

Re-reading my earlier post, I realized I missed mentioning it explicitly: I think -subdual shouldn't have any penalties or restricted weapons. When I mentioned changing it, I meant just having it as a mode you turn on and off to prevent someone from being sent to the Fugue immediately. It gives them 1 round of immortality/invulnerability when they drop to prevent this, and then from there there's some means to stabilize them. As for what a "full-featured" subdual is beyond what I outlined, I'm not sure what additional features would be added to the system.

[If Valor Were Inches]

Re-reading my earlier post, I realized I missed mentioning it explicitly: I think -subdual shouldn't have any penalties or restricted weapons. When I mentioned changing it, I meant just having it as a mode you turn on and off to prevent someone from being sent to the Fugue immediately. It gives them 1 round of immortality/invulnerability when they drop to prevent this, and then from there there's some means to stabilize them. As for what a "full-featured" subdual is beyond what I outlined, I'm not sure what additional features would be added to the system.

I actually like subdual being restricted, but if you want to open it up, give it a greater percentage chance to to fail with weapons outside of the current restrictions. Or have those weapons be penalize and remove the penalty with the ones that are currently allowed.

I'm not a fan of the idea of seeing a critical hit of a 100+ damage on a scimitar being able to subdual.

Plus a positive experience for myself was using subdual to make what would be a lopsided battle much closer, given the current penalties and weapon choices, to attempt an arrest.

[gilescorey]

As it turns out, griefers aren't really interested in abusing you by using subdual. They tend to be interested in abusing you by, y'know, killing you.

I think that was a big part of Septire's point. It's possible if subdual gets overhauled, killing could be taken as "griefing," because you don't technically lose anything for subduing somebody over killing them (besides story integrity!), and killing instead of subduing might be perceived by the strawman "server zeitgeist" as a negative thing done only by griefers, rather than a legitimate firestarter/climax to conflict.

[Peppermint]

I'm not a fan of the idea of seeing a critical hit of a 100+ damage on a scimitar being able to subdual.

Wouldn't it be more logical for a character that deals more damage to be able to subdue, rather than less, though?

Characters that deal more damage tend to have more training, and realistically, should be better at apprehending their target -- not less. However, the case is actually the opposite on Arelith: the more damage you deal, the more difficult it is to actually apprehend anyone, because there's no way to pull your punches*.

One of the most frustrating things for me when playing a rogue was that there was no way I could realistically subdue a low level target physically. A single flurry, even if I used a no damage weapon, would outright kill them.

(* Pulling punches, incidentally, being the one thing that a proper subdual mode allows you to simulate.)