[MUD-Dev] (fwd) Re: Roleplaying

[Katrina McClelan]

> > And yes, the idea of HPs rising with level stretches things a bit too.
> > ALSO not as much as people would have us believe.  For instance, it
> > is not that great a stretch to look at HP as some sort of expression
> > of one's ability to absorb/avoid/maneuver away from damage, not JUST
> > bodily physical damage.  So as one 'rose in level' one gained more HP
> > which represented a certain experience reflected in combat survivability
> > through (for example) wiser use of maneuvers, or whatever.  I do think
> > it makes more _sense_ to leave HP pretty much constant and to vary
> > your 'survivability' by adding in combat-related dodge or parry or
> > whatever skills.  But rising HP with level is by no means totally
> > indefensible.
> 
> As I recall, this very nicely summarizes how AD&D's system is _supposed_
> to work.  The main problem that people have with a Level/HP based on level
> system is that there seems to be an inconsistancy.  HP represents not only
> physical toughness, but also the 'survivability' mentioned above.  The
> perceived discrepancy comes from overlooking the resulting complexity of
> the rest of the system.  By simplifying 'toughness' and 'survivability'
> into one value, you have to complicate the rest of the system to
> compensate... which many people forget.  I'll use one of my favorite
> Dragon Mirths (from Dragon Magazine... I forget which issue, but I can
> look it up if anyone is interested) as a case in point.  An ogre is tied
> to a tree, riddled with arrows and sneering.  A mage with a clipboard is
> tallying the Ogre's remaining HP and telling the archer near by "Ok, 2
> more arrows should do him in!"  The scene in question forgets to
> compensate for the Ogre's reduced ability to use his 'survivability', due
> to his restraints.  Unless the archer is a complete pleeb, he should have
> been able to do the Ogre in with at most 2 arrows.  This happens all too
> often with such systems, and is, IMHO the primary cuase for people
> discounting them as 'unrealistic'.
> 

Well the real issues are:

1) it would make MUCH MUCH more sense to vary damage based on level rather
than hit points.  Ex: a gout of fire from a red dragon hits Drieth the
Relentless and Yodo his squire.  Drieth, accustomed to facing such dangers
reacts to the dragon's inhale and shields himself relatively well from the
blast taking 5 damage from it.  Yodo, a complete novice was too slow to
react and took the full force of the blast across his face and torso and
instead take 40 damage.  The reason I assume that TSR did not use such a
system in their game is because it is quite complex to handle,
particularly with polyhedral dice sets.  It is far easier to have the
dragon do 10d8 damage and obliterate Yodo (who has 10hp), and singe Drieth
(who has 130hp).  A mud has an advantage in that it is not limited to
polyhedral dice.  However, handling varied damage is still quite complex
and leaves enough justification to stick with simpler to handle hit
points.  The real problem is coming up with a function:

f(AL, DL, DMG) 

AL   = Attacker's Level
DL   = Defender's Level
DMG  = Some base damage (needed since some attacks are inherently 
		        more damaging regardless of levels)

such that it produces meaningful results across a wide enough spectrum of
levels, and damage bases.  Additionally, you need some situational
modifiers.  A completely helpless character would be considered level 0
(well in my design anyway) in terms of defender's level which should make
almost any attack fatal.  However it should also account for such
incredibly low damage bases (hiting a bound character with a whip for
example) that it's not always fatal.  Additionally level of wounding
should play a role in damage.  A heavily wounded character would be less
able to defend himself than a fresh one.  Of course you can get into
addrenelan(sp) affects for a life threatened character that give
bonuses... I seem to notice that this is getting quite complex.  And it's
far too simple still.  It takes no account for damage types (red dragon
laughs at a fireball, a creature with incredibly hard skin might be highly
resistant to blades, a jelly could be totally immune to any physical
attacks... or even worse could ignore blunt and divide into two jellies
when sliced etc).  Overall a rather obtruse mess that would be rather icky
to handle in the mold of MOST mud engines.  The best model I can come up
with that might be able to pull off such a system is a event driven object
collision based mud that I had mentioned before on usenet.  The bulk of
the engine would object collision handlers (which would determine damage
to the colliding objects), and player's bodies would be objects.  To
destroy (or sufficently damage) an organic object (or vital sub objects)
of a creature is to kill a creature.  

-Kat