[RPG Theory] Immersive Damage / Health -system

[catmorbid]

Foreword and the Premise
The idea of a perfect Health and Damage system has crossed my mind on more than one occasion. My very first attempts at it have been working with PnP games, but theorizng about such applications on a computer game's level is a whole different issue. I can only wish the devs of Mortal Online would take a look at this – or maybe have something similar in already. This has been inspired heavily by Victor's “A Radical Change for the Better” -thread, and the discussion I took part in there. Please do note that this is all 100% theory, and if this makes your head hurt, you shouldn't read any further

The basis of this system (which is yet to be named) is the attempt of completely removing the old-fashioned and unrealistic Hit Point mechanics, which are too abstract and unnecessary. Instead it will focus on representing damage more accurately by tying it together with different Damage Types as realistically as possible. Note that the whole system has been made with the intention of making it possible and relatively easy to create on a game, and as thus the mechanics have been simplified from the most advanced possible simulation.

The Basics
First of all, there will be not unrealistic logarithmic increase in Hit Points. Every character suffer to a similar degree from wounds, but physical supremacy will make a difference – just not a big difference. I'm assuming a basic stat value range of 1 to 100, so all calculations are based on this assumption. I'll first introduce a few terms and statistics used:

Stamina (STA): Stamina is very important in the system, as it will actually take the place of the ordinary Hit Point pool. Running out of stamina can never kill you though, and it will always regenerate relatively fast. Stamina is consumed by every physical action such as running, punching, striking, climbing – and by getting hit.

Damage Threshold (DT): This value is subtracted from damage upon the impact. This effect is only available through the use of external aids such as armors and defensive magic. Skin can never directly block any damage.

Damage Resistance (DR): This is a percentage value which determines how much of incoming damage is reduced AFTER applying Damage Threshold. Damage Resistance can be natural or external, i.e. every character has some and armors and spells give some as well. Damage resistance is capped at 90%, but natural damage resistance for player characters is roughly between 3% and 25%. It's based on Constitution and Size and Diminishing Returns applies on the formula, so that large creatures and such can be given correct values as well without having to rely on any extra rules. At 1000 Constitution and Size DR would be 95%. The formula is 1-0,9985^(Stamina + Size).

Status Ailments (SA): Variables that modify temporarily the character's physical or mental prowess. They're usually negative, but some status ailments could be positive as well. SA's include bleeding, pain and concussion – as well as death, technically speaking.

Blood Loss: Blood Loss is both a mechanical term and an ingame term. It happens usually when the character suffers from physical trauma from sharp objects, such as the blade of an axe. Blood Loss is also a statistic that determines how much blood the character has lost.

Damage Resistance is something everyone has, and essentially it does the same thing as increasing pool of hit points does, because it directly affects how much damage an attack does. Since every character has some DR, the actual damage that is dealt is never equal to the theoretical damage value a weapon has. Armor offers Damage Threshold, which means the minimum damage needed to actually inflict any harm. Anyone who played the original Fallouts will know how it works, as the mechanism is identical to that (Damage Threshold / Damage Resistance). Whatever gets through after DT and DR is the actual damage that determines how the character reacts to the impact. The Initial damage can be modified by weapon, attributes, attack velocity etc. This leftover damage is always subtracted from the character's Stamina.

Damage = ((WeaponDmg + Modifiers) - DT) * (1 - DR) * LocationMultiplier

Where LocationMultiplier equals to hit location-based multiplier. This is calculated afterwards so that headshots etc. which deal more damage wouldn't actually reduce armor's effectiveness too low: Armor has the same effect, but the actual final result of the wound is more severe.

Damage Types
Each weapon and spell has a damage type. Damage type determines how will damage be handled. In the end of Basics, it was explained how the damage value is determined. Damage Type has a number of attributes, such as:
Bleed Threshold / Multiplier
Pain Threshold / Multiplier
Stun Threshold / Multiplier
Critical Threshold

A threshold is the minimum damage an attack must deal before further calculations for the particular SA is made. Multiplier is used to multiply the damage beyond the threshold, which together equals to the particular SA's severity.

Example: A sword cut deals 50 damage after armor. The attributes of the Damage Type are Bleed TH:20, Mult: 0.5, Pain 10/0.004, Stun 30/0.1, Critical 100. The attack has the following consequences: -50 stamina, Bleed 15 points per second, Pain 16%, Stun 2 seconds, no critical hit.

Bleeding is a status ailment which unless treated will lead to the character's death. A wound that causes e.g. 5 bleeding will continue to stack up Blood Loss. Blood Loss is measured on a scale of 1 to 1000 where 1000 represents approximately 50% of human blood reserves, which is more than enough to kill a man. As natural Damage Resistance already takes into consideration Constitution and Size, which would logically affect how much blood one can lose, it's not necessary to make Blood Loss scale attribute-based.

Blood Loss adds penalties based on how much blood one has lost: At 1%-30% (1-300), the effect isn't anything mentionable. At 31-60% you get a temporary penalty of up to -20% to stats, and at 61%-80% you get a more severe penalty and some visual effects such as blurry eyesight etc. At 81-100% You lose consciousness and can be barely saved. At 100% or more, you die.

Pain makes your life more difficult, as you get a percentage penalty to all of your stats. This is temporary and it can be cancelled or reduced by medicine or magic. Pain in limbs have a more severe effect on certain functions tied to the particular body part, such as movement for legs and melee attacks on arms, and vision on head.

Stun can occur from hits to head or torso, and it basically represents attacks that are not necessarily very lethal, but deal a massive amount of pain for a short duration. Such attacks would be a hard hit to the head or stomach. Stuns last for short times only (the unit is in seconds) and for the duration you get awfully messed up vision and slowed down and crappy coordination: i.e. you find it hard to see your opponent, and your movements and strikes become slow and sloppy, but you can still fight back – or at least try to do so.

Critical Damage does two things: Disable limbs or cause instant death. So if damage is equal to Critical Threshold and you manage to hit the guy in the head, he dies instantly. To make things a bit easier and reduce the amount of instant kills, you could add a constraint where you need to have several critical hits in order to actually kill the guy. Since we're talking about an MMO where lag is everyday issue and the consequences are pretty big, it might be wise to tone down the effects of this. Or simply add a multiplier that makes the critical hits so rare only powerful creatures can actually do them.

(Edit)Effects of Hit Location
Hit locations can alter the damage dealt (after applying Damage Threshold and Damage Resistance), as well as individual attributes of the Damage Type.
For instance, hitting someone in the head would logically cause more stuns but less bleeding, because no major arteries are present (i count neck as a separate area here).

Head: Damage Multiplier: 2, Bleed Multiplier: 0.1, Stun Multiplier: 1, Pain Multiplier 1

The values are used to multiply the final results. I.e. you get 10 bleed, it becomes down to 1 etc. You don't ever need to multiply thresholds, especially not the critical threshold, because the damage dealt already affects how easily you pass the thresholds, and applying a modifier there twice would be redundant.

Poison and Disease
This is definitely the least worked out part of the system, but basically I was thinking you'd do them simply by adding different status ailments upon failed Constitution checks. E.g. Poison or disease could cause Pain, Stun – or maybe some sort of Drain effect. Basically, they would all be status ailments. Diseases definitely reduce your stamina and so on.

With constitution checks, I mean basically a virtual dice roll which determines if you can resist the poison/disease or not, depending on the potency of the poison/disease. Or one could use the potency as a measure of how long it lasts and how powerful the effects are. So if the body can cleanse itself, the potency would be diminished in time.

Healing
Technical limitations might make keeping record of each individual wound too resource consuming, but if that's not the case, then each wound would be kept record of and you'd need to heal them one at a time. Conventional medicine would need you to treat each wound separately, while magic would allow to work on the whole body at a time, making it much more powerful. With both methods you could cure bleeding and apply anaesthesia. Magic would allow replenishing Blood Reserves, but having blood transplants on a medieval age wouldn't quite fit in, so that's one thing conventional medicine wouldn't be able to deal with.

Natural healing without aids should be very slow, and disabled limbs would be difficult to treat. Stamina on the other hand would return very fast.

Final Words
I'm not expecting anything out of this, but basically what my feeble mind is trying to do is to put into words some ideas of what I think would make gameplay in an RPG more immersive and better. Someone probably thinks removing hit points and introducing thing like blood loss instead is essentially the same, but while they have similarities, it's not the same. The point is, blood loss has only one function: to represent loss of blood, while hit points represent the overall physical and mental capability to withstand blows. Even with realistically small amount of hit points, it still doesn't change it. My idea was to move away from this approach and think the system out from a completely different point of view and then come up with a system that would be as realistic as possible and using only those mechanics it would need.

All these complications would surely add more depth and and interesting new layers of gameplay. Simple thing such as healing could be taken to a whole new level of intrigue, by introducing all the different things you need to do to patch people up. I won't even start up on how you could apply modifications to Damage Type attributes in order to creater more unique weapons.

Comments and critique are welcome, as usual.

[Zageron]

We can't expect much out of this for MO.
But guaranteed, with mind controlled video games just around the corner, that a system similar to this will be all over video games in the near future. (Maybe even 5 years)

I can see all virtual reality, full nervous-system controlled games, having this kind of system.

I absolutely love the idea of this kind of health system, and I've thought of a similar system countless times. Too complicated to write down though. :P
I hope the Devs have thought of a similar system.

[mikesanimation]

Firsly, I would like to say, thanks for taking the time to write up this post. Secondly, I like a lot of your ideas here.

With constitution checks, I mean basically a virtual dice roll which determines if you can resist the poison/disease or not, depending on the potency of the poison/disease.

In my book, the idea of random numbers disgruntles me. I understand that this might be necessary on some occasions, however I would like to limit this as much as possible.

Stamina (STA): Stamina is very important in the system, as it will actually take the place of the ordinary Hit Point pool. Running out of stamina can never kill you though, and it will always regenerate relatively fast. Stamina is consumed by every physical action such as running, punching, striking, climbing – and by getting hit.

So what you are saying is that when you lose stamina, you are dying (correct?)

When you hit a punching bag for 20 minutes, you do not get injured. You may get a little tired, however to say that it has damaged you any is ridiculous. If Stamina is supposed to replace hit points, it doesn't make sense to me why swinging a sword would reduce this. I understand how physical activities would reduce your stamina (by a normal meaning of stamina), however if you are associating this with WHEN the player dies, it just doesn't seem to fit in right.

But if running out of stamina does not kill you, how do you die? By critical hits only? What determines whether or not a player is deemed "dead".


I understand how damage is calculated, but once you have it, what is done with it? Is it subtracted from your stamina? So when you run out of stamina you die?

I like the idea of a non exponential health growth when you get more progressed in your skills (as in someone maxed out wouldn't have a ridiculously amount more health than a new player), because honestly, Arnold Schwarzenegger's head would cut off almost as easily as Paris Hilton's. (Sorry for the lame celeb examples).

[Zageron]

I'm guessing that the critical rate would increase decrease depending on factors, such as bloodloss ratings and stamina, as well as other negative buffs.

Also, the most common way of dieing I can see happening is bloodloss.

[mikesanimation]

Ok, so having a low stamina will make you more prone to blood loss, and if you lose too much blood, you die.

I misunderstood earlier. I actually kind of like that idea.

[LightsabeR]

Originally Posted by catmorbid

Critical Damage does two things: Disable limbs or cause instant death. So if damage is equal to Critical Threshold and you manage to hit the guy in the head, he dies instantly. To make things a bit easier and reduce the amount of instant kills, you could add a constraint where you need to have several critical hits in order to actually kill the guy. Since we're talking about an MMO where lag is everyday issue and the consequences are pretty big, it might be wise to tone down the effects of this. Or simply add a multiplier that makes the critical hits so rare only powerful creatures can actually do them.

I'm not quite sure if I understand you correctly here. If you are saying that "critical damage" should depend on where you hit your target, then I agree with you. But the traditional "critical damage" that you find in most (all?) MMO's, where crits are decided by stats (i.e you have X critical rate thus X out of 10 hits are critical hits) doesn't fit in a system that strives for realism.

So essentially, in a realistic system such as you described here, I'd say there shouldn't be "critical damage". Instead body parts should be effected differently by damage. For example, hitting someone against the head should do more damage and have a bigger chance of stunning the opponent. In addition, weapon type should factor in here. If you hit someone against the head with a claymore it is more likely you will cut through the helmet and cause pain/bleeding damage, while hitting with a huge maul would make it more likely to cause a stunning effect.



All in all, a great post Catmorbid. I too would really like to see the traditional hitpoint system get replaced with something more immersive and realistic. Since I can't give +rep I'll just give 5 stars to the thread .

[l0kkinen]

this is something really awesome, and I hope the devs notice this. So you are actually saying, that I can be killed more easily because i've just ran a marathon and body is in a weaker condition even if i haven't been really wounded. I think this is a realistic approach, and its something most mmorpgs haven't tried out yet. It also brings a new tactic to 1vs1 battles or to situations when healing isnt' available. If you keep attacking like crazy, consuming massive amounts of stamina, you're also at risk to be killed more easily. I also like the new status ailments, again more realistic, because sword cuts will cause bleeding even if you are not using a special technique that's supposed to have inferior dmg but somehow causes bleeding dmg. However, since this is basically a step back to the dice rolling, i'm not sure if it's was every1 wants. I'm not exactly sure how locationmultiplier differs from hitpoints, but it could be less skillbased, right? (you didn't explain it all that much, but it's basically a simplified version?)

[LightsabeR]

Originally Posted by l0kkinen

However, since this is basically a step back to the dice rolling, i'm not sure if it's was every1 wants.

Why would anyone not want to remove dice rolls? The less random luck you have in the game the more skill based it is.

EDIT:
Ah, I guess I answered my own question here. The people who wish the game to be less skill based would want to have more dice rolls.

[catmorbid]

Thanks for all the feedback! I realize it's quite a bit to swallow there and I tried to write it as clear and simple as possible, but it's never easy when you're talking about concepts that break the old formulas.

Originally Posted by mikesanimation

In my book, the idea of random numbers disgruntles me. I understand that this might be necessary on some occasions, however I would like to limit this as much as possible.

I realize this, and that's why I presented another alternative to the poison/disease system

Originally Posted by mikesanimation

I understand how damage is calculated, but once you have it, what is done with it? Is it subtracted from your stamina? So when you run out of stamina you die?

The way I thought it up, was to leave stamina's function intact. I.e. once you run out of stamina, you can't move! You can't fight back! So in a way, the result might be equal to dying, because you're real easy to finish off, while catching your breath. But the damage done to your stamina is never permanent, as stamina regenerates pretty fast.

Originally Posted by Zageron

I'm guessing that the critical rate would increase decrease depending on factors, such as bloodloss ratings and stamina, as well as other negative buffs.

Critical rate actually won't increase at all at any time, it's static and dependant 100% on the type of damage you're dealing. It means how much damage you have to deal so your attack does critical damage. This is not like critical hits traditionally have been, but only represents critical injury that is very very severe. Critical damage to head or torso are lethal, while crits to limbs only disable the limb.

[quote=Zageron;66396
Also, the most common way of dieing I can see happening is bloodloss.[/QUOTE]

That is correct. Blood loss gives you a pretty steep penalty when you've lost enough of it and unless you know how to stop it, you just have to fight against time.

Originally Posted by LightsabeR

I'm not quite sure if I understand you correctly here. If you are saying that "critical damage" should depend on where you hit your target, then I agree with you. But the traditional "critical damage" that you find in most (all?) MMO's, where crits are decided by stats (i.e you have X critical rate thus X out of 10 hits are critical hits) doesn't fit in a system that strives for realism.

Critical damage doesn't directly depend on where you hit the target. I came up with this so it would fit better on a twitch-based system where once you know if you hit a guy in the head with weapon x, you will deal enough damage for a critical. It's not random effect at all.

Originally Posted by LightsabeR

So essentially, in a realistic system such as you described here, I'd say there shouldn't be "critical damage". Instead body parts should be effected differently by damage. For example, hitting someone against the head should do more damage and have a bigger chance of stunning the opponent. In addition, weapon type should factor in here. If you hit someone against the head with a claymore it is more likely you will cut through the helmet and cause pain/bleeding damage, while hitting with a huge maul would make it more likely to cause a stunning effect.

The problem is that the damage in itself doesn't do anything. It only makes you more fatigued. That's it's purpose. However, based on damage you calculate status ailments and they represent the real injuries. So when you deal more damage, you give the other guy worse status ailments: more bleeding, pain and stun. The highest degree of status ailment is the critical damage, which represent so massive amounts of damage it's capable of cutting a limb right off or splitting a guy's skull. We're talking abou the kind of damage which the guys at ER have hard time of treating

Originally Posted by LightsabeR

All in all, a great post Catmorbid. I too would really like to see the traditional hitpoint system get replaced with something more immersive and realistic. Since I can't give +rep I'll just give 5 stars to the thread .

=)

Originally Posted by mikesanimation

Ok, so having a low stamina will make you more prone to blood loss, and if you lose too much blood, you die.

I misunderstood earlier. I actually kind of like that idea.

Originally Posted by l0kkinen

this is something really awesome, and I hope the devs notice this. So you are actually saying, that I can be killed more easily because i've just ran a marathon and body is in a weaker condition even if i haven't been really wounded. I think this is a realistic approach, and its something most mmorpgs haven't tried out yet. It also brings a new tactic to 1vs1 battles or to situations when healing isnt' available. If you keep attacking like crazy, consuming massive amounts of stamina, you're also at risk to be killed more easily. I also like the new status ailments, again more realistic, because sword cuts will cause bleeding even if you are not using a special technique that's supposed to have inferior dmg but somehow causes bleeding dmg. However, since this is basically a step back to the dice rolling, i'm not sure if it's was every1 wants. I'm not exactly sure how locationmultiplier differs from hitpoints, but it could be less skillbased, right? (you didn't explain it all that much, but it's basically a simplified version?)

That wasn't actually what I meant. Stamina only affects your fighting ability: when you run out of stamina, your you're basically defenseless, so that's why stamina loss should be avoided. But yes, the end result is the same: You're very tired, and you can't fight for long times, while the other guy is fresh and can beat you to pulp.

I can't see why it would be step back towards dice rolling? The only time I mentioned random chance was in the poison/disease part with the constitution checks. Otherwise it's all player skill-based, and no random factors involved.

LocationMultiplier is damage multiplier based on where you hit the person, e.g. Head 2x damage, neck 3x damage etc. With more damage, you get worse status ailments. It just occurred that having multipliers to stun, pain and bleed SA's tied to hit locations would make it better, hence you wouldn't get as much bleeding when hit on the head, but instead stuns would be the main difference etc.

So hitting head would mean: 2x Damage (after DT and DR), Bleed Multiplier x0,1, nothing else. This means if Bleed Multiplier is 1 it becomes 0,1. At 20 damage after threshold it would mean 20 bleed would be lowered down to 2 bleed. since the damage is 2x, it would actually mean a reduction from 20 to 4 comparing to a body hit e.g. where i imagine you wouldn't have any modifiers to the damage type attributes.

[Defiant One]

I support your ideas, catmorbid and im looking forward to see atleast bits of this concept. Like having general stamina/fatigue that is affected by all our physical actions from running/swimming to blocking or receiving hits or attacking. Implemented rightly I see it being a part of viable fighting tactic, consisting of wearing your enemies fatigue off but keeping yours.

[Resin]

Great post Cat.

Something I've been thinking about that would go well with this is realistic weapon damage/properties.

That is to say all weapons would have base attributes only - things like sharpness and weight. And then they would have real shapes and speeds (this kind of impossible at this stage of technological evolution, and is more in the realm of when emotives work well and everyone has them-along with super ping and faster hardeware). The basic idea though is that your weapon would have mass and shape. It's 'hit box' would be determined by the crafter and if a hitbox hits another players hitbox, thatwould be a parry.

[catmorbid]

Originally Posted by Resin

Great post Cat.

Something I've been thinking about that would go well with this is realistic weapon damage/properties.

That is to say all weapons would have base attributes only - things like sharpness and weight. And then they would have real shapes and speeds (this kind of impossible at this stage of technological evolution, and is more in the realm of when emotives work well and everyone has them-along with super ping and faster hardeware). The basic idea though is that your weapon would have mass and shape. It's 'hit box' would be determined by the crafter and if a hitbox hits another players hitbox, thatwould be a parry.

Oh, I see where you're getting at. But yeah, unfortunately that might be too much However, you could go pretty far with the conventional system of weapon properties, just as long as you have enough attributes so you can simulate all kinds of weapons. But still no completely custom weapons, i'm afraid - unless you put a LOT of work into it.

[Elfvis]

Great post Cat,

To add to this what about Gear thresholds? For example I would really like to see next gen games calculate hits which could maybe remove my helm from my head, shield from my hand, sword from my hand etc. I know modifiers like these can seem like % luck role, but I am sure with enough thought things like this can seem less random and feel more natural.

I guess one example would be if you had a helm that fully covered your head it may be heavier but might have a rating above something like a leather cap in terms of its stability or "gear threshold". Like you mention weapons actually hit somewhere if that area was your helm and it was critical damage the leather cap would fall off and he would no longer be protective, not only would it fall off but now its destroyed, where the larger helm might stay on but ring, muffling the sound around the player, but keeping it on his head, just disorienting him.

This could also go to say that blunt and blades have different effects on gear. A mace could splinter a wooden shield into pieces. All very cool ideas yet I dunno how practical or easy they would be to execute in game.

In addition to your sentences about areas you could have effects such as slowing effects (swing speed, movement etc) add sound as well, so if you get WHACKED on your head a sound eminates from your Headset or speakers that makes everything muffled, or the world seem dizzied (like CS flashbang, or a close proximity grenade. I think these are all applications that exist, emerse, and maybe coming in the future.

[Elfvis]

Originally Posted by Resin

Great post Cat.

Something I've been thinking about that would go well with this is realistic weapon damage/properties.

That is to say all weapons would have base attributes only - things like sharpness and weight. And then they would have real shapes and speeds (this kind of impossible at this stage of technological evolution, and is more in the realm of when emotives work well and everyone has them-along with super ping and faster hardeware). The basic idea though is that your weapon would have mass and shape. It's 'hit box' would be determined by the crafter and if a hitbox hits another players hitbox, thatwould be a parry.

I think we talked about this in another thread. Its such a great idea. Stumpy had a thread as well about it.

[boblikesoup]

I really like everything you proposed. Pirates of the Burning Sea had the same Damage = ((WeaponDmg + Modifiers)) – DT – (BaseDmg * DR)) * LocationMultiplier equation but it was for boats which would take damage to different facings w/ different amounts of health as opposed to a location multiplier.

[catmorbid]

Originally Posted by boblikesoup

I really like everything you proposed. Pirates of the Burning Sea had the same Damage = ((WeaponDmg + Modifiers)) – DT – (BaseDmg * DR)) * LocationMultiplier equation but it was for boats which would take damage to different facings w/ different amounts of health as opposed to a location multiplier.

It originates from Fallout 1, which had the Damage Threshold/Resistance ratings for armor, and IMO it's been the best system ever since. I'm glad someone else has noticed it and actually put it to use. The sole fact that bethesda didn't realize this is just sad, but that's going off topic.

BTW. the equation is a bit flawed, because it doesn't tell you what BaseDmg means, even though it's supposed to mean ((WeaponDmg + Modifiers)) – DT. I'll fix that.

[Jedi]

if your weapon a mace that slow than katana nice teory