Hardcore characters?

[FaerellG]

I've come think that maybe I'm going about this whole risk in game thing wrong. Maybe we should just have an optional set of rules for people who want more risk in their game.

i mean, we have non-combatants and combatants right now.
Non-coms give up fighting for some really sweet benefits (crafting, and practically invulnerability to death via auto-regeneration).

Combatants are the standard, but I feel it's still way too difficult to actually suffer permanent negative effects.

so, maybe we ought to create a "Hardcore" character standard. The primary goal of Hardcore is to massively increase risk of permanent injury (and death) to the character.

Thus far, the ideas I've had for hardcore are the following:
1. -180 seconds on death timer. This means if you have 0 ranks of Clotting, you instantly die when you take 3 limb wounds or a torso wound as you have 0 countdown on your death timer. Every rank of clotting gives you +60 seconds to your Death timer.

2. If you have ranks in clotting and you take a 3rd limb wound or a torso wound you have 2 choices:
A) Grievous injury. You fall to the floor clutching your wounds. You may cry for help and you may crawl. If you are struck again, you instantly die. (Subdue still renders you unconscious)
B) Dieing Breath. You 'know' your wound is mortal, and you decide to take down as many enemies as you can before your life runs out. You may continue fighting (as if all of your limbs are functional) for a number of seconds equal to that remaining of your death timer. During this duration, call "No effect" to any healing spells directed at you (your injury is mortal and beyond mere healing spells). If you are struck again, you instantly die.

3. Yes, you can still be resurrected.

4. If you have an injured limb and it is struck again, treat it as a "Remove Limb".

I feel this would allow for truly epic death scenes where you've just gone down...you can get up, but if you do, you're sure to die. Currently though, I see few incentives (aside from higher challenge and the potential for epic death...and bragging rights) to playing a Hardcore character.

thoughts? Would you play a Hardcore character as it is? What would you add/remove/change to make it a viable character type?

[deneb3525]

Personaly I see "hardcore" as a high risk high reward.

Simply remove the ability to be resurected but give a 25% bonus for skill points spent on that character BUT *ALL* points in that character are lost on character death.

This way your character can be quite a bit more powerfull then it could otherwise be. BUT, you run the big risk of losing it all on character death. Also with this NPCs would be allowed to kill you.

[FaerellG]

I had originally included a Skill point bonus for being a HC character, but I decided against it. I felt that the benefits for being a HC character should be something that breaks normal game conventions and not be something that can just be gained through persisted playing.

Removing Resurrection is a good idea as well. I will keep that in mind as an alternative drawback.

I'm also thinking that most people would be vehemently against permanent skill point loss. Skill points are a player's property. The idea is to put the character at risk, not the player.

[Salaris]

I would be fine with seeing players with a "no resurrection" form of Hardcore, but that's already an option - you can refuse resurrection if you choose to.

John's description of hardcore would be much cooler if this game used heavier weapons. With the tendency of people to machine gun, you will very frequently get hit in a limb immediately after it goes down, simply because players have no way of telling if your armor/limb is damaged. We don't have any good way of tracking the hit points of our targets, and we have a lot of fast fighters.

As such, I expect that this would lead to massive limb loss. I don't think that would be fun for anyone, honestly.

These rules might work in a different game setting, but I don't think they're really applicable to the current LE games.

[FaerellG]

Actually, accidental limb loss is the point. The idea is added risk for the character.
HC character would be optional in the game, just like being a non-combatant is optional. So a player would go into HC mode knowing that there's a high probability of limb loss and otherwise permanent damage to the character including death.
This makes the blenders out there all the more dangerous.
Limb loss is just one example of how a HC mode could work. My heart isn't set on this.
The only things I'm really interested in are the "Dying Breath" and "Grievous Injury" options. I find the current rules for characters that are bleeding out to be uninspiring.
I mean, with Grievous Injury, you could literally drag/crawl your way to wherever you're needed. That would be epic if you had 5 ranks of clotting and managed this. 5 minutes of crawling to deliver a message and dying at the feet of the recipients.
Dying Breath, I imagine would look something like Boromir's death scene LotR.

The No-Res portion is kind of meh. It's not a tremendous penalty as death is not that frequent. I would be prefer a greater likelihood of death as opposed to permanent death.
I mean, the majority of players have not had a PC 'die' before, so it seems like a minimal penalty. I could say that I've refused every resurrection, but that wouldn't change anything about my character history.

The intention of HC again is to create unique penalties and benefits for HC characters...just like Non-Combatants have (no fighting, but boosted crafting/regeneration)

My intention for the unique benefits for HC are along the lines of:
Boosted Combat power or unique (HC only) options in combat (such as the choice to fight when you should be down)
But suffering major drawbacks when you are defeated.