Instadeath mitigation: "dying" status

[Derakon]

Just a random idea I had that I figured I'd punt out there.

If you take more damage than you have HP and your HP is above 0, then your HP is set to 0 and your status is set to "dying". While in the "dying" status, regeneration is disabled and any damage is fatal. The only way to remove the status is some form of magical healing -- which will remove the status, but leave you at 0HP, which means that any follow-up damage before you can heal "properly" will still kill you.

The basic concept is to give players a buffer against surprise instadeaths. Of course it won't protect you from getting hit twice in one turn (and is thus of limited use in melee), but it should be enough to guard you from "I didn't know it could breathe for that much!" kinds of deaths.

[Zireael]

LOVE the idea.

[EpicMan]

So if I got knocked down to dying, then chug a potion to get out of dying, I am still at 0 HP, right? So if I get hit will I go back to dying again?

So if you get the dying status, you would have to decide between spending two turns healing, or to try to teleport/TO to reach safety before healing for two turns (i.e. be at risk of death for one more turn). That sounds like it will create interesting tradeoffs in dealing with dying.

Maybe you could change the UI text from white to red when in dying status, as a noticeable alert.

[Derakon]

So if I got knocked down to dying, then chug a potion to get out of dying, I am still at 0 HP, right? So if I get hit will I go back to dying again?

My proposal was that if you get hit when at 0HP, you will die, regardless of status. You have to have at least 1HP to benefit from the "dying" status. Otherwise you could burn healing consumables/spells while waiting for the monster to do something "safe". This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I was worried it might make the game too easy.

Maybe you could change the UI text from white to red when in dying status, as a noticeable alert.

That could be interesting. Angband doesn't usually go in for wholesale changing of the UI, but back in the day Invulnerability used to make the game go monochrome, and I think Sil does something similar with Rage. I was figuring that the current HP warning, plus a couple of extra messages, would probably suffice:

The Ancient red dragon breathes fire. -more-
Your scroll titled "aque bitre" of *Acquirement* was destroyed! -more-
You are dying! *** LOW HITPOINT WARNING! ***

You are no longer at death's door. -more-
You have 12 more Cyan Potions of Cure Light Wounds. -more-
The Ancient red dragon tries to confuse you. You resist the effects! -more-
*** LOW HITPOINT WARNING! ***

You feel very good. You have no more Gold Speckled Potions of Healing.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I've always thought of instadeath as one of the hazards of Angband that are good. Good in the sense of increasing the stakes. Plus, @ always gets the first move when arriving on a level, so if @ later comes around a corner unawares and gets blasted, so be it. If it's about learning what monsters are so dangerous as to instakill, well, I think tweaking instadeath should be for a tutorial setting or level, but still remain part of the regular game.

[wobbly]

Interesting. What would you do with poison/bleeding etc.

[Derakon]

Interesting. What would you do with poison/bleeding etc.

"Tick" damage should still kill you if you're at 0HP. However, I don't think there's a problem with magical healing still removing poison/cuts as appropriate, so e.g. if you get breathed on by a Drolem and get poisoned, you'd need to at least drink Cure Critical Wounds to clear the poison, or else it'd kill you next turn.

[EpicMan]

So the "Dying" status mostly just means that regeneration and healing are both disabled. Is mana regeneration disabled as well?

This is a mechanic that would get weaker as you go deeper, in that (assuming you are not cut and/or poisoned) you could use your turn following the drop to dying status to teleport away in order to heal, if you though you could not survive two turns in your current location. At deeper levels teleporting is more and more likely to result in "It breathes, you die".

I really like this idea.

[Estie]

The basic game is about not losing all of your hit points. Adding another step before death might just complicate a simple and good thing.

The issue with "it breathes, you die" is 1. unknown monster property and 2. offscreen monsters which are in vision range of the @, but not the player. To adress strictly this, maybe add another condition for the "dying" status, namely that the health of @ must have been at least 1/2 max or so, so it wont trigger if you stay too long in a mele fight. I think I wouldnt like the global change to "every time you die, you dont really die at first".

It is a good idea, wether I like it if it goes live, I will have to see.

[wobbly]

I'd say the basic instadeath problem is: too easy access to teleport = need for instadeath monsters. Though the idea is still interesting and done right might work.

[Derakon]

So the "Dying" status mostly just means that regeneration and healing are both disabled. Is mana regeneration disabled as well?

Honestly I hadn't thought about it. Is mana regeneration likely to be relevant on the timescales this status effect is likely to occupy? I guess we could just turn it off too for consistency.

Estie's proposal to have it only apply when you're at at least 50% is reasonable. I expect that if this change were actually to be implemented, it would probably need a number of tweaks to make certain it plays well and is understandable to players.

We could also do things like have a near-brush with death permanently damage your CON. Mostly for flavor reasons, but why not?

[Carnivean]

I think that this is a newbie training idea, because experienced players shouldn't need to coddled like this.

With that in mind, maybe it should only apply for attacks that exceed the players total hitpoints.

On the other hand, it's kind of like the avoid death cheat option, just watered down a bit.

[Nick]

I believe Sangband used to have a mechanic like this for (at least) potions of Death, to encourage test-quaffing of potions. Effectively this would be extending this to all life-threatening situations.

I think on the whole I'm not in favour of this for Angband. The current situation feels more natural to me - there are things which can kill you with a single attack, and if you haven't prepared beforehand, there's nothing you can do. In my opinion (and this really is only a personal opinion) that sense of living on the edge is a large part of the appeal of the game.

[spara]

Hello, I'm a long time lurker of the forum and an old Moria/Angband player. This is a brilliant game and the practically the only game that I still regularly play. Thank you for keeping it alive.

I like being on my toes all the time, but off-screen insta-deaths are real joy killers, so I throw in a couple of ideas and maybe there's something of value here.

1. An amulet or ring of salvation. Basically this would activate when you're going to die. At that point it will break and you'll be back to 1 HP.
2. Going below 0 will permanently damage your constitution and you'll need to raise your contitution with stat potions. The effect could be 1 HP below 0 is 1 permanent Con damage.

[Nivim]

Doesn't vanilla have detection in various forms? Poscheng has the insta-breath-death thing in spades, but you can usually see it coming with various methods.