Limb damage

[Vargrahim]

Something I have been thinking about is the way limbs can be damaged. For example, it is possible to make deep cuts into the same hand five times until the person finally dies. For example, compare with cutting the hand off - the person does not die from that. It seems to me that the damage one can make on the same part of the body, no matter where it is, is incremental - an endless resource of damage points.

Another thing is how it is seemingly much more effective to aim at the hands of a person since cutting someone in the hand is usually much more deadly than in the stomach. This is again strange, if I may say so. A deep wound in such a critical part of the body as the stomach should be much more lethal. Yes, cutting deep wounds in a hand can make you die from bloodloss, but in the stomach and under the torso there are much more important organs whose functions can be disabled, or you die almost directly (they would also cause even more bloodloss than the hands). So in a way, the amount of damage done should be increased for important parts of the body (abdomen, torso, head) and decreased for "dispensible" parts (hands, feet, arms, legs).

[aragog]

Hmm, I would only agree partly to that as cutting of a whole leg would cause the same heavy bloodloss like a deep wound at the torso, as the leg itself carries main aorta - same for the arm. But I would agree that loosing a foot or a hand shouldn't have the same bloodloss like a leg or a deep cut into the torso.

[Abharsair]

While the critical system admittedly isn't perfect, I'd like to point out that a deep wound to the torso or the abdomen causes significantly more damage than a deep wound to the hand.

[jezz]

Yep, a hit at torso or abdomen hurts much more than one at your hand. The main reason people aim at hands usually is because it's much easier to get a crit there and disarm your opponent.

But of course, protect skill also exists, and luckily for us when you protect your hands you protect both at once.

So it's a matter of fighting experience. I change often my protection spots looking at the places my enemy is hitting me.

[Delia]

I've very rarely seen any special abdomen or torso crits, apart from the insta-kill ones. Once Delia suffered from broken ribs, which is(?)relatively common injury one might suffer, and that damage resulted from being pummeled to near-death with one hit, so it seems exceedingly rare. Then again, the rarity of other bone-breaking crits apart from hands is that people tend to prefer swords, spears and daggers more than any other weapons...?

While cumulative damage to a hit-location leading to its destruction sounds like a cool thing, it will ultimately result in decrease of gaming-enjoyment,in my opinion. In one mud I casually played, such system was in use, and the highbie fighting characters casually sparred demons of allkinds, just aiming their heads and killing them in one hit, one after the other. As Geas' highbie fighters more or less can resolve combat with one or two good, clean hits currently anyway(I think), it would not be that much fun if your not so friendly neighbourhood tshahark had easier time bashing your head in, instantly killing you. Still...some simulation of cumulative limb damage might be ok? Like after suffering a critical, it would be bit more propable to suffer a crit afterwards to the same location until you are healed? Neck and head hit chances should be tweaked in such case though...

[Malys]

Ehh, it may not be very realistic to gore a person's head or make a "deep nasty wound" on their neck and have them still survive (or even win the fight), but I think I'll gladly trade realism for challenge. Being one of the 'not so friendly neighborhood tshaharks' mentioned in the earlier post, I can say it's already too easy (and oftentimes unfair (as far as fun) or really miserable in pvp) to split skulls and pierce necks left and right, and I certainly would not want to see it easier.

I can safely say damage is definitely determined on the body part, too. A pierce to a torso, for instance, is usually a mortal blow in all the times I've seen it. A pierce to the hand, on the other hand (no pun intended), usually causes nice bloodloss, but not any critical damage (unless the person was already hurt).

I think 'critical wounds' already determines critical rate. I could be wrong, but I think the more critical wounds someone gets, the easier it is to hurt them, or the slower it is to heal?

But yes, one concern of mine is how easy it is to kill someone by whacking the same non-vital body part over and over. Cutting a hand off is less lethal than poking it 2-3 times, and more than once Malystryx has almost died from only tail-hits. Bloodloss is understandable, but you'd figure a bodypart can only take so much damage before it becomes as good as useless.

Another thing is, piercing wounds don't seem to do any long-effect damage like cutting or crushing crits. I would imagine a person would have a hard time swinging his arm or gripping something after having a weapon (like a 10 ft. lance ) being driven through the body part.

Perhaps with things like hands and such, they can have a 'damage counter' sort of thing, where if they get damaged too much, they'd be rendered unusable (can't be targeted by enemies, or used by character) until they were able to heal? I guess it would be like broken bones, but would be determined on health and not a 30 minute "mending period".

[tarlon]

The chance of hitting criticals is fairly high. For tarlon it is more realistic that the fight ends in with deadly crit as i end it normaly. against high level players the chance is for sure a little lower but crits even deadly crits are very common
Tarlon

[Delia]

Regarding the "critical wounds" percentage on "vitals"...has anyone ever seen more than 1-3%? The only time I've seen higher is when Delia has had to reattach a hand or something, and then the critical wounds jumped to 100%. Also need to add I have absolutely no idea what the "critical wounds" do...can someone enlighten me?

[anglachel]

'cirtical wounds' differ at two points from the normal wounds.
The healing rate of these wounds are slower, and then you get a new hit there is a chance based on the amount of critical wounds to suffer some extra damage, beause a half healed wound starts to bleed again.
These should represent wounds that are deeper and more nasty as normal wounds (slight scratches), but not so worse as broken or lost limbs.
May be we should change gow the 'cirtical wounds' are shown in vitals. At time the realtive amount (percent) is shown. So if your normal wounds are healing the percent are increasing till 100% (= All normal wounds are healed)