AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

Something that seems to be bothering me a little bit lately is the automatic assumption that anyone who is not "Uninjured" is automatically bleeding. It's not much, but if you intend to roleplay my wounds, it'd be great to ask before assuming.

That is all!

LB

Could you clarify what you mean?

Like, are you objecting just to the assumption that an injured status indicates cuts and lacerations and such, with visible blood? Would you object if the observer had said instead that you were bruised, or limping, or seemed concussed, or some such thing?

I guess what I mean to say is that HP are used to track physical damage, and physical damage tends to leave a visible trace.

Well, it does leave a trace, indeed. What I meant was to not assume the origins of the wounds.

Not all injured folks are running around with blood dripping. It's a minor thing, but it still ticks me. Wether they are bruises, cuts, burns or any of the such should be left to the player behind the character to inform others, if need be.

Trick is, if you're just meandering by , it's hard to get an emote in honestly assessing such a state but I understand where you're coming from.

I guess I can agree with that, Lunar. It does seem sensible to say "hey, you seem injured, are you okay?" rather than to assume the nature of the injury. Typing the word "injured" is even quicker than typing "bleeding," Grymia! It's one fewer letter. :mrgreen:

The hitpoint system is one of those game mechanics we've grown up around and consider normal even when it doesn't bear much resemblance to health and injury in real life. If your character has 500HP, it can run up a mountain; if it gets knocked down to 1HP it can still run up the mountain just as fast, so any wounds would logically be bruises and scrapes, so you could argue that mostly dead is a *lot* different to all dead and it's fine to shrug off any health status text floating above your character's head - they certainly do in terms of movement and STR/DEX scores.

At the same time, you're fifty times closer to the point of death aka -10HP than you were, and here in the real world you can't run up a mountain when you're 49/50th dead, last I looked, so you could also argue you should be RPing as Nearly Dead after all.

That's a non-conclusion to the actual question at hand, but I'm happy enough to blame the mechanic as crazy and suggest no-one worries about it much since we're stuck with it and will always come out with something crazy as a result.

I'll be first to say I'm pretty guilty of doing this. But only because it equally irks me to see people walking around with Injured, Badly Injured, and yes, sometimes even Near Death and they'll be trotting along like all is fine. I see a PC's health status just there in big Orange-Red letters above their head I often assume(rightly or wrongly) that it is in some way visible. If the PC is making no effort to RP their state, then I really have no idea whether you're Injured with a couple of broken ribs wrapped up under your tunic, or if your arm is hanging on by a bloody sliver of flesh.

In truth, the reason why I will as a player call attention to another PC's health status is because more often than not, it feels like people are ignoring it on their own. Visibly bleeding or not, it's always felt strange that ICly a character wouldn't actively seek medical aid at anything less than 50%. You really gonna go grocery shopping beaten half to death?

Edit: Uce is right though, it really is an abstraction that matches up weird to what we would expect. Leads to some interesting situations, though.

On a tangentially related subject, though, a thing that really, *really* does bug me is when another character, seeing that yours is injured while walking down the street or whatever, just strolls up to you and casts a healing without any intervening RP. Or to phrase it another way, a character walks up to yours, and straight out of the blue, starts chanting magic and trying to grab you. In any rational world, that would be grounds for PvP right there.

Even in the non-rational Amia world, it's still super dodgy.

Sam has actually punched people for doing that.

When playing a healer I would first send the player a tell to see if there are any injuries and if they are visible. Secondly she would ask before healing.

Two easy steps to avoid punches to the face.

It's honestly really annoying when people metagame my hp level and cast healing spells and then say something insulting when I'm just trying to play the game.

Try casting on Crow without his permission, and see what happens lol.
Or even casting on someone near him, without their permission, he gets downright belligerent sometimes, because:

Liz wrote:

...a character walks up to yours, and straight out of the blue, starts chanting magic and trying to grab you. In any rational world, that would be grounds for PvP right there.

Much as I said not to worry about it, I am fastidious in restoring my health to Uninjured before I walk into town. I can't think of a point in the game where it's not trivially cheap to do so(and it's usually free by resting anyway) and it's much less egregious to waste that tiny amount of time/money than it is to worry about answering the RP question which to my mind has only two answers, both of which are wrong.

I'm in the don't heal me unless you ask camp.

As for my priest, if you're injured, badly injured or near death he'll ask if you're all right (Cause he's an expert physician, figure he'd notice something was off even if no blood is involved) then if you say your not all right.... he'll send you to the Salandrans. :lol:

If I see barely injured I usually ignore it- especially if a character is fully covered. "'Tis merely a flesh wound." But if you get down to near death and you decide to walk around like you're perfectly healthy and not that your HP is to the point a Ray of Frost could kill you, I'll pull out a rusty spork and finish you off myself. :lol:

All joking aside, I'm of the same mind as Maze. And anyway what if someone LIKES the pain or wants it? Loviatar followers! I imagine they'd be pretty upset if some stranger just came up and man handled them to bandage the wounds they just got finished putting on themselves!

And it does disrupt RP when I'm actually seeking a Cleric in a local Temple, walking by with a couple wounds, that somebody just walks up, "You don't look fine", healkits you and that's it. Indeed, a healkit usage mechanically takes a handful of seconds, but it does imply touching someone else.

Not just touching with that heal kit, Lunar, but who knows the persons capabilities? A heal kit might stop the bleeding but was the individual trained enough to prevent infection? Maybe the wound needs stitches or the internal bleeding starts up.

I like to treat battle field heals as a temporary fixes and the individual needs to be seen by a professional. Especially since the ladies at the Salandran Temple *cof, Jovianne* are hot! Go give them some 'I need to be healed' luv!

Abernathy runs into these problem a lot, she will see someone is badly injured / wounded and will be in the middle of role play with associated rolls used to inform the role play and someone will just come along and bang a healkit in the characters face or a healing spell to the same effect and that is it, RP ruined and the mood ruined.

I really wish people would have the courtesy to respect other's role playing around healing rather than just a casual bit of assault with bandage.

This irks me to my very core. Had someone in the Cordor market ask my PC is she was hurt when she was "injured". I just said "Uh, no." and ignored the comment. They were quite put out about it. Guess they wanted to do a healing or something. Whatever.
Isn't this info just as OOC as the PC's name floating over their head?
I mean, in real life, a person could be "near death" and not show any signs or even know it. It's ridiculous to assume a person is trailing blood or bruised and battered if they're not in perfect health.

Not in D&D, really. Hit points are a measure of physical damage. Wounds taken from swords and claws and fire spells and such. Things like disease or whatever are represented by other mechanics (usually ability damage). No, loss of HP is very much visible IC.

I beg to differ. Even if HP represents physical damage, my PC's don't run around in their underwear. Fully clothed, with a cloak or set of armor, only head (without a helm) and hands (without gloves) would be visible. So 98% of my PC can't even be seen most of the time, and often 100%; could be nearly dead and show no visible signs.

Nobody walks normally with wounds deep or strong enough to bring them near death.

For a player to immediately assume you're fine and healthy despite being Near Death is just as bad as a player who assumes you're near death when you actually are near death.

I say leave it to individual players. None of us are mind readers, so if your Near-Death PC looks perfectly fine, emote it, dont just walk by and leave other players in the dark.

Vortex wrote:

This irks me to my very core. Had someone in the Cordor market ask my PC is she was hurt when she was "injured". I just said "Uh, no." and ignored the comment. They were quite put out about it. Guess they wanted to do a healing or something. Whatever.

To be candid, that seems very petty. Almost like "How dare you not know I was roleplaying as healthy, despite the only in-game indication indicating otherwise!". Rightly or wrongly assuming, at least they asked IC and were trying to engage you in RP. As I said, I'm often guilty of assuming. But granted, the telltale signs of stock +0 armor, non-crafted equipment appearances, and running everywhere at full speed often turns out to be a newer player who ends up like "Oh, I totally didn't realize that my PC might be hurt IC." And they usually say thank you and move on.

HP is an abstraction, is silly in many cases, but there's no need to assume a person engaging you is being a dick. Certainly not as much as a dick as someone refusing to believe their PC is anything but diddly-dandy fine at 25 of their 450 HP.

You totally hit on a fantastic argument there, DI, which should be stated more plainly:

Dark Immolation wrote:

... at least they asked IC and were trying to engage you in RP.

Always, always err on the side of more RP, not less.

I'll agree to disagree. To me. meta-rp is not good rp.

One of the basic thoughts behind good improv/RP is to roll with whatever someone has going. Don't get hung up on something minor, or you get distracted by the medium. It might be annoying to have someone assume something about your character... but if 'injured' means obvious bleeding or a broken arm is a fairly small thing to get hung up on. Just roll with it, and let the scene grow as it will. The other option is to shut down or ignore the other person, which really just means there are two players pulled out of character. Unless its a major thing in the story you're presenting, does it really matter that much? If it is, I'm sure a quick OOC mention of that will bring just about anyone on board. The shared story IS what we're all presumably here for after all.

That said, personally I pretty much ignore anything beyond 'near dead', because the healing and HP systems are well beyond silly in video games. Thinking about it too much is a quick way to break my own disbelief. But I *do* definitely think that if any character is 'near death', it would present itself in some obvious way IC.

I usually ask the person how they are feeling and if they need help

Something nondescript like, *Examines her condition* allows for the mechanically wounded player to clarify what they've got before assuming, and encourages Rp in at least some direction.

I actually find-- somewhat humorously-- that I'm more prone to wordlessly healing someone when they're Barely Injured, rather than near death. When I see something like Badly Wounded or Near Death, I tend to think that there's a reason they didn't heal up and I'm more ready to afford them the benefit of the doubt. But when someone's just barely scratched and it doesn't go away after a while, I get OCD about it and slap them with a small heal sometimes.

Mind, I don't do it to people I'm unfamiliar with. I usually wait for a while until I know for certain that it's not something being Rp'd.

Screw you guys Mathus is so fast he mummifies Barely Injured people at will with his 80 heal skill and fixes all the booboos nursed by epic level wizard barbarian shadowdancers while epic clerics wail in the background so hard you could use their robes for guitar strings

\\m//

How much xp do I get because I KILLED this topic yo!

I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Characters' Health Status

Who is online