A character's death should almost always be the choice of the player, because of the vast diversity of personalities on the net. While one player may find the death of their character's fascinating and a promotion to amazing RP (which is often true in the cases I've seen), others like myself are disheartened by even the concept of our characters dying because of both our work into their personalities, backgrounds, and development and an emotional connection to a part of our own persona.

Role-playing is a hobby and as such, should never be disheartening my opinion. As I see it, role-playing is a collaboration of stories that mend and merge to create a unique story and the point of it all isn't to win or lose, but it's to create a story that inspires and answers questions to our own lives or just simply, as a distraction.

On that note, I've had the pleasure of playing with one of the great role-players of our time (in my opinion) by the name of Ben Harrison, creator of A Land of Dark Dreams. His views, even while our own personalities conflict, are amazing on the concepts of role-play and reasoning to reality - to a reasonable degree. I agree with him on this; HP is the combined measurement of constitution (our physical endurance), pain tolerance, luck, skill to avoid otherwise fatal blows, and a certain degree of superhuman endurance. Any of these reasons can play into factor as to why a level 40 fighter can withstand a longer fight than that of a level 10 fighter.

That being said, devastating critical can come in a multitude of forms and how it's performed. A barbarian that has taken the feat is likely to strike with such brute force behind his blow (and remember, he's likely on the same level as demi-gods by now, around level 30+) that even if you manage to dodge it by a hair to avoid that fatal area, the sheer force alone makes it a blow that you cannot recover from (at that moment anyways, as some will wish to play it as being the final blow, but not death).

In the instance of my character, this will not be reflected by pure, unhindered strength, but rather a harnessing of one's own Ki and the combination of a very precise, practiced move - so much that if it connects, it is not a blow you can evade, though if you're immune to critical hits such as undead or golems it doesn't always take you out of the fight... it just takes a huge gash into that area and leaves you with less to work with in terms of endurance.

In either case, that's my two cents. Take or leave it as you wish, but that's how I've come to view things in my seven or so years of role-playing on NwN.

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"How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is." - Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt


(Teriana Alow)

What's weird is that you can go around Badly Wounded and supposedly be "bleeding" from several deep cuts into your face, chest, arms etc. and this continued state doesn't actually weaken you in any way. You still have full mobility, attack bonuses, use of your skills, and you won't bleed to death no matter how many cuts you have.

If you say this is a fantasy game where logic doesn't apply, why then should your logic apply? You can rebutt our view by saying it doesn't have to make sense, but that does nothing to support your suggestion over mine.

Personally, I find the "RP" of death scenarios ridicilous. When you die, you're dead. You don't come back with the flash of a scroll. That destroys immersion and makes for cheesy scenes. Each to their own, of course. I don't see what this has to do with the topic, though, which was whether you can reasonably RP Dev Crit subdual. Which I find to be about the easiest kind of subdual to RP.

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It is not my logic, but the logic imposed by the engine and what it tells me, as flawed as it might be. My point is that players are too attached to their characters and players are too afraid to hurt other player's feelings because of this. This leads to abstruse interpretations of game mechanics in order to apply some logic explanation and avoid situations where you have to deal with the death of a character in game.



I agree that perma death should be the player's choice, but I am talking about regular death and respawn.

Death does not exist on this server**, it has no weight on RP, it does not create suspenion nor fear, it has no meaning. I am not even talking about death penalties, they are completely irrelevant, because most players nullify its existance with alternate IC explanations.

This isn't limited to devcrit, mind you. But this thread shows the lenghts players go in avoiding to deal with death by coming up with explanations for HP and other stuff. I might be totally wrong of course, this is just my viewpoint and it is limited. Perhaps people with more insight and a broader picture of the whole server can weigh in on this and prove me wrong.


** Unless brave souls perma death their character and close a final chapter in their characters story. Kudos to you, of course.

Uh, I don't see what it has to do with being attached to your character. This is actually Ruce's explanation of Hit Points, and I doubt he has any issues with attachment. I've mostly moved on to play a server where permadeath is fair game and everyweek, too. So it's not my motivation either. It's nothing to do with PvP or Subdual, but about how to explain the game engine in the first place, be it PvM or anything. When you fight something that will, no matter how you try to rationalize it, kill you with a single good hit, you must begin to consider HP as something else than pure physical resilience. Anyone will be killed if a dragon bites you in half, even if you supposedly have half your HP left after that.

Your logic is so backwards it makes my head spin. (No offense meant, I just genuinely don't see it.) If death has no meaning or suspension, why do you even care? And if this is a sad state of affairs, as I'm sure you'll agree, why not use death as sparingly as possible and explain it away as KO in all the typical instances? You're supporting something that makes death even less interesting. My PCs extremely rarely die in PvM, because that would be cheesy. Not because I'm hurt by their death, but because I want their actual deaths to be all the more juicy.

Still, I'm not sure I see the connection between Hit Points and PvP death? There's Subdual and full PvP, and they work as the rules dictate whether you interpret HP loss as pure damage taken or as something else. What's your point?

And it is your logic to decide to go by the rule descriptions. It's still your choice and your interpretation that has to be defendable as much as any other stance. You can't really deny responsibility for your opinion because a rule seems to agree, somewhat. (I'm not sure they even state this, explicitly and consistently. Take Coup de Grace, for example: do you think it means your dagger grows to five times its original size and you strike with ten times your usual strength? No, it probably means you're cutting a helpless enemy where you know it could be lethal no matter their HP.)


I might come off as hostile, but that's not my intention. I'm just too tired to review my phrasing.

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Am I wrong in thinking Dev crit is the proverbial "lopping someones head off in one good swing" or "Chopping them down the center"?


And if Dev crit amounts to anything but death, will these characters live in a world where this scenario doesn't exist?

Will it be replaced by something similar? I mean as it stands a high death touch from a PM could amount to the same DC as a Dev Crit.

Will no fighter be able to kill in a single swing? What will the end result of Dev crit be?

I heard that they would have some Blind/deaf/kd affect.

If so this is lame. Getting your head chopped off amounts to you being blind, deaf and knocked down for a few seconds, then you get back up.

It seems like it would make death even less circumstantial than it already is. We already have many ways and reasons to not care about death...taking away another way to kill things quickly seems counter productive IMHO.

Mages can kill in a single spell, and palemasters with a single touch. Why can't fighters kill in a single stroke?

I believe it will just deal a lot of damage, enough to kill anything but a barbarian or high-health fighter etc.

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IT will be what we say it is, and speculation is moot.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham