next »

[everlive]

Just an idea I have been wondering if it would be a good idea to allow a player who is frantically trying to heal their teammate by trading health with them.  So much so, that they are not paying attention, deplete their own health and perish.

Self-destruct. (not the explosive kind)

Thoughts?

[7Soul]

In League of Legends, the champion Soraka does exactly that. She can heal allies really fast but it takes a decent chunk of her hp. She then has an ability that heals herself if she hits enemies with it, so there's this gameplay mechanic of having to hit enemies in order to heal allies and survive

[everlive]

In that case, Soraka has a failsafe programmed into that so she does not kill herself.  What I am referring to has no failsafe and relies solely on the player's control from being spam happy...or self-sacrificing.

[7Soul]

In a way you can if you have a damage over time on you (I know I have killed myself like that before u.u) but that's not the point.

Hm I don't see the point of sacrificing a character for another (at least in an RPG scenario) unless the power difference between them would justify keeping an extremely powerful character alive over a weaker one. But I can't imagine designing characters to have that much of a power gap

[0xDEADBAAD]

I find the idea itself interesting, but it will mostly depend on the context and how it interacts with it.

I mean: if you're in a classical JRPG and it's basically a Final Fantasy but with the addition of the healer (which is typically a weak character) losing HP when healing, it might not be the best design choice.

Now, if you're in some kind of coop bullet hell where you have to not just do the typical dodging and shooting but also you have to be administrating health points with your partner, that's an entirely different thing.

Then, if in that coop bullet hell both players have a special canon shot that makes you lose health points when used, it adds an even deeper strategy level.

If you add also enemy types that are weaker to the special shots of one of the two players, you have even more strategic choice built around the self-destructive healing mechanic.

As I said, it opens a lot of possibilities to build a strategically interesting rule/mechacnics set, but without the context where that mechanic is gonna be applied it's hard to give a precise answer

[Shipright]

In a way you can if you have a damage over time on you (I know I have killed myself like that before u.u) but that's not the point.

Hm I don't see the point of sacrificing a character for another (at least in an RPG scenario) unless the power difference between them would justify keeping an extremely powerful character alive over a weaker one. But I can't imagine designing characters to have that much of a power gap

It doesn't have to be a power disparity but a utility disparity instead. If you are in a dude on and the boss requires a strong magic character instead of a tank you could sacrifice the tank.

[moomat]

Like stinkfist said, I agree it would be most useful in an action, rather than a turn-based situation.

With something like that, I'd just make sure that the player doesn't die from the depleting health; rather, that they would only be able to go down to like "1 unit" or something, at which point the healing skill would be inaccessible (otherwise that would just be annoying in the case of accidental "overclicks" or whatever.)

[Sushin00]

I have made a board game based on this idea. One character, the blood witch, can manipulate physical blood, and has a number of minions at their command. The only way the witch can control the minions is by trading 1 blood to them that turn. It's possible she can run out of blood if she doesn't redistribute it back to herself, however, and since blood spilled on the ground from attacks cannot be redistributed the player has to be smart with how they use it.

This came with some other interesting mechanics, such as "blood bathe" where the player can redistribute the blood between their-self and all their minions as they please (taking up the entire action that turn), or they can do something like "blood boil" which would destroy a minion and deal area damage around it based on how much blood it had.

Probably not quite what you're looking for but I think making a game with mechanics like that, where you can leech blood from enemies and even allies to redistribute it more efficiently is a very interesting way to make a whole other playstyle within a game. Getting it to work in real time, however, seems a lot more difficult.

[mleta20]

The first thing I thought of when reading your post was of the champion, Soraka from League of Legends. I'm glad somebody brought it up. Continuing on the League of Legends train, another character, Dr. Mundo also uses his own health to use his damaging abilities. It's cool to see Soraka do it help others, while Mundo does it to harm others.

I have always liked that idea of spending health to do things. To go a step further and allow the user to perish if they spend too much health I think is a great idea. Personally, I would love the challenge of being in a fast paced battle while trying to aid and/or harm others while dodging enemy abilities AND trying to not harm myself in the process. Sounds like it would create a high skill cap. I dig it!

[Zaeche]

There's a board game/digital game hybrid being developed by the folk over at Hanakai Studios. Prodigy, I believe it's called. There's a post on their devlog; aside from being a very interesting post on design by itself, it also offers some interesting ways they've handled this mechanic (or a remarkably similar variant).

An excerpt from the blog:

I looked into old design documents to retrieve what I came up with for the Company of Thorns, using the method detailed above. You could say these are our general gameplay intentions for the Company:

    Exclusive capacity:
        Ability to use special skills without standing on Mana Squares but using Life Points
    Favored capacities :
        Using Life Points as a fluctuating resource
        Launching Curses
        Placing debuff squares on the enemy board
        Quite high damages
    Capacities seldom used
        Fewer Arcana affinities
        Few heals. If possible, link heals to fluctuating Life Points.
        Tanking damage is not their thing
    Capacities that are never used
        Characters do not help each other: no buffs, whether on squares or on other team members.

At that point, the Thorns formed a team with ample strategic flexibility. Sturdy at the beginning of the fight, they’d need to win quickly or they would succumb after a while, having no tank, no heal and no support. It made for quite thrilling dynamic. But as you can already guess if you’ve seen the Thorns play, lots of things evolved along the way.

Have a looksee here for the rest.

((A moment to froth: I just love their art style, it's gorgeous))