Friday 27 August 2010

DnD 4e and Status Conditions

I play a lot of DnD 4.e and I think some of the character statuses (stati? statum? stata?) could work well in Kharne (with some small modification). Others wouldn't work so well.

For example, certain undead could stun you. Stunned creatures can't do anything; the stun has a certain duration, or there is a chance the stun wears off at the end of each turn. In the context of a roguelike with a single character this is a highly lethal attack - it might be worth restricting this property to certain unique monsters.

Immoblisation/Restraining is also easy to implement - you can do everything except move! The closest analogue to dominated in the roguelike milieu would be the classical Confusion, where your movements are randomly swapped (along with further limitations that are generally roguelike-specific). Weakened is also simple to implement, and would also be a good brand.

Dazed however, which in DnD cuts down on the number of actions you can perform in a round to a single (standard) action would be tougher to implement. At its core, dazed is about controlling and limiting the effectiveness of a character, perhaps the closest analogy in a roguelike might be not allowing the character to attack, but allowing the character to do anything else.

And finally another status effect (but this time, not from DnD) - bleeding. Like poisoned, you lose hp each turn (or so) but to cure it you need to raise your hp to minimum as opposed to quaffing a potion.

Any thoughts on any of these? Have I missed any?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I've never played DnD 4e, but Ascii Dreams recently discussed status effects in Unangband. There were quite a few status effects mentioned, along with an idea of their implementation. I hope that's helpful.

Parthon said...

There's also slowed, where actions take twice as long. Dazed or stunned could be similar to this.

Angband uses Stunned to modify your accuracy and spell casting ability while you can't think clearly. Often it's a good time to get the hell out before you suffer more penalties.

Rooting is a common one, where your feet are fixed to the floor but you can still cast and act okay.

There's also silenced where you can run and fight, but you can't cast, and feared where you can run and cast but can't fight.

Dave Barton said...

I play alot of 4e myself, and I think the bigger question you should be posing to yourself is "If I take all these different conditions into account, will I eventually make a completely finished Kharne?"

I'm so glad to have found you're re-starting work on Kharne! I played a past incarnation of it & found it very enjoyable. But I want to see you finish Kharne, and I can't help but be a little concerned that if you set out to make it TOO detailed, it may not get finished.

Respectfully yours,
DaveInOCNJ