Priest Spell - Raise Dead

[fritz]

Perhaps this might not belong in the spell ideas as it is a lot more complicated than a single spell.? A recreation of what happens when you die to be exact.

General idea is this:

A character fights a mob, and eventually dies.? When that person dies they are teleported elsewhere.? What is left is a stone or tomb which marks their death(This stone cannot be picked up).? A priest could cast a raise dead spell and bring that person back to life.?

More specific:

When a character dies, they are teleported to a room that only allows telepaths.? Room with no exits, cannot speak, any variable commands except communication via telepaths are null.? At this point they have two options, either wait for the raise dead or suicide thus putting them back in halls of the dead.?

Some issues i've found with this however...

PvP - How easy would it be for an evil priest to come in, raise a character, and have one of their friends backstab the recently living.? Or same scenario without the PvP ie: a monster walks into the room and chews up the recently raised character.

Value - What is the value of raising someone.? Immediate return is understandable in an area that takes a long while to walk too.? That could be the only reason, as there is nothing lost when you die except a life which you have 9 of.

The choice to live or die - It should be made a choice whether or not to be raised from the dead.? This would require an interactive option for the user being raised.? When a priest cast raise dead, an option comes on the screen saying Would you like to be raised?? (y)es or (n)o?? Sounds great, but now difficult if even possible is this to code?? Can you take the screen scroll, (C)ontinue, (N)onstop, (Q)uit and reform this to be used as a responce to being raised from the dead.

Value Pt. 2 - Should there be a experience penalty for dying?? Most every online game, MMORPG, has the character lose experience when they die.? If they are resurrected they of course save some if not all of that experience.? So that would purpose the question, how could you create experience loss upon dying/suiciding?

Fritz?

[Edit]? Some of these ideas obviously don't belong in spells, however they were ideas spawned from the raise dead spell.? Move them as you see fit.

[The Crazy Animal]

Reminds me of locke's idea on the wiki:
http://www.greatermud.com/wiki/index.php/Idea:Death

Personally I don't really dig the consept very much because as I look at it all it basiclly does is give a fancy title to the time a character spends limp on the groung at -hp before they are respawned.

If that is what we are going for then we might as well just set the death rate to -(x)HP% any player going beyond that well we can just say there isn't a body left and respawn them. We could then also state that a character is beyond heal after say -(x)hp% and beyond aid after say -(x)HP%. When a character is beyond aid and heal then you would need to use a resurection spell before they hit the respawn point. We could even put a hang up penalty stating if your below -(x)hp% and you hang that you automaticly are respawned. Lastly you have the option to accept death and just be respawned.

The only PVP issue that happens with death ideas is if we have people respawn in a non-protected rooms naked. If I want to beable to repeatedly kill someone by not letting them die I should be able to.

I don't agree that the character should appear to be buried in this situation either since a something like a dragon or a hellhound would probably just rather eat you unless they figured out some way to refrigerate your body for a snack later. Even in the case of PVP death you wouldn't catch me buring my target. I'd rather be able to drag their dead lifeless corpse around with me till they are forced to respawn or choose to out of fear of loosing their gear in a unfamilar area. I think I'd also like to see parties returning to town dragging the lifeless bodies of their friends after a boss hunt just so they can get to the temple to have them resurrected before they die.

[fritz]

"We could then also state that a character is beyond heal after say -(x)hp% and beyond aid after say -(x)HP%."

The person could die after say -5% life, but aiding and healing should be the same.  The only difference between aiding and healing would be that aiding is gradual and healing(spell) an instant pretty much like it is now. If that person is beyond -5% they would then die.

I like your hang penalty idea.  I know this is a feature already initiated in the game, or at least in PvP.

As far as respawn killing I agree.  If the person is raised from the dead, they didn't lose the life, and so you couldn't eventually reroll that person by raising them, and of course their gear wouldn't drop untill they actually died.

The issue I saw with dragging a dead body is this; a person could die, turn into a corpse, then someone could take their body and drag it into a restricted area they normally could not get into.  For example the old bug which allowed people to drag Level 11+ characters into the crypt if they were mortally wounded.  Perhaps this isn't as much of a bad idea as it is a good idea. 

Only a priest could raise someone from the dead.  I don't know of any areas in the current mud database that are priest only.  I was hungup on the idea that for example a druid could drag a high level character into their staff quests(copperwood, ice crystal etc.)  However only a priest could raise dead, so that wouldn't be an issue.

I agree with you that this is more of a glam idea.  I don't know all the changes, so don't take this the wrong way.  Greatermud shouldn't be the same as Major Mud, and if you make a veteran mud player go "whoa", I think you'll have new players saying the same.  I don't know if you want to evolve Major Mud or "Lewis and Clark" it, but I support ya guys 100%.

Fritz

[The Crazy Animal]

The issue I saw with dragging a dead body is this; a person could die, turn into a corpse, then someone could take their body and drag it into a restricted area they normally could not get into.  For example the old bug which allowed people to drag Level 11+ characters into the crypt if they were mortally wounded.  Perhaps this isn't as much of a bad idea as it is a good idea.

This doesn't really bother me and could be easily fixed if needed by adding a check level if there is a player being dragged. I never saw it as a problem simply because the PVP limit kept most of the abuses to a min except where it might come to item gathering. Which to me is no biggy.

The only difference between aiding and healing would be that aiding is gradual and healing(spell) an instant pretty much like it is now.

The idea of cutting off heals and aids at certain points is to emphisize the sevarity of wounds and how close to death a player is. You start by removing the basic aid skill that everyone has and then move on to cut off the heal spells. The gap between the two would mean that there is a period of time where you would need to heal a player prior to being able to aid them and allow their wounds to heal by regen. Since that is the primary function of aid. To offset a change like this one could maybe pick up the ability to heal by using potions or other similar self use items on a player which in mud could not previously have been done.

We've got lots of ideas cooking right now to change up some of the screwier aspects of the game.

For semi related ideas check out:
http://greatermud.com/forums/index.php?topic=865.0
http://greatermud.com/forums/index.php?topic=860.0

[Colt]

The idea of cutting off heals and aids at certain points is to emphisize the sevarity of wounds and how close to death a player is. You start by removing the basic aid skill that everyone has and then move on to cut off the heal spells. The gap between the two would mean that there is a period of time where you would need to heal a player prior to being able to aid them and allow their wounds to heal by regen.

That sounds great

[fritz]

You start by removing the basic aid skill that everyone has and then move on to cut off the heal spells.

When you reach the point to where you cut off healing spells(after dropping to the ground, after aiding), does this mean the person has died or is there a period after this in which something can be done?  I could forsee using the time allowed for aiding to be either aided by someone else or restricted healing spells.  Then, during the transitition and the duration after which aiding will no longer help, only a priest with a specific spell could return that person to "aiding" status or below 0 hitpoints.  This I would consider a short form of raising someone from dying, and it's class orientated which I think the original Major Mud lacked in.

Fritz

[The Crazy Animal]

When you reach the point to where you cut off healing spells(after dropping to the ground, after aiding), does this mean the person has died or is there a period after this in which something can be done?? I could forsee using the time allowed for aiding to be either aided by someone else or restricted healing spells.? Then, during the transitition and the duration after which aiding will no longer help, only a priest with a specific spell could return that person to "aiding" status or below 0 hitpoints.? This I would consider a short form of raising someone from dying, and it's class orientated which I think the original Major Mud lacked in.

Fritz

This is the time-line I was picturing:
Drops to the ground = unconscious "can be aided"
Basic aid stops working = going into shock type of thing, "can be healed by normal heal spells"
Heals stop working = Your just hanging on to life/near death, "At the point where heals would be negated. This would be the point when special spells are needed. These spells would be to coin a term "resurrect class heals" where normal heals would be "wound class heals"."
Dead = you get re-spawned.

Using -HP% makes it a little more dynamic and makes it so a player actually gets something for their HPs cost on their exp table per level. Time would also work but I think %s gives us a little more room to play when properly balanced against DMG gains that come with leveling and allows a party to try to fight death away while getting to safety. Which would make the potential death penalties that we were talking about more fun and exciting to play with in the long run.

As for AIDing this also allows us the possibility to turn it into a skill so AID 1 might stop at one spot AID 2 a little later and so on to the skill cap. We could actually do the same type of thing with heal spells making some more valuable even if they don't heal as much damage.

[fritz]

This is the time-line I was picturing:
Drops to the ground = unconscious "can be aided"
Basic aid stops working = going into shock type of thing, "can be healed by normal heal spells"
Heals stop working = Your just hanging on to life/near death, "At the point where heals would be negated. This would be the point when special spells are needed. These spells would be to coin a term "resurrect class heals" where normal heals would be "wound class heals"."
Dead = you get re-spawned.

This is a very good idea, as it encapsulates the idea of class importance.  (Granted only one class has a resurrect type heal).  Yes indeed.

Fritz