Well Being & Toughness

[Pasquinel]

I've been thinking about the Well Being thing and it makes sense that mental state would play a part. Determination, desperation, etc. Most survivors all always comment on the will to live or winning the battle mentally before the physical.

But what about the physical? After spending days, weeks, months in survival mode, fending off nature and wild beasts, falling down mountains, through ice, spending nights outdoors, eating cattails, physical toughness along with mental toughness has to be developed. It stands to reason that a survivor of several wolf attacks would be tougher, harder to bring down, than a tenderfoot green horn. Or a seasoned survivor could outlast a blizzard, lack of food etc longer than the same tenderfoot.

I don't know if any of this is incorporated in the "Well Being" mechanic but it seems to make sense.

Thoughts?

[Patrick Carlson]

I like how you outline a narrative case for change/improvements to character "resistance," so to speak. Can the character get tougher (seasoned), basically. 

If you were to pick out one or two areas where you could imagine this evolution taking place for the character, where would you situate them? Would it be purely an aspect of physical resistance, or could "cleverness" play a role as well? Could you scavenge more effectively over time, uncover new items after becoming a hardened survivor? 

[hauteecolerider]

I like @Pasquinel's thoughts about the Well Being system being discussed here and on other threads. 

Just as in games like Skyrim, the character gains strength, skill and other traits with continued usage of those traits. Encumbrance increases with carrying armor, weapons, etc and likely reflects the growing physical strength of the character. Spells (not really applicable here, but the idea is the same where @Patrick Carlson is talking about the mental) become easier to cast with growing willpower. In the case of TLD, I would expect our accuracy with bow and arrow to become more accurate the more successful kills we make. 

Definitely the more time we spend outdoors, the more cold-resistant we become. The wolf fights would become shorter, and we may even kill a wolf with our bare hands (?). Crafting would result in more effective bows and arrows, warmer furs, and so forth (up to a limit, that imposed by the materials we use). 

I'm not in favor of blindly mimicking the systems present in games like Skyrim, where the PC gets more and more fancier gear and magic spells and powers until they are so ridiculously overpowered for the game world. I seem to lose interest around Level 20 in these games so much. I am also not in favor of creating player levels where one levels up with increasing skill points. Rather, I would just see incremental improvements (some of which already exist in the crafting menu, I really like how this is implemented). 

Basically survival gets easier with experience. And survival, of course. 

[common]

As far as weapons ( bow. gun ) becoming more accurate with time and usage of the character i believe the player themselves, will get better with using the bow or gun with time and in turn become " tougher " ... I just dont want the bow to auto aim for you because you are now tougher then 100 days ago.   Maybe less sway, or less exhaustion needed before sway of the bow starts to show

[hauteecolerider]

I agree, I don't want the bow to auto-aim either. But sometimes it feels the aiming is a little "mushy" at times, and I have a hard time getting the darn thing pointed right. I don't know if you are already penalized for trying to use either when exhausted or cold, and I think you should be. That said, experience ties all these disparate elements together - as you become more cold-hardy, your aim becomes steadier and more precise, and so on. 

[Pasquinel]

1 hour ago, Patrick Carlson said:

I like how you outline a narrative case for change/improvements to character "resistance," so to speak. Can the character get tougher (seasoned), basically. 

If you were to pick out one or two areas where you could imagine this evolution taking place for the character, where would you situate them? Would it be purely an aspect of physical resistance, or could "cleverness" play a role as well? Could you scavenge more effectively over time, uncover new items after becoming a hardened survivor? 

The first that came to my mind is wolf encounters. It seems to reason that the more survived wolf attacks the tougher a character would become.

How this would be implemented? Possibly a tougher/seasoned character would suffer less damage, fight longer or as hauteecolerider said the combat might become shorter resulting in a quicker or decisive kill for the character. Or perhaps even become tough enough to fend off a bear attack...

Fatigue would be the other. A tougher character would fatigue less quickly. Or perhaps be able to limp back into camp when a less seasoned character would have collapsed already.

As for cleverness or experience I am all for that as well. There are elements of this in the game already for instance fire starting becomes easier the more you do it. A character could become better at tracking game as they become more seasoned. Maybe learn more crafting skills or the ability to craft new items from previously unusable resources. Your average person thrust in this situation probably wouldn't know how to make a snare or some of the other items but over time could develop these skills with experience.

I too would not like to see leveling up of characters. It should be more organic than that, something more subtle but having real impact. I specifically chose the word toughness rather than strength as they are not the same at all.

[cekivi]

I really like this idea. Wish I'd thought of it myself

My addition would be if we're increasing skills as a result of experience than the opposite - skills penalties - should also be true.

For instance if you use the gun a lot than you should get the ability to hold a key for "breath control" in order to tighten up the aiming and reduce sway.

Conversely, if you get hypothermic a lot you should get a "frostbite" detriment which makes you more prone to freezing. Now you have to be at +5C to warm up instead of 0C.

It'd be neat to see how after a full year and four seasons what your character would like like: the scars they'd carry from their failures and the quiet confidence of their successes. I'd really like that

[Pillock]

There are two types of wolf-fight result, as far as I know: the one where you 'win' and the wolf runs off, injured; and the one where you don't win, and you black out for a bit, sustaining more damage to yourself and your equipment, similar to a bear attack. The first of these seems to be much more common (or easier to achieve).

If there is to be a mechanic where our characters gain ability or confidence or toughness at fighting wolves, then perhaps this could be made so that you only gain if you 'win' the encounter; if you lose, then you could start to develop an increasing fear of wolves, reducing your ability against them and causing some further negative effects (according to the general 'wellbeing' system) whenever you some into close contact with them. This could also happen if you are attacked by a bear. To balance it, I think the chances of a wolf-fight failure should be increased from what it currently is (I think it should be anyway, really).