Should RPGs let you blow up locked doors with fireballs? DISCUSS

[damager]

It is pretty easy to implant destroyable doors and chests, without rendering lock picking useless:

- noise aggros mobs
- it takes longer to blast or axe open doors
- it takes per day spells or stamina (don't allow resting in mob infested dungeons / make resting in towns expensive)
- implant steel doors that are non blast or axable
- fireballs have a chance to destroy items in chests and will destroy some items by default (would you really fireball a potion or cloth armor?)
- forceful attempts to open locked doors and chests can not be performed in stealth and will aggro townsfolk

Seems to be pretty easy to come up with good ideas. I should become a game designer.

 

[Roguey]

D:OS is not an RPG.

It's a great combat crawl.

Play some Arcanum once in a while

I have. I didn't see the value in investing in lockpicks since I don't see the value in stealing from people.

 

[Maggot]

And why does he think this is a problem?

Then you have a skill that absolutely no one takes except Role Players who don't care about making a less-than-optimal character.

I didn't bother with lockpicking at all in D:OS, I fireballed everything locked. Worked out fine.

There are chests that can't be fireballed in D:OS with around 99999HP

 

[laclongquan]

Specific example eh?

Fallout2, Metzger's fight. You can lock the doors of his house to separate the gangs into manageable number. That's the only way an early character has a chance to fight his band of slaver pre-metal armor and pre-combatshotgun.

 

[Roguey]

There are chests that can't be fireballed in D:OS with around 99999HP

I think there were keys for those?

Another thing that contributes to D:OS's lockpick skill being useless is the fact that its loot was for the most part randomized level-scaled junk.

Fallout2, Metzger's fight. You can lock the doors of his house to separate the gangs into manageable number. That's the only way an early character has a chance to fight his band of slaver pre-metal armor and pre-combatshotgun.

While that's pretty keen I think I beat that one by taking advantage of chokepoints, corners, and such. ^_^

 

[deuxhero]

The obvious solution to balance knocking down doors is to alert everyone. The counter solution is that you are killing everyone anyways

But that you would even need to break the lock after killing everyone? That's not a problem with breaking down doors, it's the problem! Why did nobody have a key? How did the prior owner open it?

It makes sense in a dungeon that hasn't seen any intelligent inhabitants in a long time (either fantasy's ancient tombs or post apoc's abandoned facilities), and maybe futuristic/high-end real life settings with non-physical keys (combination locks, passwords, biometric) you couldn't logically pick up off a dead guy, but falls apart everywhere else.

In the real world it's assumed that any motivated criminal will eventually bypass inanimate security (with the only possible exception being security that destroys their target, which is only done with copies of information) and the real deterrents are getting animate security (police, guards) before they do it. They'll eventually break into your safe if they have the time, but making it take so long they are discovered is your goal.

Given that, I think the best solution is to make time matter: Yes, you can break down the door but the bad guy gets away/the poisoned dude dies/someone else claims the bounty while you were doing that. Plenty of games have timed quests (The first parts of Fallout and Daggerfall being the only main quest examples I can think of though), but rarely does anything stop you from going back to the dungeon linked to the time quest after completion of the quest and the time limit going away.

 

[Lhynn]

Fallout2, Metzger's fight. You can lock the doors of his house to separate the gangs into manageable number. That's the only way an early character has a chance to fight his band of slaver pre-metal armor and pre-combatshotgun.

While that's pretty keen I think I beat that one by taking advantage of chokepoints, corners, and such. ^_^

How does this matter in any way? also i beat them using chokepoints and explosives.

 

[Maggot]

There are chests that can't be fireballed in D:OS with around 99999HP

I think there were keys for those?

Another thing that contributes to D:OS's lockpick skill being useless is the fact that its loot was for the most part randomized level-scaled junk.

Fallout2, Metzger's fight. You can lock the doors of his house to separate the gangs into manageable number. That's the only way an early character has a chance to fight his band of slaver pre-metal armor and pre-combatshotgun.

While that's pretty keen I think I beat that one by taking advantage of chokepoints, corners, and such. ^_^

I agree the crafting system and shitty Diablo style randomized loot made picking chests worthless for the most part. Also you can pretty easily grab a CAWS from the vault city patrols encounters and spam burst fire if you skip fighting Metzger for a bit and come back. That requires prior knowledge of vault city though.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Should RPGs let you set off traps with fireballs? DISCUSS

 

[Shadowfang]

I liked morrowind approach, you could open a locked door by:
Casting the detect key spell to find the door's respective key;
Casting the open lock spell to open the door;
Unlocking the door through the security skill;

Why would you pick pick-locking instead of the obvious superior school of alteration?
The only advantages i can think of is being mana free and being governed by the intelligence attribute. Which means nothing in morrowind.
Still the skeleton key is the way to go.


I did something similar to laclongquan in underrail by locking myself in a surveillance room, hearing the screams of my enemies while they were mowed down by a not so friendly turret.
But to do this you need to own the key, so the lockpick skill doesn't really come into use.
I also liked how in fallout you could jam the lock by critically failing to picklock a door, and then you could either try to punch it open or blow it up with dynamite.

Unfortunately i can't remember a IG scenario where blowing up a door wasn't as convenient as pick-locking it.*
I think this issue is part of a bigger problem and it has to do how many games treat the stealth path.
Why would you sneak past this group when you can just as easily slaughter them all? Or even worse, when you get no XP from it.

I would like a rpg with less skills but allowing each to have multiple uses. It's not something very complex to achieve but it does sound very time consuming.

* I remember in nwn that you would lose some items if you attempted to bash open a chest, and if i recall correctly, unlike bashing a door, pick-locking it wouldn't take you out of stealth.

 

[Average Manatee]

Let me see if I can cause a Roguey/Sawyer self combustion event.

Josh Sawyer says: If you want to open a locked door, invest in lockpicking.

Hard counters in a single-player RPG are obnoxious

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

I would like a rpg with less skills but allowing each to have multiple uses. It's not something very complex to achieve but it does sound very time consuming.

Same here - less complexity, more depth.

 

[sser]

First we must ask: what is a door?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

When is a door not a door?

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Reapa]

When is a door not a door?

when it is a jar

 

[burn_classic_rpgs_in_hell]

Let's say we have an RPG where:
1. The combat is hard and you can't fight more than one or two enemies together.
2. Loudy actions (like smashing doors) alert enemies.

Problem solved, Lockpicking is now useful, but not in a stupid way (unbreakable chests).

You might say, "this sounds like a very stealth-focused game" and that's true.
But, in a game where your aim is to ambush and kill people/monsters the lockpicking skill feels out of place anyway.

 

[ArchAngel]

One of my most rage moments when playing MotB was when my epic level party was kicked out of an only Inn and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried casting Meteor Storm on the Inn but it didn't help :D

 

[Roguey]

Let me see if I can cause a Roguey/Sawyer self combustion event.

Josh Sawyer says: If you want to open a locked door, invest in lockpicking.

Hard counters in a single-player RPG are obnoxious

With this reasoning, attribute checks would also be hard counters. One does not ever need to put points into lockpicking to complete a RPG, so Josh is fine with this method.

 

[Average Manatee]

Let me see if I can cause a Roguey/Sawyer self combustion event.

Josh Sawyer says: If you want to open a locked door, invest in lockpicking.

Hard counters in a single-player RPG are obnoxious

With this reasoning, attribute checks would also be hard counters. One does not ever need to put points into lockpicking to complete a RPG, so Josh is fine with this method.

Most RPGs also let you escape or avoid many combat areas, so I guess hard counters don't exist anywhere but the critical path?

Baldur's Gate is remarkably hard counter-free if you simply run away from any fight that incentivizes hard counters.

 

[made]

In Ultima, as far back as 6, you could blow up doors with fireballs - and powder kegs, and cannons.

Yep. *nods and puffs pipe*

 

[vivec]

How can this be an argument? A game that is nuanced enough to distinguish between the guns blazing and stealth approach can only be a good thing, right?

I mean come on!!

Think of Shadowrun HK or Vampires: Bloodlines, Deus ex. Without all the choices to do the missions differently would these games even make it to your playlist? Debates like these refresh my cynicism that a majority of gamers are idiots easily satisfied with any crap with a brand thrown at them *cough* BioWare *cough* coupled with a half-assed storyline.

 

[Shin]

As anyone who is into real hardcore LARPing can tell you; burning down doors indoors with pyromancy/gasoline is a bad idea because half of your LARPing partners will succumb due to a lack of oxygen. Doing it outdoors helps with the smoke but there's a big chance the city guards will notice and bring you into the station for questioning. In the US it's probable you won't even get to surrender to the guards and they'll start hitting you with ranged weapons.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Should fireballs let you blow open stuff?
Not if the designer doesn't want them to, no.

For example it would often not really be worth it in many party-based games where you are supposed to take at least one thief with you anyway. There it would either screw up balance because it would rob thieves (or the respective thief-equivalent) of one of their main purposes (besides detecting traps or stealth-ambushing enemies) or the designers would have to focus too much on handcrafting specific situations (a mixed party will alarm all the enemies anyway) to make up for it so the combat encounter or dungeon design suffers severely. Designers have to concentrate on something, no game is great in every aspect and that will stay that way in the future too.

And the negative consequences of blowing shit up in civilized areas would have to be too serious (if they are supposed to make any sense) to let that feature be more than a gimmick there so I don't care for it anyway.

In single char games or games with just 1 or 2 companions? Why not, but if they decide to be that autistic they can as well go the whole nine yards and do what Kem0sabe suggested and make a physics based RPG where magic leads from a magic-created impulse/force to a chain of deterministic consequences. Leveling up could increase the force available to the mage.

Spoiler

Or he could magically change some other variable, like heating up whatever he wants etc. But the fewer different spells the better, make environmental puzzles instead where friction leads to heat or something along these lines.

I'd love to play such a game.

 

[Llama-Yak Hybrid]

If you're summoning meteorites from the outer space things like doors and shit don't concern you. So either make more low-goal RPG where your powers are relatively limited and hacking through doors is not practical because it wears down weapons too much or give me a proper way to lockpick walls with fireballs if the game scales into I AM AWESOME BRINGER OF DEATH.

Thief's point is that he can remain unnoticed. If you want to make use of him as a class make it so he'll allow you to deal with problems you can't go by going in and whipping everybody's ass with your magic staff firing rotating machineguns firing full auto. As in - a tool for speedrunners and people who want to game the systems.

If you have "fuck balance - the game" then make it so.