Automatic healing before death

[ichi]

I suggest that characters who receive 100% damage from an attack while they are asleep should not die if they are carrying sufficient healing food to heal their wounds. Before a character dies, the death subroutine should automatically process any healing food in the character's inventory and abort the death if the character's damage falls below 100%.

Death is a tragic event for mature characters who have developed over many years. This is particularly true when death occurs from a sneak attack while the character is sleeping. There are three ways that characters can protect themselves from attack: carry a strong shield, have plenty of healing food, hide in a locked building. Unfortunately shields fail 30% of the time no matter how skillful the character is, and you can't spend all your time hiding in buildings if you want to have a productive life. So healing food is very important for coping with an attack, and most mature characters carry healing food. Unfortunately healing food can only be of assistance if the character is awake. A shield protects a character even when he is asleep. A locked room protects a character even when he is asleep. But, you can only use healing food to neutralize an attack when the character is awake.

My suggestion would give mature characters a last line of defense. If their shield fails from bad luck and they get 100% damage before they know it, the healing food in their inventory will give them one last chance to survive.

I am prompted to make this suggestion because of the recent death of a very old character who was skilled at fighting. He was killed in a instant by two newbies who arrived unexpectedly and attacked immediately. The first newbie attacked with a crossbow... my shield failed to block it... 50 hits. The second newbie immediately attacked with a battleaxe... my shield failed to block it... DEAD.

I was away from the keyboard for just two hours. When I left the keyboard, my character was alone with no sign of danger. When I returned, he was dead. He had no chance to eat the boiled eggs he was carrying -- enough eggs to heal all his wounds.

[SekoETC]

Then it would get even more impossible to kill established characters... Not that the combat system was fair overall.

[ichi]

It was not difficult to kill my established character. It was done in a instant by two newbies.

[SekoETC]

But what's the chance of that succeeding? 9%? That means 9 out of 10 of similar attacks are doomed to fail.

[ichi]

But what's the chance of that succeeding? 9%?

It is actually .8 x .3 x .8 x .3 = 5.8%

That assumes a truly random value for each attack; however, on several occasions I've observed decidely non-random outcomes. Like several lock-breaking projects in different parts of the world all succeeding on the same tick. It's almost as if the random number generator gets stuck on a particular value. Or perhaps a single random value is used for a cluster of different events?

So, yes, it was very unexpected that my old character should be instantly killed by two newbies. It was particularly unexpected because during his very long life, my character had never been attacked by anybody. Fancy that. His first attack (by newbies no less) and he's instantly dead. Iron shield, boiled eggs, no matter. Instantly dead.

[Doug R.]

This has been suggested many times in the past. In every case, the argument against automation has won out. The combat system needs to be changed instead of piling fudges on top of fudges.