Wicked Water

[PaladinHeart]

(Insert Evil Smiley here..)

Anyway I am going to have obviously good and clear water in my RPG Campaign that restores hit points. I'll also have unclear water that is questionable.

One type gives you 100 to 250 poison points.

Another heals you 50 to 100 hit points and adds 25 permanently to your maximum hit points!

The problem? They both have the same name, description, and sprite. Isn't that just wrong? LOL!

But of course the easy way is to save before you drink.. maybe I should have delayed bad effects too?.. Or woudl that be TOO evil?

[PaladinHeart]

Actually I guess that might be going a bit too far unless its just a little poison, radiation, or regular damage. I wouldn't want the player to drink some water, think its good, save, and then die due to over radiation 5 hours later.

Maybe I'll put some in towards the end of the game when rad away would probably be an abundant item on the player characters. Just minor bad things though, like high radiation and/or poison. I think the main characters will probably have more than enough hit points to deal with highly toxic drinks by then anyway.

[Forty-six & Two]

One type gives you 100 to 250 poison points.

Another heals you 50 to 100 hit points and adds 25 permanently to your maximum hit points!

Isnt that a little excesive maybe? :- For some completely normal water?

But water canteens sounds like a fun idea. Like in Jagged Alliance =).

[PaladinHeart]

Actually I thought it was a little small. Considering there is only a chance of 1 in 22 that each of these will actually get picked whenever I do put water somewhere. I have 22 different water entities that all do something different. I pick a random number and just count down the list until I reach that number. The other 20 bottles of water won't do much other than heal a little or give you a bit of poison or radiation. There is also one that heals 100 poison and 100 radiation. And one that heals a bit more but doesn't give to max HP. That's about the only extreme ones though.

Basically it adds a bit of randomness to my campaign. Most of the water will probably come from random encounters, making them more interesting as well. I always hated running into a band of super mutants who had all these guns but hardly any ammo.. Definitely nothing like that in my RPG

[Viktor]

Interesting idea... Will players be able to use the Geiger counter to check any water they find in the Wastes?

Calling OTB!!! Is it possible to alter the Geiger counter entity to detect poisonous items and turn it into a "Bio-Scanner" or something similar?

[PaladinHeart]

That's an interesting idea. I don't think it can be done with the FOT engine though. I believe the only thing the geiger counter can do is read the number of rads on the character holding it.

You can use it to tell you how many rads you just got from eating/drinking something though. Somewhat useful but you'll still have to save/restore your game unless you have some radaway handy :)

My first mission is a little unhospitable considering there are multiple ways of gaining a TON of radiation but not one way to cure it on the map. The player will probably have to go and trade in most of their newfound goodies for some radaway as soon as they can leave. I think it makes for some interesting gameplay. Perhaps I should have a rad away seller somewhat difficult to find? Or perhaps even force the player to find some.

I guess it depends on how long the player can survive with 200 to 500 rads on their characters. With some of them possibly even glowing.

[OnTheBounce]

Calling OTB!!! Is it possible to alter the Geiger counter entity to detect poisonous items and turn it into a "Bio-Scanner" or something similar?

Unfortunately not, Viktor, TBC-Ph is almost right on w/his assesment. The Geiger Counter is a pretty limited item, actually. I was going to require a Science skill of 40% in IOOI to be able to use it, however, this rendered it nearly useless since all a character who was able to use it could do was to either detect ambient radiation (by having it "on" and in an Active Item Slot*) or to scan him/herself. Since youre scout isn't likely to be your tech-guru that doesn't leave any way to scan him/her after he/she has been crawling around in some radioactive sludge.

OTB

*If this is done the message "The Geiger Counter is clicking wildly," will display in the text log everytime the holder has absorbed 10 rads.

[PaladinHeart]

Speaking of radiation. What are the long term affects? I did a small test and regardless of how many rads you absorb it doesn't seem to kill the character, just make them totally helpless. But what about the long term effects? Does the character die like in FO1 and 2 over a period of time or did MicroForte determine that a useless character is punishment enough?

[Jimmyjay86]

I don't think you'll kill them but you will make them so sick that won't be able to hold a weapon and all their other stats will be very low for an entire mission at least.