Game:

Pillars of Eternity (2015)

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Discussion

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Pillars Of Eternity Health System and Resting - Bit Ideas

In this Bit Ideas, I talk about Pillars of Eternity and a few RPGs similar to Pillars Of Eternity, and how they handled resting or otherwise recuperating characters. Particular games looked at are, in order: Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age: Origins, Planescape: Torment, and Pillars of Eternity.

I discuss why it may be a good idea to limit how often the player can recover their characters' health, and how to implement this in a way that is not frustrating, but rather fun. Using other party-based cRPGs as examples, I point out some of the faults present in them. Finally, I talk about how Pillars of Eternity addresses those problems.

Full Transcript:

So I've been playing a lot of Pillars of Eternity lately, and one of the features it has in common with the Infinity Engine games is the ability to rejuvenate your characters by resting. The way Baldurs Gate handled it was by allowing you to rest at any time. This meant it was possible to rest after each combat encounter, effectively making it a full restoration at the end of the battle, as long at the player bothered to make use of it. In that case, it could just be easier to make that effect automatic, instead of giving players the option to do something mildly annoying for a massive benefit. The anti-abuse mechanics of a chance of enemy ambush upon rest didn't help either. In fact, it kind of makes it worse, since these ambushes are only dangerous if you're really low on health and running out of spell charges. Of course, the only time that would happen is if you held out and avoided resting until the very last moment. In other word, only those players who didn't abuse resting would be in danger, which meant players were incentivized to rest often by the very mechanic that was intended to stop them from doing so.

Dragon Age Origins did away with the resting entirely. Instead, the game fully restored the party after each encounter, taking the system in Baldur's Gate to the extreme. This seems fine when we look at individual encounters, but it's not as great when we consider the overall adventure, since it reduces the lasting effect that encounter performance has on the game. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and too much of a lasting impact can actually be problematic. For example, removing resting entirely would maximize the lasting effects of battle performance, but would make the game very unforgiving of any mistake. However, an appreciable level of integration is nice as it can add another layer of analysis to the players decision-making. It's also a good way to show players that their actions, and their performance in battle actually matters in the context of the game.

Planescape: Torment included resting to restore characters but limited it to certain areas, like inns. The idea, maybe, was that this would prevent players from resting too frequently by restricting their ability to do so. It works to reduce the amount of resting in a similar way to Baldur's Gate: by making it more annoying to do. Players are less likely to backtrack through multiple loading screens just to rest at an inn unless it's necessary. But when it is necessary, the backtracking feels kind of tedious.

Pillars of Eternity has a unique solution that integrates the dual aspect health system and the limited nature of camping supplies used in resting. I'll start by going over the health system for those of you who aren't familiar with it. Characters get two attributes: Endurance and Health. Both go down when damaged, but characters have much more health than they do Endurance. If Endurance goes down to 0, the character is knocked out. If Health becomes zero, they die. Endurance recovers after the end of each battle, but Health requires rest to restore. This alone reduces rest frequency because it takes a little while for health to get down to the point when resting becomes highly beneficial. After all, a character at full health is as likely to be knocked out as a character at a quarter health, as long as endurance is the same. The endurance limit means that there's still a danger of characters falling in battle even when fully rested, which adds a little more tension and tactical choice to the combat. Moving on, camping supplies are used to limit how often characters can rest when away from an inn. This doesn't prevent people from backtracking if they really need to, but it gives them another, less annoying way out.

Ultimately, Pillars of Eternity doesn't make resting a truly limited resource, which would totally stop incentivizing backtracking, because this would also make the game very unforgiving of mistakes. However, it does impose restrictions on resting in a way that it allows players to play without having to resort to that kind of tedious behavior, without disallowing it if they want to. And that's something that I can appreciate.

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