Posted February 11, 2019
One mechanic that's common in RPGs is that, when a character dies, all status ailments and temporary effects on the character go away. For example, if a party member is blind, you can cure that blindness by killing the character and then reviving them. Do you think this mechanic makes sense, or should such effects remain on a character even through death?
The example that made me think of this is Final Fantasy 2, which is one example where curing some status ailments (amnesia and toad come to mind) is harder than reviving dead characters. Specifically, Esuna needs to hit multiple times to cure those status ailments, while Life only needs to hit once (and in remakes, not even that's necessary).
(Incidentally, FF2 is interesting in one other respect; in the original version, death does *not* cure status ailments, but in the remakes of said games, it does.)
This sort of rule can also lead to bugs in more complex games. For example, in Baldur's Gate 2, if a polymorphed character gets killed, the polymorph spell effect will end, but the character will retain the abilities the spell grants, allowing the character to polymorph as much as desired permanently. Also, I believe that, at least on some version of the game, a character with a sequencer might no longer have it active, and therefore can't use it, but might not be able to cast another one (I don't remember exactly how this worked, or if the bug went the other way).
So, what do you think of this common mechanic?
The example that made me think of this is Final Fantasy 2, which is one example where curing some status ailments (amnesia and toad come to mind) is harder than reviving dead characters. Specifically, Esuna needs to hit multiple times to cure those status ailments, while Life only needs to hit once (and in remakes, not even that's necessary).
(Incidentally, FF2 is interesting in one other respect; in the original version, death does *not* cure status ailments, but in the remakes of said games, it does.)
This sort of rule can also lead to bugs in more complex games. For example, in Baldur's Gate 2, if a polymorphed character gets killed, the polymorph spell effect will end, but the character will retain the abilities the spell grants, allowing the character to polymorph as much as desired permanently. Also, I believe that, at least on some version of the game, a character with a sequencer might no longer have it active, and therefore can't use it, but might not be able to cast another one (I don't remember exactly how this worked, or if the bug went the other way).
So, what do you think of this common mechanic?