How is that they call them in other games? I can't remember...

Criticals
Here's the thing. Nord brutality inspired, in TES:V we could have melee Critical Hits that make combat feel medieval, that cause broken skulls and bones, or simple bleedings over time. As rare as criticals are, they could cause only a little or no more damage but cause instead any of these effects which are in turn the "more damage" they could realistically cause.

And no, the effects are not brutal, they affect you or the enemy only somewhat, so this doesn't necessarily mean EVERY time you receive a critical injury questing is over looking to heal it. You can keep going if you can't heal it yourself, you'll just have it a bit harder.
And you know, you could deal this effects to enemies too so it's not really about making it a harder game: It's about making combat feel more engaging and realistic at the same time.

All of them should have a screen shock effect when they happen and maybe a scream and could all cap your max health a bit. You can't be full health with your skull cracked or a suddenly more flexible extremity Let me explain some more.

Crippling
Now for those crippling effects. Besides Fallout and Beyond Fallout, this is what Skyrim could approach:
A critical to the head causes a broken skulls that leaves you numbed and severely head-ached. This means your intelligence and speechcraft lower a little.
A critical anywhere else causes a broken bone which would affect all your weapon stats if the game features no localized damage, but if the game recognizes between arms vs legs it could affect weapon stats vs speed/stamina/agility.
Torso criticals could cause a whole but slighter combination of all that. That simple.
And of course, these injuries would be signaled in icons in the Stats interface telling what the effects are, no mysteries.

I don't mention strength because that would many times cause an instant overburden and leave you standing still in the middle of a fight, and while kind of logical it's a bummer and there's no chance they would implement that.

Magic
I don't think magic causes criticals. One attack doesn't cause more damage than exactly the same attack again of the same magic (unless it's a fireball to your nuts ) If anything, as a way of criticals they should have a chance to: Burn sticks for a couple secs, Freeze freezes you in place for a couple secs (like Dark Messiah), and Lightning stuns you in shock for a couple secs standing or to the floor.
They could also have a chance to alternatively cause burns (Fire, Freeze and Lightning the three cause burns if you didn't know) that simply cause some more damage and could stop health regeneration.

Healing
This would also require some special medicines or healing mechanisms. There could be healers in towns to treat you for a fee and specific medical resources in like a single "critical medkit" (tourniquets, splints, ointments to heal your burns and bleedings) to carry with you (besides healing potions). Or "Morphological Restoration" healing spells for mages for critical damages too! (wow, i even came up with a fancy name and everything! lol) Or the three separate if you want it hardcoe.
As a lighter alternative which i don't like but some may want, you could use regular healing potions specifically on these injuries.
Alchemy would also allow you to create ointments for burns and bleedings.


And after all, for the player, they could increase into Severe status if they are left unattended for more than 2 in-game days. Of course i hope you love yourselves a little bit more than that! And if some of you would want to die out of them, let it be for broken skulls only or maybe none at all.

How do you find these mechanisms? I think it adds A LOT to combat and makes it feel so much more engaging and deeper almost as a whole new experience, causing all that damage and hopefully receiving much less than that too!
To sum it up: This is just a way to make only Critical Hits better and more exciting, adds some slight effects for you or your enemies and improves on magic criticals, and you can heal them with special medkits, spells, maybe healing potions, heal burns with Alchemy and Healers in towns. Let it fly in the replies and thanks for reading.


Disclaimer: I took the idea of having critical injuries from other D&D based games like Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age and Drakensang so as you see it's nothing too hardcoe, and then fleshed it to my own imagination including the critical effects, magic extra effects and healing options.

Three mages surround you one shoots silence, one shoot ice and one shoots lightning. How will you not get permastunned until death?

All of this would be great to add to the game, just put it in a hardcoe mode or else it will really turn off some people to the game.

In Dragon Age tehy kind of did that. If you were knocked in combat you got a status effect. I believe one was cut juguler. I cant really remember but its the same kind of idea. Sounds cool. Might be a pain though.

Its a critical hit, not on every hit.

besides, potions.

Don't take on 3 mages full-front at once unless you're prepared with shield spells or enchanted armor. Sneak up to them or separate them.

Exactly. 'sam_waz_here', your comment was only flamebait.

No more opinions?

I think your idea is intelligently formulated

It'd be extremely annoying and nauseating if everytime I recieved a critical hit my screen shook, blurred or discolored though. So I'd like to have an ability to turn it off, since I'd like to be able to play Skyrim for an extended amount of time without having to vomit or getting a massive headache and weary eyes.

lmao @ japanese rpg

Long have I wanted a TES game with this kind of stuff. However, it's been widely speculated that we may not have attributes this time, on the basis that skills directly contribute to level in a different way than before now, apparently independent of attributes, thereby possibly rendering attributes redundant. That hasn't been confirmed, but if it turns out to be true, it would make lasting effects that make sense conceptually challenging to implement in a balanced way. For instance, you gave the example of a fractured skull lowering intelligence and speechcraft. If there's no attributes anymore, that would mean it only affected the speechcraft skill, thus sparing characters not specializing in (or using at all) speechcraft.

So I think it would have to be done in such a way that affected all characters equally. Maybe Magicka could be affected for any character with a fractured skull for instance, those with crippled legs would have less stamina or stamina that regens more slowly, etc.



I picked this, but the same issues I mentioned above might apply.



I think this is an awesome idea, too. But again, the same issues might apply.



*Ahhhh...* As do I.



I don't see why that wouldn't work, so I picked it.

Now, the caveat with ALL of this, is that I think it should be optional, by limiting it to a "hardcoe" mode like New Vegas offers. I think this is a great idea if the potential issues outlined above can be addressed, but I do think it should be optional.

Thanks. But about screen effects, criticals happen once in a while and i'm sure you don't complain when playing shooters that for EVERY single bullet shake your screen and add multiple effects. If you don't play those kind of games, i salute you

Would have everyone specialising in restoration unless limping everywhere is your idea of immersive roleplay, and the point of removing classes and adding perks is to make character builds more varied. Crippling was fine in Fallout, until you had 200 weightless stimpaks in inventory, but Fallout didn't have a whole school of magic devoted to healing.

What's the point if you can cure everything with a spell? Great idea for Fallout, not so much for TES. It didn't really add anything to Dragon Age either.

I'd like to see some kind of critical damage system, mostly because it would involve having limb-specific hit zones, which is awesome.

I don't know how it would be implemented, though, cause a critical injury is exactly that: Critical.

I think you'll find that a fractured skull leaves you with a bit more than a 'slight headache'. And a broken arm will do a bit more than lower your weapon proficiency. Criticals need immediate attention, and you should be out of action until healed. A broken limb should remove the use of that limb until healed. A fractured skull is so critical that you shouldn't be able to do anything, hardly even move. If we want to keep it real, that is.

I agree. They should have several types of modes to play.... Like Casual (Like Oblivion), Semi-Realistic (Take some damage into account), and Realistic (All out and everything effects your health and stats)

I think they would have to make an opponent that could actually do hardcoe damage somewhat rare...However, these effects coulld essentially replace diseases. Perhaps there could be some sort of adreniline/beserk battle shout where you could ignore critical damage until your fight was throuigh....then take some kind of poultice and get your butt to the town mage healer. I will miss attributes.

COULD SOMEONE MAKE A MOD OUT OF THIS?

Cause really, i'm getting tired of every good idea out there that may only be fantasizable within a hardcoe mode and aren't even hardcoe, and that we know Bethesda wouldn't even remotely actually consider.

TES may be getting too snip for me. Who would have thought.

Well, they are hardcoe in the sense of appealing to the "hard core" of the game's audience, i.e. the old school roleplaying fans. Not in the sense of extreme challenge necessarily. But in the sense that people who want these kinds of features, compared to the majority that is the mainstream audience that will make up most of this game's sales, are now in a small minority at the "hard core" of the likely customer base. That's where the term "hard core" originated to begin with. It used to mean, "the loyal, old school customers who are not likely to ever stray." Because that, over time, became synonymous with older gamers who had been playing for many years, it gradually came to mean "challenging." That's not what I mean by it when I say "hardcoe," though. I mean the "hard core" of the audience; i.e. people like you and me who would love to have features like these in the game.

Bethesda is one of the few companies still trying to make games on their terms that they are passionate about in an industry that has to increasingly cater to the large majority of gamers, which whether we like it or not, contains more casual gamers than hardcoe gamers. But even they have to refrain from doing anything that would turn off the mainstream so much that their product doesn't sell. Making it part of an optional "hardcoe mode" would allow those gamers to get what they want, while also giving us what we want. Personally I think that's better than not having it at all, and better than forcing it on more casual players who don't want it.

Whether that's a good thing, a bad thing, or just a fact of life that is neither good nor bad, is up to each of us to decide for ourselves. Ultimately though, it's just the way the industry is at the moment.

If they include crippling that will be the first thing I want to mod out of the game.

...I HATED that in Fallout 3.

Hmm, nice read from start to end, and unusually... ...calmed, explanatory, fundamented, understanding, accurate... Left me thinking that attitude. I know the industry and it's comings and goings but... is too much really? Critical hits with actual effects?

So i guess i can consider this "hard (space) core" now hehe...

Lol. It's not too much for you and me. But, alas, for the vast majority of gamers today... yes, probably. Note: I'm not knocking casual gaming or gamers. I think it's great that they grow the industry, and I'm not an elitist who doesn't think there should and can be different kinds of fun out there for everyone. But it would be nice to at least have the option to the play the game in a way that caters to those of us who want something more detail-oriented and granular.

I actually really like all of this. It would add to the game a lot and would make it more interesting than drinking the same purple potion all the time

I meant for example that THIS kind of features should be added instead of some stupid eating and drinking that who cares, what does it add. (i know, many pseudo-deeper gameplay fans want that, instead of focusing in actual gameplay. duh (frustration))

I think it is very likely they will add cripples and injuries, since so far the developers seem to have taken a lot of popular concepts from Fallout and integrated them... Personally I liked the crippling and such. It adds something to the experience on a good day, and is incredibly annoying on a bad day.

Anyway, since "Damage attribute" effects have already been in most TES-games, working crippling in that way at least would make sense.
It would be cool if you could score a critical hit on an opponent with your warhammer and watch him fall to the ground with a broken leg or something like that.
And bleeding-effects for piercing weapons might help un-NERF the marksman-skill, which would be pretty cool.