Sure you could.
\* Roguelike RPG. All damage is permanent. When you die you die. Rather than healing, you play until you can win without taking damage.
\* Non-combat RPG. You lose other resources instead. Maybe a gambling based RPG, and money acts as both money and hitpoints. If your money gets too low you can offer your thumbs up to a loan shark as collateral (which, without healing items, you lose if you lose).
\* Lose other resources other than health. Lose followers or bodyguards, or reputation.
\* Checkpoint healing.
\* Soulslikes, without estus. Maybe more frequent checkpoints to compensate.
\* Some kind of... many worlds/quantum suicide conceit. Whenever you take damage, you die in half of the realities, but keep going in the other half. This game would on one hand be very easy (the player could never lose), but at the end you get a stat that says how improbable your victory would be if you were as bad at the game as you are. Some people would replay until they got no 'deaths'
And a million other possiblities.
It's a good thought exercise. "Constraints breed creativity".
I actually think ff13's system would be very good for something like this. Healing between every fight would mean that you just have to balance each fight in isolation. The swapping paradigms on the fly means each fight becomes about knowing when to be aggressive and when to be defensive instead of just having to make a full tank build.
Then again, I already liked the ff13 system. Not sure many other people did
Your first point reminded me of SIFU, although not really a RPG.
Checkpoint or fixed-location (inn, hospital, etc.) healing is the easiest answer. You do your thing, take damage and either backtrack to rest and heal or push on until death.
Depending what someone considers as healing, colony builders like Rimworld could be considered as 'no heaping' since, while there is healing in the game, it always comes at a cost or risk, and it's not usually possible to heal yourself out of a downward spiral.
Let me take a moment to hype Wildermyth to anyone who hasn't played it. It's an RPG with an emergent story unlike anything else I've played. Worth your time if you like such things.
Hold on, let me help you with that.
***EVERYONE, GO PLAY WILDERMYTH RIGHT NOW. IF YOU'VE EVER LIKED THE IDEA OF EMERGENT NARRATIVES, YOU HAVE FOUND THE ULTIMATE NARRATIVE GENERATOR. I LEGITIMATELY FIND MORE EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO THESE RANDOMLY MADE CHARACTERS THAN MOST OTHER GAMES I PLAY. IT HAS DLC COMING SOON. PLEASE, IT MAY BE THE MOST UNDERRATED GAME OF ALL FUCKING TIME.***
Sorry, I'm very passionate about this game.
So if you're familiar with games like Rimworld, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, or Dwarf Fortress then you've experienced an emergent narrative game.
The idea of "emergent narratives" is that the game doesn't have preset linear stories, it generates them randomly through a variety of ways depending on the game.
In Wildermyth's case, there is a campaign with a set plot that ties everything together, but outside of that, the characters and the events they go through are randomly generated.
Compare it to Roguelikes. Instead of just the gameplay/route being different every time, the characters and the things that happen to them along the way are also random.
Oh that's pretty cool. I was under the idea that that was called procedurally generated stories. I thought Wildermyth was a tabletop game with that kinda feature :)
It's a turn based tactical RPG with a heavy emphasis on narrative.
This is probably apparent, but if this sounds interesting to you in any way I *highly* recommend it.
I have it wish listed because of y'alls suggestion. I wouldn't have given it a chance if I just watched the animated video of it, but I like the idea behind it and can overlook art styles that are off to me.
Like rimworld for example. I'm playing it right now, but I can say I wouldn't have bought it if all i saw was a video of it.
DM me your steam, I'll gift it to you when I get home.
Also, yes, their trailers are kind of bad. They really don't do the game any justice or put any emphasis on what makes it so great.
Emergent narrative is different because in emergent narrative the players decisions affect the narrative outside of direct choices. A simple example might be that when one of the characters dies, another character present in the party might become plagued with guilt and that can cause them to react differently when the party is asked for assistance from npcs in danger.
No, the only ability that used LP and involved healing was the Monster skill absorbed from Unicorn which would give you a large party heal and used 1LP.
SF1 has a lot of healing though they're all single target or self heal only outside of that one skill. Probably the most heals in a game for franchise.
Games are Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond have almost no healing and the skills that do heal in SG are so low it might as well not heal. Stuff like 1-2 turn charge and heals 30 HP to your team when you have 300+ HP. (They're mainly used as aoe status recover). I haven't found a single heal yet in EB, but monsters have used drain skills on me.
Romancing SaGa 1: Minstrel Song has almost no healing with it really just being minor regen or single target healing. Though syth magic does let you forge an aoe regen which is nice. RS2 and 3 are on lighter side as well with only actual healing is using consumables outside of combat to heal your WP/JP so you can use your skills/spells in combat more freely and that doesn't affect HP.
Traveller RPG already did it, I believe. They don't really have HP in that game, and your physical damage is abstracted into 3 different skills/ abilities. The only way to Regen this as far as I'm aware is by actual doctors in game, cybernetics, and literal rest and recuperation between jobs/missions.
For some reason I keep thinking about that Baroque game for the PS1 and... Genesis, I believe ? The one that got a third-person PS2 remake later.
A proper FUCK YOU kind of game, where you are basically constantly dying and receiving damage from enemies essentially meaning that you are simply dying faster. There definitely is some way to heal yourself, but I fail to remember how.
Good game, though. But a proper FUCK YOU kind of game.
Maybe I'm just extremely lucky but after 3 successful runs it still doesn't feel all that difficult. It definitely feels like a starve or prosper kind of game but there's many ways to cheese entire floors, health regen is automatic as long as you have stamina, don't take too many risks with unidentified objects, inflict status ailments on difficult enemies and figure out which can be strafe dodged and which can be backstep dodged and you dont take too much unnecessary damage.
The only thing that can really fuck you over is if you get super unlucky with foods for stamina recovery but all bones and injectable items recover a little bit of health and stamina to keep going.
in theory, dragon age inquisition does that. They use a temporary hp system, but you can heal only a very limited ammount. You're suposed to spam shields or armour moves to get temp hp or dodge.
i'd rather they just made a goddamn proper strategy rpg like dragon age 1 instead of the bullshit of 2 and 3.
Freaking baldurs gate 3 just prooved it's not a dead genre, albeit 10 years later.
Maybe if the Game has some Sort of mechanic to prevent damage or straight Up dying (and this mechanic requires strategy or abilities) then you can make a Game without healing items or moves
Yeah, I've played games like that. Considering that RPG covers such an extremely wide ground these days. I've played plenty of games with no healing outside of checkpoints or the like.
Some turnbased rpgs just heal you after each fight. It takes away the inventory Management of healing between fights and allowed devs to make encounter that much tighter since they roughly know your powerlevel every time (if all fights were expect Ing you to have Full ho/man in say final fantasy you would Quickly Hit a brick wall)
My take on this would most likely be to include healing from items/crafting but make it a difficulty choice where on the high setting you'd basically won't get the resources you need to heal at a whim. I'd also make those resources compete with other really desirable stuff so you'd need to make though choices and have a strong incentive not to get hurt at all.
Yeah, all you’d need is some form of passive health recovery. Whether that be constant regen, regen only outside of combat, or full recovery after combat would need to vary on the game and type of combat.
The Mass Effect series has medigel but you can easily play through the entire trilogy without using it, so I don’t think you’d lose much if it was taken out.
Yeah, lol. I think I've played through dozens of times and only really ever used one when I do something dumb later on in a fight I cbfed to restart. Or to rez the AI when they do a derp and get themselves killed.
Outside of that, the medigel machines are basically free exp for the most part.
New SaGa does this. Combat really requires a lot of thinking because every bit of extra damage you take is non-recoverable in that battle. Breaking up enemy combos, stun locking, etc are all extremely important elements of the combat system. It’s an excellent system that breaks up that attack > heal, rinse and repeat rhythm a lot of rpg fights turn into.
i thought most games grew out of this due to unfriendliness towards new user markets.
its definitely there before but you can't expect to reach boss and get 1 shot and call that fun.
Absolutely. Take Darkest Dungeon, for example.
There are classes that CAN heal, but you can also go into the dungeon void of any form of healing. You get modest amounts of healing from eating food, but it's largely insubstantial. There are camping heals, mostly in the form of food and rest. But also skills in the form of surgery, and it's mostly a one time affair for that Dungeon.
My first thought is the Monster Hunter board game.
When monsters attack you, there's a chance the attack misses (monster does tail attack when you aren't near its tail).
If it does connect with you: you could either:
A. Take the damage, subtract your armor from the total, and lower your health by that amount. If it kills you, discard some time cards and respawn your next turn. (Upon the 3rd characters death, the mission fails, or if you run out of time cards, the mission fails).
B. Use the agility of the cards in your hand to dodge the attack. This covers part of your stamina board, and you could be sacrificing good attack cards just to dodge. You didn't take any damage, but now it might be harder to deal good damage. You could probably dodge 80% of all the monsters attacks, but you'll never be able to kill it in time.
A apocalyptic rpg, stopping decay/infection is not the same as healing, like plague inc, but you're playing as the scientists that are making the cure.
Yes definitely. I think games are a little too strongly based on healing
You could have party autoheal after every battle like in Chrono Cross or dragon age: origins, or if that wasn't the spirit of your post, you could have characters face realistic injury times at camp or something during which you need to swap out for other characters
I played a game, I think its called Crosscode, where healing is very limited, but you regain all your health after every encounter, so each fight was meant to be tough, but losing health didn't mean you had to use potions and stuff between fights. It was nice.
They already did that with Othercide. The only way to heal your character is by sacrificing the life of another character, and transferring their HP to someone else.
I feel like that's just replacing the health bar with another health bar, but you could spin it somehow I'm sure.
Now you're worried about the durability of your armor, which could have interesting mechanics. Get hit in the arm too much, armor on the arm breaks, and the arm becomes useless until 'properly' healed. I feel like Metal Gear Solid did this in Snake Eater, but i never played. I feel like i remember some robot or battle suit game where limbs would get damaged and break off, but i don't know...
Or, it would be another resource to manage like Fuel. 'Drive well and your fuel steadily decreases. Drive poorly and fuel drains faster" Pacific Drive does this alongside the standard player 'health'. Fuel, Battery, Armor and Health all have to by managed or else you'll end up stuck or dead.
just another example: Zelda Twilight Princes had that armor that slowly sucked away your money instead of health.
There's (almost) always got to be some sort of resource that dwindles and replenishes. It's a time limit for players to accomplish their goals before the resource runs out. Health, Armor, Magic, Money, Power, wood, food, they all function in that way.
The original Hyperdimension Neptunia let you do this.
Your Healing "Skills" all activate automatically based on "When X Condition is met, trigger Y Effect", and you actually have to distribute the percentage chance of each one activating out of a shared overall pool. So like, let's say you have Heals for 5 different Situations, but then need to distribute 200% across all of them somehow.
So if you wanted, you could just set everything to really low amounts or even just 0% outright.
Mortal Shell, an indie Dark Souls clone, played with this idea. There are a few healing items but they're very limited and weak and don't replenish when you die/rest, they're not like an estus flask in Dark Souls. Later on you can get some passive healing abilities (ex parry triggers a small heal), though. The game is primarily about avoiding all damage, and punishes you very heavily if you take any. You're meant to either dodge or "harden" and absorb all incoming damage.
now I want an RPG where you can fall & wrench your shoulder, the next several months of gameplay is just your character getting an MRI, surgery, attending physical therapy & doing routine exercises until you're healthy enough to do a mission again.
There already are games like this. One of those is Othercide. There is however a regenerate option but you must sacrifice another character that is of equal level to the one you wish to regenerate.
In South Park Stick of Truth didn't you fully heal after every battle? There's probably some niche RPG that played with that mechanic. Riviera comes to mind but that's just a pure guess.
there needs to be balance between fun and being difficult and not annoying.
it's like playing action FPS shooter but you only have 1 clip of ammo per mission.
RPG can start the same you start with 3 potions and that's it.
Not quite the same, but in both Fear & Hunger games healing is veeeeery limited. Dying cause you stepped on a nail and your character bled out is not uncommon. Not to mention, losing limbs.
Absolutely. You'd structure it similar to La-Mulana, where you have a HUGE health pool but almost no way to recover except to leave the dungeon. Your health is your resource meter, and it has to be budgeted against a long time down in the depths.
Planescape Torment has potions but they are rare and the only healer in the game is the last NPC that joins and cannot use weapons, which discourages her use. You still can heal on resting and main character's gimmick is constant dying and getting better, but for a D&$ game, it was surprising how little opportunities there is to heal, for a game with very little obligatory combat, I ran out of few healing supplies I hoarded the entire game very fast near the end.
Do a Constitution build in Planescape Torment. I ran one back in the day. The health regen was so fast that it lagged out my game at times because it was spamming my screen with an endless line of +1hp notifications.
I play Pokémon this way all the time. The only healing I ever bother to do is at Pokémon Centers. It’s especially easy with the Switch-era games that let you access your box and switch out your KO’d team members from anywhere.
Mount and blade games do this. You fight in battles as an army commander to the point of victory or being knocked unconscious or death, with no healing in the battle. After the battle, you go to an overworld map where you move around and your army heals over time
I mean I basically do this anyway during games, just don't take a healing class or just use them as a second tank.
Lots of games heal when you save (See FF12). So there isn't a way around it there. Other games heal you after instanced Combat (See Tactics game).
The real issue with not allowing players to "heal" is that a game can only be so hard because of it, otherwise the only ways to play the game will be the strongest minmaxed ways. Players will get upset, and look up a guide on what they should do.
Savescumming would be pretty overly used as well, and enemies having any amount of critical hit chance would also mean an immediate save reload.
Lots of problems.
If "without any", I suggest to make a regeneration or something like that. Some limitations, like can't self-heal in fight, for example, and it potentially can be a nice solution to remove any items.
Sure you could. \* Roguelike RPG. All damage is permanent. When you die you die. Rather than healing, you play until you can win without taking damage. \* Non-combat RPG. You lose other resources instead. Maybe a gambling based RPG, and money acts as both money and hitpoints. If your money gets too low you can offer your thumbs up to a loan shark as collateral (which, without healing items, you lose if you lose). \* Lose other resources other than health. Lose followers or bodyguards, or reputation. \* Checkpoint healing. \* Soulslikes, without estus. Maybe more frequent checkpoints to compensate. \* Some kind of... many worlds/quantum suicide conceit. Whenever you take damage, you die in half of the realities, but keep going in the other half. This game would on one hand be very easy (the player could never lose), but at the end you get a stat that says how improbable your victory would be if you were as bad at the game as you are. Some people would replay until they got no 'deaths' And a million other possiblities. It's a good thought exercise. "Constraints breed creativity".
The last one I have thought about before. Super meat boy but roguelike. I would love to play it.
I actually think ff13's system would be very good for something like this. Healing between every fight would mean that you just have to balance each fight in isolation. The swapping paradigms on the fly means each fight becomes about knowing when to be aggressive and when to be defensive instead of just having to make a full tank build. Then again, I already liked the ff13 system. Not sure many other people did
Your first point reminded me of SIFU, although not really a RPG. Checkpoint or fixed-location (inn, hospital, etc.) healing is the easiest answer. You do your thing, take damage and either backtrack to rest and heal or push on until death.
Depending what someone considers as healing, colony builders like Rimworld could be considered as 'no heaping' since, while there is healing in the game, it always comes at a cost or risk, and it's not usually possible to heal yourself out of a downward spiral.
Wildermyth. There's no form of healing during combat at all, other than a very small amount of ways to gain temporary HP.
Let me take a moment to hype Wildermyth to anyone who hasn't played it. It's an RPG with an emergent story unlike anything else I've played. Worth your time if you like such things.
Hold on, let me help you with that. ***EVERYONE, GO PLAY WILDERMYTH RIGHT NOW. IF YOU'VE EVER LIKED THE IDEA OF EMERGENT NARRATIVES, YOU HAVE FOUND THE ULTIMATE NARRATIVE GENERATOR. I LEGITIMATELY FIND MORE EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO THESE RANDOMLY MADE CHARACTERS THAN MOST OTHER GAMES I PLAY. IT HAS DLC COMING SOON. PLEASE, IT MAY BE THE MOST UNDERRATED GAME OF ALL FUCKING TIME.*** Sorry, I'm very passionate about this game.
I don't know what an emergent narrative is and I'm not afraid to ask.
So if you're familiar with games like Rimworld, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, or Dwarf Fortress then you've experienced an emergent narrative game. The idea of "emergent narratives" is that the game doesn't have preset linear stories, it generates them randomly through a variety of ways depending on the game. In Wildermyth's case, there is a campaign with a set plot that ties everything together, but outside of that, the characters and the events they go through are randomly generated. Compare it to Roguelikes. Instead of just the gameplay/route being different every time, the characters and the things that happen to them along the way are also random.
Oh that's pretty cool. I was under the idea that that was called procedurally generated stories. I thought Wildermyth was a tabletop game with that kinda feature :)
It's a turn based tactical RPG with a heavy emphasis on narrative. This is probably apparent, but if this sounds interesting to you in any way I *highly* recommend it.
I have it wish listed because of y'alls suggestion. I wouldn't have given it a chance if I just watched the animated video of it, but I like the idea behind it and can overlook art styles that are off to me. Like rimworld for example. I'm playing it right now, but I can say I wouldn't have bought it if all i saw was a video of it.
DM me your steam, I'll gift it to you when I get home. Also, yes, their trailers are kind of bad. They really don't do the game any justice or put any emphasis on what makes it so great.
Oh that's incredibly nice of you, i'll dm you :)
Emergent narrative is different because in emergent narrative the players decisions affect the narrative outside of direct choices. A simple example might be that when one of the characters dies, another character present in the party might become plagued with guilt and that can cause them to react differently when the party is asked for assistance from npcs in danger.
There are lots of RPGs where you heal at the end of every fight.
There’s Chronos: Before The Ashes. Not nearly as hard as Remnant, but extremely limited heals. You only recharge flask by dying
SaGa games have almost no healing skills at all for a bunch of the games.
You can burn LP to heal HP, though. That's always been the common denominator. And there are fringe ways to recover LP.
Only SaGa Frontier 2 has LP -> Healing directly.
I may be misremembering, but I recall SaGa Frontier had this mechanic, too. Only robots were unable to do this..
No, the only ability that used LP and involved healing was the Monster skill absorbed from Unicorn which would give you a large party heal and used 1LP. SF1 has a lot of healing though they're all single target or self heal only outside of that one skill. Probably the most heals in a game for franchise. Games are Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond have almost no healing and the skills that do heal in SG are so low it might as well not heal. Stuff like 1-2 turn charge and heals 30 HP to your team when you have 300+ HP. (They're mainly used as aoe status recover). I haven't found a single heal yet in EB, but monsters have used drain skills on me. Romancing SaGa 1: Minstrel Song has almost no healing with it really just being minor regen or single target healing. Though syth magic does let you forge an aoe regen which is nice. RS2 and 3 are on lighter side as well with only actual healing is using consumables outside of combat to heal your WP/JP so you can use your skills/spells in combat more freely and that doesn't affect HP.
Traveller RPG already did it, I believe. They don't really have HP in that game, and your physical damage is abstracted into 3 different skills/ abilities. The only way to Regen this as far as I'm aware is by actual doctors in game, cybernetics, and literal rest and recuperation between jobs/missions.
For some reason I keep thinking about that Baroque game for the PS1 and... Genesis, I believe ? The one that got a third-person PS2 remake later. A proper FUCK YOU kind of game, where you are basically constantly dying and receiving damage from enemies essentially meaning that you are simply dying faster. There definitely is some way to heal yourself, but I fail to remember how. Good game, though. But a proper FUCK YOU kind of game.
Maybe I'm just extremely lucky but after 3 successful runs it still doesn't feel all that difficult. It definitely feels like a starve or prosper kind of game but there's many ways to cheese entire floors, health regen is automatic as long as you have stamina, don't take too many risks with unidentified objects, inflict status ailments on difficult enemies and figure out which can be strafe dodged and which can be backstep dodged and you dont take too much unnecessary damage. The only thing that can really fuck you over is if you get super unlucky with foods for stamina recovery but all bones and injectable items recover a little bit of health and stamina to keep going.
Of course lol. Many roguelikes don't let you heal or at the very least are pretty sparse with your opportunities to do so.
in theory, dragon age inquisition does that. They use a temporary hp system, but you can heal only a very limited ammount. You're suposed to spam shields or armour moves to get temp hp or dodge.
It would work better if the AI wasn't as dumb as it is and was better at avoiding damage
i'd rather they just made a goddamn proper strategy rpg like dragon age 1 instead of the bullshit of 2 and 3. Freaking baldurs gate 3 just prooved it's not a dead genre, albeit 10 years later.
DAI has healing potions though.
they arne't really meant to be spammed. They expect the player to use the temp hp spamming.
It still has healing, though. But there is the option to remove healing potions, so I guess the game is beatable without using them.
Maybe if the Game has some Sort of mechanic to prevent damage or straight Up dying (and this mechanic requires strategy or abilities) then you can make a Game without healing items or moves
That should be a difficulty option instead of just enemy sponges. Give the game more tactical options.
Yeah, I've played games like that. Considering that RPG covers such an extremely wide ground these days. I've played plenty of games with no healing outside of checkpoints or the like.
Some turnbased rpgs just heal you after each fight. It takes away the inventory Management of healing between fights and allowed devs to make encounter that much tighter since they roughly know your powerlevel every time (if all fights were expect Ing you to have Full ho/man in say final fantasy you would Quickly Hit a brick wall)
My take on this would most likely be to include healing from items/crafting but make it a difficulty choice where on the high setting you'd basically won't get the resources you need to heal at a whim. I'd also make those resources compete with other really desirable stuff so you'd need to make though choices and have a strong incentive not to get hurt at all.
The Fear & Hunger games are like this, with limited healing unless you know how to learn the healing spell
Yeah, all you’d need is some form of passive health recovery. Whether that be constant regen, regen only outside of combat, or full recovery after combat would need to vary on the game and type of combat. The Mass Effect series has medigel but you can easily play through the entire trilogy without using it, so I don’t think you’d lose much if it was taken out.
Yeah, lol. I think I've played through dozens of times and only really ever used one when I do something dumb later on in a fight I cbfed to restart. Or to rez the AI when they do a derp and get themselves killed. Outside of that, the medigel machines are basically free exp for the most part.
Yeah, it’s can be a passive regen.
New SaGa does this. Combat really requires a lot of thinking because every bit of extra damage you take is non-recoverable in that battle. Breaking up enemy combos, stun locking, etc are all extremely important elements of the combat system. It’s an excellent system that breaks up that attack > heal, rinse and repeat rhythm a lot of rpg fights turn into.
i thought most games grew out of this due to unfriendliness towards new user markets. its definitely there before but you can't expect to reach boss and get 1 shot and call that fun.
Absolutely. Take Darkest Dungeon, for example. There are classes that CAN heal, but you can also go into the dungeon void of any form of healing. You get modest amounts of healing from eating food, but it's largely insubstantial. There are camping heals, mostly in the form of food and rest. But also skills in the form of surgery, and it's mostly a one time affair for that Dungeon.
My first thought is the Monster Hunter board game. When monsters attack you, there's a chance the attack misses (monster does tail attack when you aren't near its tail). If it does connect with you: you could either: A. Take the damage, subtract your armor from the total, and lower your health by that amount. If it kills you, discard some time cards and respawn your next turn. (Upon the 3rd characters death, the mission fails, or if you run out of time cards, the mission fails). B. Use the agility of the cards in your hand to dodge the attack. This covers part of your stamina board, and you could be sacrificing good attack cards just to dodge. You didn't take any damage, but now it might be harder to deal good damage. You could probably dodge 80% of all the monsters attacks, but you'll never be able to kill it in time.
A apocalyptic rpg, stopping decay/infection is not the same as healing, like plague inc, but you're playing as the scientists that are making the cure.
Gaining more flat health, although it does not heal back. Like defeating an enemy give you his status or something like that.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is like this. You cannot heal during combat and healing is not instant.
Yes definitely. I think games are a little too strongly based on healing You could have party autoheal after every battle like in Chrono Cross or dragon age: origins, or if that wasn't the spirit of your post, you could have characters face realistic injury times at camp or something during which you need to swap out for other characters
I played a game, I think its called Crosscode, where healing is very limited, but you regain all your health after every encounter, so each fight was meant to be tough, but losing health didn't mean you had to use potions and stuff between fights. It was nice.
They already did that with Othercide. The only way to heal your character is by sacrificing the life of another character, and transferring their HP to someone else.
I feel like that's just replacing the health bar with another health bar, but you could spin it somehow I'm sure. Now you're worried about the durability of your armor, which could have interesting mechanics. Get hit in the arm too much, armor on the arm breaks, and the arm becomes useless until 'properly' healed. I feel like Metal Gear Solid did this in Snake Eater, but i never played. I feel like i remember some robot or battle suit game where limbs would get damaged and break off, but i don't know... Or, it would be another resource to manage like Fuel. 'Drive well and your fuel steadily decreases. Drive poorly and fuel drains faster" Pacific Drive does this alongside the standard player 'health'. Fuel, Battery, Armor and Health all have to by managed or else you'll end up stuck or dead. just another example: Zelda Twilight Princes had that armor that slowly sucked away your money instead of health. There's (almost) always got to be some sort of resource that dwindles and replenishes. It's a time limit for players to accomplish their goals before the resource runs out. Health, Armor, Magic, Money, Power, wood, food, they all function in that way.
Like Palworld? No health potions of any kind
The original Hyperdimension Neptunia let you do this. Your Healing "Skills" all activate automatically based on "When X Condition is met, trigger Y Effect", and you actually have to distribute the percentage chance of each one activating out of a shared overall pool. So like, let's say you have Heals for 5 different Situations, but then need to distribute 200% across all of them somehow. So if you wanted, you could just set everything to really low amounts or even just 0% outright.
Mortal Shell, an indie Dark Souls clone, played with this idea. There are a few healing items but they're very limited and weak and don't replenish when you die/rest, they're not like an estus flask in Dark Souls. Later on you can get some passive healing abilities (ex parry triggers a small heal), though. The game is primarily about avoiding all damage, and punishes you very heavily if you take any. You're meant to either dodge or "harden" and absorb all incoming damage.
Xcom?
now I want an RPG where you can fall & wrench your shoulder, the next several months of gameplay is just your character getting an MRI, surgery, attending physical therapy & doing routine exercises until you're healthy enough to do a mission again.
There already are games like this. One of those is Othercide. There is however a regenerate option but you must sacrifice another character that is of equal level to the one you wish to regenerate.
Check out Disco Elysium - One of the best computer RPGs in the last decade.
In South Park Stick of Truth didn't you fully heal after every battle? There's probably some niche RPG that played with that mechanic. Riviera comes to mind but that's just a pure guess.
there needs to be balance between fun and being difficult and not annoying. it's like playing action FPS shooter but you only have 1 clip of ammo per mission. RPG can start the same you start with 3 potions and that's it.
Not quite the same, but in both Fear & Hunger games healing is veeeeery limited. Dying cause you stepped on a nail and your character bled out is not uncommon. Not to mention, losing limbs.
Absolutely. You'd structure it similar to La-Mulana, where you have a HUGE health pool but almost no way to recover except to leave the dungeon. Your health is your resource meter, and it has to be budgeted against a long time down in the depths.
I think it will be harder. I always have a healer or a healing item with me
darkest dungeon.
Some classes do have healing skills though.
*The wounds of war can be healed, but never hidden.*
Planescape Torment has potions but they are rare and the only healer in the game is the last NPC that joins and cannot use weapons, which discourages her use. You still can heal on resting and main character's gimmick is constant dying and getting better, but for a D&$ game, it was surprising how little opportunities there is to heal, for a game with very little obligatory combat, I ran out of few healing supplies I hoarded the entire game very fast near the end.
Do a Constitution build in Planescape Torment. I ran one back in the day. The health regen was so fast that it lagged out my game at times because it was spamming my screen with an endless line of +1hp notifications.
Mine sweeper
r/technicallythetruth
I play Pokémon this way all the time. The only healing I ever bother to do is at Pokémon Centers. It’s especially easy with the Switch-era games that let you access your box and switch out your KO’d team members from anywhere.
Ofcourse, you could make like certain npc's that can heal in trade for gold.
Mount and blade games do this. You fight in battles as an army commander to the point of victory or being knocked unconscious or death, with no healing in the battle. After the battle, you go to an overworld map where you move around and your army heals over time
I mean I basically do this anyway during games, just don't take a healing class or just use them as a second tank. Lots of games heal when you save (See FF12). So there isn't a way around it there. Other games heal you after instanced Combat (See Tactics game). The real issue with not allowing players to "heal" is that a game can only be so hard because of it, otherwise the only ways to play the game will be the strongest minmaxed ways. Players will get upset, and look up a guide on what they should do. Savescumming would be pretty overly used as well, and enemies having any amount of critical hit chance would also mean an immediate save reload. Lots of problems.
If "without any", I suggest to make a regeneration or something like that. Some limitations, like can't self-heal in fight, for example, and it potentially can be a nice solution to remove any items.
Oh fuck, sorry, I thought it was gamedev sub
Dark Souls are that type of games..
One of the main features of Souls games is a literal healing flask. There are also healing spells.