[Idea] Pain system

[Wasps]

To me, the big thing missing for BDSM-based mods is a pain system. The health and stamina system simply do not do a good enough job of representing pain.

 

This'd probably take quite advanced modding skills (if it's even possible), which would definitely be far beyond my capabilities. But here I'll offer my services as a back-seat game designer and illustrate how I'd imagine such a system would work, especially in regards to how it could interact and enhance other mods.

 

Obviously pain happens outside of BDSM, so this system could also be used to enhance things such as combat and illnesses.

 

UI

It could be displayed as an additional bar on the UI much like health, stamina and magicka. The more pain your character is in, the higher the bar.

 

Long term and Short term pain

These could both be reflected on a single scale by long term pain affecting the base level of pain - say your pain metre goes from 0 to 100, your long term sources of pain might give it a resting point of 30. Sources of long term pain could be: illnesses, wounds (which could be gained from receiving an excessive number of short term sources of pain, for example being whipped too often), punishment items (for example, a particularly large buttplug, nipple clamps or an uncomfortable pair of shoes), being on low health or being triggered by certain animations (i.e. aggressive sex, kneeling, ZaZ furniture, sitting with buttock injuries). These could be applied by magic effects which would allow some sources of pain to last any period of time and diminish in effect over time or be applied permanently.

 

Short term pain could instantly increase your pain metre, which then slowly 'regenerates' back to it's resting level as dictated by long term pain. As mentioned above, excessive short term pain could cause longer term pain; for example if you receive 20 lashes of a particularly nasty whip, your pain metre may jump to 60 and start to recover, but the lasting wounds this cause may give you a resting pain level of 30 for a few days.

 

Pain levels and effects

Different pain levels cause different effects which would be its main gameplay function. Here are some ideas of some possible effects:

 

Low levels of pain (eg 1-33%) - at this level of pain, it would still mostly be bearable.

- This could be considered a pleasurable level of pain when inflicted short term that increases the PC's arousal level when combined with the SexLab Aroused.

- Small chance to cause the PC to drop their weapon.

- Reduced spell casting abilities.

- Force struggling with any Devious Devices.

- Moaning.

 

Moderate levels of pain (34-66%) - at this level of pain, you'd be able to think about little else.

- The player's sight may become blurred to represent the character losing focus on what's going on around them due to being in so much pain.

- The player starts to take heavy stamina penalties.

- Movement speed penalties - stumbling and crawling on ground.

- Much greater chance to cause the PC to drop their weapon.

- Screaming

 

High levels of pain (67-100%) - purely debilitating agony (I would suggest long term pain being capped before high pain levels so players don't get stuck with permanent debilitating effects):

- With a mod such as Sanguine's Debauchery or Defeat, the player may no longer be able to keep fighting and submit in combat and get either raped or enslaved.

- The player might go into shock or pass out.

- The player starts to take health penalties.

- Unable to speak.

 

Increasing Pain Threshold

Exposure to pain makes you better at coping with it. This could either be done by reducing pain received by a percentage and keeping pain on a scale of 0-100, or increasing the maximum value of the pain metre and adjusting the thresholds of pain levels accordingly.

 

Other possible uses

This could also potentially work as a way to measure asphyxiation too as it could have much the same gameplay effects. As such it may work well for choke chain type items (for example, in an enslavement mod, move too far away from your master and you start to 'suffocate', getting blurred vision and eventually passing out).

[Jayleia]

I like this idea, though rather than having it at three equal-sized areas, I'd prefer to have a large area where I could just take it (cause I'm the hero), a small area where I can be debuffed, but still reasonably able to fight, an even smaller level where I REALLY need to finish the fight soon but am having much more serious difficulty and a very small area where I might be able to fight a bit, but at crippling, even dangerous debuff levels.

 

I do NOT want a chance to drop weapons, or at least I'd want that to be toggleable...because there's no fun like dropping a Daedric artifact weapon outside of the floor...I lost Dawnbreaker that way...yeah, no, I reloaded that game.

[vpoteryaev]

Helpless mod will drop your's weapon. And what I can't imagine (maybe thats Defeat) - forget my spells and ... more.

But in reality I prefer stuck instead.

[Wasps]

I like this idea, though rather than having it at three equal-sized areas, I'd prefer to have a large area where I could just take it (cause I'm the hero), a small area where I can be debuffed, but still reasonably able to fight, an even smaller level where I REALLY need to finish the fight soon but am having much more serious difficulty and a very small area where I might be able to fight a bit, but at crippling, even dangerous debuff levels.

 

I do NOT want a chance to drop weapons, or at least I'd want that to be toggleable...because there's no fun like dropping a Daedric artifact weapon outside of the floor...I lost Dawnbreaker that way...yeah, no, I reloaded that game.

 

It's a good point for future consideration if someone does pick this up and turn it into an actual mod. It's largely down to balancing (and at this point a bit arbitrary, I mainly assigned percentage values to demonstrate how it could be tied in to a metre) and also depends largely on what percentage pain each source of pain inflicts. I'd imagine being such that a single source of pain would be unlikely to push you into the medium threshold by itself (unless it was quite an extreme source of pain), but one or two sources of long term pain could keep you at low threshold but make you very vulnerable of falling into the middle threshold if you receive additional pain. What's more, the boundary between different pain levels doesn't have to be so clear cut, I mainly outlined them as such above for ease of describing when different effects might come into play. Of course then there's still the aspect of increasing your pain threshold to consider, where in if you want to have quite a high pain threshold to only rarely encounter medium and high level effects, you could 'farm' an increased pain threshold by subjecting yourself to punishment items.

[Jayleia]

I'm really liking the idea of a pain system.  I mean, I don't like the idea of me fighting enemies and having no ill-effects until I hit my threshold for SD/DAYMOYL bleedout and then BOOM...but if I get a few people having sex with me, I get negative effects via apropos.

 

I wouldn't connect it to aroused in general.  But if your actor was registered as a masochist, AND certain types of "attacks" were flagged to be arousing, then connecting it to aroused would be interesting.

 

For some creepy fun, have an item/spell cast on you register you as masochist, and select ALL attacks as stimulating...yes, that means you might orgasm from getting your face melted by a legendary dragon...hehehe.

[Wasps]

I'm really liking the idea of a pain system.  I mean, I don't like the idea of me fighting enemies and having no ill-effects until I hit my threshold for SD/DAYMOYL bleedout and then BOOM...but if I get a few people having sex with me, I get negative effects via apropos.

 

I wouldn't connect it to aroused in general.  But if your actor was registered as a masochist, AND certain types of "attacks" were flagged to be arousing, then connecting it to aroused would be interesting.

 

For some creepy fun, have an item/spell cast on you register you as masochist, and select ALL attacks as stimulating...yes, that means you might orgasm from getting your face melted by a legendary dragon...hehehe.

 

Fair point. I guess it could be done if attacks add a status effect such as 'Whip wound' or 'Stab wound' to define the pain, and arousal could be added at that point depending on the type of wound/ pain.

 

However, people might not be masochists? Huh, those weirdos.

[Jayleia]

 

I'm really liking the idea of a pain system.  I mean, I don't like the idea of me fighting enemies and having no ill-effects until I hit my threshold for SD/DAYMOYL bleedout and then BOOM...but if I get a few people having sex with me, I get negative effects via apropos.

 

I wouldn't connect it to aroused in general.  But if your actor was registered as a masochist, AND certain types of "attacks" were flagged to be arousing, then connecting it to aroused would be interesting.

 

For some creepy fun, have an item/spell cast on you register you as masochist, and select ALL attacks as stimulating...yes, that means you might orgasm from getting your face melted by a legendary dragon...hehehe.

 

Fair point. I guess it could be done if attacks add a status effect such as 'Whip wound' or 'Stab wound' to define the pain, and arousal could be added at that point depending on the type of wound/ pain.

 

However, people might not be masochists? Huh, those weirdos.

Hehehe...my main character isn't a masochist, a strong personality herself, but extremely submissive to strong, dominant personalities (i.e. Master from CD, Mistress from TiR).

 

Her player, however, is more than a bit masochistic...thus, my character frequently finds herself in...interesting situations... ;-)