Torment: Tides of Numenera - Alpha Systems and Can Companions Die?

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Kickstarter update #47:

Torment Alpha Systems Tests Have Arrived
Hello Tormented Ones,

Thomas here.

Midway through last month we released Alpha Systems Test (AST) A0, the first of our ASTs for those backers who have alpha systems access as part of their tier rewards or as an add-on. You may remember the ASTs are bite-sized chunks of early-game Torment content, meant to give eligible backers a very early look at the direction we're heading in as well as an opportunity to provide feedback and suggestions. Two weeks after the first AST we released the second, B0.

A0 consists of the opening scenes of the game, including the narrative-based character creation Adam talked about in our previous update. The purpose of this AST was mostly to have our backers experience the atmosphere of the game, play around with the dialogue interface, and get an impression of the quality and feel of writing. The second, B0, consists of two scenes from the very early parts of the game, showing more of our exploration HUD as well as exploration mechanics and a glimpse at the game's companions and even a tease of the items I've been designing and implementing in the game.

[...]

Can Companions Die?
Adam here to talk about party death.

One of our core guidelines for Torment is to make failure interesting. We don't go out of our way to discourage savescumming (i.e. reloading to avoid non-game ending failures), but we don't want to encourage it either. As much as possible, we want the player to overcome their setbacks, rather than pretend they never happened. From our website:

"...in many Crises, failure isn't death, nor is it the end. It's just... different. You might find yourself in a prison and have to escape. You might return to the spot of the Crisis and find that you can try again or that your enemies have accomplished their goal and now the landscape of the game has changed. We are striving to create interesting fail states in all situations, but especially so in Crises."

It is partially from this guideline (and from the way our illustrious predecessor handled death) that the idea of the Labyrinth formed. Castoffs are extremely hard to kill, so when the Last Castoff dies, he usually wakes up in the Labyrinth where he or she can explore extra (optional) content or simply choose to return to the real world.

The world does move on when the player dies. Sometimes the player can return to a Crisis to try again, but just as often things have changed. A crime lord may have increased her guards (or decreased them, thinking that the threat was over). The Last Castoff may have been dragged away by his enemies to some new location (or posthumously arrested, for those that know what he is). These branching "failures" are designed to encourage players to continue on after a defeat, if only to see what happens.

The death of party members is a little trickier. Some companions are castoffs themselves-or are hard to kill for other reasons-and so they can get back up after most battles. But the Ninth World holds no resurrection for mortal characters. When a mortal companion dies, it's permanent.

This presents a problem with our "interesting failure" guideline. I imagine there are only a small percentage of gamers who would play through a beloved companion's death, knowing that a happier storyline lay only a reload away. At the same time, if we just let the defeated companions get up at the end of a Crisis, it would take away a lot of the tension of keeping your party alive - despite your player character's near-immortality, we don't want combat to be a low-stress, "nothing that happens matters" affair.

Our solution (pending playtesting) is an adaptation from Numenera core rules called Lasting Damage. When a mortal companion drops to zero in all three Stat Pools, they're out of combat but not dead. When the Crisis is over, the companion will get up but they will be scathed with a Lasting Damage fettle.

The specific effects of this fettle and how to remove it will be tweaked as needed for balance, but in general:

• The fettle will have some severe effect, on the order of making all tasks more difficult by two steps.
• The fettle will go away after the party Sleeps X times. The player can choose to Sleep until it's gone, but doing so will have other effects on the game.
• There will usually be a skilled chiurgeon of some sort nearby who can remove this fettle immediately for a number of shins. Sometimes this NPC may be hard to find, or their healing might not be available right away, but the player should be able to heal before most major Crises.

With balancing, the Lasting Damage fettle should present a challenge while not being so negative that most players reload. (Some players will reload anyway, of course, but the balance of this fettle is about minimizing that number as much as possible-again, we aren't going out of our way to discourage savescumming; we're just trying not to encourage it).

This design allows the player to choose whether they want to spend time or money to remove the fettle, or whether they want to just deal with the fettle until it goes away naturally. There is a cost whichever way they choose, but there is enough choice that players should feel empowered rather than frustrated, encouraging them to play on despite setbacks and to forge their own story.

That said, certain actions the player might take could result in the irreversible demise (or departure) of a companion. But if and when this can occur, it will be at the player's discretion (or perhaps because the player ignored the dangers, forgetting that their choices will have consequences), not the whim of a random number generator. [...]​