[Realism Mod Suggestion] Realistic loot

[Firebrand]

In antiquity, looting everything from fallen enemies was the standard behaviour. Haven't you read for example Homer's the Iliad? Or read that after Teutoburg's massacre, there were no single piece of armor, arrow, spear or sword left, because they took everything away? Resource were scarces, and everything was reused.

[l3lessed]

Yep. Most people don't understand how scarce pretty much everything was until the last 200 years or so, AKA industrial revolution and mass production. Even in the largest empires, like the Romans, there was scarcity for allot of their inhabitants. Not the ruling class and their supporters of course, but the everyday person did not have tons of stuff to themselves. And, even if the peons were lucky enough to get a stash of wealth/possessions built up, you can bet their lord would notice their vassal's growing wealth and stake a claim to it. It was really the basis of how knighthood and the feudal system worked. Every day peasants largely gave up their wealth and provided labor for the intensive labor processes required at the time to do about anything, and in return for being a vassal to that lord and his knights, they promised you protection not if, but when wildlings, roving bandits, enemy forces, raid parties, vikings, or just the poor and displaced souls came looking for wealth, goods, food, and possibly a new home land to build on.

As an example of scarcity, they didn't even make tools out of steel because of how rare good quality steel was. They made shovels out of freaken wood; wooden shovels for christ sake! They would merely wrap the tip in a thin layer of steel to save. A steel arrowhead was as good as a coin and would commonly be used by soldiers as a bataring replacement for coins when out fighting from home.

The vast majority of information presented in everyday and the media about medieval life is greatly distorted to present it has a more positive experience than it truly was because no one wants to watch or read something that shows the truth of how dirty, ugly, insane, brutal, heartless, and just straight sociopathic our ancestors where. Instead, we tell ourselves stories about beautiful blond vikings slaying hordes of "baddies" and returning to a life of beautiful maidens, plenty of food, servants, and longevity. In reality, most people died before 20, disease was rampant for everyone, there was no sanitation so everyone smelled and was covered in a thin film of poop, pee, and dirt, rulers were largely mentally off from years of incest, nepotism, and disconnection from the reality of their peons, rights were not existent so torture was rampant and used daily to keep the feudal system running and safe, and on and on I can go of the horrors of those times.

Here is a good reddit discussion with some back up texts. They even reference a battle that was lost because too many of one sides forces decided looting the dead and getting rich was more important than the battle in front of them causing their fronts to be over ran by enemies. The caveat seems to be if the bodies became fetid, disease ridden, a health risk, then they would be dropped into mass graves with equipment.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ ... r_a_large/

Ultimate realism would be for friendly npcs to wander over to a corpse and begin looting it, if you don't within a certain amount of time. If no npcs are around, items start to slowly disappear to replicate wandering npcs finding the loot or it just decaying away to being useless to anyone.

[Jay_H]

Well said. Then again, some would separate fun from realistic. Realistic in GTA means getting clipped by a car, breaking your hip, and spending 3 months in a hospital amidst several operations... Realism isn't the ideal for everyone

[Firebrand]

Ultimate realism would be for friendly npcs to wander over to a corpse and begin looting it, if you don't within a certain amount of time. If no npcs are around, items start to slowly disappear to replicate wandering npcs finding the loot or it just decaying away to being useless to anyone.

I agree. There's something similar in Oblivion, with wandering orcish adventurers that kill monsters and bandits to loot them, like the player charachter. They can also loot what you kill.

[Firebrand]

Well said. Then again, some would separate fun from realistic. Realistic in GTA means getting clipped by a car, breaking your hip, and spending 3 months in a hospital amidst several operations... Realism isn't the ideal for everyone

The worst part would be making debts to pay the medical bill

[DaveCastle]

In antiquity, looting everything from fallen enemies was the standard behaviour. Haven't you read for example Homer's the Iliad? Or read that after Teutoburg's massacre, there were no single piece of armor, arrow, spear or sword left, because they took everything away? Resource were scarces, and everything was reused.

You seem to suggest that I said something along the lines of looting not happening. I think I said it was frowned upon by society and that there were certain taboos surrounding the handling of dead bodies. Big difference. (And yeah I read the Iliad, it was compulsory reading in 5th grade, fucking hated it too.)
Moreover, the provinces in Daggerfall aren't engaged in all-out war and none of the towns portrayed seem so poor to me that an arrowhead would be particularly valuable. Could be engine limitations preventing us from seeing the poverty-stricken underbelly of society.

Aaaaanyway, getting back to the original topic, I think that a mod that reduces the amount of armour pieces that drop from mobs - for whatever reason, you can headcanon most of it away by saying you smashed them apart with your warhammer - and limits the number of weapons that drop from humanoids (just now, a dude dropped a dai-katana, a claymore and a wakizashi as well as two helmets) would have some economical merit.

[daggerdude]

Seems like a good idea to me. This was very much how it was in ES Arena.

[jayhova]

So basically the idea is bodies tend to have as much armour as the NPC would have when it fought you. Chances are pretty good they will have one of each piece of armor. They will not have armor restricted by their class. They will tend to have one melee weapon and one missile weapon not restricted by their class.

There seems to be this thought that if you give armor to enemies you will unbalance the game. Your PC can only carry so much and their will be little incentive to walk around with 10 iron breastplates in worn condition. But if the enemy was shooting at you with a bow he should have a bow. I would like to make enemy possessions less about the PC getting treasure and more about what they would realistically have on their person. Let the player role play what to do with loot rather than justifying unrealistic possessions as a moral or game balance mechanic.