New modder help: pros and cons of an approach to mortality

[Opcero]

So my idea is to make "dying of old age" possible in Daggerfall. I'm thinking of two approaches (if you have another please feel free to recommend it):

1. Place at the bonfire in privateers hold a shadowy figure (someone who looks like the daedra summoner in every mages guild perhaps) who will grant the "quest of mortality". The quest is nothing more than a count down timer of like 50 years. On the day the quest ends, the player is killed.

Q: is it possible to script a player kill at the timing out of a quest? Would it be easier to make a version of the "mummy's finger" quest and have a super powerful undead (death himself?) come and kill the character after an appointed time?

2. At the start of play, the player is given an incurable disease called "mortality" that simply depleates every stat by 1 point every year. When any stat reaches 0 of course that player would die.

Q: can I actually make my own diseases in DFU and where would I look for that info? The tutorials seem to focus on quest scripting.

[King of Worms]

I love the idea of implementing it thru the mortality disease!

[Hazelnut]

I considered implementing this, but then decided it was not worth it. Players may play maybe a decade in game with a character, but 5... seems unlikely to me.

Anyway you could do it with a quest, no idea about doing it with a disease. Pretty sure diseases use effects system which works on a few second long magic rounds. May be easier to have some c# script that controls this.

[Opcero]

Thanks for the ideas. I mean, it can easily take years just going between different provenices for the main quest. Given the size of the game, significant periods of time are pretty likely to pass!

Looking at the disease code in the github. I'm thinking I will go with 4 dieseases that every player gets, but each with decades of incubation so that they are additive and incurable. They will also be a handy guide for players to know how old they are. As someone pointed out on the reddit forums, the character is explicitly 30 years old at the start of the game according to the pregen character backgrounds and starting year.

Middle age disease (lower stats like end, speed etc). Maybe add to wis, int.

Old age (further lower stats like personality, speed str etc). Buff maybe perception, wis, int.

Natural Death (quickly drop all stats over the course of a few days...)

I'd like vampirism to 'cure' this disease and maybe, way down the line maybe do a "become a lich" quest. My skills are rudimentary (basic python) so who knows what I'll be able to do. If someone beats me to it, I'd applaud rather than be vexed!

[Magicono43]

As Hazelnut said, it would probably be more simple to make this a constantly running quest, since they already come with a Clock functionality built in, that can go for a VERY long time potentially.

I think it would be interesting if you could base the player characters life-span off of their starting endurance score or something, like a paper thin character with 10 endurance would probably not live very long with their poor health, whereas a character with 85 endurance would probably be quite hardy and live for some time.

[Opcero]

Thank you, thats a great idea.