How does the game decide to kill a <40-year-old PC with 6 health "from bad health"?

[Burned Coffee]

The PC's court sure, not the PC themselves.

Also if this is accurate then only the "vanished without a trace" deaths are as a result of pruning.

Just checked it, apparently if there is a inheritance of titles, there is a trigger for pruning and these characters do appear as "dead of natural causes" But afaik they are never in the court of the PC.

All of my pruned characters died of poor health. I think vanished without a trace is for event characters that you reject, or children that get eaten by satanists.

I don't think so. I really could be wrong, but methinks you are just facing the RNG.

 

[Dracko81]

The PC's court sure, not the PC themselves.

Also if this is accurate then only the "vanished without a trace" deaths are as a result of pruning.

The vanished without a trace is typically seen for courtiers who are generated for events that you can choose to say you don't want them. Random woman being better than your councillor, do you want to appoint instead? That event for instance, if you say yes she becomes a courtier. If you say no she vanishes without a trace.

If they want to give it to non-pruned characters, they should make the reason something that makes sense. Like "an unexpected accident" or "of unknown causes" or something. If I die of bad health, I expect to have been aware of my bad health before hand. I really doubt this was ever intended as a death reason for the player character, even if it did wind up being given for some strange reason.

I don't know where you get the idea that it isn't intended. Additionally the player never gets culled. Landed characters are immune from the mechanic as well as others, simply marking a character as special should also make them immune.

 

[faiuwle]

Just checked it, apparently if there is a inheritance of titles, there is a trigger for pruning and this characters do appear as "dead of natural causes" But afaik they are not in the court of the PC.



I don't think so. I really could be wrong, but methinks you are just facing the RNG.

Nothing random about every single one of your courtiers dying "of poor health".

The vanished without a trace is typically seen for courtiers who are generated for events that you can choose to say you don't want them. Random woman being better than your councillor, do you want to appoint instead? That event for instance, if you say yes she becomes a courtier. If you say no she vanishes without a trace.


I don't know where you get the idea that it isn't intended. Additionally the player never gets culled. Landed characters are immune from the mechanic as well as others, simply marking a character as special should also make them immune.

It looks exactly like he was pruned. If he wasn't, in fact, pruned, then that was unintended.

 

[Savijari]

Check #2 of this excellent post. I encountered the same issue a few weeks ago.

Allright... new statistics!

Health and Death
A total of 4002 characters were observed (from age 16 to death) regarding their life expectancy based on health as the variable. Other variables, such as epidemics, assassinations etc. were eliminated. There were two sets of samples, one with a health value of 6.00 which is pretty much the highest base health any character can achieve without trait/event modifiers. The other set had 5.00 health, which is the average base health of males. All characters were males, but sex here is irrelevant, the only advantage females have is their average 0.5 higher starting health. They live longer because their base health is higher on average. I should have done a 4.00 health set (which is pretty much the floor) but this experiment was pretty annoying to do (requires to actually process 90 years ingame)

Findings:
1) There seems to be a flat 4.5% chance that a character will have a mortal illness irrespective of health. Ironically this percentage was higher for the high health group, but that is just statistical randomness I think.
2) This one is a bit difficult to understand. The game distinguishes between 3 types of "natural" death. In case of "Natural" death, the character just dies apparently without any reason. The tooltip on the skull icon also says this. Someone here on the forums or reddit, can't remember pointed out that the game has a "culling" system: it does a health check every once in a while, and kills off characters who cannot make the check. The check is per individual, that is why you see people with cancer outliving healthy characters. It was also found that there are age brackets. Characters who are killed by this random check and are below age 45 automatically get the "Poor health" reason instead of the "natural death". It is possible (though very unlikely) that a Ruler Designer character with a health of 20.00 dies in a year in "poor health". The third type, "Trait" are deaths related to the character having a trait that is used as an explanation for death. The culling is the same, but if the character has a health condition, it is given in the tooltip instead of "natural".
So, without epidemics, characters on average have a 0.6% chance (for 6.00 health characters) or a 0.9% chance (for 5.00 health characters) to develop a health condition on their own, without any epidemic and die from that condition.
3) Approximately 4.5% are killed of before the age 45 by the culling.
4) The average age of characters with 5.00 health is 63.8 years, 68% falling into the 62.1-65.5 year range. Median is 65 years.
5) The average age of characters with 6.00 health is 64.8 years, 68% falling into the 63.0-66.6 year range. Median is 66 years.
6) It appears, that 1.00 health translates to one additional year lived on average, BUT most likely this is NOT linear. I expect that characters with 4.00 health would live MUCH shorter on average than those of 5.00 or 6.00, not just 1 year shorter on average. This is because they are more susceptible to developing conditions on their own, not to mention they are very unlikely to survive epidemics.

NOTES
The experiment did not include child survivability. Much like in real life, taking child mortality into account, that 1.00 health would have made a much greater difference as low health characters are very likely to die before age 6 (this is hardcoded in the game, the culling system is harsher for infants and people over 70). My suspicion that a character with 4.00 health is quite unlikely to survive childhood.
The experiment also excluded epidemics. They cannot be really tested because epidemics are extremely random (when, where and which sickness occurs). My guess is that epidemics on average lower the life expectancy by around 10 years.

CONCLUSION
My unsubstantiated estimation is that life expectancy with Reaper's Due epidemics and child mortality should be around the age of 50. War and assassinations also need to be included, but again, they are very arbitrary. The conclusion is, that expecting your ruler to reach age 60 is not a good strategy. Make sure you have a competent heir ready to take over when your ruler hits age 45.
So, the value of the health attribute largely depends on where you rule. Rulers of coastal regions are much more susceptible to epidemics than those deep inland making the health attribute very valuable to them. If you are in the very middle of the HRE you can focus more on other attributes.

 

[Guthix]

@faiuwle open the ingame console with the ` key and enter "charinfo" and then scroll over characters in the game--you'll see extra information such as DNA, fertility %, and health.

What I'd suggest you do is look for characters who have health <5 but <4 is ideal, and see how long it takes for them to die. People can lose health permanently through events other than sicnkess, such as some Mecca and Pilgrimage events, and that fucking "lose pride trait or lose 1 health haha loser" event.

In my experience, characters with ~1 health tend to last for a year or two at most, but can died rather suddenly. Characters at 2-3 have a rather high death rate, but this is on a scale of several years or even decades of living at around 2.5-3.5 health, and can live a full healthy life with mild risk at around 4-4.5 health. In the event of having <1 or, god forbid, negative health, you are almost guaranteed to die in a week if not a few days.

Conversely, characters that exceed certain health levels like 7-8 can wind up living into their 90s with relative ease, even if they contract something like the plague. The general population of India tends to have extremely long lifespans because some of their sects give a base +1 to health when you're a part of them. With traits like the the strong trait, the robust/brawny trait, and any of the health-boosting dharmic sect traits, you can wind up with >10 or even >15 health, essentially rendering diseases and wounds incapable of killing you and making it impossible for you to die before you reach your 80s of anything other than suicide, war, intrigue, or acts of God.

With all that said, I'd suggest that, since this is frustrating you so much, that you start building your characters around health level and take any sort of trait or event that increases your base health. Keep in mind that health boosts and hits from events that don't give you a modifier or trait are permanent, meaning if you take the -1 health option from the pride loss event, you will permanently lose 1 health and be unable to get it back without receiving a health boosting event like some of the hunting and pilgrimage events.

 

[Marinaliteyears]

Yeah, because I'm responsible and don't lead armies.

"Bad health" means the character was pruned by the new system introduced in Reaper's Due. The player character should never be pruned, I don't care what you have to say about RNG. There should never be any random chance of being pruned to make the game faster.

Edit: I can't believe some people actually want the game to prune their characters.

This is factually incorrect.

Characters of all ages and health levels have a chance of dying, its just that the chance of dying gets much -much- more likely as you get older, and have lower health levels. In the past, 'generic' deaths like this were called "Died of natural causes" and people would make threads like this, asking how a 6 year old died of natural causes, so the Devs renamed early generic death to be called "Death of Poor health" to make it less silly seeming when someone young dies from bad luck.

Pruning is a seperate game mechanic from random death, and is something that only kills unimportant people. Player characters are totally immune to Pruning, as are your councilors, and even married people, If I recall. so no, your character was not Pruned. your character had a very unlucky death, and you got the generic death message. (which yes, is sometimes shared with pruned charaters, because they also die for 'generic' reasons.)

So what your doing is assuming that the underlying reasons for death are the same because you got the same message, which is not the Case. Instead, simply a few kinds of 'generic deaths' share the same message.

 

[Rubidium]

As noted, every character has a random check regularly to see if they die in that time period. Health modifies the roll, as does being old. If they fail, then they die, and the game assigns a cause of death. For example, if they are sick with a specific illness, the game gives that illness as a cause (since most illnesses include a penalty to health, and that penalty presumably contributed to failing the random check). If they fail the check and don't have one of the other causes to assign, "died of bad health" is the catchall term (at least for characters younger than a certain age). So in this case, your character had a bad die roll. Welcome to the RNG.

It's the same cause for pruned characters because it is the generic death cause. If they gave a separate cause of death for most of the generic pruning ("died of not being important enough"), it would stand out like a sore thumb, and mess with immersion even more than "a bunch of randos suddenly disappeared when I inherited a county and its court" already does.

 

[faiuwle]

1) This character had 6 health, don't lecture me about my characters not having enough health, 2) this was mthe starting character, I have no control over how much health HD has anyway, 3) I am only arguing that the reason doesn't make sense and should be changed. Why don't people in this forum even read the thread or the title before posting?

 

[faiuwle]

Check #2 of this excellent post. I encountered the same issue a few weeks ago.

This is saying that my character WAS pruned.

 

[mrstevehazzard]

I think the problem is that the game uses 'died of poor health' as the generic death reason for a character under 50. So whether they got pruned or not, if they're below that age threshold and they didn't die from something specific, it will be 'of poor health'. I definitely agree that maybe they could have a different death reason for a pruned character, but it works for your character if he was 40.

 

[faiuwle]

It does not work for any character who has been consistently healthy.

 

[The kalrSalian]

3) I am only arguing that the reason doesn't make sense and should be changed. Why don't people in this forum even read the thread or the title before posting?

What reason doesan't make sense? The reason your character died was because that particular month you rolled really bad on the healthcheck. Thats it, and this happens for all characters every month. Even if u had 1000 health u could still die because the dice was not in ur favour. This is literally how the game has worked since release.

Yes high health make it less likely for you to die but it never eliminates the chance of it happening. You simply experienced bad luck, now deal with it. Thats what this game is about.

 

[hwoosh]

marking a character as special should also make them immune.

I wish this worked reliably, but... I regularly mark my talented, unlanded commanders and councilors as special to try and keep them, yet on every succession I see half or more of them get pruned

 

[Rags17]

1) This character had 6 health, don't lecture me about my characters not having enough health

Per @Savijari's post there is a fixed chance to die no matter what your health. The chance goes way, way down if you have high Health but it never goes away completely. You got poor, maybe even bad, luck, but it wasn't completely out of the ordinary.

As I tried to suggest in my first post - there are many things that can kill a healthy person in the prime of their life, the game is simply trying to capture that.

2) this was the starting character, I have no control over how much health HD has anyway

• Family Focus = +1 Health
  
• Health Focus = +1 Health, chance to get Hunting Dog event for another +1 Health
• Carousing Focus = Chance to lose Stressed and Depressed traits (which have HUGE Health maluses)
  
• Theology Focus = Chance to get events that remove bad traits such as Glutton and Drunkard
• 
  
• Pilgrimage Decision = Chances to gain all sorts of helpful traits, lose bad ones
• Hajj Decision= See above
• Recruit Physician = Can help remove disease traits, cure some altogether
  
• 
  
• Build Hospital = Increased resistance to disease

3) I am only arguing that the reason doesn't make sense and should be changed. Why don't people in this forum even read the thread or the title before posting?

CK2 is a really, REALLY big picture game - we are literally talking about hundreds of years and tens of thousands of characters in the game. In the course of a single campaign you may play 20, 30 or more characters. Losing one to a random event is supremely annoying, but that's how the game plays. If random death and sudden disasters don't appeal to you then you have two options -

1) Don't play Ironman
2)Don't play CK2.

Good luck with your next character !

 

[faiuwle]

I'm not complaining that my character died, it's fine, I had an heir, I had a chance to change my succession from gavelkind. It's just that "poor health" doesn't make any sense with this character. I can't get rid of this reason by not playing ironman, you have to go edit the localization, probably. I don't know why Paradox doesn't do that, it's really simple.

 

[Dracko81]

I wish this worked reliably, but... I regularly mark my talented, unlanded commanders and councilors as special to try and keep them, yet on every succession I see half or more of them get pruned

That sounds interesting, have you made a bug report about it? The pruning at succession might have different rules as the other pruning that occurs. Pretty sure the intention is that special marked characters should be immune to any culling.

I'm not complaining that my character died, it's fine, I had an heir, I had a chance to change my succession from gavelkind. It's just that "poor health" doesn't make any sense with this character. I can't get rid of this reason by not playing ironman, you have to go edit the localization, probably. I don't know why Paradox doesn't do that, it's really simple.

Actually your topic and first post look like you are complaining that he died. As stated above the old cause was of natural causes, but there were threads every month or so complaining about that. There is literally nothing wrong with the wording.

Considering I had a health issue when I was much younger than 40, which can lead to death. I was very active and there was no underlying cause, just one of those things they still don't know the cause of.

There is nothing wrong with the localisation, there is nothing wrong with your character randomly dying at 40yo. It comes down simply to be unlucky. If you can't fill in the gap with a death reason using RPing or logic, there is little else anyone else can do.

 

[faiuwle]

My thread was about

How does the game decide to kill a <40-year-old PC with 6 health "from bad health"?

That's it, that was the thread.

Considering I had a health issue when I was much younger than 40, which can lead to death. I was very active and there was no underlying cause, just one of those things they still don't know the cause of.

And I suppose you went to the doctor and they said "yeah, that just happened because you had poor health. Eat some asparagus"?

 

[mrstevehazzard]

I'm not complaining that my character died, it's fine, I had an heir, I had a chance to change my succession from gavelkind. It's just that "poor health" doesn't make any sense with this character. I can't get rid of this reason by not playing ironman, you have to go edit the localization, probably. I don't know why Paradox doesn't do that, it's really simple.

Is there something that you'd rather have seen given as a reason for your character's death?

 

[faiuwle]

God, do you people even read the threads before you post?

If they want to give it to non-pruned characters, they should make the reason something that makes sense. Like "an unexpected accident" or "of unknown causes" or something. If I die of bad health, I expect to have been aware of my bad health before hand. I really doubt this was ever intended as a death reason for the player character, even if it did wind up being given for some strange reason.

"Died suddenly of unknown causes" is better, but yeah, basically.

 

[mrstevehazzard]

Okay.

So you answered the question yourself almost 20 posts ago, and 'unknown causes' sounds good to me. So we understand the reason why even otherwise-healthy characters under 50 die of 'poor health' and you've come up with a phrasing you prefer, so we're all good I guess? Glad to hear it.