MP/energy

[Pollen_Golem]

I'd like to make a suggestion about OP's actual concern: to make all stats useful for all chars.
This makes more things relevant to melee tanks: Int, MP, eyes of draining, but not silence.
It also makes fighting skill less relevant to blaster casters, but physical attacks become less reliable backup for MP depletion.

• Reinterpret MP as energy.
• Intelligence boosts max MP, but fighting/sc/invo/evo have no effect on max HP/MP.
• Having a spellcasting skill of 0-8, 9-17, 18-26, 27 means you spend 0-1, 1-2, 2-3, 3 less MP on casting a spell, respectively.
  (edit: in other words, spells cost spellcasting/9 less MP to cast. If spellcasing/9 is a fraction, it is rounded up or down randomly, weighted by the remainder.)
• Attacking has a chance to drain 1 MP, depending on the weapon's weight vs your strength, and your fighting skill.
• You may attack at 0 MP, but you could still drain MP, sending your MP into the negatives.
• Having -X MP is equivalent to having -X slaying and -X EV.
• Flavor-wise, you may suggest that intelligent fighters have more foresight about long fights, or that they are more energy-conservative with their attacks.
• Having hostile monsters in LOS gives some kind of malus to MP regen (a la Slow Healing 1 and 2). Edit: e.g. stalls/prevents 1 of the next 2 bullet points:
• Edit: Every turn there is a (current satiation/max satiation) chance of losing 2*(4 +/- metabolism mutation level) satiation.
• Edit: Whenever you lose satiation in this way, you gain 1 MP (unless you are at max MP already).
• MP regeneration is close to zero at starving, but it's also very hard to hit 0 satiation (hunger ghosts?) - in any case, you never die of starvation.

Anyway, it doesn't seem too complex for players to easily grasp, and just might squash a few longstanding Crawl problems like a large rock of penetration.
If anybody with greater knowledge of Crawl (Sandman?) wants to flesh this mechanic out, I'd suggest starting a new thread.

[I want to believe]

I'd like to make a suggestion about OP's actual concern: to make all stats useful for all chars.
This makes more things relevant to melee tanks: Int, MP, eyes of draining, but not silence.
It also makes fighting skill less relevant to blaster casters, but physical attacks become less reliable backup for MP depletion.

• Reinterpret MP as energy.
• Intelligence boosts max MP, but fighting/sc/invo/evo have no effect on max HP/MP.
• Having a spellcasting skill of 0-8, 9-17, 18-26, 27 means you spend 0-1, 1-2, 2-3, 3 less MP on casting a spell, respectively.
• Attacking has a chance to drain 1 MP, depending on the weapon's weight vs your strength, and your fighting skill.
• You may attack at 0 MP, but you could still drain MP, sending your MP into the negatives.
• Having -X MP is equivalent to having -X slaying and -X EV.
• Flavor-wise, you may suggest that intelligent fighters have more foresight about long fights, or that they are more energy-conservative with their attacks.
• Having hostile monsters in LOS gives some kind of malus to MP regen (a la Slow Healing 1 and 2).
• MP is regenerated by converting 0.01% of nutrition into MP per turn, giving about 1 MP/turn at engorged.
• If you are at max MP, the nutrition vanishes instead of being used to recover MP.
• MP regeneration is close to zero at starving, but it's also very hard to hit 0 satiation (hunger ghosts?) - in any case, you never die of starvation.

Anyway, it doesn't seem too complex for players to easily grasp, and just might squash a few longstanding Crawl problems like a large rock of penetration.
If anybody with greater knowledge of Crawl (Sandman?) wants to flesh this mechanic out, I'd suggest starting a new thread.

From the POV of a noob who can only play MiBe, this seems to be much more complex than the existing stat system (Perhap only because this is new that the existing one is old), and as you've stated with physical attacks being less useful as a backup once you run out of MP (Or before you use MP is niche situations), it seems to pigeon hole classes as more melee or magic focused, whether that's desirable or not. Again, inexperienced opinions, just giving my first impression of that system.

[duvessa]

I'd like to make a suggestion about OP's actual concern: to make all stats useful for all chars.
This makes more things relevant to melee tanks: Int, MP, eyes of draining, but not silence.
It also makes fighting skill less relevant to blaster casters, but physical attacks become less reliable backup for MP depletion.

• Reinterpret MP as energy.
• Intelligence boosts max MP, but fighting/sc/invo/evo have no effect on max HP/MP.
• Having a spellcasting skill of 0-8, 9-17, 18-26, 27 means you spend 0-1, 1-2, 2-3, 3 less MP on casting a spell, respectively.
• Attacking has a chance to drain 1 MP, depending on the weapon's weight vs your strength, and your fighting skill.
• You may attack at 0 MP, but you could still drain MP, sending your MP into the negatives.
• Having -X MP is equivalent to having -X slaying and -X EV.
• Flavor-wise, you may suggest that intelligent fighters have more foresight about long fights, or that they are more energy-conservative with their attacks.
• Having hostile monsters in LOS gives some kind of malus to MP regen (a la Slow Healing 1 and 2).
• MP is regenerated by converting 0.01% of nutrition into MP per turn, giving about 1 MP/turn at engorged.
• If you are at max MP, the nutrition vanishes instead of being used to recover MP.
• MP regeneration is close to zero at starving, but it's also very hard to hit 0 satiation (hunger ghosts?) - in any case, you never die of starvation.

Anyway, it doesn't seem too complex for players to easily grasp, and just might squash a few longstanding Crawl problems like a large rock of penetration.
If anybody with greater knowledge of Crawl (Sandman?) wants to flesh this mechanic out, I'd suggest starting a new thread.

I've been playing crawl for 5 or 6 years and I'm having trouble grasping it

[Pollen_Golem]

Well, it's complex, but on about the same level that today's crawl mechanics are complex. Most of the changes replace one odd feature with another odd feature. We're just used to the older odd features, which some of us have spent 5-6 years getting used to. The only really new features are:

• Attacking has a chance to drain 1 MP, depending on the weapon's weight vs your strength, and your fighting skill.
• You may attack at 0 MP, but you could still drain MP, sending your MP into the negatives.
• Having -X MP is equivalent to having -X slaying and -X EV.

The other ideas are there to accomodate the main 3, and iron out inconsistencies.
Also I'd better reword "0.01% of nutrition" to "0.01% of current satiation level (which is capped at 12000 IIRC)" EDIT: even better, ^

[tasonir]

So if you're engorged you regenerate 1.2 energy a turn? And at normal hunger (which is ~3000) you'd get .3 energy a turn? Seems a bit too low for the normal case, and I'm not sure that turning rations into "triple your regeneration for a while" items is really what they are intended to be.

The system as a whole could work, but I'm not sure about tying it into food, unless you're going to really overhaul food. At this point it starts to sound like it'd be better as its own game, though.

[Pollen_Golem]

you'd get .3 energy a turn? Seems a bit too low

Too low? Since a starting mage character gets around .1 energy a turn now, .3 is way higher than that. You would get an MP regen malus with monsters in sight, but you wouldn't wait as long to regenerate it when alone.

I'm not sure that turning rations into "triple your regeneration for a while" items is really what they are intended to be.

But they could work like that, couldn't they? Their only function now is to avoid starving if you either go to a corpseless branch or get an unfortunate streak of corpse-less kills.

I'm not sure about tying it into food, unless you're going to really overhaul food.

I think satiation could be overhauled without affecting how food and eating work. Now, balance, potential issues? I can't foresee all situations, but what's the likelihood of this being more boring or tedious than the current satiation system?

[twelwe]

this is weird and complicated. some people will love that