Playing a non-healer?

[Unparallelogram]

How do characters that do not naturally regenerate health over time recover reliably from damage? Is there some sort of strategy they can use to keep themselves alive? I am new to this game, so there may be something obvious I overlooked. I tried playing a Deep Dwarf Necromancer as a caster that was described as easy. Most of the time I can kite my enemies and avoid damage, but sooner or later I get hit hard. My heal potions and the wand are very limited. Vampiric draining seems to barely return any health, especially since whatever I'm draining next to me will be taking hits at me. I also tried to play a Vampire in the bloodless form and came across similar issues. Please advise. Thanks.

[absolutego]

you have a rather thorough list over here, at the bottom:
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Deep_dwarf

for deep dwarves and vampires in particular, vampiric draining and makhleb (who restores HP and MP for kills) work very well. as a deep dwarf you'll have to rely on healing wands and potions until you can cast the former reliably, or get enough piety for the latter, but keep in mind that you can recharge any wand at the cost of a permanent MP (see 'a'). for vampires, there's little need to play bloodless during the early game (poison resistance helps, but you can do without much rC and rN).

so, pretty much what you said. the early game as a deep dwarf can always be rough, but as soon as you can cast vampiric draining reliably you're set. if you consistently have problems with this setup it's probably a matter of bad threat assessment: try to kill the dangerous stuff at a distance with wands or slings and use vampiric draining on the easier stuff, invest in stealth, pick your battles, etc.

[sxoz]

Vampiric draining seems to barely return any health

I thought this too, the first couple of games where I tried using it. But it actually does work well. It seems to work better, the more health you need and the more health the enemy has. If you're only down a few points of health, it won't do much, but if you're at 50% health and the enemy has plenty of health left, it'll give you a lot. It also seems to get stronger as your stats go up (I'm not sure if it relies on Necromancy or just high Int/Spellcasting). I think.

[Unparallelogram]

Thanks guys!

Besides vamp draining, is there a method that is particularly sustainable over a run, rather than just for emergencies? I'm not planning to play as a Healer background, because it seems like it would limit some options like Necromancy.

[joellercoaster]

For sustained healing support you can worship can Makhleb, who gives you MP and HP for killing things. Trog also has a regeneration ability, but it has costs (unlike Makhleb's, which is passive).

[edit: removed bad advice about Regeneration.]

Seriously though, I've managed to get a DDNe to about XL19 using only Vampiric Draining before he died stupidly - it's a matter of getting a feel for when it should be used, but once you have that, it gets a lot easier!

[Whart]

Quite sure that deep dwarves can't use the regeneration spell. Spoiler wiki says that the health you drain with vampiric draining is based on spell power, which is based on (in this case) necromancy skill, plus any boosters.

[danr]

Vamp. draining healing (and damage done) do depend on how hurt you are - at full health it won't do much if anything at all, I think.

It's a really cool spell because it deals a lot of damage, in addition to healing you. I often find myself HOPING to lose some HP so that I could clobber them back with Vamp. draining.

Makhleb's healing gets better toward the end of the game, I think it is tied to monster HD or something, such that one or two kills can often restore you to full health. My last game I was pretty much ignoring my HP near the end, except during tough branch-end fights, because good old Mak was pretty much constantly healing me to full after every other fight.