Deep Dwarf vampiricism should heal MP not HP
Posted: Friday, 24th March 2017, 19:49I've been playing DDNes lately, and HP being a consumable encourages tedious play. Every natural enemy is a HP source and you don't want to waste them. If it's slow and has fast regen like a worm, you definitely don't want to kill it, because you can stash it somewhere for future draining. You can easily kite worms and cast Vampiric Draining on them repeatedly to get as much HP as you need.
I thought about ways to fix this, but I can't think of any easy option. Let's say vampiric attacks drain from a separate non-regenerating HP pool, and you get some message like "The worm's life force is too weak to drain" if it's empty. You'd still want to stash natural monsters if you were at full HP so as not to waste that HP pool. Stashing monsters breaks autoexplore so it's very annoying.
I considered making vampiric healing increase an uncapped "vampiric energy" pool instead of healing, which can be converted to HP by resting. This would remove the problem of stashing monsters when at full HP, but it doesn't prevent the problem of wasting monster HP if you kill them with a non-vampiric attack. Meet some popcorn monsters at low MP? You can't just tab them because you're wasting HP. You have to rest up and drain that HP every time.
I don't see any way to make vampiric HP healing non-tedious for DDs. The obvious solution is to make it heal MP instead. This is thematically appropriate, and it encourages DD casters to get up close to their enemies, which is fun. If this is too much of a difficulty increase (and DDs already lost healing wands) then healing from potions could be increased to compensate.
I thought about ways to fix this, but I can't think of any easy option. Let's say vampiric attacks drain from a separate non-regenerating HP pool, and you get some message like "The worm's life force is too weak to drain" if it's empty. You'd still want to stash natural monsters if you were at full HP so as not to waste that HP pool. Stashing monsters breaks autoexplore so it's very annoying.
I considered making vampiric healing increase an uncapped "vampiric energy" pool instead of healing, which can be converted to HP by resting. This would remove the problem of stashing monsters when at full HP, but it doesn't prevent the problem of wasting monster HP if you kill them with a non-vampiric attack. Meet some popcorn monsters at low MP? You can't just tab them because you're wasting HP. You have to rest up and drain that HP every time.
I don't see any way to make vampiric HP healing non-tedious for DDs. The obvious solution is to make it heal MP instead. This is thematically appropriate, and it encourages DD casters to get up close to their enemies, which is fun. If this is too much of a difficulty increase (and DDs already lost healing wands) then healing from potions could be increased to compensate.