Racial/Fighting HP

[dolphin]

Should the HP gained from Fighting reflect racial HP gains? There was some discussion of this earlier Ogre Healthcare, but I don't think that was the main point of the OP.

However, there tends to be class-based HP gain (a caster-type doesn't gain as much Fightingas a physical-type, just because a caster isn't played that way), so this may not be an issue at all.

Here are some pretty numbers.
Method: Start selected species; WIZ; XL 27; Skill levels 27.

(Species Hunter) Apt | Racial/R+Fgt | Gain | (Fgt/R) | Adjusted Gain = R + 1.09R

Human 0 129/269 - 140 (1.09) ...
Troll -2 - 171/311 -140 (0.82) 357
Ogre +2 - 163/298 - 135 (0.83) 341
Spriggan -2 90/235 - 145 (1.61) 188
Deep Elf -2 98/243 - 145 (1.48) 205
Naga 0 157/297 - 140 (0.89) 328
Kenku +1 103/243 - 140 (1.36) 215

[galehar]

The bonus from fighting doesn't depend on race. It's (Fighting * XL) / 5 (except for felid where it's /7).
If anyone wants to help solve that issue, make a chart with the base racial HP for each race at each level (with fighting = 0). Yes, that's very tedious. I'll try coding it, but I'm not sure when I'll have the time to do so.

[KoboldLord]

Here's a simple solution:

All races get the same base hp per level, and the same hp bonus for fighting skill.

Deep elves and spriggans start with Frail 2.

Trolls have Robust 3.

Other races fall somewhere in between. These are racial mutations that cannot be removed.

If we want the 'real' Frail and Robust mutations to stack on top of these, just give the racial ones a different name.

[dolphin]

Alright, here's the beginning of the spreadsheet for Galehar. I like KoboldLord's idea, though.

[danr]

I _really_ like KL's idea. Using the same mechanics for the same things really simplifies design and makes things more transparent to the player. Other racial differences already show up as "mutations" - speed 3, herbivore 2, etc.

These mutations just might need a little rebalancing to make them approximate current racial HP differences.

The other thing I would suggest is boosing the XP level HP gain a little at the expense of the Fighting HP gain. I think it's poor design that pure casters have to grind fighting purely for the sake of HP, when they have no intention of actually using melee. Pure casters should be playable / survivable without having to essentially go hybrid.

[dolphin]

Editing the spreadsheet works now. If only I could find the edit button on the forum

[Strongpoint]

I think HP should be influenced by size, halflings and ogres with same HP isn't logical at all

[zasvid]

I _really_ like KL's idea. Using the same mechanics for the same things really simplifies design and makes things more transparent to the player. Other racial differences already show up as "mutations" - speed 3, herbivore 2, etc.

Seconded, that's a simple and elegant solution.

I think it's poor design that pure casters have to grind fighting purely for the sake of HP, when they have no intention of actually using melee. Pure casters should be playable / survivable without having to essentially go hybrid.

I think it's poor design that they are allowed to. After all, the whole idea of Fighting skill giving HP is to give pure fighters some advantage that could try to counterbalance lack of spells. It probably needs to be moved out of a skill and tied to Str and Dex somehow (or something different altogether), but that's a discussion for another topic (and also I think it was already discussed somewhere on this very forum).

[dolphin]

Table is finished and locked (lemme know if you want it unlocked again). I still like KoboldLord's idea, though.

[evilmike]

I think it's poor design that they are allowed to. After all, the whole idea of Fighting skill giving HP is to give pure fighters some advantage that could try to counterbalance lack of spells. It probably needs to be moved out of a skill and tied to Str and Dex somehow (or something different altogether), but that's a discussion for another topic (and also I think it was already discussed somewhere on this very forum).

If they weren't allowed to right now, you'd wind up with deep elf casters with < 100 HP at level 27, opening yourself up to being one-shot by certain enemies. For example, certain enemies can cast iron shot or LCS with damage amounts greater than 80 or 90 (I was once hit for about 87 from an iron shot cast by frederick, on a deep elf that had 85 hp). Training fighting is an easy way to give yourself a bit of an HP boost on characters like this, increasing survivability by a not insignificant amount.

It might be bad design that some races are encouraged to train fighting for HP, but this is largely because they are so frail in the first place.

I do know of a few players who simply opt to ignore fighting on casters and do fine, but I've had one splat caused by doing this and a lot of close calls which could have been avoided if I had more fighting skill. I don't like playing characters where I know things can one-shot me if the a the rng isn't in my favour.

[galehar]

Table is finished and locked (lemme know if you want it unlocked again).

Thanks a lot for that!

I still like KoboldLord's idea, though.

I don't.

• It limits us to -30%/+30% range. Currently, felids are -45% and trolls +34%.
• It limits us to just 7 scales for our 24 races.
• It overlaps with the mutations.
• To conclude, it brings many limitations and some complications and doesn't offer anything. Also, it doesn't address the problem of the bonus from fighting which is actually the one we are trying to solve here.

So back on topic: HP bonus from fighting. First, why does it exist and why do we want to keep it? Because we want fighters to have more HP than casters. But not such a big bonus. I can't crunch the numbers right now, and I won't be able for the next 2 weeks, as I'm leaving, so I'll just leave a few pointers if anyone wants to tackle the task. In my opinion, what we need to do is:

• Base the fighting bonus on the racial HP. Frail races gain less from fighting, so they won't bother training it if they are pure casters.
• To compensate, give them more base HP.
• Calculate the base HP with a mathematical function. The current trend is to give less HP per level at high level, so maybe something like (XL*r)^k. With r depending on race and k < 1.

[galehar]

It doesn't need to be limited to seven values. "You are extremely robust (+35% HP)" or "You are extremely frail (-45% HP)" would work just fine.

Great, now we have to change the mutation system to allow ones with more than 3 levels. What's the point of designing it as a mutation? It's just more work to code and is completely useless. Can we focus on the fighting bonus instead?

[co]

Don't have much time right now so this will be brief:

I think 7 levels are enough, we could spread them out more if we think its necessary. (like -45%, -30% -15% +0%, 15%, 30%, 45%).
Why would we need more levels? less levels are cleaner, the differences should be significant.

Also by using the mutation interface it becomes transparent automaticly, in the same way other mutations are transparent. Using the mutation interface is a good idea.

If we use just adjust the current frail and robust, it won't be much to code right? No need to complicate things.

The current robust and frail mutation is quite weak as it currently is IMHO, removing them as regular mutation and add them as permanent racial mutation (Not the right words but anyway) is a valid option I think.

[dolphin]

The main advantage of KoboldLord's proposal is that it's transparent.

And simpler, which reflects the coarser skill apts we now. I know nothing of coding, but FWIW, it seems like it might be easier to have a single HP progression for all species, and then slap on mutations as needed, especially when adding more species. Currently all species are special-cased in terms of HP progression. Even if there were 2-3 base HP progressions to which the Frail/Robust mutations could be added, a system like that would be easier to mess with in the future. Still, if the chart helps, I'm glad of it.

[danr]

Yeah, I really like the transparency of this. It also increases consistency - why are some species traits treated as mutations, and others are treated in the black box of the source code?

Ideally I think all the aspects of a species should be apparent to the player on the % screen, whether as abilities or "innate weirdnesses".

I agree that seven levels is plenty, and the range can be easily adjusted. I think they should be symmetrical though, eg frail 3 should be -40% and robust 3 +40%.

I'd put a refinement on the proposal though. The starting point for racial HP should be character size - that's what actually determines how much bulk is there to absorb blows, missiles, etc. Then you can adjust that up and down with the frail / robust intrinsics.

The other thing that seems to me should affect HP is Strength. The advantage of this is that casters can use it to increase their HP a bit, but at the cost of Int. This is similar to the tradeoff between training fighting and spellcasting, but is probably proportionally a bigger tradeoff and also involves no grinding of non-class-related skills.

So e.g.:
- Human are of course the standard - normal size, not robust or frail.
- Spriggans would have low HP due to their tiny size. They are not necessarily frail or robust considering their size.
- Deep Elves / Kenku are normal size but frail to some degree.
- Minotaurs / Hill Orcs would be normal size, robust
- Trolls / Ogres would be large, but not robust for their size.

For transparency, size should be listed in Innate weirdnesses too.

Starting background then would not affect starting HP other than through the Str attribute. Fighters would have more starting HP than wizards of the same race because their bodies are more built.

I think with factoring in Str and body size (or perhaps it should just be Str, as species already have different base Strs to reflect their size), you would not need many levels of frail / robust to have a wide range of HP levels to start with.

And then you give racial HP bonuses per XL, because it's an RPG and that's what happens.

The result is very intuitive and easy to explain, using actual game terms:

- Spriggan wizards have low HP because they are little and weak.
- Human wizards have less HP than Human fighters because they are weaker
- Trolls and Ogres have more HP than humans because they are big and strong.
- Minotaurs have more HP than humans because they are strong and robust
- Dwarves have more HP than humans because they are strong (+1) and robust (+1)
- Alternately, Dwarves have more HP than Humans because, even though they are smaller (-1), they are strong (+1) and very robust (+2) for their size.
- Deep Elves have less HP than High Elves because they are very frail.

[danr]

As a further way to help understand the distinction between the effects of Str, body size and frail/robust:

- Str indicates how much muscle mass you have
- Frail / Robust indicates how tough your skin and bone structure are, maybe even how "tough" your "meat" is.
- Body size affects how much skin, bone and muscle is there.

[Curio]

I thought, back in the Ogre thread, main idea said by co was:

"Make the difference in racial hp gain significant. Racial hp gain should be important."

So, besides making races reflect their robustness, maybe it's wise also make that HP gained from race higher than HP gained from Fighting skill.

This will also make less scum-inducing for casters to train fighting. If you are frail Deep elf - a little training will be quite insignificant overall.

Completely opposite crazy idea - bound HP gain to a stat.

[Curio]

I think, you overcomplicated a bit. The less factors there is - the better, I think.

- Str indicates how much muscle mass you have

Not necessarily so

- Frail / Robust indicates how tough your skin and bone structure are, maybe even how "tough" your "meat" is.

Honestly, I thought that this was covered by +AC bonus. Draconians, Nagas, Ogres etc. have tough skin therefore armor boost. If it's also gonna be HP boost - it will bw quite confusing and hard to balance.

- Body size affects how much skin, bone and muscle is there.

Personally, I think this one covers all. In real life, size matters. The bigger you are - the more beating you can take due to body mass. That's why most brutal sports have weight category

Spriggan can be robust and very strong. For a spriggan. If something like Ogre, (n-times bigger than it is) steps on it - spriggan will be crushed like a bug. Crunch gonna be loud due to robustness, but still

[danr]

I do think body size should be the most important thing, but it can't be the only thing or DEWz would have the same HP as MiFi (both are normal size).

Str makes the most sense as the factor to add in, because that is already a pre-existing difference between backgrounds. So the DEWz with Str 5 or whatever and the MiFi with Str 20 would have very different HP.

Arguably, those two could be enough, and then simply boosted by XL. DEWz would still have less HP than HuWz as long as DE have lower racial starting Str than Hu.

So in this system, it is effectively racial HP, but it is racial HP in that it is driven by the base Str and body size of each race, rather than being a separate racial intrinsic of itself.

Frail / robust can be achieved then just by adjusting Str. DEs and Kes will be more "frail" because they tend to start with lower Str, and they don't get any random Str bonuses. However, if the appropriate level of HP cannot be achieved just by starting Str, then frail / robust can be added in as final tweaks. And then of course everyone's HP scales with XL.

The result:
- Casters are not rewarded for training fighting
- Casters can get more HP but only at the cost of precious Int level-ups (or +str mutations)
- Fighters naturally get more HP for boosting their Str
- Dex-based fighters will have some reason to invest in Str (although Dex could also have a smaller effect on HP, which would be another way to help casters too.)

[Curio]

Str makes the most sense as the factor to add in, because that is already a pre-existing difference between backgrounds. So the DEWz with Str 5 or whatever and the MiFi with Str 20 would have very different HP.

I agree. This also will make Str stat more important. Right now Int is #1 stat even for melee oriented characters because of redundancy of other two.
Problem #1 is, this is very drastic change and will impact balance very much. Devs are very strict about changing fundamentals. And they are rightly so.
Problem #2 is Dex being less useful stat in this case. Int - mana, Str - health. What left for Dex? Speed?

Arguably, those two could be enough, and then simply boosted by XL. DEWz would still have less HP than HuWz as long as DE have lower racial starting Str than Hu.

Yes. robust/frail is better reserved for mutations and left out from base HP equations.

- Dex-based fighters will have some reason to invest in Str (although Dex could also have a smaller effect on HP, which would be another way to help casters too.)

Come to think of it, makes sense.
Strong characters use armor. Do not dodge - get hit a lot therefore HP are more of use for them.
Dexterous characters evade attacks completely. Need HP just to not be 1-2 shotted. Those who feel less confident - invest more in Str.

[danr]

Dex also boosts EV (and does it help with spellcasting?)

My hope would be that these factors be balanced in a way that pretty much reproduces the existing HP differences. My main goal is just to make them more transparent and simple, and to do away with the silly business of casters training fighting.

The simplicity is achieved by removing the separate racial HP factor, tying that instead to body size / str / frail/robust (already existing mechanisms so this means fewer total attributes to balance) and also removing the fighting bonus to HP.

I think a case could be made for Dex to also have a lesser effect on HP, on the basis that your flesh is somehow healthy / more supple / flexible.

With this system:
- Str-fighters would focus on Str, as they currently do. No need to change that.
- Casters would get some benefit from dex and more from Str, which they would have to weigh against the all-important Int.
- Hybrids would have reasons for boosting each of their three stats - Str for HP and carrying capacity (they won't get it high enough to really do much for damage output), Int for spellcasting, and Dex for evasion and some HP.

The racial tradeoff for size remains one of Str and HP in exchange for Dex and EV, and of course other racial traits (speed, hunger, weapon sizes).

[Strongpoint]

The result:
- Casters are not rewarded for training fighting
- Casters can get more HP but only at the cost of precious Int level-ups (or +str mutations)
- Fighters naturally get more HP for boosting their Str
- Dex-based fighters will have some reason to invest in Str (although Dex could also have a smaller effect on HP, which would be another way to help casters too.)

- Strength boosting items become more useful (it's good ) I almost never use this ring of str


But main problem here it's huge rebalancing. Some races may benefit hugely (Demigods, ogres, trolls) some may lose to many HP (halflings, kobolds, humans)

Also, if fighting will stop to give HP, it become almost useless

[danr]

Clarification:

- Magic Str boosts would not count as these don't reflect actual body mass. So potions of Might, Rings of Str would not also boost HP.

- Rebalancing - the factors should be weighted and the formula designed so that it reproduces roughly the way HP is currently.

- Fighting also gives damage and to hit boosts. Its XP cost could be reduced to reflect the reduced value, or its effect could be increased a little.

[tazoz]

Here's a simple solution:

Each race has a set amount of hp gain per level, an example:

Ogre 8
Troll 7
minotaur / naga / Mountain dwarf (maybe 5) / Draconian 6
human/ high elf / sludge elf / deamon spawn / Hill orc / Merfolk 5
Deep elf / Spriggan / Kenku / Halfling /Kobold 4
Felid 3

Fighting adds 4% hp for each skill level so:

Max hp (rounded down):
Race / equation / with 27 fighting / without / with 10 fighting
Ogre: 8+8*27*(1+0.04*x) = 457 / 224 / 310
Troll: 7+7*27*(1+0.04*x) = 400 / 196 / 271
Naga: 6+6*27*(1+0.04*x) = 342 / 168 / 232
Human: 5+5*27*(1+0.04*x) = 285 / 140 / 194
Deep Elf: 4+4*27*(1+0.04x) = 228 / 112 / 155
Felid: 3+3*27*(1+0.04x) = 171 / 84 / 116

10% extra hps mutation adds before fighting bonus so: 22 point hp bonus for Ogre at level 27, 14 point hp bonus for Human and 8 hp bonus for Felid.

[dolphin]

27 Fighting currently gives 145 HP across the board, while racial gains vary from 66 HP (Felid), 121 (Human), 163 (Troll). Adding 145 to all of them gives 211, 266, and 308, respectively.
Humans 45% of this potential HP from just leveling up, Trolls 53%, and Felids 31%, meaning that Trolls could invest less in Fighting, and still have good endgame HP, while something with only a little racial HP, like Felids or Deep Elves, needs to invest more heavily in to bring their HP up to average.

I think that Relative Racial HP gains could be even across the board (50-60%?), with Fighting and possibly Strength filling the gaps. With 60% racial HP, using adjusted potential HPs, Felids would get 87 Racial/58 Fighting/145 Potential, Humans 159R /106F /266P, and Trolls would get 214R /143F /358P.

It makes more sense if you can see it. Racial HP Adjustments. Here's the original.

[MrMisterMonkey]

(hp gain from fighting is already lower for felids)

[KoboldLord]

[*]It limits us to -30%/+30% range. Currently, felids are -45% and trolls +34%.

I think you miss the point that my suggestion was trying to address.

Trolls are only +34% hp over humans at 0 fighting. If both the human and the troll train up to 27 fighting, this advantage shrinks to 15%. Similarly, the penalty for being felid or deep elf shrinks dramatically as they train fighting. Eventually racial hit points are a less than half of most races' total.

The significant point in my suggestion is that the race modifier goes AFTER fighting is applied, not before. The frail and robust mutations are an existing system that already does exactly that. Whether you expand the existing system or create a new system that has the same functionality is a judgment call for the person coding the change.

[*]It limits us to just 7 scales for our 24 races.

Aptitudes were shrunk to a coarser scale, too, and only having 9 possible aptitude levels didn't seem to damage the skill system any.

[*]It overlaps with the mutations.

Yes, just like all the other racial differences, like troll hunger and regeneration, or claws and teeth.

[*]To conclude, it brings many limitations and some complications and doesn't offer anything. Also, it doesn't address the problem of the bonus from fighting which is actually the one we are trying to solve here.

It does address the bonus from fighting. Frail or robust gives you a modification to your fighting hp as well as your racial hp, because it applies at the end after everything else has been calculated.

[*]Base the fighting bonus on the racial HP. Frail races gain less from fighting, so they won't bother training it if they are pure casters.

This is functionally identical to my suggestion.

Great, now we have to change the mutation system to allow ones with more than 3 levels. What's the point of designing it as a mutation? It's just more work to code and is completely useless. Can we focus on the fighting bonus instead?

First off, there are already existing mutations that have more levels than 3. The +stat mutations go up to eight. Second, there's no actual reason that the game needs to give a bonus or penalty to hp more finely than increments of 10%. Does anyone care that a 25th-level grunge elf has 2hp more than a 25th-level eager elf?

Felid doesn't actually have a 45% penalty to hit points, because those felids all train fighting.

I'd put a refinement on the proposal though. The starting point for racial HP should be character size - that's what actually determines how much bulk is there to absorb blows, missiles, etc. Then you can adjust that up and down with the frail / robust intrinsics.

I know there's some support for linking various statistics to size, but I'd be very cautious about that. Making lots of regularly used statistics infer their value from other statistics can cause a lot of unpredictable knock-on effects down the line if those other statistics need to be changed for some reason.

Simplest way to put hp where you want it is to slap on a multiplier and call it a day. No change elsewhere in the monster-sized program that is Crawl can possibly mess with your setup, and if you decide you need to change it again it will be a simple matter of swapping out some variables. The number of races is unlikely to reach such high numbers that increased efficiency from inferred variables will eclipse the readability of the code in value.

Str makes the most sense as the factor to add in, because that is already a pre-existing difference between backgrounds. So the DEWz with Str 5 or whatever and the MiFi with Str 20 would have very different HP.

This also has the consequence that the game will actively resist attempts to create a race with low strength paired with high health or high strength paired with low health. It is open to question whether you'd ever want to do this, and if you don't then this is no problem. On the other hand, the current system has ogres who are good spellcasters but bad at every particular school of magic, so odd combinations like that aren't exactly without precedent.

(hp gain from fighting is already lower for felids)

Is it? Then just extend that to all the races, putting their hp wherever you want them to be. Using frail and robust is more transparent, if transparency is desired, but fundamentally both solutions are the same.

[galehar]

Clarification:

- Magic Str boosts would not count as these don't reflect actual body mass. So potions of Might, Rings of Str would not also boost HP.

- Rebalancing - the factors should be weighted and the formula designed so that it reproduces roughly the way HP is currently.

- Fighting also gives damage and to hit boosts. Its XP cost could be reduced to reflect the reduced value, or its effect could be increased a little.

Thanks danr, I find your proposal very interesting. Some comments:
I wouldn't worry about giving hp for dex. EV needs a nerf anyway. If dex ends up not being useful enough, then maybe make EV more dependent on it.
Under this system, koboldlord's idea makes more sense. We could give the frail mutation to felids and ogres for example (ogres could afford to have a bit more hp IMHO).
Raising str to 8 should have about the same result as training fighting to 5.
Raising str 9 times should bit about the same as training fighting to 27.

[danr]

I always get warm fuzzies when a dev is interested in my idea...

[seth]

- Body size affects how much skin, bone and muscle is there.

Personally, I think this one covers all. In real life, size matters. The bigger you are - the more beating you can take due to body mass. That's why most brutal sports have weight category

I don't think this is strictly true. Chimps are stronger than humans, for example (they can pull about the same weight at about half the size). Strength and toughness often have more to do with body structure than body mass (across species, not just across humans).

If we just let size determine health or strength, that'd be boring--it'd just be a linear relationship and the same for every race in their size group. That would prevent some potentially interesting races from being made, like a race that's giant but relatively weak and frail (and intelligent), or small races that are extraordinarily strong and robust, but still can't use two handed weapons.

[vintermann]

I really like danr's proposal. The important things is mixing strength into it, taking away opaque racial peculiarities, and making the contribution from size more predictable (and significant). But it needs to be done in a way that preserves certain things we want to preserve. Spriggans, for instance, can't have all that much fewer HP than today, especially at lower levels! Even though they will be hit with both a low-str penalty and a tiny size penalty.

What I'm currently doing with the food reform proposal is setting up some pseudocode (actually, it's runnable code, but not suitable for direct inclusion into the source). I set up the behavior I want to preserve (Spriggans must still never be allowed to eat sausage, kobolds must never be allowed to eat bread, humans must be able to eat all sorts of permafood etc.) and play around with formulas to make it all work out. I found a pretty good one after a lot of trial and error.

I think we should do the same with this proposal. A spreadsheet is probably a better option than the C code I'm using It will be hard to preserve roughly the same HP advantage for most races, but it would be worth it.

[dpeg]

I was only going to reply in two weeks, when galehar is back. But it seems they have these internets now also in the US!
Everyone here agrees that a racial modifier should come at the end, I think (just like the Robust/Frail mutations do already). Disagreement is about from what additional maximal health should derived: Fighting skill, other skill, and/or stats. And whether or not to use innate (and more finely grained) mutations. And finally whether starting health (from background) should be derived from a stat or not.

As I said before, I don't like the Fighting skill. (I have a proposal at home where all melee skills are involved instead. This means in particular, that raising melee skills beyond one is good for something, but there are some subtleties to clear up.) However, that's not really relevant to the question at hand. For that, we have to crunch numbers. Thanks for the help with that, to all who contributed to the speadsheet. For example, we have to settle on the granularity on the "beefiness" innate mutation (which should be distinct from Frail/Robust). The fewer, the better, obviously.

Regarding stats, I've said a few times that it'd be conceivable to use the nine stat choices for HP purposes. I'd give full effect on HP for Str, half for Dex, none for Int. However, that is secondary and need not be undertaken in the first go. I feel confident that we can have a new max HP system for 0.9. For now, we should be trying to get 0.8 out of the door.

[wesleyshaver]

DPEG,

One of the main reasons I like KoboldLord's suggestion so much is that skills no longer affect HP. Tying HP to mutations is transparent in a way that tying them to skills is not (just open your mutations screen and you can easily see why your Deep Elf is so fragile). I also like Danr's suggestion of giving an HP bonus via STR (I'd suggest each point of STR gives 1 HP). This would make STR more valuable compared to the other stats which is a bit of balance that I think Crawl needs anyway.

Giving HP bonuses from Fighting or Weapons skills is not intuitive at all. Those skills should give bonuses to hit and damage.

[dpeg]

We want a pure melee fighter to have significantly more Health by game end than a pure caster. I doubt that you'll get there in a good way without taking into access skills. For one, even a pure caster will be able to spend a number of stat increases on Str. This is not what we want!
The goal is to set up an easily implementable system, not a cloud castle. We'll keep the effect of skill (Fighting for now, perhaps something better later), but apply the following changes: turn the effect of species on HP from arbitrary numbers to fixed multiplier; and apply that factor at the end (like the Robust/Frail mutations).
At least that's the plan so far as I understand.

[danr]

We want a pure melee fighter to have significantly more Health by game end than a pure caster. I doubt that you'll get there in a good way without taking into access skills. For one, even a pure caster will be able to spend a number of stat increases on Str. This is not what we want!
The goal is to set up an easily implementable system, not a cloud castle. We'll keep the effect of skill (Fighting for now, perhaps something better later), but apply the following changes: turn the effect of species on HP from arbitrary numbers to fixed multiplier; and apply that factor at the end (like the Robust/Frail mutations).
At least that's the plan so far as I understand.

Just a point of clarification: will you take it as a sign of good design if casters give up on trying to increase their HP? And if so, do you think that casters should get just a bit more base HP somehow so that it is not necessary to train fighting as a caster?

Currently, all my casters end up as hybrids because of this. It seems "Never turn off Fighting" is no-brainer advice for all characters right now.

I'd be very happy if the game let me just play a pure caster and have a decent chance of survival. Whatever change makes that happen, I'm for it.

I agree though with the above comment that tying HP to skills is unintuitive.

dpeg, I take it as a challenge from you that the desired fighter / caster HP differentiation cannot be achieved without getting into skills. I'm going to try to work up a spreadsheet that would show how this could work.

I do think the balance right now is good, I just want to substitute investing in Str for grinding up fighting skills.

[dpeg]

minmay: Yes, that's a good way to see it. Note that changing the racial effect to come last will already make Fighting less attractive to pure casters. That's why I suggest to start with just this step, and think about further innovations after the dust has settled.

[zasvid]

We want a pure melee fighter to have significantly more Health by game end than a pure caster. I doubt that you'll get there in a good way without taking into access skills. For one, even a pure caster will be able to spend a number of stat increases on Str. This is not what we want!

I doubt that you can achieve this goals with skills in their current form without any degenerate behaviour. Available xps are an abundant resource and pure casters will whack rats with xps to spare to improve their HP as long as it's possible. However, the number of stat increases you get to choose is quite limited and tying HP to Str would create a meaningful decision - do you want to boost your spellcasting via Int or survivability via Str (and, maybe in some cases, Dex could also be in consideration). It would be an improvement over the current situation, because it adds an interesting choice and removes grinding Fighting. It is not an ideal solution, but certainly an improvement of the current situation. Only downside - if it leads to any rebalancing, it will be a lost effort if an ideal solution requires this to be undone.

Also, while I was thinking about the whole issue, it occured to me that there is another resource that is heavily used by spellcasters, but not at all by pure melee fighters and could be used to fix the situation: spell slots! If you could trade in spells slots for HP permanently, it would certainly achieve the goal of pure melees having more HPs than casters. This would perhaps require differentiation between level-gained spell slots and those from Spellcasting, so fighters wouldn't start grinding Spellcasting for HPs (though if you only allow trading in a maximum of spell slots that you've got from levelling, this problem would be solved). Also, the amount of HP gained from traded in spell slots should reward bigger investments more, because it wouldn't be good if this required spellcasters to get by with a core set of spells and drop the rest into HPs for a significant gain (perhaps you would get +1 HP for first slot, +2 HP for second etc., so it would be quite probable that getting another spell could be a better lifesaver than a measly few HPs).

[danr]

minmay: Yes, that's a good way to see it. Note that changing the racial effect to come last will already make Fighting less attractive to pure casters. That's why I suggest to start with just this step, and think about further innovations after the dust has settled.

Okay, I'll trust you on that. Once the dust settles though I can't promise I won't be back with more of my wacky ideas!

[dolphin]

Until something is implemented and playtested, I'd say KISS. While I like the ideas for non-racial HP gains, especially danr's Str-based one, I think HP is pretty complex already, and changing that system into something else is going to be a piece of work. Focus on the fundamentals (Racial HP, Fighting HP, KoboldLord's Innate Mutations), leave the peripherals for later, and it will probably be implemented sooner.

[TGW]

New HP = Class HP + racial HP*(1+fighting/18)

[galehar]

I was only going to reply in two weeks, when galehar is back. But it seems they have these internets now also in the US!

I can't help keeping an eye around, but my contribution to the discussion will be very limited until I come back

[danr]

New HP = Class HP + racial HP*(1+fighting/18)

Is that a proposal, a decision, an actual that's been made? Please clarify!

[TGW]

it's the best proposal

[acvar]

As much as I hate the fighting skill simply moving its effect to weapon skills will cause a whole world of problems. People will grind weapon skills just to get more HP, and whether that is a pure caster increasing his best proficiency or a real fighter dumping experience into cross training other weapons it all going to be ugly. I agree that non-caster should have more HP then casters. So here is the radical proposal.

1. Get rid of fighting skill. (people can't grind what is not there)
2. Increase everybody's base HP.
3. Make each level of a spellcasting skill (spellcasting, fire magic, hexes...) give some penalty to HP.

This gives the desired effect, but prevents anybody from grinding to achieve higher HP. Spellcaster will train spellcasting skills and as such will have lower HP. Pure fighters won't train spellcasting skills and as such will not have the penalty and will have more HP.

[ryak]

New HP = Class HP + racial HP*(1+fighting/18)

This.

Every other discussion is a distraction i think and should only be taken up after this obviously good change gets made.

[KoboldLord]

New HP = Class HP + racial HP*(1+fighting/18)

You want each background to have an inherent hp curve that irrevocably changes the character and cannot be altered post-chargen? Doesn't that kind of violate one of Crawl's design philosophy, that backgrounds are just a starting point and given enough effort anybody can cross-train into any other build?

Seems like you'd be pressured to play one of the high-hp growth backgrounds in the early game, no matter how unpleasant you find that play style, in order to cross-train into whatever you really wanted later on. Otherwise, you're gimped in the late game with no compensation.

[MrMisterMonkey]

it is a constant offset based on class and iirc it already happens (no multiplication, no curve changing)