Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1244
Joined: Thursday, 10th March 2011, 19:45
Fighting HP idea
One of the things that came up was that the reason why fighting should affect HP is that "fighter" type characters should be physically tougher than spellcasters. However, in practise it does not work out like that as with the removal of victory dancing, a spellcaster can train fighting just as easily as a melee character.
Going back to victory dancing is not an option, so as an alternative, how about making some other skills that a "fighter" is more likely to train than a spellcaster also affect HP.
The simplest proposal would be to use the same formula as now, but instead of using fighting alone, use the average of fighting and best melee weapon skill (including unarmed.) I don't remember anything like this being discussed before, though I could have missed it.
This would make it more likely that characters who actually fight in melee would have more HP than casters, and would also be an incentive for those characters to train weapon skills beyond what is necessary to get the minimum delay.
Of course it could have downsides as well - for example, it would allow characters to get respectable HP without ever training fighting which could have a big effect on balance. It might be possible to solve this by making a more complicated formula, perhaps including other skills - maybe armour, secondary melee weapons or shields, or alternatively maybe using the lowest of fighting and weapon skill instead of the average.