How to make a Stamina/HP system work

[remiel005]

I don't know where the designers are going on this or what others have suggested, but here are a few ideas I had for health/stamina.

 

Stamina doesn't automatically regenerate after combat.  Instead there is a short-term rest (like a 5 minute breather) where stamina restores and /encounter abilities recharge.  This would allow for better management of barbarians specifically, since they do increased damage at lower stamina.

 

The stamina to health ratios also influence whether or not damage is applied to health.  So most characters must take 4 damage or any multiple of(rounded down) converted to health damage.  For a barbarian it would need to be damage by multiple of 8s.  So a fighter grazed for 3 points of stamina would receive no wounds, more of a winding experience, but a crit for 43 points of damage would cause 10 health loss.  Effects like poison, deep wounds or monk wounds could then tick more frequently at lower values and not significantly hurt adventuring day longevity, while still affecting the flow of combat.

 

Allow healing spells to bring people back from being knocked unconscious.  Healing in the game already seems slightly counter-intuitive with the system, don't see why healing classes can't have some specialty in combat.

[Seari]

Quoting myself from the other thread:

Why does health and stamina have to be affected by damage (ratio) at the same time? Why not when stamina is depleted you take health damage? This is how I thought it worked when I first saw the health/stamina system. Or if that goes against the spirit of the idea or whatever, why not have health affected only when stamina is low, maybe under 50% or 30%? This would increase the adventuring day and make the system more intuitive overall IMO.

 

Or the health/stamina ratio could increase/decrease the lower/higher your stamina is.

[Namutree]

Quoting myself from the other thread:

Why does health and stamina have to be affected by damage (ratio) at the same time? Why not when stamina is depleted you take health damage? This is how I thought it worked when I first saw the health/stamina system. Or if that goes against the spirit of the idea or whatever, why not have health affected only when stamina is low, maybe under 50% or 30%? This would increase the adventuring day and make the system more intuitive overall IMO.

 

Or the health/stamina ratio could increase/decrease the lower/higher your stamina is.

That's a cool idea.

[morhilane]

 

Allow healing spells to bring people back from being knocked unconscious.

 

Those were planned at some point, the Priest Kickstarter update mentioned a spell called "Revive the Fallen" that revive unconscious party members and the Paladin was supposed to get a command that does the same.

 

These might be higher level abilities, the BB stop at level 8 after all, but the level cap is 12.

[illathid]

Sure, but then you're breaking the 1:1 damage ratio again. Not sure if that'll help with the new system being clearer.

Not that I really have problems with either 1:1 MaxHealth:MaxStamina or 1:1 HealthDamage:StaminaDamage, but having at least one of these constant would be good, I think.

 

I'm toying with another idea, though, which might be easier to present to players, while functionally being pretty much the same :

 

Switch "Health" to a "Restoration Pool" - getting damaged doesn't drain your green bar, being healed does. 

 

(And let's call Stamina/Endurance "Hit Points",  - they're exactly the same, so it's not because it makes more sense, but this post would get (more) confusing otherwise. Also, "Restoration Pool" is a dumb name, but can be abbreviated easily.)

 

Keep the values they're implementing for now. 4 Health:1 Endurance -> 4 RP:1 HP (... or uh, 3 RP:1 HP, actually. Health(-1):Endurance) Healing is done on a 1:1 scale. In or out of combat, doesn't matter.

Run out of HP? You're knocked out.

Run out of RP? You're still standing, but no more healing for you.

Run out of HP with an empty RP bar? You're goners.

 

There are some edge cases, though. Health:Endurance can easily support "knock-out gas", Endurance damage without affecting Health. This one? Not so easily. (But I think the "Restoration Pool" would handle the converse better. Special attacks that also affect another bar would stand out more than special attacks that affect one bar more than usually.)

When and how to implement Maimed status might need some rethinking as well. Can't have that occur on 0 RP, because it doesn't make sense to have maimed status be triggered by a healing action.

 

Hmm.

I've suggested something similar on the game mechanics board. It's mainly just. A cosmetic change, but I think it might help people view health, RPG, or whatever as a strategic resource, rather than something to keep topped off at all times.

[Lioness]

Isn't the system they have en Xenonauts equivalent to the one in PoE but less confusing.

 

In Xenonauts, you can only heal in the field 1/2 of the damage taken, the other 1/2 damage can only be healed by resting in the base (preferably in a hospital bed).

 

Isn't the PoE system roughly equivalent  to that except with a different ratio, and unnecessarily complicating it by adding another pool ?

 

Sorry if this has been brought up many times before, but what I am thinking about is a system with one pool only, but 20% (for example) of the damage can only be healed by resting.

[Ark Evensong]

I've suggested something similar on the game mechanics board. It's mainly just. A cosmetic change, but I think it might help people view health, RPG, or whatever as a strategic resource, rather than something to keep topped off at all times.

 

Yeah, I saw, after commenting on yet another thread where this idea was brought up. I think you were first, though. (At least, in the last couple of weeks. Dunno if there were others before. I haven't seen 'em, but it's fairly big forum with about two years of content.)

 

It's perhaps a little "gamist", but I like it, and I think it would be clearer to new players. I'm okay with the current system, though (with some tweaks, but they're working on those.) - So I won't complain too loudly.

 

Isn't the system they have en Xenonauts equivalent to the one in PoE but less confusing.

 

In Xenonauts, you can only heal in the field 1/2 of the damage taken, the other 1/2 damage can only be healed by resting in the base (preferably in a hospital bed).

 

Isn't the PoE system roughly equivalent  to that except with a different ratio, and unnecessarily complicating it by adding another pool ?

 

Sorry if this has been brought up many times before, but what I am thinking about is a system with one pool only, but 20% (for example) of the damage can only be healed by resting.

 

Ooooh. No, not really equivalent, but I like this as well.

 

It's not really the same because in the current system, you start each combat at full strength until you hit the bottom of the health bar, at which point you're in trouble, while in your (or Xenonauts') system, you'd start each subsequent combat a little worse for wear.

 

As an example, consider these subsequent fights, during which a 100 HP character receives no healing, and takes 80 damage before the fight is over.

 

Fight 1:

Current: Survives with 20 Stamina/Endurance, restores back to 100 - Health at 80 (or 320, if we're using the system we're expecting to see in the next patch)

Yours (at 20% rest-only restoration) : Survives with 20 HP, restores back to 84 HP (20+80*0.

Fight 2:

Current: Survives with 20 Endurance, restores back to 100 - Health at 60 (/240)

Yours: Survives with 4 HP, restores back to 68 HP (4+80*0.

Fight 3:

Current: Survives with 20 Endurance, restores back to 100 - Health at 40 (/160)

Yours: Is downed after 68 HP damage. ?Restores back to 54 HP? (0+68*0.8, rounded) (Maybe there should be a "downed" penalty? -10% max HP or something? Skipping that for now.)

Fight 4:

Current: Survives with 20 Endurance, restores back to 100 - Health at 20 (/80) (or, restores back to 80, if I understood some of the planned 'clarity' UI updates.)

Yours: Is downed after 54 HP damage. ?Restores back to 43 HP? (0+54*0.

Fight 5:

Current: Upon last hit of the fight, is downed and DEAD, or Restores with 1 Health and Maimed status.

Yours: Is downed after 43 HP damage. ?Restores back to 34 HP? (0+43*0.

Fight 6:

Current (if Permadeath is off): Is downed upon first hit of fight and DEAD. Stays DEAD properly this time.

Yours: Is downed after 34 HP damage. ?Restores back to 27 HP? (0+34*0.

... etc, etc. (restores to 22, 18, 14, 11, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 ... um, yeah, definitely needs a "downed" penalty somewhere.)

 

I think that should illustrate the difference - under your system, you start dropping out of fights sooner, but you'll survive longer. (If there's no "downed" penalty, anyway.) Sure, we can tinker with the recovery percentage, but it'll never line up completely - I think that's okay, though.

 

Certainly an interesting system. Worth considering, in my opinion.

 

[EDIT: because the darn thing is messing with emoticons and font sizes. Ugh.]

Edited September 22, 2014 by Ark Evensong

[frapillo80]

A noobish question: currently, is there any way a downed character (who still has health) can lose further health either from area of effect spells or from being targeted by enemies?

[Randomthom]

The health/stamina system is PoE's THAC0.

 

It's not complicated per-sé but it is not intuitive.

 

I fully expect there to be a short tutorial built into the final release of the game that explains it better but right now (build 278) I'm finding myself suffering somewhat from information overload in combat.

[Lephys]

I'm pretty sure the new change is highly intuitive. If you take 10 damage, you lose 10 Stamina AND 10 Health. You'll just have more Health than stamina. If you run out of stamina, you are downed (you're not dead, but you can no longer operate well enough to fight, at the moment). If you run out of Health, you die (or are maimed or whatever, depending on whether or not you turn on the absolute death option).

 

Pretty intuitive.

 

Really, though, I've gotta say that they'd be neglectful if they didn't at least take advantage of the fact that each pool functions differently. Some stuff should only damage Health without damaging Stamina, and vice versa. I know there's nasty spider venom that skips your stamina and goes straight to health, but there should really be some instances in the game in which you take stamina damage but not health damage. Or at least different amounts.

 

Just off the top of my head, maybe a graze results in 100% of the attack's stamina damage, but only 50% health damage? Maybe a critical deals more health damage than stamina damage. Maybe Fighters can get some defensive abilities that allow for only Stamina damage to occur (but, at the cost of taking MORE total numerical damage, so it's not just free damage mitigation -- 10 damage to stamina AND health would become 20 damage to stamina, etc.).

 

Stuff like that. I get that it serves a function regardless, but I really think the strategic/tactical aspect of the differing Stamina (now called "Endurance," I suppose) and Health pools.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I have to admit, I almost didn't recognize you without the Slowpoke avatar picture. Are you a Beta participant, or is what you said just conjecture? I don't mean to invalidate any points you have made, I'm just curious about your experience with the current build of PoE.