Vitality should regenerate, not health

[lokiju]

I find it very illogical (and overly annoying) that health regenerates like I'm superhuman, but my energy doesn't come back without the health of potions or a pylon?

 

If this is a balance issue, then I'd rather have harder mobs than have to go back to pylons all the time.

 

Anyone have any insight as to why Jeff did this? I never played any of the other games, so not sure if it also worked that way in his G and A games?

[Lilith]

This is the first SW game that has this kind of health regeneration at all, and it's controversial enough as it is. Jeff explained that he still wanted there to be some kind of resource that had to be conserved over the course of a series of battles, so that players would start to feel a little stressed as they ran low during a dungeon. There are enough vitality potions in the game that running low on vitality shouldn't ever be a crippling problem, anyway.

[A less presumptuous name.]

If it were vitality that regenerated, players could simply use healing spells repeatedly until they were at full health, and then let their vitality bring itself back up. To make vitality-regeneration work without breaking the game totally, Jeff would have had to remove healing spells.

[lokiju]

Originally Posted By: Master1

If it were vitality that regenerated, players could simply use healing spells repeatedly until they were at full health, and then let their vitality bring itself back up. To make vitality-regeneration work without breaking the game totally, Jeff would have had to remove healing spells.

This is why spells have cooldowns, no? In any case, maybe I'm just bad at it, but I'm in no way able to outheal incoming damage in this game.

Again, endurance/vitality should regenerate as we take breaks...our wounds shouldn't heal like Wolverine.

[Superba]

When you are in Incubus company with a level 5 party, as you reported, I think you are a good player with some even better strategy. But point is that at that low level every fight may be really hard, too hard I believe, and your vitality suffers of the unusually low power of your Party. It would also depend upon which game are you playng (normal, hard or torment?). In the end I agree with Lilith when she says there's enough vitality potions in the game... when the game is played with a Party at the "right" level compared to the hardiness of the quest.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: lokiju

This is why spells have cooldowns, no? In any case, maybe I'm just bad at it, but I'm in no way able to outheal incoming damage in this game.

Early in the game, you're not supposed to be able to -- on higher difficulties, there are a lot of fights where you still can't do so even later on. Try a more aggressive strategy: lock down enemies with debuffs and then kill them before they recover (Shadowstep is a brilliant early-game skill, Daze isn't terrible either, and both are cheap in terms of vitality). Use healing potions when necessary: they exist for a reason, and you can use one and still attack in the same turn. Another thing to keep in mind is that Shamans can heal other PCs without spending any vitality at all, so if you are running into vitality trouble, bring Jenell along.

[Demseinwetter]

I personally vouch for the regaining of health, because seriously, running around until you meet the gates of a friendly town, which would magically restore your health, is annoying. And it's not much fun. Health has to be restored somehow, I think regeneration over a course of time is a fair deal. I definitely like this better than running around Avernum.

[lokiju]

While I understand (and can even agree) the points presented (and I did take on more than I can chew under the dragon caves), I still feel that at the very least, logic/realism (even in a fantasy game) would dictate we recover energy instead of health at a superhuman rate.

[Lilith]

I dunno, I feel like it's more important to make a game that works well as a game and let the players come up with their own tortured justifications for what's actually going on in a highly abstracted imaginary world that doesn't actually exist.

[Dikiyoba]

If it helps, some of the in-game messages when you're fighting opponents suggests that the health bar doesn't measure actual injury but is more along the lines of minor scrapes and bumps from getting knocked around, while the vitality bar represents exhaustion and overwork. When looking at regeneration from that angle, the current system makes a lot of sense.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Aoslare]

Except that minor scrapes and bumps don't kill you.

 

Hit points and health scores have been unrealistic since the earliest days of RPGs. HP was a holdover from war games where they represented the number of hits, or losses, a unit could sustain before it became a casualty. In other words, they were highly abstracted, and did not represent any one thing.

 

RPGs use hit points in more ways, though, and that killed the abstraction without making things any more realistic. Most RPGs have you gain health as you gain levels. On an abstract level, this makes a certain amount of sense: having more experience in combat means you may have a better idea of how to survive it. The problem is that HP is also used as actual health: if you hit a 1st level PC and a 10th level PC with the same fireball, and they are chained to a wall, it is likely to kill one and not the other. And that's where it all falls apart.

[Lilith]

And then somehow a 10th level PC at half their max HP is harder to heal up to full than a 1st level PC at half their max HP. It's probably best to just not think about it too much.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

Except that minor scrapes and bumps don't kill you.

Strictly speaking, neither does health loss in Avadon (or the later Avernum games). It knocks the character unconscious. If the whole party is unconscious, there's nothing to prevent them bleeding out, or nearby enemies killing them. So, kind of like what Dikiyoba said, HP represent something more like pain tolerance and ability to avoid unconsciousness while injured and losing blood. This also explains why that Navy Seal has so many more HP than Joe Average: they may both die from a bullet to the head, but the former is much more likely to avoid incapacitation from a bullet to the arm. This still isn't tremendously realistic, and enough consideration will reveal definite holes in this idea as well, but it does make much more sense than conceiving of HP as amount of injury away from death. If nothing else, near-fatal injuries often cause the sort of trauma that incapacitates people for weeks, not minutes or hours, and various forms of permanent damage. We can make some allowances here for magical healing, but even that has to at least remain internally consistent.

[lokiju]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

And then somehow a 10th level PC at half their max HP is harder to heal up to full than a 1st level PC at half their max HP. It's probably best to just not think about it too much.

Or, someone can improve on it? I mean, why invent the wheel when people had perfectly good packs? Why invent light bulbs when candles worked?

Accepting the status quo often leads to stagnation.

[Aoslare]

The problem is that it's difficult to make a system that is realistic AND plays well.

 

Here's a favourite essay on the subject:

 

http://www.driftwoodpublishing.com/whatis/JCCombat.htm

[Gerry Quinn]

Indeed, it's hard to make it perfect. It would have been perfectly fine gameplay-wise to have both health and vitality regenerate.

 

Lilith nailed it in the first post when she said that the aim was to make players feel a little stressed. Jeff is actually on record as pointing out that the need to conserve vitality is basically an illusion, i.e. there are plenty of vitality potions, sao much so that there is never any real need to return to a pylon for a charge-up.

 

Played through on hard, and this was true, and indeed I didn't use either charge-ups *or* vitality potions often, even though I used abilities almost unrestrainedly. Jenell needed potions much more than Nathalie or my Shadowalker, for some reason. Maybe Nathalie would have got thirstier if I had concentrated on her 'charge-ability' skill - I only got this very late. The shadowalker hardly ever ran out. I guess it depends a bit on builds and how you play.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Gerry Quinn

It would have been perfectly fine gameplay-wise to have both health and vitality regenerate.

It would make vitality a redundant stat, though. The recharge time already limits ability use in individual battles, and recharging it would negate its function of stressing out players during long encounters.

Dikiyoba only ran low on vitality once or twice (on casual) and only after getting the earthshatter scarab.

[Gerry Quinn]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Originally Posted By: Gerry Quinn

It would have been perfectly fine gameplay-wise to have both health and vitality regenerate.

It would make vitality a redundant stat, though. The recharge time already limits ability use in individual battles, and recharging it would negate its function of stressing out players during long encounters.

True, it would be redundant. But would that affect gameplay much?

Its function is to stress out players during long levels. But that function is really illusionary. We're not talking about real funtions here, we're talking about how things are perceived by the (perhaps unsophisticated) player.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I've used a decent number of vitality potions on my recent torment playthrough. Never enough to run out...probably about 75% of the potions I've gotten so far, but none of the elixirs. I found my blademasters (PC and Sevilin) go through vitality quickest, mostly because of casting triumphant roar before any challenging encounter (which is most of them on late-game torment). Jenell and Nathalie consume vitality pretty quickly, Shima not so much. I find the shadowwalker skill set the least useful, so that's probably why.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

The problem is that it's difficult to make a system that is realistic AND plays well.

Here's a favourite essay on the subject:

http://www.driftwoodpublishing.com/whatis/JCCombat.htm

btw this website is run by the dude who made The Riddle of Steel, which is A Good Game that you should play if you are into tabletop RPGs

[Aoslare]

It's true. I almost linked to some of the TROS mechanics concerning blood loss and shock, but decided that that was overkill.

[Superba]

With regard to "realism", the game might be more realistic if each character and each foe could loose attack points in proportion with the health and vitality (the latter only for characters) loss during the fight. I.e. if so, a foe with half of his health left would strike much weaker, and the same for the character. But I am not able to hypothisize in which ways a method like this could change (good, bad?) the game.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Superba

With regard to "realism", the game might be more realistic if each character and each foe could loose attack points in proportion with the health and vitality (the latter only for characters) loss during the fight. I.e. if so, a foe with half of his health left would strike much weaker, and the same for the character. But I am not able to hypothisize in which ways a method like this could change (good, bad?) the game.

This can lead to a phenomenon called the death spiral, where having the advantage early in the fight leads to increasing advantages throughout the fight, and so it becomes very unlikely for someone to come back from an early disadvantage. Death spirals are usually considered a design flaw.

[Superba]

I see :-) and I presume that in Avadon the fact a character can use self healing or potions while a foe (often) cannot raise his health could unbalance fights... ?

[Denizen of Terrestia]

Originally Posted By: Superba

I see :-) and I presume that in Avadon the fact a character can use self healing or potions while a foe (often) cannot raise his health could unbalance fights... ?

Thats what AI is for!
Besides, in most fights they run to get help, use spells, potions, etc themselves.