Originally Posted by
BenMathiesen
I've gotten Str up to 30 or so from eating high-level giants. I think the issue is not when natural training starts to run out, but that some stats have reliable sources of unnatural training while others don't.
Str: giant corpses
Le: reading difficult spellbooks (esp. Wish)
Ma: kobold shamans and frequent PP depletion
Dx: bugs (if you're willing to retrain Wi after)
But I don't think this is a problem, and I don't think characters (even trolls) need to raise their stats to 30. Yes, the str drain from undead is especially annoying for trolls, but that just makes undead and greater demons something to be feared, and rightly so.
^This, although I'd disagree about Learning, as it spellbook reading virtually never works - spellcasters start with enough Le so that pitiful rewards from books will go unnoticed, other classes are unable to even read those.
When you think about from RL perspective, I'd say the following stats should be more trained more naturally -
Strength (already the case)
Dexterity (you are constantly practicing after all dodging the attacks)
Perception (try to constantly track movements of everything around you without getting better at recognizing patterns)
Willpower (you never sleep, rarely eat and constantly do something - I'd say that's a clear case of steady determination)
Mana is almost perfect to be trained while spellcasting and seems balanced very well IMHO.
Charisma we'll look in current version where companion RFE was implemented.
Appearance is rightfully (or is it?) never trained - if anything, you should get progressively more ugly after all that damage. Although an interesting quirk with races can be implemented to help balance the game a bit - say, humans would value perfectly shaped and built bodies (Strength), elves would value an untarnished beauty and grace (Dexterity) and so on.
Toughness puzzles me a bit. Regenerating health can be interpreted in both ways - (your body grows accustomed to the needs to fix damage and get more sturdier) or vice versa (really crippling for game balance I'm afraid). Getting better after sickness can be boosted in stat training (currently it's pitiful).
Learning seems like an unlikely candidate for natural training.
Another argument which may or not have been mentioned in the original RFE (sorry, JS, there's too much stuff there to read :D) is the following:
There is a fixed limit to burden training on Strength which is 18 (20 if you don't mind Dx). However, think of races, their potentials and the actual logic applied. If a human starts with 10 strength, he's averagely strong and can get higher with some training. For trolls 18 is about the average for all adventurer trolls. It will make sense for them to be able to grow stronger by using the same method as humans - carrying loads of stuff. Personally I think some actually "natural" training methods should not stop. As balance issues are sure to be taken into account, we can always impose something like (currentStat/potentialStat) penalty to make training available for all, but hard for all in the
same manner.