[Balance] HP-casting should be more costly
issueid=1201 08-24-2012 12:18 PM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by Grey: 58
[Balance] HP-casting should be more costly
Make HP casting abuse To and Wi, or make it more expensive

At the moment late game casters have it really easy since they can cast from HP indefinitely, healing up with infinite sources like spenseweed. The Mana penalty is irrelevant, especially in the late game sections. There needs to be a bigger penalty for this abuse. Ideas:

- Change the cost of casting from HP to double the PP amount instead of half the PP amount
- Make HP-casting abuse Toughness and Willpower, and abuse them much harder than it currently abuses Mana.

I kinda prefer the latter solution since it doesn't punish early game players so badly (in the early game HP-casting can be vital for sticky situations).

Edit: Some good ideas below, including:

- HP-casting has a big satiation cost, meaning over-reliance leads to starvation (this is perhaps my personal favourite idea).
- Make each HP-cast cost an additional 5 per cent of your max HP. This prevents abuse whilst still making it a valid tactic for difficult situations.
- HP-cast spells take more time, as per the higher energy cost of book-casting.
- Casting from HP corrupts when in corrupting areas, with more corruption in areas with higher background corruption.
- HP-casting has a chance to stun/sicken/confuse/paralyse (I really don't like this myself - HP-casting is often used in difficult situations, and having this effect would simply stop people using it ever).
- Casting from HP has a chance of failure, similar to wrenching the final charge from a wand.
Issue Details
Issue Number 1201
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category Windows 7
Status Implemented
Priority 8
Suggested Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 2
Implemented Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 7
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 8
Votes against this feature 3
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




08-25-2012 02:41 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Silfir
That's what I meant with "overshooting". If you make the satiation cost severe enough that it actually becomes an honest-to-god hindrance in late game battles, it will also be severe enough for early game wizards to get into actual trouble with food.

As it stands, though, losing turns in an orb guardian battle or such isn't much of a concern; you can spend your time eating in Coward mode. Grey probably has the best expertise on this subject, having won the game with an acid spitter - how frequently do you have to run out of food before it actually hurts?
As I pointed out, the idea is to make occasional HP-casting fine, but continuous HP-casting more difficult. Early game spellcasters aren't going to spend all of their time casting from HP, because they're too fragile and their available HP is small relative to the cost of spells (and they have slower healing and lack methods of additional healing). It is in the late game that HP-casting becomes standard operating procedure, and thus it is in the late game that satiation issues would become a major problem if this were implemented. But if the concern is that it'll be too strong against early game spellcasters, then you can easily address that by modifying the amount of satiation consumed by HP-casting based on one of a few factors (an easy option is to make it increase with character's level, but not linearly - that would be too fast).

While I'm sure you can eat while in Coward mode, it's still a risky thing to be doing. You've lost HP from the casting, you have to complete the eating process in order to get the satiation (meaning, cancelling due to low HP or other such issues wastes the time you spent trying to eat), further casting in case of danger would only make matters worse, and thus you find yourself needing to finish eating in order to prevent reaching Starving, and having your stats drop... should you cast to the point of starvation, stopping to eat would be dangerous due to being attacked with lowered stats while trying to eat. And then you get the extra issue with To abuse (actually, I think abusing all stats - except perhaps Mana - would make sense).

Having said that, I offered a number of approaches to making HP-casting more risky. Temporary stat drops, slower casting from HP, and satiation issues would all work, in my opinion... perhaps some combination could work well. And there's a reason why I noted the idea of making HP-casting slower was my favourite choice - if casting an 80PP spell from HP meant that you were effectively leaving yourself completely open to attack for 8 turns, most wouldn't take that risk in such contexts. If this were combined with making tactics affect offensive magic (say, increasing/decreasing power of offensive spells by 20% for each step either way along the tactics spectrum), using Coward wouldn't help much with this.

08-25-2012 04:58 PM
Ancient Member
My acid spitter relied on a lot of tricks to survive. In the fire tower he had drakeling speed, hugely smithed up PV and the stunning spell to help down the ACW. In the mana temple he *outranged* the archmage's spells (yeah, I'm cool :P). And on D50 he used a wish for speed and did a lot of teleporting about to defeat the balors, but it took a very long time. And acid spitting doesn't even use up all that much satiation. Casters could certainly have ways to get around food costs for HP-casting, but it would involve thought and effort and some tricky situations, which is exactly as it should be.

And satiation costs wouldn't hurt low level chars much since the HP cost would still be the bigger deterrant by far. It's impossible to HP-cast numerous times in a row at low level already.

08-25-2012 05:47 PM
Ancient Member
I never cast from HP. The prospect of dropping my Mana stat always was enough of a deterrent.

08-25-2012 05:51 PM
Ancient Member
Alright guys I'm gonna jump in headfirst like I always do! You guys are throwing around some big ideas and whatnot, but I'm just gonna say my piece.

First: My Cred. I've won twice. Only Twice. Both times were with a spell caster. First one was a Wizard, second one was a Necromancer. Both spellcasters. The Wizard closed the gate, the Necromancer killed Andor Drakon and became an evil god.

BUT: Once they hit that last level, I think 95% of my spells were cast directly from hp. I'm not even joking. I'm almost positive Andor Drakon drains PP. And on the last level, both of them had to deal with teleporting Balors and had to get away from both them and Fistanarius, and neither one was too big on getting hit by Chaos Creeps.

Also, the mana temple. Had to HP cost from there, and nearly died both times anyways cause the boss there is no slouch.

Now, my wizard, she was a fragile thing, who pretty much casted her way through the game. She probably could have tried melee some more. But my Necro, she barehanded almost every monster in the game (for shadow touch), and pretty much the only thing I didn't kill that way was some really tough Golems, and the Balors. She could kill Chaos guys with her barehands, and the golems with her flail.

BUT EVEN WITH ALL THAT: She still casted a lot. Especially against those Balors and in the Mana temple and against Andor Drakon.
Was it easy to keep casting? Yes. Was it easy to heal? Not as easy, but it wasn't super huge. She had cure serious wounds, which I used a lot of.
But the point is, she HAD TO. I didn't have any PP! It's not like I could wait around for it to regenerate! Both chars were that way. I had a few blessed scrolls of power, which I read, but honestly it was kinda pointless cause they didn't recharge me enough for it to matter much.

So what am I getting at? I don't know. But I'll say this. At the end, I didn't have a choice. It was cast from HP, or not cast at all.

08-25-2012 06:48 PM
Ancient Member
Yeah, that sure is food for thought. Maybe abusing HP-casting in the very endgame is not so bad after all. This makes me lean towards HP-casting abusing more stats (To and Wi for example) rather than stuff like sickness, paralysis, etc.

08-25-2012 07:38 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by anon123
I never cast from HP. The prospect of dropping my Mana stat always was enough of a deterrent.
If you haven't, I recommend you to try it. In the beginning I did the same, never ever casting from HP because I was too scared of the consequences. But when you try it, you get a feeling of how it plays out (especially in the endgame).

About the methods.. in the end, I don't care much how it is addressed. If a nerf happens at all, I'm happy.

08-25-2012 07:53 PM
Ancient Member
Oh! I also wanted to point out that with my Wizard I did actually pray several times to get full PP, which helped. It was pretty much the only way to get a decent charge. But, my Necro, I didn't even Bother. I killed Fistanarius and all the balors and had to wait around to get full corruptions to go through the gate. I had like 700 PP then or so. But once I crossed, and almost instantly had zero I didn't even bother. What's the point? My god would give me PP, next turn it would be gone. Same for the Scrolls.

So I don't really know what the solution is there. Make it easier to get PP back?

One thing I could think of is, take out healing spells. None of my melee people have ever cast a healing spell, and outside that last level I don't think either of my spellcasters did either. If I needed healing I always used potions first anyways. If I couldn't heal more than it cost by quite a bit, it might have been an issue to cast from HP, (If I had a choice about it anyways.)

08-26-2012 07:30 AM
Ancient Member
I think Lasher's point here has a lot of merit. On the one hand, getting PP back in the endgame is actually pretty terrible, because it's capped at 1PP/turn. Anyone who's tried mindcraft in the endgame knows the pain of having no easy way to restore PP and no HPcasting. Allowing for methods to increase PP regeneration beyond current levels might be a way to offset additional penalties with HPcasting. If you could regenerate 2-3 PP per turn, say, then you can fill your battery quite a bit faster--but if you are going to be teleporting every other turn to get through the lower levels quickly, you'll still run out pretty fast and then be faced with a more risky HPcast.

I think the Mana Temple is sort of an interesting illustration of the problem. In theory, I would say, the Temple is designed to be a nightmare for casters, because there's hordes of monsters who constantly drain PP, so you basically never can cast properly. In reality, even if all of the PP drainers were removed, it would probably make no difference since most casters going in probably don't have much PP stored up anyway, and will quickly end up casting from HP to clear the multitude of summons. The only effect that the PP draining in the Mana Temple really has is to screw mindcrafters who want to use their talents, and make it hard to get that 1 PP for your wand of far slaying to activate the Archmage.

As an aside for Lasher, yes, Andor does drain monstrous amounts of PP. Praying for PP would have been... a bad idea though.

08-27-2012 04:18 AM
Ancient Member
Yeah, a big problem is that scrolls of power are pretty ineffectual. I've made a separate post about that.

Incidentally, isn't it cool that we're even getting to talk about this sort of thing? A few weeks ago such discussion would have seemed pointless.

08-27-2012 04:00 PM
LFk LFk is offline
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Grey
Incidentally, isn't it cool that we're even getting to talk about this sort of thing? A few weeks ago such discussion would have seemed pointless.
The truth.




Anyway, I personally wipe the Mana Temple with very minimal HP casting, but using ~2-3 prayers along with scrolls of power and a source of invisibility. IMO making HP casting very punishing would not make this location outrageously difficult, just reliant on a tolerant deity. A source of invisibility is all but guaranteed by MT.

Andy is another story for Chaotic casters. I guess it would really force them to develop an appropriate weapon skill, and get a huge pile of slaying missiles.

11-01-2012 07:18 AM
Junior Member
I have another idea. Significantly increase the HP cost of spells and/or make it proportional to max HP. Then...

Blood Magic (skill)
Improves the ratio HP-PP ratio for casting spells from health. Classes starting with Blood Magic: Necromancer, Druid, Chaos Knight (instead of Concentration).

Alternatively, makes it a class power of one of the above classes. Druids were no strangers to blood sacrifices so it fits, besides they're N= and not lawful.

11-01-2012 02:31 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by b0rsuk
I have another idea. Significantly increase the HP cost of spells and/or make it proportional to max HP. Then...

Blood Magic (skill)
Improves the ratio HP-PP ratio for casting spells from health. Classes starting with Blood Magic: Necromancer, Druid, Chaos Knight (instead of Concentration).

Alternatively, makes it a class power of one of the above classes. Druids were no strangers to blood sacrifices so it fits, besides they're N= and not lawful.
I like this. It would help making wizards less overpowered compared to other casters, and especially help necromancers who need a little bit of love.

11-01-2012 03:18 PM
Ancient Member
Cool idea, b0rsuk. You should make your own RFE for that to ensure it gets noticed.

11-01-2012 03:29 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by b0rsuk
I have another idea. Significantly increase the HP cost of spells and/or make it proportional to max HP.
Personally I would prefer seeing % of current HP [instead of max] with limit of minimalizing drain [likely at current ratio]. That way emergency casting would still be a thing.
Increasing HP drains is probably best case as core of problem now is that you can cast quite a bunch of spells before even considering healing.

On same point removing HP cast option from healing sells would not hurt either. HP casting heal spells to actually get hp is not very healthy, IMHO.

11-01-2012 04:10 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Grey
Cool idea, b0rsuk. You should make your own RFE for that to ensure it gets noticed.
Thank you. I will post a separate FR if a few more people like the idea. It's such a small sample.

11-01-2012 06:48 PM
Ancient Member
It should be a class power, you can wish for it otherwise (and it's likely that end-game wizards, which I'm told HP cast the most, would find a spare wish).

11-01-2012 10:47 PM
Junior Member
MORE costly?!?
I've been playing ADOM (badly) for more than a decade and I still find it challenging to play a pure caster.
I say we make it easier and remove the abuse of the Mana stat like Gamma 16.

12-08-2012 06:16 PM
The Creator
HP casting has been adjusted, my solution being a mix of several proposals.

12-08-2012 07:43 PM
Member
Ok, it's been implemented, but I was going to say that I'm very much with Lasher: most of the time at deeper levels it's cast from HP or not cast at all. I've been playing Adom on since... oh, gamma9 and I've only ever won three or four times, two of those with a wizard. I do think that the game is already plenty hard enough for casual gamers, 'casual' meaning that you don't concentrate on abusing every technicality, farming every herb, maximising every stat increase and reading though every guidebook on the internet. I always considered casting from HP a wizard's last resort, and without it one would have to resort to cheese to clear, say, the Mana Temple.

Having just signed on the forum I'm a bit worried that so many requests are to make the game harder, because naturally the forum is full of very experienced and knowledgeable players and there might be a bias that way. I've been trying to get others to love this game for over a decade and usually their biggest gripe is the difficulty.

12-28-2012 04:54 PM
Ancient Member
I've played a lot of wizards and by the endgame I never used HP casting - didn't need to.
Between w5, collecting blessed scrolls of power which restore my entire PP pool after reading ~10-15 of them and using prayers, I never had a problem with that.
Stealth helps quite a bit in mana temple - if the eyes don't detect you, they don't drain you. I have yet to count the times when PP drainage only began after actually entering the temple interior and subsequently eyes' LoS.
By the time I cleared the temple with either 32 or 48 Wi, I only had to pray once and read a few scrolls just to exit the temple with PP at 1/3 or more.

The only marginal issues I had with lack of PP were on D50 simply because of a multitude of monsters that need lots of love to go down.
Chaos servants - normal or greater - as well as mutants and a few other D50 summonable monsters can be dispatched effectively with a wand of death, charged with either scrolls or potions to ~20-30 castings.
That allows you to preserve quite a lot of PP for the monsters that can only go down with hard magic (acid balls and company). I realize wand of death isn't a common item but recently I consider its usefulness sufficient to use a wish to obtain it. Abundance of other wands make it viable to keep booze and scrolls of charging for a later time and use them on the wand. Plus the wand can be used by non-casters effectively as well. Learnable spell is simply too costly.
Another thing is that with my previous banshee/animated forest scumming, I had no issues with items. Regardless of that though, I had several games with no scumming techniques used and usually got 2-3 wishes in each.
Last thing - it's not necessary to kill all monsters either in MT or D50. It's just a matter of how much you can handle with your current HP/PP.

Personally I think HP casting is only a must for speedrunners and half-casters - the first group doesn't have the time to grind enough stats/items to restore PP reliably, the second is simply not suited for fast PP recovery and never get far in spell casting effectively to reduce the costs. Wizards belong to neither group and I'd argue neither do necromancers or to some extent druids.

That said, this change is irrelevant to me but for people that like to press their chars to the extreme when casting, it might be a significant difficulty.

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