I know this part isn't really part of this discussion, but it's worth commenting on - I think that training through various means should be dependent on how close to potential the PC is. Carrying junk around at Burdened shouldn't be able to get the PC anywhere near max strength. At Strained it should be able to get a bit closer, and closer again with Strained! - but it should take more than just carrying lots of junk around to reach your potential. It shouldn't be a fixed number limit, but dependent on potential.

All of this is why I think the current system needs changing - as far as I can tell, the current system sees the PC's stats determined based on Race and Class, and then potentials are worked out from the stats. And as such, potentials are strangely distributed, which is probably why those built-in limits were added. If, instead, potential was determined first, and then actual stats from there (whether through the method I was describing or another method), in my opinion we'd be able to drop the built-in limits and instead make natural training limits depend on potential, thus eliminating, for instance, the problem of low-strength races being able to train their strength all the way up to 18, irrespective of potential, just by carrying a lot of junk around, while high-strength races that start with, say, 20 strength have trouble getting their strength anywhere near potential, because natural training doesn't help them improve it much.

On the issue of strength, perhaps you could train Strength at Burdened if the stat is below 70% of potential, at Strained if the stat is below 80% of potential, and at Strained! if the stat is below 90% of potential. And if there are some R/C combinations that result in Strength potentials that are so low that you need to be able to raise them through pack-muling in order to be at all usable, then either they're absurd class combinations that should be considered major challenges (rather than being an issue that needs fixing), or the determination of potential is too extreme, creating R/C combinations that would never survive in Ancardia anyway.

That's a terrible idea and would absolutely ruin the game. Allowing people to train strength to 18 is an absolute must that should never be changed.

You're also completely wrong about the RCs that start with such low strength - they're mostly hurthlings, actually, of any stripe.

Others have said it, now I'll say it - you're confusing "is" with "ought". If hurthlings are starting with such low strength that it's necessary to pack-mule to build up enough strength to survive, then that's a problem with how the hurthlings are set up, it's not an indication that we need strength potential to be a soft limit up to 18.

If you want to make sure all players can have a strength of at least 18 through training, then you should make sure that strength potential is at least 18 for every R/C, not hard-code a limit to natural training that ends up benefiting weaker races and handicapping the ones designed to be stronger. What point is having a strength potential above 18 if you can't reasonably train higher than that anyway? Does it really make sense that a character with a strength potential of 25 can only train it to 18 through pack-muling, while those that have a strength potential of 12 can train theirs all the way to 18 by the same technique, even though the former might be a huge troll and the latter might be a tiny hurthling?

Not really, Aielyn. For one, I strongly oppose letting people train strength above 18 (maybe I said it here or another thread) - 18 is a nice convenience feature that lets you carry an appropriate amount of stuff without being burdened all the time. Letting people train strength a lot higher (easily) than that would be kind of broken because of how the +damage scales [factoring in fire orb, eventually, of course]. More importantly, having you only be able to train strength to 18 (and having +St corpses being not that common / guaranteed) has a lot of implications for the game - if you are playing a barbarian w/ >18 St, you are much, much more wary of things like shadows because you cannot recover that strength without a bit of luck. It adds a bit of nuance as to what monster effects can be devastating for what RCs. This also adds an interesting question to the early game for low St races - do you weight train in what is actually one of the most dangerous parts of the game, or do you wait until you're on your feet?

I have no idea what you mean by "benefiting" weaker races vs. "handicapping" stronger races - stronger races aren't handicapped because they are already stronger! Weaker races are benefiting a lot in not making the player micromanage their inventory, which is a good thing because that would make the game less fun. I am like the #1 proponent of making the game easier for melee and harder for "pure" magic/missile users [without making it again harder for melee], and I play almost exclusively melee focused characters, so I'm exactly not talking out of my ass here. I have a lot of experience with these types of characters, and in no way is an RC handicapped by only being able to train St to 18 when having a potential above that (especially because the giant corpses they DO come across will actually work reasonably well! You can get St to 19 in ogre caves, etc.). So, there is a distinct advantage to having a potential above 18 currently.

So, I like the status quo and I think there are plenty of reasons to keep it the way it "is" rather than what some people think it "ought" to be.

Asumming not race with terrible prices [DE/mist elves mostly] I recall best bet is scratch ~3k [Kranach/selling stuff in black market/zapping Hotz with offensive wand] buy lots of raations in food shop, eat some and weight lift others. Shopkeeper blocking door ensures w5 goes uninterupted. Might need to go out of shop to allow restock once or two. Takes few game days and ~10 minutes real life while moving any char in 15-16 ST range.
So I don't know where is dillema. Personally I would prefer ST burden training to go assuming some default carrying capacity is added.

In general about potentials - while it is true that some theorethical limit exists, I would think part of any race which chooses to be fighters and who chosses to be wizzards have done so because they are [through geneteics/early training/family tradition] better suited for the job. So barb and wizzy having same differential between stat and stat potential maximums does not sound too convincing.

As far as potentials go - herb overtraining has to go [and yes I imagine it is problematic programming wise] I tried some misty elf on server - had very little problem of bringing To to 23 with using garth to increase potential maybe once. The thing about herbs sometimes faailing to overtrain is solved by simply eating and farming more which does noth but increases tedium. On otrher hand if you do not get rise you might just use HP casting to get drained on To and start working on potential again [I somehow failed to do this in practice but suspect answer is simply eat even more herbs].

Garth even if going for guarantees [realistically overpaying] one can improve potential 10 to potential 16 for under 20k [assuming stats itself is covered by other means] - so this needs at least recalibration.

Corpses respecting potentials is somewhat strange which makes them sort of obsolete in many cases. At least having some sort of chance to raise potential would be needed. Or I don't know introduce some sort of wood witch living in hut which can make some magical brews from corpses - maybe having her own questline.

Once again, you're confusing "is" with "ought" - if the game is unreasonably easy for PCs with strength above 18, that suggests a problem with the impact of strength, or a problem with the typical potential strengths of characters.

You have yet to explain why it makes sense that you can have a Strength potential of 30, but can't train Strength anywhere near it, yet if your Strength potential is 12, you can train it up to 18 anyway. How does that make any sense at all? It's a flaw in the game's design, and if it was introduced in order to make characters playable and to keep them from being overpowered, then it indicates further flaws in the design. As for the idea of it being harder to compensate for strength losses from Shadows, an alternate solution would address that in a more sensible manner - make the amount of training necessary to increase a stat grow with the stat, so that training gets harder with increasing stats. But having a hard-coded limit separate from potential completely destroys the whole point of having the potential in the first place.

And the whole point of me describing the strength-oriented R/C combinations as "handicapped" is that the system is designed with tradeoffs between stats, etc, and yet PCs focused on Strength don't get to train up the stat that is meant to be their benefit, while those whose strength is low, intended as a weakness in their stat distribution, can fix it quite easily just by picking up everything they see for a while.

Soirana: wrt first-ish paragraph - I don't think most people play in that optimal way, it's rather boring [or, I hope so...]. But I agree with the rest of your post.

Look, Aielyn, it'd be great if we could just change the whole way ADOM works, but I really could care less about what you're claiming it "ought" to be. I have a lot of opinions about how the game "ought" to be, and I'm never going to see things the way you think they "ought" to be because I think some of your suggestions in this thread are just completely wrong, time-consuming change that will make the game worse, and in the best case, have no added benefit over working with the current system. I'm not confusing "is" and "ought" just because I like much of the status quo in the game and think it both works well and presents interesting choices. A lot of what "is" is what I think it "ought" to be.

It's very easy to see why the game starts to get easier as St goes over 18 (you get +1 dam per 2 St [if I recall correctly], which scales with all multipliers and tactics [again, if I recall correctly]). What you're asking us to do is (1) let people train strength over 18 and (2) space out the +dam from strength as you go higher [or so it seems]. What's the point of this? Why can't we live with the current system we have, which I think works pretty well? Do we need to change everything so that it makes more "sense"? Do we need to encourage people to play Strained! most of the game as the best method of min-maxing your character? I see no reason this needs to be true - why change the way the game is designed to achieve the same thing we already have? Because the system would "feel" better?

I really don't see what's so hard about this. Having people be able to train strength to 18 is a very nice convenience feature - if you want to argue that all potentials for strength should be set to 18, I'm fine with this since it will make it a lot easier for me to train strength to 18, which would be nice for me. Allowing people to train strength above this if their potential allows is just asking people to lolligag around Strained! most of the time. Changing the game so that being able to train St to 30 is balanced, if your potential allows, just doesn't make any sense - what we have right now works pretty well. Changing things and balancing them so that people have technically different stats on paper, but not really in reality, is just a waste of time.

Again, so? They aren't handicapped because they already have a high strength, what's so hard about this? They already have the benefit, heaping more benefit on top of it doesn't change anything. A lot of these "strength"-oriented RCs get other advantages that stack with strength (like nice weapons, or better unarmed damage with levels [this is why troll beastfighters are always inferior to hurthling beastfighters, no matter how much strength you have]). Strength training was clearly introduced so that having a low starting strength wouldn't be a handicap for the whole game. It's not intended to be a weakness in their stat distribution for the whole game.

This is exactly the problem I see right now. A character with St:10 is encouraged to, as you put it, "lolligag around Strained!" till getting up to St: 18. Which, depending on where the potential is, could take quite a lot of time. Or one could go the ridiculous route and indeed train inside Munxip's shop.

So, the options I see here are:
1) allow burden training up to St: 18 or potential, whichever is lower
2) have each char's potential at at least 18
3) make potential training below 18 easier

I still support option numer 1. Yes, some chars will have some problems early game. But it's not like they are going to be stuck with low St forever. Potion of strength +2 St +2 potential. PoGA +1 St +1 potential. Ogre/ettin/giant corpses, chance at +1 St (provided they'll be allowed to go past potential, which I support).

Yes, but mostly in the early game where it represents interesting trade-off (imo) that can get you killed ;) That's why I like it.

This comment is the part I most need to respond to...

You do not understand the is/ought fallacy, and have confused what we're saying. Your arguments all stem from "the way it is is how it should be" - not because you like the status quo, but because you aren't considering alternate possibilities in the first place. You assert that the strength cutoff needs to be 18 and not the PC's potential because otherwise it will screw with the balance of the game... but that cutoff was introduced to rebalance the game because of an underlying problem. The need for this hard-coded limit of 18 is what you're confusing "is" with "ought" on, not the limit itself. Basically, the game as it stands is patches on top of patches, but you're asserting that that's how it ought to be, because that's how it currently is.

Your entire argument is rooted in the current situation, and every time someone offers an alternative idea, you assert that it's a bad one because it would cause issues with <insert artificial gameplay patch here>, which in many cases were introduced specifically to "fix" the problems that people are suggesting alternative ideas for. This is your is/ought problem.

Oh, and here's the other thing I want to comment on: "Changing things and balancing them so that people have technically different stats on paper, but not really in reality, is just a waste of time."

What, exactly, do you think the current system is doing? The way the game is currently set up makes it so that PCs may technically start with very different Strengths and Potential Strengths, but when it comes down to it, through something as simple as picking things up a lot, most PCs end up at around the same Strength anyway. So why bother with having the variations in Strength/Potential in the first place - right NOW, the game has R/C combinations with technically different Strengths on paper, but not really in reality. And this is precisely what I'm arguing needs to be fixed.

Also keep in mind that my suggestion also asserts that the stat/potential gap should be smaller for classes who use the stat a lot, so classes like Beastfighters, who depend more on Strength, wouldn't get much out of pack-muling at all - they might start with a Strength of 25 (for all I know), but they wouldn't be able to train it much beyond, say, 27. On the other hand, an R/C combination that starts with Strength at, say, 5, would probably have a potential at least around 15.

Is this not pretty much exactly what you want to have happen? R/Cs that have problems with Strength can train it up a reasonable amount, those for whom Strength is higher at the start can't train it up much further, but still come out significantly ahead once all training is done? It makes both logical sense (training prior to entry into the Chain would lift the stat closer to the potential) and gameplay sense (PCs closer to their potential get less benefit from training, so that beastfighter gets a lot less value from walking around Strained, which is important when they use their offensive melee abilities to survive, while wizards, who depend more on magic, get more value from it).

Every single change that is made to the game will result in some rebalancing having to happen. Arguing against the changes because it would force some rebalancing is like arguing that computers shouldn't be given new control interfaces because that would mean having to alter the GUI to account for people using it.

sorry in advance for post length, it is real monster of ungodly proportions.

You're telling me I don't like the status quo, but I do like the new status quo, and not because I'm not considering your alternatives. [I expound on this more below, but I've already experienced your alternate possibility]. I think you currently have some meaningful choices that would be taken away if you were to be able to train strength close to potential [more on this in super long, discombobulated paragraphs somewhere below]. Given how strength currently works w/ carrying capacity, I think the current unburdened capacity that increases to ~1500 stones by end of early game is pretty good [in my experience having this much unburdened carrying capacity is sufficient that you don't have to micromanage inventory at different stages of the game]. So, yes, the hard-coded limit of 18 isn't needed, you could make it 10 or 50 if the ~1500 stones unburdened capacity is kept, which is a nice convenience feature. Sure, we could change carrying capacity around to fit some new definition of strength, I guess, but that's only one of many things you'd need to fix to put some of the meaningful choices back in the game.

I don't think most of my arguments involve an artificial gameplay patch (obviously you think the 18 St is an artificial gameplay patch, but what else are you talking about here? I would hope not stat draining – I hate it, but it's an interesting mechanic). Yes, most of my arguments do involve the current situation because I like the new current situation and by changing this one thing (how strength is trained), you create an avalanche of other changes that need to be made in order to start putting things back in order. I don't regard this as illegitimate, and I'm not sure why you do.

Yes, I agree this is how the current system works. Difference is, the current system is already in place and doesn't require you to first change things then go back and balance them...to get stats that are technically different on paper but not so much in reality. [or so youseem to imply by stating we can rebalance new strength for +dam capability, among other things]

Actually this is much better than what I thought you were saying - I wasn't considering changes applied together, so you're right there.

However, this doesn't change my position because it is still removing a lot of things from the game - who cares about giant corpses anymore [this would change slightly if they affect potentials, but not hugely so since it is % based chance in first place, and best suggestion is to make it % chance to budge potential]? so what if you get drained by shadow? who cares if you lose some st to greater daemon? all these things were formerly fairly important if you had St at 19+ [in fact, very big consideration for me when considering tactics I use in graveyard], but once you add ability to train strength to like 90% of potential, they are completely removed without reworking them [what, you get potential and stat drained now? I actually considered this, but it's practically unworkable under revised system because you can't budge your potential by strength training - someone with St 13 (90% in your St 15 example) can get totally boned. They only drain potential when stat is not at max? there are some alternatives, but whole stat draining system for strength would have to be redone to give it any meaning]. You introduce a whole host of complications with how potions of strength / potential strength work [let's even disregard the poorly thought out and very bad mino maze change] – as now you can raise your strength to really high levels. How will hurthlings even work? I could go on and on and on about things that need to be thought about [some I've mentioned before but not here, such as +dam and +carrying cap.], but this section is already positively enormous, so I'll stop here so you can actually get through whole post.

Suffice it to say I have thought about this a bit and the things you need to change to get strength back in what I consider working order are very extensive - it is a very complicated task. Since p7 or so, strength has become one of those stats you fight for precious points above 18 because it's become much harder to raise [and pretty damn useful]; removing that completely changes the stat and there just aren't "alternate possibilities" to force the same considerations. This is a pretty big change from 1.1.1 [no ring of weakness, sickness/starvation training w/ ogres – I used to do the latter A LOT], and I really like the way it forces you to consider now. [of course, most of this breaks down in late game now, due to mino maze being fundamentally broken on every level, but let's disregard that for now because I have sliver of hope that TB will eventually see the light and roll back this very bad, game-breaking change]. Obviously I've dealt with limited carrying capacity before [who hasn't], so I've experienced much of this "alternate possibility" of yours and I like ITS "alternate possibility" better, where you have to consider things more carefully.

This is partly what I want, but our definition of "reasonable amount" differs heavily, and the way we each want it implemented differs heavily, as well. Plus, I disagree with how you want current/potential to work (see last paragraph).

Well, I of course agree with this – having to rebalance is never my primary argument against something. [I am big advocate for rebalancing things, as you can seeif you look at some of my RFEs]. What I'm against is changes that require lots of pointless rebalancing – i.e. changes that can instead be achieved by working with the current system and doing the necessary rebalancing there, which I think can be done for potentials. For example, why would I support reworking all stats to consider potential first then stat when the same thing can be done given that we already determine current stat first [I obviously have not been saying we can't reconsider HOW potentials are determined - in this thread and I believe elsewhere, I've advocated rebalancing them for change in how potentials work]. I guess I haven't been very clear here, but literally what you are advocating by determining potential then stat can also be achieved by first determining current stat then potential, which is already how things sort of work! Unless you think that the current stat for characters is broken in some way (and hopefully some huge way), why would you want to change this and then work backwards to get current stat into a usable state again? If the problem is potentials, then fix them in the existing framework if possible [it is very possible – one could even fix them to work the way you suggest, by determining the current stat first, even though I wouldn't like it].

You say above that "as far as I can tell, the current system sees the PC's stats determined based on Race and Class, and then potentials are worked out from the stats. And as such, potentials are strangely distributed, which is probably why those built-in limits were added." I do not think potentials are determined solely on current stat (or else there is quite huge variance, or different tiers with big difference, which is possible). But even if this is the case – why can't potentials be adjusted based on current stat, race, and class (i.e. same as your suggestion for potentials, but opposite)? Like, I'm not opposed to this, I'm opposed to a huge investment of work (that is much less to has zero chance to get done) that involves reworking entire system when there's a much simpler solution that achieves the same thing without having to rework the entire system! Hopefully this is clear now.

That's a big part of why I completely disagree with your proposed change. [other big part is that I dislike general outline of current being close to potential for people that use it as, in general, that hurts melee classes more than spellcasting classes unless stats are raised across the board for melee classes, which I think would be a pretty bad idea]. [though if mana potential became hard cap I would giggle evilly]

As far as I can think, encumbrance is not magical. So, in theory it should not raise strength potential.

There is enough strong races, starting heavy equipment classes, items, talents to increase carrying capacity and strength in the game to not necessitate the need for it to.

I think it quite an exciting prospect to play a character with such a burden, excuse the pun.

I think mino maze is just the way it was supposed to be, the prizes are relative to the effort necessary to obtain them. Also, it is an optional location.
I actually think it *might* be a little too easy right now, as I've done it with all my chars so far, irrespective of r/c combination and usually between lvls 22-25.
If mino maze was made even nastier than it currently is, say, 10 levels deep with all the extra fake ones, I would upvote such an RFE.
I hope TB leaves mino maze as it is right now; it is finally worthy to visit the place whereas if it was brought back to 1.1.1 state, I wouldn't bother, even without the fake levels.

Much as I hate to admit it, I agree with Stingray here. There's plenty of means to manage carrying capacity so it is not as strongly tied to absolute strength value as you would see it.
Also, ring of weakness still works as of pre20, just like it did in 1.1.1.

I didn't say you don't like the status quo, I said that it isn't your like of the status quo that is informing your position, but the fact that you reject alternatives. That is, every time someone makes a suggestion, you filter it through the current system, and reject the idea without first asking if there's an alternate way to make it work.

I would indeed describe an 18 St cap to be an artificial gameplay patch, presumably put in because strength training was too unbalanced.

What I said was that, if making the game respect the potentials rather than having a hard-coded limit unbalances things, then we should fix the balance problems directly instead. Of course, there are multiple ways to ensure balance. The simplest way that I can think of would be to reduce the burden scale (so that lower Strength doesn't impact carrying capacity so much) and to make sure the highest starting Strength potential doesn't go too high. With a stat potential generation system (which is the whole point of the RFE we've been discussing) done right, this should be relatively easy to handle.

Most of those can be kept interesting either with a small tweak to the specific case or with good design of the strength training system. Giant corpses are still useful because pack-muling would be incapable of maxing out strength. Add a small chance to boost potential, and there's more value. Alternatively, make it so that giant corpses can still train potential if the stat is maxed (I have no problem with that - I consider corpses to be magical sources for stat training, etc). For draining, a neat solution would be to make it sap potential as well (perhaps place a natural lower limit on potentials to prevent PCs from having potentials of 1 - which I'd like to see anyway, on potentials)... but suitable training limitations would work well, too (I suggested a 70%/80%/90% training limit, but it could be 60%/70%/80% - which would mean that PCs that have a potential of 25 would be unable to train above 20, and if they start with 23, then the drop in stat would be unfixable through pack-muling).

But you want to hear a more interesting implementation? How about a training limit system that depends on the actual potential? Let the PC train up to max(potential, round(2*potential/3)+5). So if the potential is 12 or less, the PC can train up to max with pack-muling. If the potential is 13, they still can only train up to 12. If the potential is 18, the PC can only train up to 16. If the potential is 24, the PC can only train up to 20. If the potential is 30, the PC can only train up to 24. Since, in my suggestion, physical-focused classes would start closer to potential, this would mean that stat drains would be more problematic, and giant corpses more useful, for classes that depend more on strength.

Well, the issue as I see it is that, if you have the stats determined first, you might end up with the absurd situation in which a Troll Wizard starts with a higher Strength potential than a Troll Beastfighter, because the gap ends up larger for the wizard but the stat is being calculated first. On the other hand, if you work out potential first, you can ensure that the distributions make sense. Note that I'm not overly locked to the specific implementation I proposed - if all of the calculations work on addition/subtraction (as per the current system), I would be quite fine with it - it would probably also ensure that nothing starts too high or too low. But I still stand by the idea of working off potential first.

I think you slightly misunderstood what I'd said here, too. I didn't say that potentials are worked out based solely on the stats, I said that they're worked out *from* the stats. That is, potential = stat + gap, where gap is determined by some method that seems arbitrary from the player's perspective.

The end result of implementing a potential-focused generation process might be a slight change in the stat distributions, and it would likely slightly boost strong stats and reduce weak ones... this would make the game more interesting, in my opinion, and might help to make melee classes more capable, relatively speaking. And indeed, it's entirely possible to make it produce the same starting stats as the current system - what it does differently, though, is produce a potential distribution that is consistent.