CON stat as it relates to amount of HP gained/level

[tezster]

This is my first post - sorry if this has been covered before.

As I understand it, the higher your CON, the more HP you gain when you level. Does this mean that it's better to max out your CON stat as early as possible? Or does your max HP get re-adjusted anytime your base HP CON stat changes?

[ekolis]

Not 100% sure, but I think your max HP get changed dynamically when your CON changes - at least, that's what I recall happening when getting hit with CON-draining attacks! But I could be thinking of a variant, not Vanilla...

[Derakon]

It doesn't matter when you get your CON bonuses; your hitpoints are recalculated on the fly.

As I recall, the way this works is that your race and class together determine your hit die, which is the die that is rolled to see how many hitpoints you get when you level up. The results of these die rolls are fixed (that is, losing/gaining experience won't reroll them). In addition to this, you get a bonus to your hitpoints based on your level and CON stat.

So let's say you're a level-10 character with a d10 hit die. You've rolled a 6, 8, 2, 4, 4, 1, 9, 6, 5, 8 for your hitpoints, giving a total of 53 hitpoints. Let's say you have a high CON score, so you get a per-level bonus to your CON of 5 hitpoints. That means that your actual hitpoints would be 53 + 5*10 = 103. Now you put on the Helm of Hammerhand and increase your CON; your new bonus is 7 hitpoints per level, so your total HP is 123. Then you encounter a Purple Mushroom Patch that completely wrecks your CON stat, leaving you with a measly 1 CON/level bonus; your new HP is only 63.

Make sense?

[paboperfecto]

I'm looking at the NPP code but I don't think the code would be different. You get a constitution bonus to your HP (as determined for each level at birth based on your hitdice - in other words when you create your character your HP bonus for each level gain is determined at that time by a random number based on how many hit dice you have) which is multiplied by your level.

MaximumHP = Sum of Hit Dice to current level + (constitution bonus * level)

In other words it doesn't matter when you get your constitution, the bonus is recalculated every time that it changes. In the NPP code the max bonus is 12.5 or 625 HP at level 50.

[Derakon]

Incidentally, you'll occasionally see reference to a "life rating". This number measures how lucky you were when rolling hitdice, compared to the average, and is always expressed as X/100. A character with a d10 hitdie would get, on average, 5.5 hitpoints from hitdice per level, leaving him with 275 hitpoints from hitdice at the end of the game. The theoretical maximum would be 500 hitpoints from hitdice, and would give a life rating of (I think) 181/100. The theoretical minimum would be 50 hitpoints from hitdice, giving a life rating of 18/100. Though, note that you always get a perfect roll on hitdice for your first level, so that low value wouldn't actually be possible.

Some variants have ways to reroll your life rating, which involves rerolling your hitdice.

Half-Trolls have a d12 hitdie, and, assuming I'm reading p_class.txt correctly, warriors add 9 to that. Thus, the theoretical maximum hitpoints in Angband would be 1050 from hitdice + 625 from CON bonuses = 1675. On average, though, a Half-Troll Warrior would have 550 hitpoints from hitdice, giving 1175 total hitpoints.

[Mondkalb]

I'm trying to understand the HP mechanism, but ... The game displays the hit die of mages always as 0. Does that mean, it doesn't matter what race you choose regarding hit points? What die roll comes out of a zero sided die?

The only further explanation I have found is from the ability.spo file from 1996 and probably extremely outdated. ( http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/games/Angban...er/ability.spo )
Though it says there

A 50th level character will always have a number of hit points (unadjusted
by Constitution) between 50+(150*(base HD-1))/8 and 50+(250*(base HD-1))/8.

which makes little sense - with a base HD of 1 the formula would result in maximum hit points of 50.

[kaypy]

A characters hit dice is the sum of the hit dice for their class and the hit dice for their race. A mage class gives no hit dice, so it would be based on the race alone.

So a human warrior gets 1d19 (10 for human, 9 for warrior) per level (plus con bonuses).

Whereas a human mage only gets 1d10 (10 for human, 0 for mage) plus con.

[Derakon]

Meanwhile your CON gives you a bonus to HP based on your level. For example, if your CON bonus is 2 then you'd get clvl * 2 extra HP from CON. CON bonuses max out at 12.5 HP/level at 18/200.

[Mondkalb]

The table from the old spoiler file seems to be still correct then.

[Timo Pietilä]

A characters hit dice is the sum of the hit dice for their class and the hit dice for their race. A mage class gives no hit dice, so it would be based on the race alone.

So a human warrior gets 1d19 (10 for human, 9 for warrior) per level (plus con bonuses)..

Hm, is that 1d9 + 1d10 IE. minimum of 2 / level and biased toward average of two, or does it really add sides together and after that adds rolls so that combined it is flat 1d19. Not that it matters much, but just out of curiosity.

[Timo Pietilä]

Meanwhile your CON gives you a bonus to HP based on your level. For example, if your CON bonus is 2 then you'd get clvl * 2 extra HP from CON. CON bonuses max out at 12.5 HP/level at 18/200.

50*d19 (for human warrior) = average of 500 + CON bonus 50*12.5 = 625, total 1125.

I would like to see that ratio more in favor of level than CON, something like 2/3 from level and 1/3 from CON, so that maxing CON would be a bit less important.

That would change game dynamics a lot though, so it would need thorough playtesting.