Remove featherfall or make it useful

[Pete Mack]

One more time: if you wish to be educated on the possibilities of traps, try NPP 0.5. It covers this issue far more deeply than traps alone:
* Many traps can affect you at a distance, and their damage scales with depth.
* Dungeon has topography (sand, oil, shrubs, lava, water, etc) that affect the bahavior of both monsters and the player.
* Area affects are persistent, and cause limited sight lines.
* Area damage is persistant, so a poison breath does (say) 800 damage up front, and an additional 70 damage on the next dungeon turn.

[Hajo]

Unangband has more sophistaced traps too. I assume it is the same concept that NPPAngband also has - regions and terrain features.

Unlike some other games, Angband has no persistent levels. It generates new levels as the player moves up and down the dungeon, allowing to grind, train, scum for better stats and items. In a game that has this as a very basic game feature, scaling the dungeon danger with player HP would nullify the training effect that was allowed in first place.

Scaling with player abilities works for games that have only a fixed number of opponents, where the player has no chance to "go training/grinding/leveling" further before they run into new areas. Since they can't go training, the new area must be scaled to be doable for this player.

Angband is another sort of game. Training, levelling, looking for resistances is a basic part of the game. Things which work well in one sort of game do not always work as well in another sort of game. So I'm against traps that scale with player abilities. Traps should (if they need to) scale with depth - this is native to Angband, the deeper you go, the more nasty things become.

Generally I want to second those who suggested that traps should not depend on "HP damage", but on other effects to the player and their equipment. There have been very good suggestions for trap effects.

[EpicMan]

Krugar,

Are you a programmer (Can't remember if you said so one way or the other)?

If so, why don't you get a copy of the Angband source and see if you can alter the trap code to scale with player hp?

If you think this would improve the game the best way to demonstrate it to the skeptics is to make it happen in a variant; if the gameplay is appreciably improved by scaling trap you might be able to win over more people.

Of course, if you're not a programmer this isn't a viable option (unless you become one? Messing around with game code is probably a fun way to get your feet wet).

[PowerDiver]

The whole point of a HP system is that more HP means you can survive more attacks. No attack should scale with HP, ever. If you want to separate out avoidance and armor damage reduction so that a blow to the head has a fixed chance of killing the player, then you should use a different system entirely.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Hajo: I don't play a heckuva lot of CRPGs any more; the last one would've been Neverwinter Nights. But from my experience: each area has a set difficulty. They *don't* scale to become harder as the character(s) get better; it's just that the stories are much more linear, and often there's no monster repop...so by the time you get to Area 7, the game knows you'll be 11th level.

krugar, I'm NOT comparing it to monsters. My point is, it's terrible design, in that it reverses things. My attacks and my defenses, are tied to my level. That's natural. YOUR attack power isn't linked to MY defenses, or to MY attack power; that's just wrong. I can readily explain why my attack at level 50, is more powerful than it was at level 40: I'm more skilled, more accurate, stronger, I can draw more power into a spell, whatever. All of those are entirely plausible and not a bit forced or contrived. Why does the damage that *your sword* (or the jaws of the bear trap, or the spikes in the pit, or whatever) change, between me being 40th and 50th level?

The first time I ever saw this point made explicitly, was in the 3.0 to 3.5 conversion for D&D...specifically, with the spell Harm. In older D&D and in 3.0, this spell didn't do X damage...it *left you* with 1-4 hit points. So if you had 100 hit points, you lost 96. If you had 300, you lost 296. The spell was *more powerful* against more powerful foes...and they realized (and stated) this is completely wrong.

Note that the kind of interaction you mention *can* exist in a reactive situation...how hard a batter hits a ball is partially a function of how hard the pitcher threw it. But we don't have that kind of interaction.

[Timo Pietilä]

The whole point of a HP system is that more HP means you can survive more attacks. No attack should scale with HP, ever. If you want to separate out avoidance and armor damage reduction so that a blow to the head has a fixed chance of killing the player, then you should use a different system entirely.

To me HP represents physical endurance. However some attacks like poisoning or mind blast could go past that physical endurance and be direct percentile damage. HP-based scaling has its places. Same applies to healing. Either go with fixed amount or percentile and we have now percentile healings, and it not only feels right, it feels realistic.

[Atarlost]

To me HP represents physical endurance. However some attacks like poisoning or mind blast could go past that physical endurance and be direct percentile damage. HP-based scaling has its places. Same applies to healing. Either go with fixed amount or percentile and we have now percentile healings, and it not only feels right, it feels realistic.

\

If an attack isn't effected by physical endurance it shouldn't effect something that represents physical endurance. By your logic mind blast should be save or die or attack mana or stats, not do a fixed fraction of HP damage.

[ewert]

This "what HP stands for" is I guess a regular discussion on tabletop games. IMHO, it stands for more than physical endurance (ie. physical combat prowess in general, luck, fatigue, etc. whatso, all combined together). As such, there are arguments for both sides, but simply put in game mechanics in Angband I don't feel percentile based dmg belongs in the game.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

If hit points ever mean something in some system, they don't here. The scale simply becomes ludicrous; a gigantic stone figure (colossus) *smashes* you with both its fists, blows that would rip stone walls apart...and it's just minor wounds to you. At that point, it's not toughness, or luck; it's purely bookkeeping.

Conversely, you can also say that ANY interpretation of hit points, in this context, is valid. This has the same effect: you can't use it as a basis to assert anything based on hit points.

Timo points out that the cure potions (the lesser ones, anyway) do percentage healing, and we feel it's realistic. I disagree on the latter. It's NOT realistic; it was done strictly to make them remain at least somewhat viable, and I suspect because we want the notion of "cure serious wounds" to scale. If I have 500 hit points, being down 50 hit points is not seriously wounded. It's those damnable adjectives that prejudice us.

Also, percentage healing was an answer to the TMJ issue; this approach let them be much less not-junk. But, it's the wrong answer because it's doing exactly what it shouldn't: the effect scales not with the power of the object, but the power of the target.

Note the impact if we simply change the names on the healing potions:
Healing
Adventurer's Healing
Daredevil's Healing
Heroes' Healing
Conqueror's Healing
Divine Healing
Life

From the names alone, one gets a different sense; the adjectives evoke a sense of greater and greater power, *without* the sense that they'll work as well on you whether you're level 10 with 70 hit points, or level 45 with 750. Thus, they don't create the expectation that someone who needs the full power of a Conqueror's Healing potion, will get much benefit at all from a basic, townie-level Healing potion. It's a subtle but IMO significant change to the player's thought processes and expectations.

[krugar]

Folks, I'll try this again just to dispel some beliefs and probably clarify my position a little better.

Warning! Long post ahead. Enjoy. But please, if you choose to comment on some part, make a point of reading the whole thing. I'm sure if there is something that annoys you too, is to have to answer someone with quotes from your own previous post because they failed to read the entire thing.

The HP legend
HP is, and will always be the base for any balance decision on a game that relies on it to determine when a player character is alive or dead. In the early stages of the game development decision concerning damage and effects are based on the established hit die (HP). What we actually see in the end of the design process is an abstraction of this in the form of damage die, number of attacks, etc.

For this purpose, on quality games, mathematical formulas are devised (sometimes quite complex ones) to determine the right balance across several character classes and their levels and for the duration of the game. Player progression is often matched with linear damage progression on the basis of established hit dies (HP).

You must be careful when defining HP has something that should never influence damage progression. That assertion is almost always wrong. It's the way the game then abstracts these raw formulas, hiding them into concepts such as dice (randomness), value ranges, HP, and damage (including even effects), that may lead you to think there's no correlation between player character progression and their HP. You couldn't be more wrong.

Thinning out the correlation in the game
That said, it is indeed true players (but also designers) don't like to see those formulas clearly during gameplay. More to the point, they don't like to expose that correlation between HP and damage in a clear fashion. In a minimalist definition, a game is nothing more than an abstraction of mathematical formulas. So, one can hide the maths (or expose different and more simplistic maths) using those abstractions.

In this process one can effectively thin out this correlation between HP and damage in the context of player progression, giving the illusion of natural progression. Ubiquitous mathematical elements in about every game, like randomness, value ranges and others (number of attacks, effects, etc), with the help of statistical analysis, expand on the initial raw formulas and do indeed introduce more to the game than a simplistic relation between HP and damage. Player progression is given a "natural" feeling -- and in any generalized debate about the game, we can indeed conclude the game offers more than just a direct relationship between HP and damage.

The HP formula
How does the above can be exemplified? Let's take a direct relationship and turn into something more "natural" -- more gamelike.

Imagine traps always did 75% of player charater's HP:

TPdam = PChp * 0.75

That's the raw concept. A rather ugly way to deal with damage. That's as far as someone with no interest in designing an good game goes. But believe it or not, is part of the thought process that goes into defining better methods.

Let's introduce something more interesting. I want to define trap damage to sit randomly within a certain range of values based on player HP. Say, it should damage the player between half and 3/4 of the player character HP:

PChp * 0.5 <= TPDam <= PChp * 0.75

It's still pretty much linear. But what this means is that a natural factor of randomness was introduced into the formula (I can't possibly use mathematical notation on this text box, so bear with the above simplistic non formula). That is a first step into defining something more complex. With more thought and thinking of different factors, we can reach something like:

TPdam = PChp * depth / max_depth * damage_factor

The above, which is one of my earlier suggestions, determines that trap damage should be defined in terms of dungeon depth, with potential damage increasing as we go down. A damage_factor can be applied in the form of a random number (or arbitrarily, on a case by case basis) to reduce or increase the damage. Finally damage is defined in relation to player HP.

With the above approach, we can then apply an abstraction to trap damage based on the current game abstractions and with the help of statistical analysis: For instance, just averaging the hit die of every class:

TPdam = (depth)d6 * damage_factor

Naturally, we want something more complex than this. But this is just a crude example of the way we move forward from raw formulas and concepts and into an abstraction that introduces -- gives the illusion of -- a more natural damage progression.

The HP definition
HP is not a player character physical endurance, damage resistance, or something else with a relationship with human resistance. HP stands for "hit points", as you well know. As such HP is Hit Points and nothing else.

Trying to establish relationships between HP and real-life counterparts is not going to help reach any conclusion or serve any purpose. HP is a mathematical device to a mathematical approach to games. Nothing more. In real life the same shot through the heart will kill an elephant, a strongman or a child. And if it doesn't, it was not because an internal HP count in our bodies stayed above 0. I'm sure we can agree at least on that.

I'll be happy to discuss HP as being this or that in the context of playing the game. But please don't bring that debate when we are discussing game design choices. We can generally agree on a weak definition and on the game semantics that go along (it depends on constitution, for instance). But no more. Everyone knows what HP stands for; but nobody should dare saying what exactly.

The Trap monster
Stop making comparison between traps and monsters, then saying you aren't comparing, and then keep doing it

Traps aren't monsters. The semantics are completely different. Both in the way the game approaches traps as the players do. A completely different set of rules currently apply to traps. In no way any consideration between traps and monsters should be made to further a point, or to counter another.

Traps aren't currently even well defined as a strategic medium. There's a few cases, but by virtue of the game random generation of dungeons (and trap placement) they are only evident on static dungeon elements like vaults, or by chance when the RNG did make something interesting out of a dungeon section. Unfortunately the monsters currently don't take advantage of traps either. So really, with traps not being monsters already, they aren't even strategically significant.

With this in mind you should really think twice before using again a monster example to counter trap damage arguments. If instead traps start becoming more interesting, then we can start discussing it in those terms... sometimes.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

The above, which is one of my earlier suggestions, determines that trap damage should be defined in terms of dungeon depth, with potential damage increasing as we go down. A damage_factor can be applied in the form of a random number (or arbitrarily, on a case by case basis) to reduce or increase the damage. Finally damage is defined in relation to player HP.

And that's when we completely reject your position, because the final assertion is WRONG, for reasons many of us have cited.

Using depth, and depth alone, in a formula gives the rest of the model you describe. It is reasonable to extrapolate "at a given depth, the player will typically be level X, with Y Con, and therefore hit points will be roughly about...this much". If divers push that, and tend to be lower level at a given depth (or have lower Con) then they have a consistent, increased risk that they choose to accept.

SPECIFICALLY, what we are rejecting is the hard tie-in you imply: that, at the time damage is computed, the amount of damage is related to your current or max hit points. We are NOT rejecting the notion that damage increases with depth.

[nullfame]

SPECIFICALLY, what we are rejecting is the hard tie-in you imply: that, at the time damage is computed, the amount of damage is related to your current or max hit points. We are NOT rejecting the notion that damage increases with depth.

This.

Depth is *roughly* a function of character level. Gear is a function of depth. HP is a function of character level (and class and race, which you can use average values for, and gear which we've already seen is a function of depth).

It is the "roughly" part that makes the game interesting.

I agree with the assertion that, in the end, basing it off HP and off of depth would be functionally similar. I would even agree that to determine logical damage output one should base it off of *assumed* HP. What I don't agree with is this:

A possible trap damage formula:

[Player Maximum HP] * [Depth (level)] / 100 * [Trap Dam Factor (TDF)]

This takes away the risk of diving too fast and the reward of clearing too slow.

[krugar]

Interesting to note my post was simply ignored. Being that isn't even the in-game formula, but just the concept formula. Should learn to not write so much. A waste of time and effort.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

The waste of time and effort is being casually and sarcastically dismissive, when you fail to ever counter any argument WE made.

At this point, it's not we who fail to read your posts, it's you who fail to read and/or answer any of our arguments.

[fizzix]

Interesting to note my post was simply ignored. Being that isn't even the in-game formula, but just the concept formula. Should learn to not write so much. A waste of time and effort.

There's no waste. I read your post and all the other ones. It's always good to have opinions, and there will always be disagreements. I've made a lot of suggestions on this forum that were argued against and discarded. I've also had some suggestions that were played with, adapted, and included in the code base.

The only reason I haven't responded to this post is that I agree with the consensus that basing damage off of HP is a bad idea, and there's really nothing for me to say that hasn't already been said.

Even if you get no responses, don't feel like you've been summarily dismissed. You can be certain that people have read what you suggest and probably put some thought into it as well.