Bonus MaxHP and Vigor Siphon

[ayayaya]

The current implementation of bonus MaxHP decay is rather annoying. The moment a fight ends and I have bonus MaxHP, I want to heal everyone as fast as possible to reduce decay. Because unsummoned injured demons take longer to heal--I normally have at least one healer summoned that heals me and other summoned demons quickly--I have a bunch of not fully healed demons in my party when all my summoned demons are healed. To speed up their recovery, I manually summon my injured demons one by one to be healed by the healer. This is tedious to do.

Furthermore, as wizzzargh pointed out in a different post, one reason the ability Vigor Siphon is too strong is because it can make the user too tanky. I propose a change that would make bonus MaxHP less annoying and nerf Vigor Siphon:

Make bonus MaxHP not decay over time. Instead, bonus MaxHP decays each time HP damage is taken by half of the HP damage. For example:

I am at 100/120 (110) HP.
I take 10 damage.
I am now at 90/115 (110) HP

Thoughts?

[Ferret]

Hmm... this could work, and it would relieve the need for auto-explore and auto-rest to be perfectly optimized to be usable by MaxHP builds. I like it. I'll put it on the list for the build after next (I want to get the UI stuff out of the way first )

[Ferret]

Apparently I liked this idea enough I went ahead and did it even though this is theoretically a boring UI build.

New system is pretty much literally what you suggested:
* MaxHP bonus is no longer lost over time.
* However, most sources of damage will cause you to lose bonus MaxHP = 50% of the damage taken.

I'm going to run a MaxHP-drainer build for my testing run of this build, so the 50% number might change based on the results of that, but for now, that's what it is. Thanks again for the suggestion.

[ayayaya]

Glad the proposal got implemented! Though, now that I think about it, Wraith Touch gets hurt by this change more than Vigor Siphon since being in melee means you're more liable to take damage. Wraith Touch might need a compensatory buff depending on how things turn out.

[Ferret]

Possibly... though, Wraith Touch is already 15 SP to Vigor Siphon's 30 SP. It could also mean Agility and Dodge become more important for MaxHP builds operating at close range to help them keep the HP longer, which isn't a nerf so much as an interesting possible change to how some variants of the build work.

At some point, I'll probably add an ability that reduces the % of MaxHP lost when you take damage. It seems like the sort of thing that should exist.

Hmm... I wonder if I should give characters that possess MaxHP draining abilities a random amount of MaxHP when they're generated? After all, it doesn't wear off over time anymore, so if they've ever successfully used those abilities, they should still have some of the MaxHP.

[wizzzargh]

This all sounds like a very elegant solution to some of the scummy behaviors time-limited MaxHP caused, making your MaxHP more dependent on your characters defenses and combat participation rather than the player's tolerance for kiting enemies and micromanaging your resting with heals.
....nnnnnnnot that anyone EVER did that, I'm sure

[Ferret]

Pfft, I'm a guy who used to drop all my potions and scrolls before any ice or fire battle, even so much as an orc wizard, back when Stone Soup allowed even a hint of cold/fire damage to destroy consumables, so I have a pretty good idea how often people were probably doing that.

[Sandman25]

Right, don't underestimate roguelikers... I switched to manual exploration mode and summoned healers when playing with max HP build. Though eventually I got so tired of it that I decided to play recklessly to die as soon as possible