MaxHP drain kiting

[Ferret]

I like MaxHP drain being available to players... but I'm not sure I'm fond of it being used like this. It isn't that I mind it working so much as I don't like it when a tedious method becomes the optimum one, because that makes the tedium mandatory which is... not fun.

Not sure what a good answer here is yet.

Enemies don't really have a way to earn experience, so the main player method doesn't work so well for them.

Pure stones... in theory I could train AIs to use items and give them pure stones/gems, but this is just extending the tedium, not eliminating the problem (this would cause other issues too, such as status conditions suddenly becoming very hard to use )

I could have demons attempt to flee the level if they have lowered and the player seems to be kiting... but I'm not sure I like this either.

Hmm. I'll think about it some more.

[Sandman25]

It might be temporary (duration-based). So player cannot just deal some maxHP damage, escape for healing and then return later to deal more max HP damage.

Edit. Similar problem was in DCSS with draining brand, it used to permanently decrease HD which decreased monster max HP and damage. It was solved by making draining temporary (duration-based).

[geminimax]

You could make it so the enemy maxHP quickly regenerates when out of battle.

[Ferret]

Yeah, that's the easy one... I resist it mostly because one of Demon's rules has been "things work the same way for the player and the enemies both." But, at the moment, the current system of MaxHP recovery is only really an option for players, since enemies can't earn XP anyway, so I guess I'm technically already violating it. Maybe I should bend it this time and allow this for enemies. Call it the tower's evil aura or something.