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Natural Regeneration Rates


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I'm working on a mod that tweaks the files that control how your primary stats (STR, INT, CHA) affect your secondary stats (THAC0, hitpoints, shop discounts), and I'd like some feedback on the rate of Regeneration conferred by one's Constitution score.

 

VANILLA NUMBERS:

All values of CON < 20 : No Regen.

20: 1 hp/60 sec (1 hp/turn)

21: 1 hp/50 sec

22: 1 hp/40 sec

23: 1 hp/30 sec (1 hp/5 rounds)

24: 1 hp/20 sec

25: 1 hp/10 sec

 

MY TWEAKED NUMBERS:

1: No Regen.

2: 1 hp/57,600 sec (4 game days)

3: 43200 sec

4: 36000

5: 28800 sec (2 game days)

6: 26400

7: 24000

8: 21600

9: 19200

10: 16800

11: 14400 sec (1 game day)

12: 12000

13: 9600

14: 7200

15: 4800 (8 game hours)

16: 2400

17: 1200

18: 600 sec (1 game hour)

19: 300 sec

20: 60 sec (1 turn)

21: 30 sec

22: 15 sec

23: 6 sec (1 hp/round)

24: 3 sec

25: 1hp/sec

 

The reason I'm asking here is because natural regen is SO much more prominent in BG1, what with its lower maximum hitpoint totals, much more traveling, and much rarer opportunities for regen from other sources. So what do you think: Would Kagain be made largely irrelevant by these numbers, as you could easily build your own Dwarven PC that heals 1 hitpoint every half hour, right from the start of the game? I made a point of keeping the regen rate at 20 Con constant--should I have changed it instead?

 

Please let me know what you think. Cross-posting to Ironworks & Pocket Plane.

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I think it's good to keep the 20 CON value consistent but I dunno... 1hp/sec or even 15sec seems a bit much. I know those are godlike scores but still, that's some pretty hefty uber-regen that makes you wonder how any "gods" would've actually have "died."

 

As for a person with average CON regenerating a hitpoint per day, that seems fairly reasonable. But it also seems fairly unlikely without any rest (hence the need for resting to heal).

 

Edit: Oh and I wouldn't think a person with under 6 CON would regen at all. They'd need potions, drugs, spells or the like to heal (*maybe* rest would help, but that might only just maintain their current HP).

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1hp/sec or even 15sec seems a bit much. I know those are godlike scores but still, that's some pretty hefty uber-regen that makes you wonder how any "gods" would've actually have "died."

I'm deliberately making the stat effects asymptotic at extremely high & low values because I feel that, yeah, godly stats should have godly effects. As for how these values might affect combat, I just did some checking . . . if DLTCEP is correct, Greater Lycanthropes already regenerate 6hp/sec, so tacking on another 1/sec (if the engine even adds the smaller number, it might simply ignore it) wouldn't make much difference. And only Greater Werewolves could get that extra 1/sec, because Greater Wolfweres have only 16 CON. At least, those are the BG2 numbers, I shall double-check to make sure this doesn't make the Lycanthropes in BG1 virtually unkillable or anything.

 

I wouldn't think a person with under 6 CON would regen at all. They'd need potions, drugs, spells or the like to heal

Well, adventurers in a D&D-type world would certainly know about things like splints & bandages . . . but yeah, I'm thinking about dropping all regeneration for CON = 4 and below. Largely because the computer has better things to do than count on 36,000 fingers. (1 hitpoint per 10 real-time hours? Bo-ring.)

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I like it a lot. Seems you put some real thought into the progression.

 

Miloch makes a good point; regeneration can be a huge edge for a character. But I think it's more of an edge outside of battle, helping you get back on your feet and ready to go much faster. By the time your constitution gets way up there, enemies that don't hit harder than a freight train will be somewhat rare.

 

Also, in general, people probably aren't going to get that kind of score unless they're cheating, and if they're cheating they probably won't have much interest in balancing their enemies to match their skill level.

 

If lycanthropes have that kind of regeneration, I think it should be possible for a non-cheating PC to be able to heal at 1/360th of the current the rate in BG1. And that's still 1/10th of the rate of SoA Irenicus (if I remember right) when the PC is at the end of ToB, assuming there's enough CON-boosting items in the game to get you to 25.

 

Is there a way to make the mod fiddle with the characters it might overbalance, like if the potential BG1 lycanthrope issue you mentioned arises?

 

I'm intrigued to see what you do with the rest of the stats now.

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Sadly, I've been forced to drop increased CON-based regeneration, as the game engine doesn't like it and throws bizarre bugs: In BG2, upon Reloading, injured party members often snap back up to full health--which ones get a free Heal varies randomly with every Reload. Testing these same numbers in the BG1 engine gets even weirder: Resting, traveling, or even starting the game (since you're automatically forwarded to Hour 8) can cause party members to literally regenerate to death, but not actually die: Your Inventory screen is greyed out & your Records screen says "DEAD," but the dead character can sometimes still remain controllable; other times he just stands there, immobile, and sometimes he's not there at all. Booting a "not-quite-dead" NPC from the party creates a corpse that's still standing up, and destroys all items they were carrying, as the game doesn't drop their loot because they were never "killed."

 

The BG1 bug is clearly potentially game-breaking, while the BG2 bug is just ugly, cheesy, and immersion-breaking . . . but even that's enough to make me roll back the change. Pity, really, as apart from that, the slow natural regeneration appears to work just fine.

 

I'm also probably going to have to cancel my plans to smooth out the rate at which INT affects one's odds to scribe Wizard scrolls (the vanilla curve stops almost completely dead in the 19-23 range, and then spikes at 24), as the game engine's not handling that correctly, either: A character with 16 INT should have a 65% chance to learn a spell, but his Records screen says his chance is only 3%, and his actual success rate (so far) is 100%. My tweaks to the INT-based Maze duration don't seem to be working, either, but that's a very minor concern, and probably easily fixable.

 

On the plus side, my other changes seem to be working . . . nothing quite as appealing as realistic natural Regen rates, but at least high-level Priests with very high WIS scores will no longer overflow the number of displayable spellslots, Keldorn's lower-than average DEX will finally give him a +1 AC penalty, and non-Warriors can now gain additional hitpoints by going above 16 CON. Players may appreciate my attention to detail, such as the way that each point of DEX affects one's Pick Pockets ability 3 times more than it does one's skill at Hiding in Shadows.

 

Anyway, those who are capable of digging into the game engine (Taimon, Avenger, etc.,) and finding out why the hell the game freaks out about natural Regen rates at CON<20 are more than welcome to do so. But for now, the #1 change that inspired this tweak in the first place is now officially on ice.

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