Hey there folks, just had a couple of questions about this...

First. My experience. I have a LVL 51 warrior. 21 CON (maxed). I train my HP and I get 10 hp points for something like 1500 copper. Now, while this may not be the same for when I train mana and mov, I was curious to know a couple of things.

What stats does the trainer take into consideration (if any) when you decide to use your train for HP gains? Do they base the HP gain off of your current CON and generate a number from there? Something like half-CON rounded down? Or it is just a standard 10 hp when you train no matter what?

Also, has anyone given any thought to possibly increasing the amount of HP that you can get when you do train the HP 'stat'? Perhaps a decent number like standard 20 or 30? Maybe even match it to the current number of CON you actually have? Especially since trains are so valuable, it seems that they are seriously under valued when put into HP but still cost a crap load to use when you want to increase a stat like HP or MANA or MOV.

Naturally there would be some concern about a race/class combo like a dwarf warrior putting all his trains into HP and then becoming ultra healthy; but even the most ultra healthy person would still be short lived since every time they lost a point of CON they would not be able to get that point of CON back through training.

Do you mostly play warriors or mages? For warriors it's less of an issue, but mages need the hp.

Most mages have around 600-700ish base hp at hero. Every practice is worth one hitpoint. A mage with 18-21 wis (most races) gets 290 practices by hero (counting trains as 10 practices). Figure about 75 skills worth practicing, that leaves 215 practices. If you can dump those all into hitpoints you're gaining about 33% more base hitpoints. Basically every time you train something other than hitpoints you're missing out on 1.5% of your base, and that adds up pretty quickly.

Now sure, you could train con a million times, but really it takes quite a while to run through all your con anyway, unless you're pretty suicidal. And sure, you could train your str and dex back up but those stats aren't that important as a mage. How much over max str are you really gearing as a mage? More importantly, there's always an equivalence between strength and hitpoints. How many points of str can you get in a slot? How many hitpoints? If you can get 3 points of str in a slot, then you need to be able to find something with 30 hitpoints on it for you to be better off wearing the hp gear in that slot.

And then there are things you can only get from gear. You can't train save vs spell. So unless you're not wearing any hp gear at all, you could put that many trains into hp, and wear the svspell instead and come out ahead. Training hp gives you a lot more flexibility, because it's always useful, and you can always consider that you can swap out equipment at will, but you can't change what you've done with trains.

Obviously I'm a big believer in training hp, but it also depends on your playstyle. For example, if you stack a lot of DR then you don't need a lot of hitpoints, maybe you would be better being able to take a boatload of maladicts and still wield your heavy weapons. But I personally will never count on finding a/b/s, which means I need the hitpoints to avoid being a pathetic speedbump.

... HP is VERY important for DR.

Say you have 1000hp, then add ABS+Stone to that and you have what? 3000hp

If you only had 500hp that would give you 1500hp with ABS+stone

(These numbers are NOT accurate. I'm just trying to give you a picture of how it works.)

So, the more HP the more milage out of DR.

>... HP is VERY important for DR.
>
>Say you have 1000hp, then add ABS+Stone to that and you have
>what? 3000hp
>
>If you only had 500hp that would give you 1500hp with
>ABS+stone
>
>(These numbers are NOT accurate. I'm just trying to give you a
>picture of how it works.)
>
>So, the more HP the more milage out of DR.

That's absolutely true. All I mean is that if you think you need 1000 hp to beat somebody, you can use DR instead of HP if you have other things you want to focus on. It's certainly true that the goodness of dr multiplies with hp.

I don't know why we'd increase the amount of hp you get for training HP, given that most characters spend most of their trains on HP already.

If anything it would be more interesting to devalue HP trains or kick mana/move up even further to make there be more of a real choice.

Really? I find myself rarely training hp. I keep my CON maxed out until I hero. Levelling slowly means I usually suffer some mob or PK deaths, meaning I have to spend 2-3 trains to keep it at max.

Then I save some # of trains to counteract STR/DEX effects of aging.

You also tend to play characters to age death.

Which, btw, I completely support and encourage, but you're not most people in that respect.

True.

What about removing "train hp" and "train mana" altogether?

They seem to penalize two groups of people:

1. Characters who die frequently and have to use their trains on CON. This group skews towards newbies, but also includes characters that take a lot of risks.

2. Long-lived characters, who have to save trains for str/dex.

OTOH this would represent a nerf to gnomes.

Wait...most people spend their trains on HP anyways? I don't think that I have ever seen someone, in any group that I have been with, or in most of my time at CF train their HP except one or two random people.

Is it really a tactic that a lot of people are using? Cause if so then I can certainly understand the need to tone it down a bit, but I didn't think that training HP was a tactic that many people even considered let alone did on a regular basis.

And for myself, even if I save a few trains for middle-age/old, I still find room to put a few into extra hp. I'd personally say the hp per train should start going down after you've used a few, just to make gnomes less stupidly healthy despite having ####ty 18 con.

>Wait...most people spend their trains on HP anyways? I don't
>think that I have ever seen someone, in any group that I have
>been with, or in most of my time at CF train their HP except
>one or two random people.
>
>Is it really a tactic that a lot of people are using?

Yup.

I'd say, roughly, in the first half of levels you see people training their stats a lot; in the back half (which typically is a good number of trains since most characters tend to have a lot of spare practices which get gain converted), it's almost all HP.

Some people will train con as they need to, as well, but a lot of people will power towards hero without losing any or without bothering to replace what they've lost.

I haven't attempted to gather statistics on this but this is basically what I've noticed across a bunch of players/characters.

Ahhh ok. I just assumed that most people did what Isildur does and kept them for training purposes later on, since they gave so little HP when you did train.

Thanks for the response! This clears things up a bit for me.

A gnome gets +400hp from trains if ALL put into trains. (BUT, some are needed to train stats, 3-4 I think, then a few pracs are needed.)

So roughly 350hps from trains at hero. For example, Gnome warriors who spend pracs/trains wisely will have an higher average base-HP than dwarves at hero.

Every high int char I've had has trained HP. It's only the low-int ones that I haven't with since I usually need to gain revert to get pracs.

>I don't know why we'd increase the amount of hp you get for
>training HP, given that most characters spend most of their
>trains on HP already.

Actually, I do rather like the idea of the amount of hp/mana/mv increased being tied to your stats in that area. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that a frail dark-elf who wants to train at how to take a beating better, would get as much improvement as a dwarf would. Or what a dwarf who wants to train his mental reserves gains as much as said dark-elf.

>If anything it would be more interesting to devalue HP trains
>or kick mana/move up even further to make there be more of a
>real choice.

I like the option of HP trains for general-int/wis level chars. What always struck me as odd, was the fact that for high int, high wis, and particularly high int AND wis characters....ultimately the high int/wis translates into lots of HP trains...because they're smart?

>Actually, I do rather like the idea of the amount of
>hp/mana/mv increased being tied to your stats in that area.

The problem is nobody would ever play a gnome again. Or probably any of the other frail, smart races. Consider that you're making dwarves even more healthy to the point of insanity. Right now the races are balanced with the ability to train hp. If you're going to shift that much power towards the healthy races, you'd need to give the smart, frail, weak races something or else they're just a terrible choice for anything.

If you want an IC explanation, just think of it as elves and gnomes being better and more persistent in studies, where the dumb races are too stupid. The fact is, hit points is an abstraction that just doesn't make any sense anyway. So whatever you think would give a person hit points, that's what elves and gnomes are doing with the trainer, and they're the only ones smart enough to do it in a controlled, safe environment. Those dumb giants just insist on getting hit hard in the face instead.

n/t