Jump to content

Percentage of hit points


jeffh

Recommended Posts

I've done a little basic modding using the existing tools to edit 2wa and itm files, but I really don't know much about this so forgive me if this is a silly question.

 

Is there a way to have something, say a spell or magic item, heal (or inflict) damage equal to some percentage of the recipient's hit points (preferably capable of being further modified by a die roll)?

 

TIA.

 

(In case anyone cares, the one set of changes I've made was mostly to change a lot of the rules in IWD to be more like 3E PnP D&D, though I also did things like flatten saving throws, i.e. make them start better but then seldom improve. This is fairly trivial but makes a significant difference to the gameplay experience, IMO for the better.)

 

Actually, a second question just dawned on me. Am I correct in assuming that changing the modifiers for, say, a high Strength will benefit a LOT of monsters, not just my party?

Link to comment
Actually, a second question just dawned on me. Am I correct in assuming that changing the modifiers for, say, a high Strength will benefit a LOT of monsters, not just my party?

 

Of course.

Link to comment
Opcode 12 can be made to inflict damage equal to a per cent of the target's max HP. Your die roll of additional damage can be a separate damage effect dealing xdy damage. You can find out more by checking the IESDP pages for effects.

To me, that reads as though those can only be used to set the target to a percentage of its hit points. Have I misunderstood something about them? e.g. the wording used there makes it sound like I could set a target to 80% of its hit points but not deal damage equal to that figure.

 

(Actually even that's something of a guess - nowhere in the description for opcode 12 does it say what it's using a percentage of, unlike most of the others which are very clear about this.)

Link to comment

Because I was hoping to prey off the genius of others. :blush:

 

A little more seriously, because I'm a busy grad student who doesn't know much about modding. But perhaps I'll give this a shot one of these evenings, and make it known what I find.

 

Just FYI, the idea was to change healing spells so that they healed some percentage of the target's maximum hit points, plus some additional amount (so they wouldn't be useless at low levels). I thought the idea might also have offensive applications (used sparingly for, say, certain undead attacks). Any further advice on whether and how it might be possible to implement that would still of course be appreciated.

Link to comment
Guest thelee
Just FYI, the idea was to change healing spells so that they healed some percentage of the target's maximum hit points, plus some additional amount (so they wouldn't be useless at low levels). I thought the idea might also have offensive applications (used sparingly for, say, certain undead attacks). Any further advice on whether and how it might be possible to implement that would still of course be appreciated.

 

Balance critiques probably are off-topic for this forum, but wouldn't this severely skew up lower level healing/class differences? If cure light wounds did something like heal 25% + 1d4 health, then the level 1 fighter with 17 con would get dramatic healing over a level 2 mage with 10 con? Both would need roughly two castings of it to heal up to full health from 1 hit point, so it's basically like punishing lower-sized hit die classes.

Link to comment
Just FYI, the idea was to change healing spells so that they healed some percentage of the target's maximum hit points, plus some additional amount (so they wouldn't be useless at low levels). I thought the idea might also have offensive applications (used sparingly for, say, certain undead attacks). Any further advice on whether and how it might be possible to implement that would still of course be appreciated.

 

Balance critiques probably are off-topic for this forum, but wouldn't this severely skew up lower level healing/class differences? If cure light wounds did something like heal 25% + 1d4 health, then the level 1 fighter with 17 con would get dramatic healing over a level 2 mage with 10 con? Both would need roughly two castings of it to heal up to full health from 1 hit point, so it's basically like punishing lower-sized hit die classes.

No more, and perhaps less, than the current system "punishes" those with a lot of hit points or high Constitution. (I find "being healthy makes it take longer to heal" particularly annoying).

 

At any rate, the 25%+ that you read me as suggesting is very close (in fact, much closer than what I had in mind) to how 4th Edition does things, and I haven't heard of a single person raising the issue you bring up. And it's not like 4E doesn't have its share of detractors, who would raise the issue if they thought it was even remotely a serious problem.

Link to comment

Have you come up with something working yet on this?

 

If not, try opcode 17. It's the opcode used in the healing spells. You can increase or decrease by a set amount such as Cure Light Wounds which cures 8 hp only (a negative number would subtract points ie damage). You can set hp to a specific number equal to or less than the max hit points of the given creature (this might cause the creature to gain or loose hp depending upon their current state). You can also set hp to a percentage of the max hit points, the Heal spell does this by setting it to 100%.

 

In the example you gave earlier regarding a spell that healed by 25% + 1d4:

You'd have one effect of opcode 17 with Modifier Type set at 2 and Probability 1 set at 25 with # of dice set to 1 and dice size set to 4

So for a character with 12 maxhp it would set them to one of the following depending upon the dice roll:

3 + 1 = 4hp

3 + 2 = 5hp

3 + 3 = 6hp

3 + 4 = 7hp

 

For characters less than 3 current hp this would help, but for characters with more it would actually be a loss.

Your idea is better suited for a high level spell rather than a early low power spell. As a high level spell it would not become available until the party had higher hp counts. However, its use would have to be well scripted to ensure that characters who got healed would actually gain hp and not loose any.

Link to comment

The problem with this suggestion is that what it does is absolutely nothing like what I described. I want it to heal people by a percentage of their hit points, not set their hit points to a percentage of their hit points (which is relatively easy). Your suggestion would only have the effect I want if the target was at exactly zero hit points. In the IE, that means they're dead unless something seriously weird is going on.

 

What you've described, I wouldn't call a healing spell at all; it's an offensive spell that can occasionally bite you in the ass, and might, in a real emergency, have a secondary use as a healing spell, given a short enough casting time. That's not a bad idea for a mid-level necromancy spell or something, but it's an utterly different idea than the one I was asking about.

Link to comment

There's not really a way to do what you want for healing AFAIK.

 

In BG2, damage can be made to a percentage of HPs (Mode 2 sets to a percentage, but Mode 3 deals percentage damage). IESDP is pretty lame for this; you can look at instances of the Damage effect in NI, which correctly separates the two WORDs (damage type and mode).

 

I have no idea if this works the same in IWD.

Link to comment

Let's see if I understand correctly now that you've stated things differently...

 

Character has a max of 50 hp

They are injured and at 20 hp

You want to heal by say 25% of their hp total (25% of 50 hp = 12.5 hp)

So that when healed the character has 20 hp + 13 hp for a total of 33 hp

 

Is this correct?

 

If I am correct, you could try the following but it may end up being a lot of script code as well as spells.

 

Create a script that looks at the characters MAXHITPOINTS. If the max hit points fall within a specified range, apply the correct spell that adds the median value equivalent to the percentage that you want. Some would get a slightly higher amount than the chosen percentage and others would get slightly less. The ones getting higher would be at the lower end of the hit point range.

 

Example using a 25% of hit points:

Max hit points less than or equal to 16

CheckStatLT(Player1,MAXHITPOINTS,17)

Percentages

25% of 16 = 4

25% of 12 = 3

25% of 8 = 2

25% of 4 = 1

Average

4+3+2+1 = 10

10/4 = 2.5

Apply spell that adds 3 hp

 

 

Max hit points greater than 16 or equal to 32

CheckStatGT(Player1,MAXHITPOINTS,16)

CheckStatLT(Player1,MAXHITPOINTS,33)

Percentages

25% of 32 = 8

25% of 28 = 7

25% of 24 = 6

25% of 20 = 5

Average

8+7+6+5 = 26

26/4 = 6.5

Apply spell that adds 7 hp

 

continue on as high as you wish to go....

 

In this scenario you could create a script block and spell for every 4 hp (we can't do decimals) but that would be an extremely large quantity of spells and script blocks.

 

I'm not even sure how this would work for you. While in theory it would give the end result that you want, you may not be able to get the script to be triggered by casting a spell. Maybe if you could set a global value within the spell that must be true in each of the script blocks.... But I don't know....

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...