[Elea Rossi]

Mmmhmm, all good points.

[Harry-James Payne]

I can use your own argument against you. My modification is the same as a shield spell you say? Well what about the way that you are currently using it. You're using it as a buffer to survive otherwise unsurvivable attacks. What do you think that is? You could achieve the same effect for physical attacks with a shield spell and for magic you can use the appropriate resist spell.

The thing is about practicality. The other spells do not have downsides, and so why should Fortify Health? Name one spell, besides levitation and water breathing which do not count, that has a negative effect? Restore health? No. Fortify Strength? No. Resist Fire? No. Your argument is completely invalid.

And on a third note, the Fortify Health spell IS a tanking spell. Why else would you Fortify Health? To die more easily? Because that is what it does. It creates an unneeded, impractical risk for your character, when it should be just what it advertises: helping you tank. Fortifying you and helping you survive your attacks.

[Matthew Barrows]

BrodieSWR is right about that.
None of the other spells have an inherent downside.
That only this one should is absurd.

And it basically is a spell for tanking.

[Jesus Lopez]

I need to agree that the spell is flawed as it stands. I know more than once i might fortify my health, There's a good chance I'll still be in the middle of battle when it ends. That becomes an issue if i suddenly drop all the temporary points i had. I don't always have time to monitor the effect icons to see when it starts fading out, so i have to hurry and heal. Worse is if you happen to only have a healing magical spell and you happen to be hit on the ground, not much you can do till you get up, and if the spell runs out before then, your [censored] out of luck.

Let's take your example(s) and compare them with another one.

Later i get my HP to 200, Fortify Health bumps to 250/250
I take 30 points of damage, so I now have 220/250
Later the effect wears off. HP drops down to 176.

Now you've only blocked 20% of the damage rather than 30%, so it becomes less effective as you get stronger. Sounds like how it should.
Assume i have my health boosted twice from two separate spells/effects, for 25 each instead.
both effects: 220/250
1st effect ends: 198/225
2nd effect ends: 176/200

Still follows the same percentage rules, so it sounds good.

Having damage removed from the temporary first. never changes effectiveness. you stop 100% of the damage for x hitpoints.
150/150 - 30 = 120/150 Spell wears off, 100/100
250/250 - 30 = 220/250 Spell wears off, 100/100

Although D&D follows this rule, it has a limit morrowind doesn't. For balance reasons you can't have any one bonus effect stacked, the stronger one takes precedence. So getting your health boosted by 100 from two mages (or potions, scrolls Ect), you only get one of the 100. The only use the second one would have, is to overlap time and keep it going longer, basically buying time till you can heal them properly.

Honestly, either fix would be an improvement, but I'm leaning toward percentage, since it sounds like how it should work.

This was exactly my point.

[Hayley O'Gara]

Not sure who might care, but this is the Vampiric Touch description from AD&D 2nd Ed Tome of Magic:

On successful attack, opponent loses 1d6 hp per every two caster's levels; max drain is 6d6 for a 12th level caster. hp are added to caster's total, they're temporary. any dmg taken after is taken from these temp hp points. after an hour, all extra hp are gone. does not affect undead creatures.

[Schel[Anne]FTL]

A quick run-down:

BrodieSWR's way: Provides safety from "Fake Difficulty".
Elaura's way: The spell's actual magnitude is more relevant.

The old way: Clunky, unwieldy death-trap, inferior to any and all alternative spells.

[Nana Samboy]

What dagoth_jeff said just now about the D&D Vampiric Touch spell is basically the Elaura version.
You get a maxHP bonus, then any HP you lose first goes off of the bonus.
When time runs out and the bonus fades, you're left with your unspent original HP.

[Amiee Kent]

And to think I thought it was just the Nyquil talking.

[carrie roche]

Sorry dagoth_jeff, just clarifing for readers.
(My argument, not your writing, sorry...)

[clelia vega]

I don't think the developers meant to create a spell that is so hazardous that most players tend to avoid using it. Fortify Attribute, Fortify Fatigue, and Fortify Magicka are all useful spell effects.

Something needs to be done about Fortify Health, even if it is just a quick-fix to keep it from dropping health to below 1HP.

No vote.

[Jarrett Willis]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty

One Hit KO (when unavoidable, or when caused by knockback)
Only when there is no chance for the player to avert an instant-death attack in any way. If it can be dodged or prevented in some manner, then it is true difficulty and you weren't skilled enough. However, one common method of fake difficulty is knockback sending the player into One Hit KO pitfalls or hazards without any Mercy Invincibility.

Well, we can't say "in any way". So we aren't skilled enough. PK is right about that. But we deserve some mercy!(maybe 1 HP fix Alaisiagae mentioned but with further penalties. I don't want full pardon. Just some mercy.)

I have a problem with "-30" health. What the hell is a negative health? These are fundamental game design problems. When you can fight with full capacity till end then dropping dead instantly is very unrealistic, at least for an RPG.

We should debate this a little further. I'm thinking giving player more time. Maybe remaining time can be scaled based on remaining health. Giving more time to the player could be the mercy. Or taking half of it from attributes directly, from endurance. (In my ideal game, attributes would be wholly dynamic like that. But that's for another discussion.)

PS. @BrodieSWR, I found the current state of your opening post as offensive. Too opinionated and thus unclear.
:excl:

[Stu Clarke]

After doing some thinking, and taking peachykeen's point into more consideration, I will concede and give it some due credit.

Yes, the current method implemented by MCP does add a useful mechanic, buffering health before a battle, and increasing the effectiveness and allowing the use of more powerful healing spells.

But this mechanic requires longer durations to be useful.

The current ratio of cost/performance is too high compaired with other methods of defense, such as using a shield spell and health restoration. Accomplishing this same thing with Fortify Health is not cost effecient.

The second thing is that the durations are not long enough either.

To make this mechanic effective, you need to make the cost of Fortify Health lower and affordable, and increaes the durations of all effects in the game.

The first one is simple through a setting, but the second one is too difficult unless you modify all of the items in the game, and all items added by any mods, making it impractical.

So, through an implementation point of view, my method, I believe, is more practical for the current situation.

Sorry if in my previous posts, I seemed abrasive and unassailable. My thought process is humble, but my rhetoric can be very abusive at times. I have considered your points of view however, know that.

[Beast Attire]

Personally, I always considered Fortify Health like a HP loan, so it worked for me, but I can understand why some would want to change it. However, are you not including Fortify Magicka aka Mana Loan in that proposition?

[Chica Cheve]

Well that explains it, the A2's always were a bit twitchy.

[Chloe Botham]

Even thinking of it as a loan, a lack of magicka isn't necessarily life-threatening... but a lack of health is.
Some PCs need little or no magicka, but everyone needs health.
Also, since falling to zero kills you, it's ridiculous that this can make it negative.
It simply must be given some sort of failsafe...

Lastly yeah, when I first saw BrodieSWR's main topic post, it admittedly looked sort of like a ripoff of Timecube...
...but then I noticed that he had a point.

Edit: For those who don't know what I meant by Timecube, you can read all about it here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeCube

Just take my advice, and don't go to the actual timecube site, if you're not prepared.
It's kind of NSFW due to language... but it's mostly just insane.

[Lawrence Armijo]

And now he has another point...
I hadn't realized that the "temporary health" setup could be exploited in such a way:

3) Temporary HP: This method would treat Fortify Health as a preemptive heal. That is, the hitpoints that it adds would be removed first when damage is taken, and then, when the effect wore off, any remaining temporary health, if it remained, would be removed. The downside to this method, however, is that it creates an exploit with constant effect items containing the effect, allowing a person to constantly heal themselves by reequiping the item constantly.

I guess I have no choice but to support the percentage system.
Using the "temporary health" setup would mean having to remove all instances of constant effect fortify health,
and blocking it in the enchanting system, to preserve balance.

I guess percentage is the best fix for this, and it's certainly far better than the alternative.
I'd still prefer the "temporary health" setup, but I don't like all the nerfing it would take to balance that.
...Vote updated.

[Stephanie Nieves]

After doing some thinking, and taking peachykeen's point into more consideration, I will concede and give it some due credit.

Yes, the current method implemented by MCP does add a useful mechanic, buffering health before a battle, and increasing the effectiveness and allowing the use of more powerful healing spells.

But this mechanic requires longer durations to be useful.

I absolutely agree there. With long durations, more than the usual for a single fight (multiple fights you can chain the spell or have a high power version) it would become far more useful than it is. In fact, to build on Gaius Atrius' comment:

It simply must be given some sort of failsafe...

How does a fade-out sound?

For example, the player casts a fortify health spell, boosting their health by 50 points. When the spell wears off, instead of them losing 50 points from what they have remaining, the spell slowly fades. Let's say they instead lose 10 per second, up to the amount given by the spell; or they lose the health over the course of 5 seconds (20% of the boost each second).

That would give players a warning and a chance to heal instead of dropping dead out of nowhere (I understand that it's easy to lose track of spell durations in a big fight), but it doesn't ditch the strategic nature of the effect. It seems like a nice balance, removing the major problem you're worried about and keeping the aspects I appreciate. Making the spell somewhat cheaper and allowing longer durations would also be beneficial, together they would make for a very powerful (but not risk-free, and so not unbalancing) spell effect.

Sorry if in my previous posts, I seemed abrasive and unassailable. My thought process is humble, but my rhetoric can be very abusive at times. I have considered your points of view however, know that.

And the same from myself.

[Lizzie]

The downside to this method, however, is that it creates an exploit with constant effect items containing the effect, allowing a person to constantly heal themselves by reequiping the item constantly.

Yes, it would be a possible game breaking exploit, however I'd be too lazy to use it If i made a pair of shoes and put it in hotkeys and swapped it out with another set of shoes to get that effect, it would take out too much of my effort in a battle. If a pair of shoes was scripted that way to equip/unequip, and put on an NPC you had to fight... Uggg... That would be scary. Hard to kill, and scary. I shudder at the thought. At that point it's manually activated damage reduction, which isn't how fortify health is suppose to work.


With that in mind, i do believe the fortify magicka (and fatigue) should be percentile based as well. I hate casting fortify magicka, and then seeing it running totally out of mana at the end of the time as though i didn't cast it at all except to loose that magicka. In my mind, that makes it about as useful as fortify health currently is. That's what totally turned me off of even trying to use those spells before.


Although off topic, it comes to question. Could the restore magicka effect be allowed as a spell you can cast/enchant? If it then costs more to cast than it restores (say 5:1), then it's mostly useful as an enchantment, and you could make an item to act as a temporary battery/reserve to restore your magicka. You could also make constant effect items to slowly restore magicka (at 5:1, effectively 50 magicka to restore 1 per second). But maybe that's too powerful/godlike.

[Adam Porter]

Hmm, a slow fadeout would work rather nicely.
My only real concern here is the "sudden collapse" itself, which leaves the player without any failsafe measure.
As long as that is fixed, I'm happy.

My vote for percentage still stands, though.

[Mandi Norton]

Although off topic, it comes to question. Could the restore magicka effect be allowed as a spell you can cast/enchant?

As far as I know, it can simply be activated/unlocked in the CS. The problem is that the effect is a real nightmare to balance.
Premade enchanted items with drawbacks is my personal application of it. (Although not yet implemented in my game.)

Edit: corrected a typing error.

[Nana Samboy]

Although off topic, it comes to question. Could the restore magicka effect be allowed as a spell you can cast/enchant? If it then costs more to cast than it restores (say 5:1), then it's mostly useful as an enchantment, and you could make an item to act as a temporary battery/reserve to restore your magicka. You could also make constant effect items to slowly restore magicka (at 5:1, effectively 50 magicka to restore 1 per second). But maybe that's too powerful/godlike.

There's at least one mod that does pretty much that -- adds a useless restore magicka spell to the world so you can learn the effect. I found it as "http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=138" at PES, by Shalinor.

Drops a book onto Caius Cosade's bed that teaches you the spell "Fool's Recharge." Recharges 19 mana, costs 20... useless spell.

More importantly, it gives access to "restore magicka" as a possible enchantment effect.

(Sorry to keep derailing your thread here, BrodieSWR. Um. Some kinda fix -- good for everyone except maybe the person implementing it, since it'll be optional anyway. Why so much arguing?)

[Ymani Hood]

There's at least one mod that does pretty much that -- adds a useless restore magicka spell to the world so you can learn the effect. I found it as "http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=138" at PES, by Shalinor.

I wasn't asking if it could be done, i was meaning if it should be done. Settings turn it off by default; ie: can't learn it as a spell, can't enchant using it's effect.

But unless it becomes more relevant to the topic I'll leave it alone for another day.

[chloe hampson]

I guess you could use Oblivion's system. The Fortify Health effect can never kill you, only reduce you to 1 HP. I don't really like that though, seems like a cheap way to circumvent the problem.

And I still stand by my point that Fortify Health is the only spell with a negative aspect to it. Name one other spell that has a negative aspect to using it, with the main point being beneficial, besides levitate and waterbreathing.

[NeverStopThe]

I guess you could use Oblivion's system. The Fortify Health effect can never kill you, only reduce you to 1 HP. I don't really like that though, seems like a cheap way to circumvent the problem.

And I still stand by my point that Fortify Health is the only spell with a negative aspect to it. Name one other spell that has a negative aspect to using it, with the main point being beneficial, besides levitate and waterbreathing.

Um okay Fortify personality

[FLYBOYLEAK]

Jump. Semi-useful spell of limited practicality. No good guidelines for how much to use to get what effect, and just because you can jump high with it, doesn't mean you can survive the landing. In this respect it's even more dangerous than levitate. At least with levitate if you cast it again you can stop your fall, or water-breathing you can cast it again to keep from drowning.