The problem of low hit points on humans

[Epaminondas]

alexti said:
Another idea to make human heroes more useful: built-in "heroic luck". Let's say your regular hero fights in the battle, takes a big hit and dies. But when "heroically lucky" hero fights and takes a big hit he only kind of dies - he isn't anywhere on the battlefield and he doesn't participate in the battle in any way, but if your army wins you'll get a message that as the army returned to the camp hero "such and such" appeared out of his tent cursing that some prankster stole his armour while he was sleeping

I would love to see a Heroic Luck prowess as well. Perhaps add a Luck attribute that stacks with normal Luck? In other words, if you already had Luck cast on you, you could have 75 percent chance of surviving the hit, instead of the normal 50 percent.

[Epaminondas]

Epaminondas said:

I would love to see a Heroic Luck prowess as well. Perhaps add a Luck attribute that stacks with normal Luck? In other words, if you already had Luck cast on you, you could have 75 percent chance of surviving the hit, instead of the normal 50 percent.

Hmmm. I recant. I am not sure if this is a good idea. Most HoF heroic prowess continues to increase, and this attribute could increase to the point where your hero may be unkillable!

[PvK]

Hullu said:
... Oh you mentioned non-magical/blessed - the Dom3 heroes ARE blessed and/or magical and/or just HEROES.

Only the ones marked as such, and therein lies part of the problem. Many of the heroes in Dom 3 are only somewhat better than typical commanders. I and others enjoy them that way, but they really start as people with hero potential, rather than fully-fleged heroes. Once they have experience and heroic abilities and items, they can be quite powerful, if still mortal. But with some exceptions, most of them don't appear from the start at "quite powerful" level. You have to build most of them up, and unless you embrace the challenge and risks of doing so, it's not particularly worth the time and attention, especially from a competetive standpoint when there are more powerful summons you can blink up for a small pile of magic gems.

I think the "Worthy Heroes" mod is really the right approach. The designers offer a built-in set of heroes, many of whom are just somewhat better than national commanders, and many of us find them interesting and nicely restrained in their abilities. If you want more super heroes, you can mod them in and/or use mods than do so. It's far easier to do so now in Dom 3 too because there are much nicer mod commands for heroes than there were in Dom 2.

[Taqwus]

Epaminondas said:
Further, while I am not sure if Herakles ever took a severe blow from many of his mythical enemies, my assumption is that he must have, given the number of his accounts. In this respect, perhaps it is important to emphasize that the legends usually emphasize Herakles' strength and hardiness, not his agility, in contrast to, say, Achilles, who is usually depicted as swift or fleet-footed.
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As noted, he was also not human -- he was half-god, and not just any god, but the leader of the pantheon known for direct divine intervention. He's therefore not a great example of what should be achievable by humans.

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2. Achilles' near invulnerability came from his mother Thetis dipping most of his body (except the notorious Achilles' "Heel") in the River Styx. One could say that that is an equivalent of his natural armor or "protection" but it could also said to represent his natural hardiness or constitution or--gasp!--HP. To insist on Achilles' near-invulnerability solely as a category of "protection" may be to try to interpret everything according to your convenience.
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That is the textbook definition of protection. He could not be harmed save by a blow to the one vulnerable location. When he was struck there by an enemy who was forewarned, Achilles died. That's protection, not hp -- hp reflect being hurt. He was simply not hurt when hit elsewhere. His ability to not be hurt when hit elsewhere, was completely irrelevant when he was hit in his one vulnerable location. That is not consistent with any explanation that relies on a global stack of hit points, not protection + critical hit.

3. Yes, the "Iliad is littered with dead heroes." But so what? I don't know too many instances where heroes in the Iliad (I can't think of any at the moment) die due to causes other than the might of other heroes or divine interventions. That is, heroes do not die by a lucky stroke from an ill-trained militiaman.

...as if a soldier who killed a hero wouldn't be treated as one in the tales, at least tales written by his own side?

Also, consider this: was Patroclus considered a hero in his own right, until he demonstrated the skill of fighting as Achilles did, to the point that his opponents believed his armor? Or was it his (not special!) damage-taking ability that fooled them?

Pathos gets godly protection, just like Achilles. In fact... unless it's been reduced, he's BETTER protected than the average mage who just cast Invulnerability, if memory serves. Like Achilles, if he takes a well-aimed critical hit, he can die. If he gets tired and his skills effectively degrade, he can easily die -- just as, say, Zhang Fei died to two lowly, common soldiers.

[PvK]

Twan said:
...
One more time : the D&Dian original definition of hit points was "capacity to survive" *including all non conventional ways to avoid being hit*. To resume the original hit points are an abstraction representing not only endurance but luck, skill and fate of the character. D&D was based on miniatures strategy game rules, unlike the following RPGs made once they were a specific genre. In a miniature game you would have paid hundreds of budget points for your heroe, so you prefer "the better he is the longer he will survive, but he won't be able to survive without limit if you use him too much" (to resume : he worth his budget) over "he may dodge or be one shoted, if you have luck he will survive for eternity, if you have not... ahah you lose" (to resume : he may worth 0 or ten times his cost). I still can't understand how some strategy gamers may be so convinced that the D&D approach is only a weird RPG thing, and the second the best for strategy games, when it's very clearly the contrary IMHO.

I already knew the history, and I accept that some players are OK with (or even prefer) massive-HP characters for various reasons. Personally, I find it an unsatisfactory and tired abstraction which is far overused in far too many computer games for my tastes. To me, it makes the tactics very artificial and annoying (i.e., I'm pretty invulnerable until I wear out, and then after getting steadily whittled down, I'm almost sure to die unless I withdraw and heal...). I think it's unfortunate how many games rely on high-HP-based damage systems, because I tend to find them really bland and uninteresting, because they tend to just be about wearing down enemies at constant and predictable rates, and don't model situations in a very accurate or interesting way. They tend to remove risk and unpredictability. And so, I tend to cherish the few games like Dominions that model combat results in more detailed and unpredictable ways, that are more like the actual situations they say they represent - more about risk and cause and effect, and less about "my hero can't die on turn one - that's not supposed to happen - he's a hero!" etc.

[Epaminondas]

Taqwus,

I am glad we are having an intelligent debate rather than shouting matches. This is what I expected from this forum, as opposed to a Blizzard forum.

Now let me respond to all three of your points:

1. I am not completely sure Herakles is so exceptional as heroes go. Yes, he is probably the greatest hero in the Greek mythos, but the trait you single out for his exceptional character--his half-divine birth--is not so exceptional in Greek myth or other prominent myths. That is, many of the great heroes of various sagas claim to have half-divine births. In Greek myth alone, many--if not the majority--of the greatest heroes do have such pedigrees. For instance, Achilles himself is born of an immortal mother, Thetis (though she was indeed not Zeus or even Hera or Athena but a nymph).

More germane, Pathos does have the same half-divine lineage, and he is nowhere as overpowering as a Herakles or an Achilles. Achilles, it should be pointed out, was not simply another Joe with high "protection." He battled a damn river god in the Iliad!

2. I concede wholeheartedly that Achilles' near-invulnerability is best defined as "Protection" not HP in the context of Dom III. Nonetheless, it is not "Protection" in the sense of armor you "wear" but what is called "Natural" armor or protection. My point is that it is not so easy to separate natural armor or toughness and high constitution or high HPs. But I suppose this has to do with my own conceptual biases.

3. Most of the Iliad's near-superhuman or frankly superhuman heroes were considered as such prior to the Trojan War. Achilles was long considered the best warrior in the world, and that is why the Greeks fetched Odysseus, the most clever among them, to get him to participate in the war. Ajax or Aias was already considered the next greatest warrior. Hector, likewise, was considered the greatest Trojan Warrior. Diomedes' and other heroes' heroic pedigrees were also well-established.

I do agree that the case of Patroclus is an exception, but exceptions do not make an argument--or at least an argument of a general nature.

Finally, regarding Zhang Fei--he died in old age and rather drunk. Since you appear to be familiar with Luo Guanzhong's tale, you know what kind of rear-end kicker he was when in prime and sober!

[Taqwus]

Heroic Luck wouldn't necessarily make a hero unkillable. After all, there's no reason why it'd have to increase linearly and unbounded, rather than asymptotically approaching some sub-100% upper bound. And even if it did reach 100%... that's nothing that Umor can't handle. (and one might consider perhaps cons6 or cons8 items to weaken luck).

On a related note, it strikes me that it would be useful if a modder could give constraints or hints as to what HoF ability would be given to a specific hero. In fact, for a veteran hero (say, an already legendary one) -- it would make sense to assign both XP and a specific HoF ability (but one which wouldn't increase further unless he remained within the HoF).

For 'neophytes with potential' heroes, constraining HoF ability choice would lower the risk of getting something wildly athematic. For instance, it would be galling for Heroic Stupidity to land on your average heroic sorceror-type, and Unequaled Obesity might not make sense against a backstory describing feats of long-distance running, et al. A great paladin champion and enemy of the undead shouldn't suddenly get Undead General. For a healer-type to get Legendary Cruelty would be rather bizarre, unless she's got a rather odd personality or doubles as an inquisitor... I don't know if the game would ever be perverse enough to assign such, but the ability to give hints to the engine would help.

[Epaminondas]

By the way, I am surprised at the number of replies and interest this thread has generated.

If anything, that shows that a lot of people do agree with me in feeling that there is a problem with the base human commander or hero HPs.

[PvK]

Exactly, Taqwus!

Edit: LOL!
We're all posting at the same time. I should have written "Exactly, Epaminondas", about the points about Achilles being a great example of high Prot with human HP, Herakles being like a Dom 3 Prophet, etc.

[PvK]

Epaminondas said:
...
If anything, that shows that a lot of people do agree with me in feeling that there is a problem with the base human commander or hero HPs.

Actually, my posts are all about trying to point out that the low hit points on humans is not a problem, and that even if it seems that humans have a survival problem, the HP themselves are not the problem. At most, the damage amounts may be a problem, but the HP ratings are in line.