Roguelike gameplay mechanics: player HP as mana/currency/everything

[rogerdv]

Im having an argument with my partner in our new project. My proposal was a simple roguelike with traditional mechanics (my inspirations are old Mordor and Tales of MajEyal), yets he wants to introduce somethig "original" and insists in making player hit points the game currency. Also, make it the energy points required to cast abilities, and nerf weapons to the maximum to prevent players from using them. For him, thats not only original (nobody did it before), but also creates tension in the player. Some sort of making the player think that the game is ultra hard and he/she has to be extra careful. Recovering hit points first required harvesting a resource that depended on random rains (rains that can also kill you), but now I see he is proposing shelters were you can recover life. He even tried it with pen and paper and says it works.
I see some reasons why this could be a bad idea. It can easily leave your game in unplayable state if you reach 1 HP (at least, until he introduced shelters and recovery). There are better ways to create tension, if you have played ToME you know what I mean. If you have a max HP of 250, how do you buy an item of 600? Forcing the player to spend HP to cause damage would also require to return to safe places after each combat, killing the exploration side.
What do you think about this? There is some way to tweak the system to make it work?

 

[Bester]

If he's adamant, why not let him have it?
And code it in a modular way so that it can be replaced / removed in less than an hour.

 

[std::namespace]

There is some way to tweak the system to make it work?

of course!
call of duty did it!
you should also introduce popamole cover and iron sights!

 

[Dadd]

One of the important things about roguelikes is that sometimes games become unplayable because of bad luck, bad decisions, etc.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I don't see this working as described.

If shelters recover HP, what is to stop the player from going back and forth between shelters and shops to buy everything?
This scheme renders health potions (the normal way of connecting wealth and health) meaningless, along with many other health oriented gameplay options.
This creates a 'win more' paradigm where if the player is doing well, they can afford more gear and do even better to afford more gear. A problem common to most roguelikes, but this doubles down on it. If not flawlessly balanced, a run will either be impossible or trivial, and largely due to RNG.
If spells and such cost hp, then using them becomes less of a tactical decision and chance to express oneself and more of a simple math question- do I lose more health by using the spell or not?

I do recall an old jrpg that used such a system for spellcasting at least (and many games have included 'blood magic' as an option) but the currency thing seems like a dealbreaker to me. It simplifies things too much. Having special shops where hp (or max hp especially) can be used as a currency is interesting, not having money to spend is not.

If you want a fairly original idea that adds a lot of tension to the gameplay, I suggest giving the player a resource he starts the game with that can never be restored, only spent. Whether spent on items, spells, or permanent upgrades, it makes for a lot of meaningful choices.

 

[Lord of Riva]

It simplifies things too much.

That is what it boils down to,

it really sounds like a demake of the core ideas rather than a reinvention. Having different "currencies" adds to the potential of complexity and if you really want to lower it in this specific genre is questionable at best.

 

[BING XI LAO]

HP as currency sounds unworkable
HP as mana sounds kewl tho

 

[lukaszek]

hp as mana is concept tried in various places, on top of my hand: dao, poe, wow

 

[Bester]

HP as currency sounds unworkable

We haven't heard the other guy's side. He claims to have tried it in pen & paper and it worked.

Souls games have souls as both a source of XP and a currency. HP being currency is just one step further into the weird, but it sounds interesting.

I can also see lore explanations for this. Watts can be a currency in a sci-fi world and it's also the energy needed to keep your nanobots regenerating your body, i.e. it's HP.

 

[spectre]

"Blood magic" as a system has been around. In a lot of games, it is considered an upgrade over the regular mana economy when it's easier to recover through items, leeching, etc.
If paying with HP is a global rule, I think the biggest challenge is preparing the AI so that it doesn't kill itself by spamming abilities.

Some other considerations off the top of my head:
(o) Instead of the simple take: health bar is now your mana bar, it's possible to get quite creative with the resource, as there's a number of things you can spend:
HP directly, HP regeneration rate, max regenerable HP, negative traits affecting the character (permanent and semi-permanent wounds).

This lets you tweak the flow of the game - spent HP will regenerate naturally over time up to a certain cap, you need to rest to restore the HP to its maximum cap,
and to remove wounds you need further special interventions (getting back to a hub as a default).

The final system lets you separate cost into minor, for common actions with little danger of use, and scale this up for more complex and powerful effects where the player needs to weigh
the cost / benefit - is it worth to take a potentially crippling wound at the very start of an adventure?

(o) How do magical items work? Do you need to feed them blood and at what intervals?

(o) A natural question to ask at this point is - do you have to pay with your own HP pool? This opens up a can of worms of interactions if you don't.

(o) There are also other considerations - is HP the end all and be all of defensive stats? Look for the armor system on Path of Exile for further inspiration.
It has energy shield acting as another layer of on top of the HP pool, which regenerates quickly when not damaged for a time and can be pierced by certain damage types.

(o) All sort of bleed and poison effects will now need a thorough review for balance. Same goes for summons.

 

[Krice]

I think any idea where you need to go somewhere to get something and return back where you were is a bad idea almost always. That being said, in my experience the only way to be sure is to try it. I don't care how great it sounds in plans or paper, you need to try it. You would be surprised how many ideas suck when you try them.

 

[Haba]

I fiddled with health as spell casting resource, but this was with a party. i.e. you could/would use party members as energy source. So even if the player was completely clueless, they could reach the endgame, just with the MC being alive.

I naturally didn't explicitly reveal the fact that magic was killing your characters. The whole thing worked with thresholds, magic skills were limiting early casting, so you couldn't instantly kill your party by spamming lightning bolt. It just looked like their stamina was being drained.

Then later on in the game you'd have more desperate situations where you would be tempted to use stronger spells -> permanent damage and eventually death.

Once you become aware of HP being a commodity, people start gaming the system. I don't think that works very well. In roguelikes you tend to be risk-averse by default, being forced to be even more careful just sounds like a recipe for a disaster.

 

[Moonrise]

Okay but how are healing spells supposed to work if they're fueled with hit points? There are no clerics in this hypothetical world. It's hyper entropic. If there's an abundance of potions then you're just shuffling things around. If you can rest without impunity then there's no sense of urgency. In a traditional roguelike food is the limiting factor. You can't rest or grind forever because eventually you'll starve to death. Sometimes the wheel doesn't need to be reinvented. A good example of blood magic would be a buff that while active reduces your max HP. This can be slotted into a traditional system, and provides a meaningful dilemma for the player. I do like Damned's idea of a campaign wide finite resource. In an RNG based game you'll constantly run into situations where you wonder whether you'll fail or not, and be tempted to use what you have. It's the antithesis of a JRPG where 99 elixirs collect dust over the course of the game.

 

[rogerdv]

If he's adamant, why not let him have it?
And code it in a modular way so that it can be replaced / removed in less than an hour.

The problem is time. I have 3 jobs and constant power cuts. I have to play safe and make something fun that gives me some money to solve urgent problems and quit the most hated job. Or at least, something that looks good in my portfolio and gets me some remote job as game developer.

 

[Justinian]

If he's adamant, why not let him have it?
And code it in a modular way so that it can be replaced / removed in less than an hour.

The problem is time. I have 3 jobs and constant power cuts. I have to play safe and make something fun that gives me some money to solve urgent problems and quit the most hated job. Or at least, something that looks good in my portfolio and gets me some remote job as game developer.

Hate to break it to you but you'll be lucky if your first game makes enough to get your steam publishing fee back.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's the antithesis of a JRPG where 99 elixirs collect dust over the course of the game.

You're not wrong, but the irony of it is that I've only ever seen the concept in JRPGs. First in SaGa Frontier where you could exchange your maximum lifepoints (Think of them more like con score than HP, and can never be increased) for powerful treasures at a particular merchant. And later as a more fleshed out mechanic in Breath of Fire 5, where you could burn a meter to basically enter godmode and win any fight... but the meter also gradually burns itself over time and if it reaches 0 the game in over, making it possible to make your game unwinnable without starting over if you use the meter too much.

I've always wanted to see more games use something like that; give you access to a power that corrupts you permanently or the like and can't be gamed easily to just use 99% of it up and save the last drop to avoid death. I'm sure examples must exist elsewhere but I can't think of any aside from old DnD spells that aged you when cast, but who the fuck is going to cast Haste often enough to die of old age, especially as an elf or dwarf?

 

[Moaning_Clock]

HP as currency sounds unworkable
HP as mana sounds kewl tho

I would second this.

I used health as mana for a small game of mine, The Blood Mage. It's a fun system. Why not, especially if it's only one way playing it aside from normal combat for example, I could see that in a roguelike. As currency I think this would only be fun in a very small game. A game where health would be used for every action, even movement sounds also interesting. If it's not optional you will design the whole game just around that mechanic.

 

[lukaszek]

due to currency i keep thinking about 'in time'. I guess your ingame adaptation would be paying for moving, breating, food and so on?
If you gain enemy currency on kill it would be fun i think, bloodlust mode. It would have inbuilt mechanic to limit mindless exploration - level is only 50% explored, but is it worth it to look out for more?

 

[rogerdv]

If he's adamant, why not let him have it?
And code it in a modular way so that it can be replaced / removed in less than an hour.

The problem is time. I have 3 jobs and constant power cuts. I have to play safe and make something fun that gives me some money to solve urgent problems and quit the most hated job. Or at least, something that looks good in my portfolio and gets me some remote job as game developer.

Hate to break it to you but you'll be lucky if your first game makes enough to get your steam publishing fee back.

I was thinking about itch.io, not Steam. Cant get there yet.

 

[rogerdv]

Well, it has been very instructive to read your opinions. Now, perhaps, I have a better idea that could work. Maybe something like having no HP limit, getting HP for killing or consuming some sort of item, etc. Still needs a lot of poilsh.

 

[baboogy]

due to currency i keep thinking about 'in time'. I guess your ingame adaptation would be paying for moving, breating, food and so on?
If you gain enemy currency on kill it would be fun i think, bloodlust mode. It would have inbuilt mechanic to limit mindless exploration - level is only 50% explored, but is it worth it to look out for more?

It's a roguelite (not a roguelike, so not exactly what OP is looking for, but I think the concepts carry over well enough that it might be worth considering) but Risk of Rain does something similar to what you said.

Each level has shrines that you can gamble HP as a percentage of your full HP at, with a preset value on the shrine, between 50% to 99% of your maximum health. When you use it, you immediately take 50-99% of your max health as damage, and the shrine has a chance to reward you (or not, it's a gamble) with items ranging from mediocre to god tier.

You can only use the shrine while enemies still exist and are spawning in on the level, so you can't cheese it by say, clearing everything on that level out, then safely using each shrine and waiting on your health to recover. You have to gamble on your health being severely diminished on that level while enemies are still around, either playing safely to avoid taking more damage or using items that recover health on enemy kill. You can't cheese it by killing all but one very weak enemy and kiting them around either, because they are ONLY active when the game state is in the actively spawning enemies state, until you activate the conditions to stop spawning new enemies and leave the level once they are all dead.

It's an interesting mechanic and works fairly well but I'd say it greatly hinges on the fact that it's a real time roguelite and so player dexterity and ability can help immensely to just run away from enemies and avoid damage. I'm not so sure it'd work well in a turn based context where damage is practically guaranteed.

 

[Odoryuk]

I'm skimmed through this thread and surprised no one mentioned Shadow Tower (1998). It's a pretty neat single character first person perspective real time dungeon crawler. In this game, durability is the king (a very old and frail king), and you can repair your equipment mainly by trading your own HP at special NPCs (there are consumable restoratives, but they are rare).
Now, it's a very elaborate, yet simple, system.

Enemies do respawn, but they are finite. You can clear every location and no enemy will respawn there again. Enemies have semi–random drops, if you kill every enemy in a location, you get all the drops that were possible.
Every health potion (and mana potion) restores HP to the maximum level. The amount of potions available in the game is finite. You can buy a potion using other in–game currency, cunes, and the currency itself is also finite, can't farm it.
More valuable and strong equipment requires more HP. Fully broken equipment requires a lot more HP to repair than an item that has 1/10 durability.
When you beat 25% of the game you can obtain an HP regenerating equipment, and in a game where HP is a currency it sounds very broken, but: HP regen is kind of slow and it doesn't go past 50% of max HP, you still will be vulnerable, though the game stops being insanely difficult once you reach that far.

If you have a max HP of 250, how do you buy an item of 600?

There's another interesting feature in Shadow Tower — you can find already broken equipment, which has very good stats, but you have to get a high enough HP level in order to repair such an item. You find special Soul Pods in the dungeons that let you to level up your stats (also killing enemies adds to your stats, so if you see an enemy that gives STR, which boosts max HP level, kill it immediately). So, there's technically no stats requirements for equipment (aside from equipping a lot of heavy stuff and not being able to move), but for some good items you have to level up your max HP to repair them.

HP being currency is just one step further into the weird, but it sounds interesting.

And FromSoftware did HP as currency way before Exp as currency, funny enough.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I agree with most of what was said in this thread, but here's another way of looking at this. If you guys are disagreeing on this thing now, do you think this will be the only thing you're going to disagree on or will there be more things down the road? If you're looking to do something more traditional, and your partner isn't, this could create further rifts even if this one is sorted out. If the latter is the case, an idea might be that you two find what you agree on and collaborate on that code while both of you work on your own rogue-likes. For example, if you both agree on the attribute system, co-develop that together and share it for both of your ideas. There should be plenty of other things you agree on to work together. The data structure for monsters, loot, and so on could be fairly generic enough for co-development. Even the random dungeon generator can be shared between two games where there's diametrically different mechanics since all dungeons will have floors, stairs, doors, and so on.

 

[Demo.Graph]

For him, thats not only original (nobody did it before), but also creates tension in the player.

It was done in Turgor / The Void.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/37000/The_Void/
Also, blood magic is an old concept.

1. It can easily leave your game in unplayable state if you reach 1 HP (at least, until he introduced shelters and recovery).
2. If you have a max HP of 250, how do you buy an item of 600?
3. Forcing the player to spend HP to cause damage would also require to return to safe places after each combat, killing the exploration side.

1. Players should git gud. Also, introduce a newbie area with endless but time consuming farming.
2. You don't.
2.1. Also you can introduce several types of HP for varying prices and different builds. See The Void. They even had a system where overabundance of a color (a type of HP) affects game states (e.g. a lot of aggro HP inside the player makes him deal more damage AND makes the environment more damaging).
3. Just like in real life. And not "each combat", if you design your HP/damage economics correctly.