If you think about it, HP (red bar) and stamina (green bar) are actually the same thing. They both represent your character’s -ability- to go on, though HP does it in a poor and undefined way. HP is more like your long term stamina, while stamina (green bar) is your ‘sprinting’ ability.
How injuries and healing figure into this, I am not sure.
This is how I would arrange things. For one thing, you would not ‘hit’ or be hit with every blow. Our characters would have so many holes in them by now, it is ridiculous to even consider it (though, that is the way it is done now). Instead, battles would be calculated by short term stamina, balance, long term stamina and -actual- injuries.
Balance: VERY important. Being knocked off balance is often the losing factor in a fight. When off balance, you can not attack or defend well, allowing your foe to injure or knock you down. Loss of balance depends on what fighting stance you are using and how high your short term stamina is. Example: you are using a ‘Full defensive’ type stance and have high stamina. This allows you to evade/block most physical attacks against and equal foe without losing much balance or stamina. Balance can be lost and regained within a few seconds. Regaining balance would be as simple as switching to a more evasive/defensive stance.
Short term stamina (STS): Every swing you make, spell you cast, step you move, block you do, or training you study drains your short term stamina. The lower it gets, the less accurate your moves, spells, balance, evasion, and blocking gets, and the slower you will learn. This has no affect on your health, but recharges at a steady rate based on health and long term stamina. Potions could restore short term stamina.
Long term stamina (LTS): A variation of HP that recharges based on your health. Think of this as the reserve for short term stamina. The higher your reserve, the faster short term stamina recharges. If stamina was water, this would be a large bucket with a small hole in it that drains into a small cup. The small cup would be short term stamina, which you drink from to do actions. Training your character in different ways would increase the size of the bucket, the cup, or the transfer hole. If your ‘bucket’ runs out of water, you are dead. Having 0% stamina means you have 0% energy left to do anything, including keeping your heart beating. If dedicated, you could possibly -run- yourself to death, but it would take a few days worth of non-stop running and jumping.
Injuries: This is for when you actually get hit. Injuries would be -unhealable- in a fight. No food, no magic, no potions. Injuries would have a direct affect on short term and long term stamina. Going back to the bucket example, injuries would be poking holes in your bucket and cup, draining both at a steady rate, and plugging the hole. As above, if these injuries drain your stamina to 0%, you are dead. Injuries would be classed from minor to lethal. Each ‘level’ of injury would put a drain on your LTS. Minor injuries would be “Rat hits you on the leg, giving you a bruise”. This drains only a tiny amount of LTS that you would not even notice, which heals the minor cut or bruise over time (magic could heal them faster). However, if you are hit by that rat a hundred times, your ‘little’ bruises are going to start adding up, reducing the flow of stamina to STS, and starting to drain your LTS at a fast rate. Severe injuries would be deep cuts and bad breaks, poking large holes in your ‘bucket’ of stamina. “Gobble slashes your arm, breaking it and causing severe bleeding.” For this, you get out of battle -fast- and get yourself healed by magic, or in a perfect system, bandage it and stop the bleeding if there are no mages about, then get help. Mortal injuries would kill you soon after inflicted, but you still have a little time to get away and find healing. Lethal injuries kill you instantly. “Ulbernaut takes a mighty swing, removing your head from your shoulders.” Say “Hi” to Mr. Death for me.
Heath: Actually, there would not really be a heath meter. Perfect health with no sickness or injuries would mean your LTS (or HP, if you must) would recharge at its maximum amount. Severe injuries would drain your LTS much faster than it could recharge. Sickness would slow the rate of recharge.
Battles would be a series of attacks, blocks, evades, and minor injuries until someone becomes off balanced enough that a solid blow could be landed, disabling or killing his opponent. Unless you are fighting an Ulber or such, where you have to land a great number of blows to cause it enough injury to kill it.
Now, this brings me to the topic of this thread. Food and drink. Food and drink do not instantly do anything for any of the above. Downing 100 apples during battle will just make you bloated
. What foods and drink will do is give you a -future- boost in several of the above. How and what depends on what, exactly, you ate. A drink of water will boost the refill rate of your short term stamina for about half an hour of gameplay. A good steak will boost the refill rate of your long term stamina for a few hours of gameplay. A sugary snack will slowly increase the volume of your STS for about ten minutes of gameplay. Veggies would increase the volume of both LTS and STS to a small amount, and boost learning rates. Other foods would boost your magic abilities. Mixes of the above foods will very the ‘buff’ of volumes and refill rates.
“So I’ll just eat a 100 pounds of sugar before each battle!”
No, you won’t. Every type of character (based on stats) would have a ‘full’ meter (in a menu, or popup when eating) that would not allow you to eat more than your fill, and types of food that would be best for them. So, it will be up to you to find the best combination of foods to keep your character fully recharged in what you do the most. Filling up on sugars would be great for battling, but you run out fast and would have to wait until you had enough ‘room’ to eat more.
Potions (normal) would also have a slow affect, but speed up healing of injuries over the long run, or give a large boost to LTS or STS. Magic potions would heal your injuries very fast, but still take time. -Both- would take up room in your ‘full’ meter as well, and have adverse affects if you took them without already having eaten good foods.
Then there are other foods that have positive and negative effects (glances at the dwarves). Yes, wine and ale (and perhaps sugary foods). Such would give a boost in charisma and STS gain, but reduce the rate of learning a skill. Drinking too much then drops all skills, including charisma STS. some food could be great boons for casting magics, but be poisonous, such as muchrooms. Potions could have a similar effect, being greatly beneficial for healing wounds, but severely handicapping the rate of short term stamina refill (all your HP would be going towards healing, leaving nothing for actions).
However, you would never actually -have- to eat. Eating would just add 'buffs' to your character over time. When that food runs out, your buff fades. Otherwise, eating will be assumed to happen while offline, or the Sun's energy would sustain your character.
That is how I would do things. But that is just me.
