Food and Drink

[bilbous]

Does anyone else think that eating food and drink should more logically improve stamina rather than hit points? When you are working up a real sweat, stopping to rest will help you rekindle your energy and having a bite to eat and something to drink will add more but it won't magically close blisters or heal wounds. For those things you would apply first aid and take medicine.

[Illyria]

But rrrememberrr, medicine, not even in RrrrL help right away. A 'fix' to put in medic panks like FPS shooterrrrs mostly have that heal you rrrrright away arrre as unrrrreal as food that heals (rrright away).
The only thing that is rrreasonable to explain that it could cure diseases/cure wounds rrrright away is, of courrrse, Magic.
methinks 

[Natrina]

 Hmm, I think food should give Hit Points and drinks should give Stamina. If you don't have enough nutrients and the good stuff from food you can't be healthy. And yeah, you also can't without water, but I think drinks are more related to stamina and food more to hit points... just my view anyway.

[Nikodemus]

hit points are not about health Hit points are about energy and ability you have to fight.
If you fell from a height, you are in pain, you fight worse, but it is passing, your HP go up.
Food do increase HP, as it recover your strenghts <--- here answere to your post Natrina
HP are even about illness, being Ill you won't fight good and so you have less strenghts, so your HP reach zero faster, coz there are less of them. But to restore the level of HP to their normal, you need to stop being ill, what isn't so easy as with overcoming pain after a while. It should take time. At least it's how i imagine it.

Think of HP as health makes no sense. How do your wond recover in real? Days or months (whoever trying to comment, keep in mind PS day is shorter, but your char doesnt live faster, there is no argument for that). In PS the HP bar is rising fast. There is no Health bar, if there were, it would probably keep the hp bar decreased until you recover (see lenght of recovering in real life)
The potion of healing is increasing HP bar, but it doesnt heal you, but recover your strenghts, what explain how it is possible, it works so fast.

[bilbous]

Umm what happens to you if your hit points reach 0? contrast that with what happens when your mental and physical stamina reach 0. Hit points are your health, it is an abstract representation certainly and characters in the PS world all are regenerative in nature... must be something to do with the crystal, if you need an in context explaination... but you cannot do anything when your hit points reach 0 except spawn by the death guardian -- with full hit points no less! There are no injuries, there is only damage.

[Nikodemus]

its obvious that when HP reach 0 you are n longer able to defend yourself and are crytically hit.Your not visualised health in binary form (1 or 0) drop to 0 and ouy die.

[Garile]

hhmmm yes if I fall down from a tower I'm to tired to land on my feet and that is why I die. That really makes sence....... 

Also why would I get more tired fom getting hit then from hitting myself? The HP goes down because when you get hit you are wounded so HP represents your health obviously. Not the least seeing HP stands for Health Points and not Hitpoints in many games

[Nikodemus]

hhmmm yes if I fall down from a tower I'm to tired to land on my feet and that is why I die. That really makes sence....... 

HP drop to zero, because your health must be obviously zero, there is no reason for your HP to be differen't, while you are dead.
Why won't you try to look sense in the fact, that HP regenerate so fast, if you argue they are health?

Also why would I get more tired fom getting hit then from hitting myself? The HP goes down because when you get hit you are wounded so HP represents your health obviously.

For swinging blows you have stamina. Didn't you see it decrease wen you does it? If you swing too much, your stamina drops too 0 and you can't fight efectively, in consequence your HP will drop faster.
You are not getting hit. It's stupid we are get hit, while in real 1-2 such hits are lethal. You evade blows good enough for them not to lethally wound you.

Not the least seeing HP stands for Health Points and not Hitpoints in many games

Did you see them to care about any logic in a fight, besids it looking cool? I did not, because it is obviously not their objective, so i have no idea how you can give them as example.

[Natrina]

 Hmmm. I wasn't trying to come up with a discussion about the definition of HP in PlaneShift. And I think we can go around it and touch all the definitions we can find but it in the end depends solely on the devs, so let's leave the definition to them (or is there something official already?). My point was that HP, that comes down to be your body's status (it's strength, it's health, it's damage capacity), was more directly affected by hunger (read: lack of nutrition, which makes the body weaker), while the lack of water would inflict more rapidly in your stamina, being able to cause you to pass out (which doesn't happen in PlaneShift, but should. Arcanum had a nice system of when stamina [which was MP] reached zero your chara passed out and remained in the ground until his MP reached positive values again).

 Anyway, my point is everything less solid. The lack of sugar, for example, also causes people to pass out, as well as water shortage is quite quicker to kill a person (weeks? while food shortage takes months to kill). Oh well, let the discussion continue.

[Nikodemus]

Food in this way... I'm all go for it.
At the start your dfferent body status bars would be just decreased and then if it worked out and people realised they really need to eat, devs could introduce passing out, if you don't care about eating. As about water. Each food contains water, so eatng/drinking would be one and the same. Unless you want everything what one can drink or eat has two values: amount of food and amount of water.

[Zan]

I don't have the time to read all replies right away but comsuming food making an individual less tired ... well that doesn't make much sense.

Like Nikodemus said HP is a representation of general health. Eating and drinking can improve general health, it cannot remove fatigue .. unless you're drinking caffeinated products

Ideally I'd like a system where our characters have additional 'hunger' and 'thirst' bars. Forcing us to eat and drink regularly or experience a decrease in HP over time. The hunger and thirst bar will decrease slowly over time and can only be replenished by eating and drinking. If they run out, they'll make sure your health bar decreases over time .. eventually leading to death by dehydration or starvation.

[Nikodemus]

Like Nikodemus said HP is a representation of general health. Eating and drinking can improve general health, it cannot remove fatigue .. unless you're drinking caffeinated products

That's nice, but i meant something opposite ;P Unless i don't know what you define by "general health"
And when you don't eat, you are tired. Somehow i fell it's what you meant

[Shamax]

Whether it's food or drinks, it makes sense to improve both, health and stamina, as long as the food and drinks themselves are healthy.

This is normal. Haven't you seen athletes exercise? They need both to keep up the energy levels. If they get injured, proper food (or supplements) with a good amount of vitamins can help with faster recovery time. The energy recovery is more of a short-term effect, while health recovery is more of a long-term effect but both are affected.

Also, take a look at the PlaneShift guide here:

http://www.planeshift.it/guide/en/guide-stats.html

2.5.3. Hit Points

Hit Points are calculated with a formula that involves strength, agility and endurance - endurance being the greatest factor. A character can increase his or her Hit Points by training in the skill of Body Development.

Let's see what "Body Development" description is:

http://www.planeshift.it/guide/en/guide-skills.html#guide-skills-training

Body Development

Determines the health of your body and provides you with more Hit Points. Whenever you train this skill you spend time to work out and to enhance your health.

So, you see that both can affect HP greatly.

I don't think food and drinks should have a major instant effect in the game anyway. Picture eating a sandwich while in an intense battle. Fast HP and MP recovery should be left to magic potions or magical items/gear with regenerative properties. Unless, of course, it's a magic sandwich, which eats itself for you.

Pretty easy to figure out.

[Draklar]

I have to agree with Nikodemus.
I had a similar problem in a p&p game I'm playing, where the "Hit Points" couldn't logically represent health.

I simply came to conclusion those stand for vitality. Same in PS. I don't think you could survive sword slashing directly at your head. Instead you can assume thanks to vitality reserves, your character had enough energy to get away from the attack "just a little bit", as a result receiving only minor jab, instead of a skull-crack. Once your vitality goes down, you no longer have the energy to avoid such blows and the opponent simply finishes you off.
Another thing it explains is why better sword skill gives you better damage. If you hit, you hit, right? Damage should simply depend on the strength. But with better sword skill, it would be harder to avoid direct jabs.

Falling from heights also. At some heights it doesn't matter how much vitality you have, you'll simply die. But in other cases having enough vitality may allow you to make the jump a little bit more controlled.

But I think that's looking for logic in place where there is none :)

Edit: One more thing. Stamina going up through drinking and eating is kind of dodgy. It could just as well represent muscles burning out oxygen. And if that's the case, then eating and drinking won't help much.

Either way the "Weakness" spell shows Hit Points aren't really all about health.

[Zan]

Like Nikodemus said HP is a representation of general health. Eating and drinking can improve general health, it cannot remove fatigue .. unless you're drinking caffeinated products

That's nice, but i meant something opposite ;P Unless i don't know what you define by "general health"
And when you don't eat, you are tired. Somehow i fell it's what you meant

Like I said .. had little time to read through the replies so I just glanced at yours quickly. What I mean with general health is our condition. Our health points being at 100% means that the character is perfectly healthy. 0% means he's dead ... anything in between there can point to him being wounded,  crippled or just generally ill.

Food has two effects, a long term and short term one ... in the short term it only 'cures' the feeling of hunger or thirst. But it won't make us feel healtier or less tired, in the contrary .. the energy needed for digesting a meal makes us more tired, right after eating it. Of course in the long run it keeps us healthy ... that's why I think a system where not consuming food should be bad for a character's HP, instead of where eating food rewards a character, is more realistic.