Question about the "Cure Light Wounds" spell

[Oraticus]

Ok, I'm a bit perplexed about the math on the CLW spell... according to the description, it says it "Cures 15% of your wounds (min 15hp)..." I'm playing a dwarf paladin, and decided to use the spell after a particularly nasty fight with Lagduf and his snaga/black orc minions. I was using the spell, but noticed that my HP didn't seem to be going up as fast as I had expected, so I payed attention to the next cast.

I was at 134/169 HP, and cast the spell... it brought me to 150/169 HP. That's a recovery of 16 HP, or 10% of my max HP (rounded down), not the 15% I was expecting. Is there a hidden detractor for being a paladin, or something else impacting the healing of this spell? Is it a typo, and supposed to be 10% instead of 15%?

I tried to search the forums for this issue, but was unable to find anything on it, so I apologize if this is a repost. Thanks for any input!

[Derakon]

It's 15% of your wounds, not 15% of your max HP. Thus the amount healed will decrease as you get closer to full health. You saw a healing of 16 because you also naturally healed 1 point of damage in the time it took you to cast the spell.

[Oraticus]

Well, I suppose if I read that description a bit closer, it would have made much more sense. That just completely goes against my normal comprehension of healing in most games, though... it's often based off a strict calculation or off your max HP. Can't recall another game I've played where the amount you heal is based off the damage you've taken.

Thanks for the clarification, though, Derakon!

[quarague]

In angband this is the key differences between the heal spell and the lesser healing spells. Heal acts as a percentage of your total health, whereas all the other ones act on a percentage of your wounds. Thus the lesser spells/potions become useless late game. IIRC this was done on purpose to avoid people spamming Cure light wounds spells/ potions in the final fights because these are available almost unlimited whereas the use of heal is limited by the number of potions you found or the amount of mana you have.

[Oraticus]

Originally Posted by quarague

IIRC this was done on purpose to avoid people spamming Cure light wounds spells/ potions in the final fights because these are available almost unlimited whereas the use of heal is limited by the number of potions you found or the amount of mana you have.

While your recollection might be right, it does seem like a weird basis for changing the effects of those spells. I haven't been so far as to face Sauron or Morgy yet, but from what I read, you'd have to have a TON of HP for a 15% or 20% heal spell to be able to offset the damage that those two can do, or any mid-late game uniques, for that matter.

On the other hand, I can see why a spell that only costs 2 mana for a tank-y paladin would have to have some means to prevent it from scaling too strongly as a character gains HP. While it might not be a sufficient alternative vs late-game powerhouses, it might let a character fight a battle of attrition with many other normal enemies.

[Derakon]

As I recall it was mostly an issue of using Phase Door and then spamming CLW. Back when rogues and mages had CLW (instead of just rangers), basically nobody except warriors needed to find a large stash of potions of Healing, because magical healing was entirely enough to make up the difference except in really dire emergencies.

Of course, now only paladins, priests, and rangers have CLW, so it's less of an issue, but I still don't really see a compelling reason to change the current behavior. If anything, we could just make CLW et al heal a fixed amount of damage (15/30/60 HP, say).

[Raxmei]

Originally Posted by quarague

In angband this is the key differences between the heal spell and the lesser healing spells. Heal acts as a percentage of your total health, whereas all the other ones act on a percentage of your wounds. Thus the lesser spells/potions become useless late game. IIRC this was done on purpose to avoid people spamming Cure light wounds spells/ potions in the final fights because these are available almost unlimited whereas the use of heal is limited by the number of potions you found or the amount of mana you have.

I thought the rationale was the opposite. The cure line of spells didn't originally scale so they became useless in the later game. Scaling by the damage you've taken is still scaling (more total HP means you can take more damage without dying) so it lets you keep using CLW later than you would have before.

[EpicMan]

Originally Posted by Raxmei

I thought the rationale was the opposite. The cure line of spells didn't originally scale so they became useless in the later game. Scaling by the damage you've taken is still scaling (more total HP means you can take more damage without dying) so it lets you keep using CLW later than you would have before.

It's both. Originally the cure X wounds spells didn't scale, so Cure Light Wounds was junk, Cure Serious Wounds was only useful in the early game, and Cure Critical Wounds was mainly useful for curing status effects rather than rapid healing.

Then the devs changed them to curing a % of your wounds so that they were no longer junk. This was way better, but then players discovered that the Cure Light Wounds spell was able to heal you up in a short time, and Mages and Rogues could fight just like a Priest or Paladin. So they lost the spell to keep the classes playstyles distinct.