[Suggestion] Add Constitution to existing stats

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

It might have been suggested already, but sometimes during playing or especially during character creation i feel like there should be the Constitution stat additional to the already existing stats.

I have no idea how much work that would require, but let us just have a short thought what could be influenced by the general constitution of a character:

Base HP of body parts and natural healing
Base Stamina and Stamina regeneration
Resistance against Poison, Radiation, Parasites, Food Poisoning, Illnesses and others
Base Healthiness

Base Chance for positive/negative Mutations

Also with the change of Bionics into a slot based system (currently WIP but looks very promising) it could affect how many slots per body part could be available for bionics or in other words how much of your body you can replace with other parts before your body functions get influenced negatively.

An another point would be that the Stats-Through-Skills-Mod might be easier to balance if the skills are influencing an additional stat and the stat growth is spread more.

There could be a reason why constitution is part of most role-play-games.

2

This looks a lot like the already-existing Strength stat

3

Yeah, strength does most of that already.

In role playing games, constitution is important because hp is important. In DDA, hp has relatively little effect and most of the danger comes from pain and armor damage.

Though if it actually added resistance to pain, hunger and thirst, constitution could be quite useful.

I’m against making it help with mutations. At least with the current unweighted mutation system.

4

Resistance to pain, hunger and thirst sounds like a good reason to have a separate stat. And tiredness. My alter ego gets tired really fast atm.

5

Don’t you see how obvious it is to state “it seems a lot like strength already is”!? Of course it does! The point is to separate the two, to take the Constitution out of Strength!

I think I’d love to see Constitution. Max stamina has bothered me a lot because it can’t be affected, with the exception of two traits. You can only control your stamina consumption. I mean, if the designed purpose of Strength is to represent both constitution AND strength, then Strength should also affect and determine max stamina and stamina regeneration. Which it doesn’t, and never did, AFAIK.

If separated, Strength would likely then dictate only carry capacity and bonus melee damage, so not much. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I don’t want to say, but adding Constitution would bring some new life to the game, I think.

Then again, if separated, we might run into a hopeless balancing act. Highly fit but weak and overburdened characters might be able to go on and on indefinitely. Of course that could be easily prevented by penalizing overburdening so severely that no amount of Constitution would be able to compensate it. Then there’s the matter of melee combat. How much faster should the fittest guys be able to gain stamina over the least fit guys? Is there a risk that we allow the existence of characters who are truly indefatigable in combat from day 1?

Also, more character points might need to be added. New stat = few more points to allocate. Hopefully that doesn’t grant too much exploitation.

It’s not just about the lack of control over stamina but with the separation we would be able to experiment with strong but unfit characters (beer drinking bikers, some weightlifters, some overweight types), or fit but weak characters (marathon runners, other resilient-bastard types and anti-quitter fanatics).

I guess what needs to be recognized is that having Strength and Constitution combined into one stat has its advantages but also its restrictive limitations. Should there be a change to that?

Is this Call of Duty or CDDA? Are we going to succumb to streamlining, simplification and other such weakness and depravity? :stuck_out_tongue:

6

4x8 characters are fine. I’d rather have the new stat result in 5x8 characters being slightly better than 4x8 ones were.
Average stat is 8.5, with the addition of the new stat it would be 8.4 - no need to correct anything here.

Is this Call of Duty or CDDA? Are we going to succumb to streamlining, simplification and other such weakness and depravity?

It’s not Dwarf Fortress, though. We don’t have Soap Making as a skill, Kinetic Sense as a stat, or teeth and nails as separate body parts. Simplification is necessary.

Constitution being ripped out from strength could make sense, but it should first make sense and then be separated, not the other way.
If strength was to only affect melee damage, carrying capacity and some minor interactions (pulling vehicles), it would be better to merge it back into constitution than to keep it separate.

Alternatively, the split could be made in a different way:
Instead of strength and constitution, we could have a split between fitness and resilience.
“Fitness” would affect strength and stamina, but not HP or pain resistance.
“Resilience” would affect HP, resistances, willpower (morale penalties and crafting cutoff), hunger and thirst.

7

How would it effect older characters?

8

old people get killed on their 30th birthday to prevent overcrowding.

Also, this isnt a near-term change

9

Alright, and there’s always save editing.

I like this change, though. Strength has always been… Powerful? Important? I can’t think of the right word. Not OP, but not balanced.