Hit points
A character's hit points (or HP) reflect their current healthiness and durability, and are displayed in an X/Y format; the X shows your current hit points, while the Y shows your maximum. Monsters and a wide variety of other effects will all reduce your current HP, but this recovers over time unless you are sick.
Damage
If at any time your character's current HP reaches 0 or lower, you die and your game is over. You can avoid this by resting between battles, quaffing potions of heal wounds or curing, or using any of the more exotic healing methods available.
Be very careful if you ever see the message, "Ouch! That really hurt!" pop up - it occurs after you've lost over 50% of your max HP in a single attack.
HP modifiers
From Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup in-game documentation:
At | Ba | Co | DE | Dg | Ds | Dj | Dr | Fe | Fo | Gr | Gh | Gn | Hu | Ko | Mf | Mi | MD | Mu | Na | Op | On | Sp | Te | Tr | Vp | VS |
1 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 1 | 0 | -1 | 1 | -3 | 0 | -2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | -1 | 3 | -3 | -2 | 3 | 0 | -3 |
Each point is equal to 10% maximum HP.
Modifying Max HP=
Temporary
The following spells will change your maximum HP:
Spell | Modifier |
---|---|
Ice Form | 1.2 |
Statue Form | 1.3 |
Dragon Form | 1.5 |
Tree Form | 1.5 |
Berserk will multiply your current and maximum HP by 1.5. The drain status will reduce max HP proportionally to its strength. Elyvilon's Divine Vigor increases your max HP temporarily by its strength.
Permanent
Your permanent max HP only changes under rare circumstance:
- Leveling up:
- Gaining an experience level.
- Improving your Fighting skill will increase max HP.
- Gaining the Robust mutation increases your max HP by 10% per rank, while Frail decreases it.
- Casting Borgnjor's Revivification permanently reduces your max HP by a small amount.
- Gaining the Rugged Brown Scales mutation increases your max HP by 3/5/7% (determined by rank).
The formula is:
Max HP = (Racial Mod.) * (Mutations Mod.) * (Forms Mod.) * (8 + 11*XL/2 + Fighting*XL/14 + (1+Fighting*3)/2)
History
Prior to 0.26, rot existed, lowering maximum HP temporarily, like Drain does now. However, it could be cured with a potion of heal wounds or potion of curing. Prior to 0.14 backgrounds had a small effect in the calculation of the player's hit points.