This solution uses the same base idea as Roy Johnson's (summing the original stats), but uses an approach that won't give negative stats and doesn't suffer from rounding error. (It does this by quickly trying every possible combination of initial stats.) 

use strict;
use warnings;

use List::Util qw( max sum );

my @stats = qw( hp mana spells );

my %rates  = ( hp => 12, mana =>  17, spells =>  7 );
my %stats  = ( hp => 60, mana =>  80, spells => 31 );
my %needed = ( hp => 51, mana => 107, spells => 38 );

{
   my $avail = sum @stats{@stats};

   our @parts;
   ('.' x $avail) =~ /
      ^
      (.*) (?(?{  length($1) > $needed{$stats[0]}  })(?!))
      (.*) (?(?{  length($2) > $needed{$stats[1]}  })(?!))
      (.*) (?(?{  length($3) > $needed{$stats[2]}  })(?!))
      \z
      (??{
         push @parts, {
            $stats[0] => length($1),
            $stats[1] => length($2),
            $stats[2] => length($3),
         };
      })
      (?!)
   /x;

   
   my ($result) = sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] }
                  map { my $part = $_;
                        my $time = max
                                   map { ( $needed{$_} - $part->{$_} )
+ / $rates{$_} }
                                   @stats;
                        [ $_, $time ]
                      }
                  @parts;

   print(join("\t", @stats, 'hours'), "\n");
   printf(join("\t", ("%d")x@stats, "%.2f") . "\n",
      @{$result->[0]}{@stats},
      $result->[1],
   );
}

[download]
hp      mana    spells  hours
43      95      33      0.71

[download]

There's surely a better way of finding the partitions, but I don't know it off the top of my head, the method I used works, and the method I used is fast.

In reply to Re: Calculate easiest way to 'level results' by ikegami
in thread Calculate easiest way to 'level results' by Anonymous Monk

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