Raw data below. Should Veyda stay a shadow faeling or reincarnate as a furrikin?

Consider bashing, general fighting, long-range dreamweaving, and other applicable factors.

I appreciate any and all help!

4.14.6 The Furrikin Race

The Elder God Bollikin was the first Elder God to fragment his being,
popularly believed because his gentle nature could not abide the
impending Elder Wars. As the first Elder God to splinter, Bollikin did
not achieve the uniformity of race reflected by other races. Legend has
it that Bollikin was so endeared to all the smaller creatures that he
could not concentrate on a chosen form at the time of fragmentation.
Subsequently, the furrikin race have an unusually wide range of forms,
some bearing a striking resemblance to rabbits or foxes or dogs or even
small bears (looking like miniature tae'dae). Whatever their form,
furrikins are generally quite diminutive and nimble. Furrikin are
considered a passive race, though they have been known to bristle their
hair when being derogatively referred to as "furrballs". {Editor's Note:
We wish to apologize to any furrikin who took offense to the "bristling
hair" remark. The author has been properly chastised.}

STATISTICS:
Strength : 9 Dexterity : 17 Constitution: 11
Intelligence: 13 Charisma : 14 Size : 6

ADVANTAGES:
o Has a racial language, furrikini.
o Can ROLL under obstacles.
o Recover balance more quickly, level 1.
o Recover equilibrium more quickly, level 1.
o Faster herb balance, level 1.
o Resistance to magic, level 3.
o Resistance to cold, level 1.

DISADVANTAGES:
o Are more susceptible to fire, level 1.

4.14.5 The Faeling Race

Faelings are not descended from an Elder God. Rather, they are the cross
between an elfen and a creature of the fae. Faelings are almost always
raised in elfen communes, and are given special status by wiccans.
Physically, they look like extremely diminutive elfen, even smaller than
the furrikin, and they all have elaborate butterfly-like wings enabling
them to fly. While not very strong, they make up for that in speed and
intellect.

Ever since the undead elfen Rowena Nightshade tricked Laeroc, Consort of
the Queen of the Fae into fathering her child, faelings who take the path
of the wyrden Great Nature Spirits of Night or Crow transform into shadow
faelings, a curious breed of faeling, larger than others of their kind,
with a dark complexion that seems to churn with shadows, more bat-like
wings, and eyes that glow with a somber red fire.

STATISTICS:
Strength : 7 Dexterity : 15 Constitution: 10
Intelligence: 16 Charisma : 16 Size : 5

ADVANTAGES:
o Shares Elfen racial language.
o Can FLY.
o Regenerate health and mana while in forest environments, Level 2.
o Recover balance more quickly, level 3.
o Heal faster from elixirs, level 2.
o Faster herb balance, level 1.

Common Skills Rank Pool
------------- ------------ ------------
Combat Gifted Melee
Resilience Inept Fitness
Discernment Gifted Intellect
Magic Capable Arcana
Planar Transcendent Mysticism
Discipline Fabled Willpower
Environment Expert Communion
Influence Expert Magnetism
Riding Inept Magnetism
Arts Inept Finearts
Lowmagic Gifted Arcana
Aethercraft Master Mysticism
Combateer
Dramatics Expert Performance

Trade Skills Rank Pool
------------- ------------ ------------
Artisan Transcendent Finearts

Guild Skills Rank Pool
------------- ------------ ------------
Nature Mythical Mysticism
Druidry
Totems Transcendent Arcana
Crow
Dreamweaving Mythical Willpower

Faeling is better. Level 1 bal/eq bonuses are negligible, so the only real benefits you'd be getting from reincarnating into furrikin would be the magic resistance and 1 extra con; however, the faeling sip bonus alone more than makes up for these.

If you really want to reincarnate, I suggest mugwump, because then your offense will actually benefit from the bonuses.

Before psionics came out the only way to attack dreamers was through magic damage, which furrikin are practically invincible to. Now there are multiple other ways to attack them, but most still rely on violet/kether. In general fighting, verses spiritsingers/moondancers the lvl3 magic is going to help you as well. You might be feeling that drop in sip(it's certainly significant), but your gaining an eq bonus, and can just whore roll if you get into danger.

On the down side, do you really want to race-change into a tribble?

I would say furrikin are better for dreamweavers. Like Zenji said, most people use kether/violet to attack them. Furrikin who sip absinthe can basically tank kether/violet forever. You also fight MDs a lot, and lvl 3 magic resist makes moonburst do basically nothing. Hunting will be harder, though, since you'll lose some int and the sip bonus, but slightly the faster eq and +1 point of con will help that a little bit.

Faeling's better.

ADVANTAGES:
o Has a racial language, furrikini. Useless.
o Can ROLL under obstacles. Already have Tumble + Faeling size. Useless.
o Recover balance more quickly, level 1. Faelings have level 3, useless.
o Recover equilibrium more quickly, level 1. Minor.
o Faster herb balance, level 1. Faelings have this, too.
o Resistance to magic, level 3. Good.
o Resistance to cold, level 1. Minor.

So the only real advantage is the Magic resistance (since level 2 sip bonus + level 2 regen in Wyrd as a druid > +1 con). Learn further in Magic, and that resistance also becomes less and less useful. So...yes, from those two choices, Faeling is far better.

Though Mugwump (offensive) or Kephera (defensive) would probably be a better choice, meh.

Shadowcaster Faeling RP > Furrikin RP.

Unless you're going to be like one of those Pearls Before Swine characters. That'd be kind of neat.

The magic resist is very nice for dreamweaving, though, since you can't actually sip to heal yourself. If you spend a lot of time in dreamform, furrikin is better (as people like Urazial have demonstrated). Faeling is probably better for other applications, though.

*peer* Furrikin RP is fine. Down with poser faelings!

(Faeling is a better race for a druid though, especially poser faelings, for reasons Synl described.)

Furrikin RP:
"Hey, you're shedding..."
"NO I AM SODDING NOT!"

As I said, investing more lessons into Magic will make the racial resistance less and less useful.

It was awesome BEFORE that.

"Are there any alchemists around? My worms seem to be coming back. I've also been 'scooting' a lot, you know? And not the kind where I just roll around in whatever smells bad at the time. Oh great, Kalodan's got a jar of peanut butter. There goes the afternoon."

furrikin is better just for the resistance and equilibrium. while people say +1 balance is useless cause he's a faeling, as a druid that +3 balance is already useless. As a furrikin he'll be at an ideal size, meaning it's a size every titan/demi hovers around for the most part to balance stun and tumble, plus he can diminish if he really wants to get smaller. But he has the nifty spider thing. generally 1 point in con comes out to around 300 health. With him being ranked only 243rd that's not much health at all. saying that learning magic negates the furrikin bonus is also flawed because it'll just add on. Furrikin makes night users invincible to moonburst, but not druids. Druids need all the help they can get so furrikin would be a good choice in that regard. Also, the sip bonus only helps if you live through the attack, likewise with regeneration. The only advantage I'd actually like over a furrikin is the flying, but BT's get crowcloak so that's not an issue. With the magic bonus you'll be taking that much less from every attack, my guess is a couple hundred maybe even 300 from every moonburst. It seems to be on par with having just about trans magic. multiply that by the zerg and it's X amount less he takes which a faeling sip bonus won't cover. anyways, he probably has more important things to learn than magic at the moment. so another reason to go furrikin.

Learning Magic doesn't negate the racial resistance, but it makes it less useful. There's not a lot of difference between taking 300 damage per violet and 200 damage per violet (adds up with a certain number of people, but how many people actually have violet/kether?).

He seems to have most of his skills in order, really just needs to learn further in Resilience/Magic/Combat. Probably in that order.

Also, Veyda, how long do you plan on actually staying in Dreamform? That is, what do you when you're 'long-range dreamweaving'?

My plan for skills is transing discipline, transing druidry, and then moving on to resilience/magic/combat.

In terms of 'long-range dreamweaving', there's just a few things that are involved:

Making 'visions' appear at the Mother Moonhart. ()

Sleep-ninja'ing people who've raided the Night Avatars.

Actually trying to fight.

Listed in order of increasing time investment, from about 1 minute to 4 minutes to 15.

EDIT:

And Krellan has a very strong point: I go up against a -lot- of magic damage.

Go Tae'dae and bearhug your enemies back to stone age!

Why would anyone spend time in dreamform? It sucks.

Dreamform can be very, very dull. Very. However, there are some interesting things to do if one has the patience and willpower needed to make long excursions in dreamform. When Urazial was a dreamweaver and enemied to Celest, simply lingering at the Pool of Stars and linking to a likely target would give access to Celestia and places otherwise inaccessible to me, not to mention monitoring movements of Celestian combatants packing cloaking gems and who might've been tipped off that they were being watched by being scried too many times. Useful information gained that way was rare, the bulk of watching the activities of fleshies by the studious dreamwatcher being quite dull, with few conversations passed along vocally. On the other hand, I was able to have a look through the Moondancer guildhall in dreamform, so as with everything it depends on how you use it and a bit of luck.

As for faeling or furri, I'd say furri. Pentu's complained to me enough times about moonbursts that it just seems silly to go faeling on that alone since inevitably you'll be running into those. Though Urazial didn't do much killing in dreamform (mischief and irritation being the motivators, not bloodthirst), I can testify that furrikin magic resistance meant that I could play around a lot longer tanking a great deal more violets than many dreamweavers.

Just as a warning, doing this could mean you are effectively enemied to the nation you illusion in for the rest of your gaming life in Lusternia. It is much better, I think, just to go on a slaughterfest - much more bearable from a RL player perspective. It's been over a year now during which I've repeatedly applied to be unenemied, had events of contrition, and still been denied.

I'd probably go Furrikin if you think you are going to spend a lot of time in dreamform, but the reality is as others have said that you really can't do much in it. Even spying is extremely hit and miss. So maybe Faeling and rely on the extra charisma to slightly offset the missing tankiness in dreamform. Plus as a shadow-faeling you'll have more willpower.

Maybe dreamweavers should have a way to spy on CT. Not full access, but X number of messages after the person they are linked to makes a comment on the channel.