This.

Also, what pyromancers? Malicia hasn't even fought one likely, as she became active again well after they were nerfed into the ground.


I've been sympathetic to the races that carry a buff to balance/eq tempered by an elemental vulnerability. Aslaran, Merian, Mugs- because their bonus got axed hard in the last review, and the malus did not.

However, we shouldn't flatten out damage type bonuses/maluses.

Because that just pushes the lumps on the bed around. You have races like my lovely orclachs (even though Magekui won't be one ) that have a nice set of resists countered out by some godawful stats. You weaken the resists, and you weaken the race. And you think Tae'dae are unappealing now? Wait until all those thick resists are leveled out.

So keep the damage type vulnerabilities where they are. Yes, this means dracnari and merian and orclach get fried sometimes. But you can work around these. Unless it's like, a fictional race with a level 3 cutting weakness, you can work around these. This differs from the old balance/eq bonus/malus issues, where combat and race choice revolved utterly around these things.

What we definitely don't want to do is cherry-pick removing vulnerabilities. For the obvious reason that doing this equitably and fairly would be damn near impossible.

So, not to be entirely negative, what would I suggest?


Merian: Give them +2 constitution across all specs (meaning merian lords/ladies would now be sitting on 17 base!). Give them +1 to their primary stat in each spec too- give them really enviable stats to offset their weaknesses. Maybe throw in a level 1 cutting/blunt resist too, so that elemental runed knights don't hit them quite as hard, but they still carry the weakesses as a balancing act.

Mugs: Boost their intelligence up by a lot, so that they have the highest natural int of any race. Give them a little more constitution. Maybe drop their one level 3 elemental weakness (electricity) down to level 2.

Aslaran: Honestly, drop the herb malus and give them a little more constitution and they'd probably be fine. They already see use.

Tae'dae: Keep the elemental penalities, lose, or heavily drop, the balance/eq penalties (which are really what is choking this race).

Knight races in general: As someone who was a changeling knight for a long time, I can't *prove* this, but it always felt like those races with low dex just had a miserable time landing the wound I wanted, even if I had more than enough wounding to do it, with the reverse being true for higher dex. Again, this is just a feeling. But consider general dexterity increases for Orclach, Taurian, Tae's, Igasho, Dwarves, and the spec races that usually wind up lower than their counterparts. -This would have the additional effect of possibly opening up some of these for better consideration as monks, which right now are usually lobos, krokani, keph/illithoid, and Thul.


As for nerfs and other spec races, I'm not going to comment. Be careful, because if you over do it, then that's every bit as bad, if not worse, than having a race underplayed (see old Mugwumps being "required"). And I feel quite strongly that we shouldn't be messing around with damage type strengths/weaknesses, because that's just cruising for problems. Both for the above mentioned issues with races balanced with crappy stats and good resists, and as well as the "I should lose my weakness to your element, but your race is clearly balanced by other factors and as such should retain its weakness to my element". Anyone going down that road should be forum banned until the review is complete.

- During the last rebalancing, fire weakness was assigned/increased to a bunch of races that were perceived as not having enough weaknesses due to balance/eq penalties being lessened. The result is that fire has a disproportionately large number of races that are weak to it compared to strong against it, and has notable repercussions with certain skills (destruction). Recommend working to balance out the ratios of elemental weakness/resistance between races for greater diversity.

- High INT granted by specs usually isn't sufficient to outweight the malus of lost/low constitution after INT scaling was shifted noticeably. Perhaps focus more on keeping INT/CHA stable while giving more con for the caster specs.

- Make demigod regen independent of regen level limits, and adjust it as seen necessary to be "fair". This way races that get level 3 regen in certain enviornments, or get regen with a specific malus that works to weigh against it (Lobo comes to mind) can carry on their full advantage to endgame.

I'm not really that happy with most of them either but got no time to really edit Kaalak's suggestions. They DO sound cool though and the idea itself is RP-focused enough and original that it might just work!

Also! Racial influencing advantages? How about racial influencing disadvantages! Only a real wuss would be intimidated by a faeling.

Dracnari

Illuminated Dracnari - Pyromancer
Enlightened Dracnari - Illuminati
Insert Templar Dracnari here. - Templar

If hallifax can have two spec races, Gaudiguch should be able to manage 3 specs for 1 race. This way the Illuminati dracnari racial changes can not -nerf- the spec race by lowering a stat that is their primary attack stat for bashing.

Remove sip malus too and replace with something else.

Make illithoid immune to Soulless. Just sayin'

Only if we get a change to how Glomdoring gathers Faethorn fae, or getting the race spec removes the malus.

Or just not working on fae creatures. Though it makes sense for shadow faelings not to have that malus.

One of the things discussed was the evening of the resistance/vulnerabilities like the eq/balance levels were nerfed. The resists/vulns were not changed accordingly.

This is good, because you have a number of races balanced around having nice resists and bad stats. If you do to the resists what you did to bal/equ stuff, you'll have races with "meh" resist bonuses, and bad stats.

Meaning you'll just have a new set of races nobody wants to be.

Either would work for me.

This is more for the vulnerabilities than the resistances. See: Mugwump.

But anyhow, we're considering whatever, so keep posts coming.

Give 'Evolution' to all races, like humans have. Everyone starts off with 12 in every stat and gain more as they level, though unlike humans, RNG gets to have fun with their stats and they are not based on the class of the player. Some races are more likely to get some stats than others, while unlikely to get others. Racial specializations still kick in upon..specialization...and since this was pretty much impossible to read as a post, I've taken the liberty of making a little chart in Notepad. D:

So RNG can possibly screw up your race to your class? please no.

Was thinking more along the lines of 'Okay, this will solve the issue of most races having stats below 12 to begin with, and they can evolve as race rather than class to avoid screwing up the special snowflakeness of humans'. Was just an idea

Yeah, but its a very blunt solution that'd create tears. Lets say as a Viscanti Nihilist 9 times out of 10 I end with a usable amount of int and con for my class. That tenth time I'm still going to end up with 15 con, 15 dex, and 13 int. Last thing we need is a RNG effecting us. I could possibly see starting everyone at 12 with specific evolution paths as they level but my question then would be why. The whole reason humans do start out at 12 everything and then get awesome is because they get an exp bonus and are made to be leveled.

Edit: And to be productive, my heart is set on racial stat packs or pickable bonuses. I don't want stat packs like Aetolia where any race can have any stat pack. I'd rather see race specific ones. You're still never going to see a Igasho with Faeling size or an Illithoid with Faeling con because it'd never make sense. But you could see a tae'dae who trades in some strength and con for int. smarter then your average bear pack.

I want to see a tae'dae player that actually RP's below average intelligence first. 9 out of 10 tae'daes act like high elfen in the intelligence department.

As a Viscanti Nihilist, you'd have, at minimum, 15 int (12 natural, +3 for spec).

Then at least 14 Cha (12 natural, +2 for spec)

Maybe 10 Dex (12 natural, -2 for spec)

Remove the RNG factor from my idea, and gain then set it to earn stat points as you level within your archetype instead of inter-race, then? Mages/Guardians more likely to get ++int, but aren't gonna be packing con, ect?

set everyone to 12 base stat modified by spec and you get stat points per level that you can spend on any stat you want with cost increase per point to keep you from hitting 25 str/int

I feel like an intelligent tae'dae should be, for lack of a better example, like Hoaracle. Muttering about the trees and soil while they chew on bamboo.

I still feel that, at this point, there's really only a small few races that really need changes.

Merian/mugs need compensation for their vulnerabilities, Tae need to lose the balance/eq penalties. Maaaaaaaaaaaa(etc.)aaybe Aslaran need a little tweak in the same direction of Merian/Mugs.

The last racial overhaul took an axe to the china cabinet. Maybe this one should just oil the squeaky door.