By "much more intelligence" you mean "1 point," yes? Aslaran have much more strength and constitution, Faeling have much more charisma and more dex.

So you're trading, essentially, a bunch of con for a bunch of ego. Seems like racial advantages / uniqueness to me.

Especially if Forcefield gets changed to not 100% bypass low-race constitutions (which really should happen anyways).

Pretty much. Even if they become unviable for combat, they're still going to be one of the non-com top tier choices.

There is also the factor of e-ugliness when considering a race to play. /random

Not quite. Faelings are far more outlier prone than the other races. Both in terms of their stat distribution and their special abilities, even moreso when you consider the net effect of both.

If their low outlier (con) can be compensated for, that only leaves the high outliers. This is why such things are hard to balance. They can be unique and different without clinging to this sort of problem. Boost the con, level them out just a bit, slow them down a bit. Then they are still unique, but much more in the pelaton, so to speak.



Nobody is trying to make them non viable! Just, not having the statistical outlier issue. When you have magnagoran monks (no forcefield) picking them secretly? It probably warrants a looking at!

Actually, I don't think that in itself is a problem. Sure, some people won't pick Illithoid because it's an ugly snake. But then there are others like me who wouldn't pick Faelings if they had a one second Judgement as a racial ability, because they're still butterflies. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say.

I'm not saying people are, I'm just saying I don't foresee a big drop in the race's popularity even if they go to that extreme of being PvP junk. If anything, it might mean you will see far more unspecced faelings outside of Glomdoring than specced faelings in Glomdoring.

I'm not saying you're saying that. But bringing up "if they become PvP junk" sorta passively implies it.

My thing is, take away their outlier land, and boost up their constitution, maybe the strength a bit. So long as they have the level 3 speed/sip bonuses, they're going to be a little problematic to balance, and if speed becomes better again, there's always the risk of them being the "race of choice", the way mugs were at one point.

And THAT problem was part of what lead to the whole speed nerf to begin with.

I'd rather not repeat a cyclical mistake. Eliminate the outlier components, compensate the weakness. Doing this has the additional effect of making other aspects of the game (monk, knight mechanics) that much easier to adapt without having bizzare consequences at said outliers.

I think some people see the dex as a problem too, even with the rock bottom str on base. I don't think it would be unreasonable to move around some of those points to other races and have other races possess more DEX, but I would not be inclined to give them to aslaran unless they are also losing str in turn. I'm not really in favour of faelings get more str either way.

Monks will always be a problem because all stats for monks are less meaningful as a whole compared to outright speed.

You will notice a considerable change in effect if a monk changes his strength noticably. It is often the difference between stacking wounds and just plain perma sipping.

As for the faeling v mugwump thing.. didnt I already make that comparison?

Mugwump


Ultra fast, but they pay for it with medium stats elsewhere mainly, low con, and 2 different weaknesses.

Faeling


So if you do not spec you have the "high int", higher dex, higher charisma, lvl 3 sipping bonus, flight, and zero weaknesses to balance this out.

Balance is also relevant to STR, and to a lesser extent, DEX. Eq is relevant to INT, which stops mattering at around 14-15, since the buffs you can get after that point allow you to maximize damage as effectively as anyone else. Mugwump was awesome before because they didn't just have higher afflicting power - they could also dish out damage per hit that was equal or greater than that of most other casters, while also doing it faster.

Faelings have a base STR of 7. If we want to argue that faelings should have a stack of disadvantages like mugwumps, then unspecced faelings should have a base STR closer to 10 or 11.

Conversely, if we want to argue that mugwumps should have a similar stack of advantages, such as a sip bonus, high cha, removal of elemental weaknesses, we'd have to chop down their base INT to at least 8 for the comparison to match.

They are not meant to be directly comparable. If anything, aslaran is much closer to the mugwump damage/speed versus weaknesses build. But then, I'm pretty sure I've seen people asking for aslaran to get buffs too.

Alternatively, some reduction of balance bonus, some sip, and dex on faeling would be more even all-around.

Strength and dexterity do matter for monks.

While we're discussing Aslaran as being the next big thing, don't forget the penalties they have: lvl2 fire weakness and lvl1 herb balance reduction.

Aslaran may be stronger than a faeling, but one could argue that they are squishier to raw damage (or at least not significantly less squishy), especially when fire damage is so commonplace. I think a faeling would be better able to survive a hyperactive + destruction combo than an aslaran. Overall? Maybe. Faeling doesn't have the stats, but Aslaran does have one significant penalty and another one that reduces curing effectiveness over a period of time.

I think dropping Faeling intelligence wouldn't be out of place. They've got three high stats to make up for two low ones, and intelligence covers the con gap for warriors. Ignoring flavor completely for a second, it seems as out of place as giving Mugwumps 15 strength when they are otherwise designed as a "caster race." They're currently set up as a tiny hyperactive fairy, and the flavor is spot on, but mechanically it seems to be doing slightly wonky things.

Faeling:
Balance -> L1
Dex -> 17

Discuss.

(Mugwump vs faeling argument is stupid.)

Disagree, speed is such a huge bonus, and moreso once the speed buff goes live.

You did post something reasonable despite the comment, oddly enough, L1 balance to faelings seems a decent thought though giving maluses is a better fix.

What some people are seeming to forget is that low stats are very easy to get around. Low int? Knowledge blessing! Low health? Platters, spheres, artifacts, etc and bam! On the other hand, penalties are NOT easy to get around. Sip penalty? Sucks that only alchemists have a way to reduce that, doesn't it? fire/magic/cold weaknesses? Proofing only does so much and even then you're still taking MORE damage that other people who are equally buffed without the penalty.

My point is that the "low con" argument for Faelings has an extremely weak foundation to stand on in regards to why they have advantages out the ass without any balancing penalties

Reducing faeling balance bonus to level 2 to compensate for the speed buff is more than enough to balance them, they even get very slightly nerfed!

In addition, reducing aslaran strength by 1 should balance aslaran knights vs. specced shadowlords (same end strength, same speed, difference in tanking power) and slightly downgrade aslaran monks.

As a side comment, downgrading popular races because they're popular doesn't strike me as sound balancing.

It still isn't a good argument, as my prior post has outlined.



When they are sufficiently low, it has a similar effect to damage type resistance/vulns, in that everyone else can get those buffs too, and everyone is stuck with the same stack-ceiling. The difference lies in that the damage type resistance/vulns are outside of DMP, and so don't get the diminishing returns stats do at certain levels. This makes low INT not much of a disadvantage unless it is below 10 base, and STR not awful unless it is below 12 base or so, etc.

And if low stats were that easy to get around, wouldn't people be looking for other ways to buff viscanti other than giving them... more stats?

The reason why I said mugwump vs faeling is a stupid argument is because you're comparing a race that no one has bothered to play since the last racial revamp to one that is played the most. The suggestions made on this basis will either 1) nerf faeling to mugwump level or 2) buff mugwump to faeling level. Neither solves the problem. If you must compare, compare faeling to aslaran, which has a level 2 bal (as well as level eq) bonus.

I don't feel that base faeling casters are the problem (don't bring Fillin into this as that's a combination of many things that need nerfing in the first place *coughrunecough*). Their bonus is balance, not equilibrium, so the only problem with their damage output is with their dexterity and strength. Their strength is low enough, so the problem really comes down to the monks. High dexterity means they build up wounds very quickly. Their initial damage output suffers a bit, but this is overcome by their speed and wounding/afflicting potential. Reducing the speed solves the problem for base faeling monks as well as for shadowlord faeling, without affecting the casters so much.

As for shadow faeling, I'd suggest nerfing caster to +1 int, -2 dex, +1 size, warrior to +3 str, +2 con, -3 int, -2 cha, +2 size and bard to +1 cha, -1 size.

It's been tried in the past. The Admin want viscanti to keep the horrid sip penalty, for example, amongst their other debilitating penalties. Our last resort to save this endangered and hopeless race is to give them godly stats to make up for their lack of being good at anything

Worst Race Ever with debilitating stats like great con, great strength, and resists up the wazoo.

But yes, if we're also going to bring up 'numerous ways to buff stats' argument, CHA is probably one of the easiest stats to find buffs up for, through quests, blessings, and the like.

And why are you trying to reduce shadowlord faeling strength. When was the last time someone gibbed you through damage as a faeling warrior