Go ahead as long as you also quote all the posts talking about numbers of Faelings, because a significant portion of those Faelings are mages. While you're at it, quote all the posts talking about 'how easy' it is to mitigate low con. At least a few of those also reference Mages directly, while it's also a subtext in a fair number of them.

So I am not sure how you can say it's patently false when it's a very powerful driving reason for the numbers, and thus the discussions based on those numbers. Faeling mages are far more common than they really should be, for this reason, and it drives numbers up. So do those who pick it straight for influencing, of course (in which case health does not matter as much, admittedly).

Number of active Shadowlords? Quite few, especially in comparison to these.

What's the problem with having influencing speed based on equilibrium and not Charisma? You'd have to rebalance the speeds a bit, but it would provide an incentive to not always just go faeling to influence with.

It might not be worth the effort, of course.

You'd shaft eq-penalty races even more. And then everyone would just go mugwump instead, in all likelihood.

You nerf one of the few things a tae'dae is actually good for.

The main problem would be that it is another huge nerf to Tae'dae, on top of the rest. That's the primary one I can see; though it is amusing to think of Mugwumps with low-ish Charisma fast-talking their way through mobs.

This.

I don't want to nerf faelings, but this much is true-

The low con as the major malus of the race, given their extreme bonuses, just doesn't add up properly.

Low con is highly mitigatable. Especially at demigod. This differs from the races balanced with elemental weaknesses, which are very finite in their ability to mitigate.

My solution for this particular issue with faelings is to just give them more freaking con, and lose the sip bonus entirely. Or give them somewhat more con, and reduce it to level 1. So long as health can be ramped up, "high" health plus level 3 sip (leave alone how many high health level 3 sip are running around with DMP aura. And how many of THOSE also are surged knights. yeesh.) We're never going to balance the race so long as we pretend that the low con balanced by a huge sip bonus is the right way to go. It's just too avoidable. (For example, without even trying, if Akui were an SL faeling, I'd have 13 base con, 14 with weathering from athletics, and a surge from 14 int. With a LVL 3 sip bonus to top it off. That's crazy mitigated. Let alone that if I'd go Night and get nightkiss aura with the DMP, and my life rune. I wouldn't even care about the low con. I'd be fine. Conversely, as a Merian Lady, I feel the crap out of the elemental maluses right now, even with 11k hp.)

Nor do I feel we should slap an elemental malus on them. Seriously, look at what those do to merians and mugs. We don't want another pariah race in the game.

Give faelings more con, lose the sip bonus entirely. Then we have a much cleaner race to work with, rather than this convoluted freak of a thing.
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The balance and strength issue is another creature entirely to me. It does bear mentioning though, that ALL shadowlord faelings, by their nature, have spiritbond bear. So when the comparsion is made to aslaran, keep that in mind. A SL faeling demiknight has the same strength as Akui does as an aslaran, using geburah.

If faelings are kept ultra fast, they should be the same speed as Aslarans. So that every org has access to a generalist race that makes an acceptable knight with the same sort of speed.

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Elemental Maluses in general

A level 3 elemental weakness is far more harmful than a level 3 elemental resist is helpful. For the obvious reason that elemental weaknesses can be targetted. When they happen, they DO hurt. The mugwump hit with an electric attack will be ravaged by it. The furrikin hit by a magic attack will resist much of it, but there are still loads of ways to kill the furrikin otherwise.

Imagine you are offered a choice. You can have an average immune system. Or you can have a freakish one. The freakish one is totally immune to bacterial and viral infections, but has a massive chance of developing horrible cancer. Alternately, it is totally immune to cancer, but bacterial and viral infections are devestating.

Most people would pick the average immune system. The same principle applies to elemental resists/maluses.


Hence, Merians and Mugs are doomed to pariah status so long as they walk around with the "explode me" sign on their necks. Making them faster is a nice trade off however, assuming it is fast enough. That said, please consider the following:

For merian knights, when they specialize, make their EQ bonus turn into a balance bonus instead. This will keep the same feel, as they keep the same vulnerabilities. (Alternately, drop/reduce the elemental maluses).

Oops. Forgot about that. Influence relying so heavily on one single stat, though, makes thing awkward to balance. You're either good at it or you're not. There's no real sense of flavors or degrees to it.

Actually...


Most faelings are wicca, with distant second of bards then druids.

(Though some of these are fairly inactive, by general standards.)

Sucks when, you know, real numbers defeat sweeping, unproven generalizations.

And I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure what a lot of people were talking about with con being easily overcome is throught demigod + domoths + karma blessing + platter + Tosha + artifacts. It takes not very much work for me to stay above 7000 hp as a Faeling, which with the sipping seems to keep me fairly unburstable with damage kills. (It does not, however, keep me alive on when super astral bashing if I happen to hit an unlucky spot of lag at the wrong moment. In that case I eat xp loss from burnout + xp loss from a death.)

Again, it'd be good to see the distributions for specced and unspecced faelings.

Interesting turns in the forums while I gamed lol.

Faeling being played so heavily says they are the outlier, that makes them the problem not everything else. People dont like nerfs as much as buffs but buffing everyone to meet that standard would be akin to removing the elemental weaknesses from mugwumps entirely and leaving them as is otherwise. +con, -sip, is that still assuming lowering speed? Wondering if we are going for the squishy blitz or what. I thought about it and realized the -1 str and sip bonus means the admin believed faeling should always be fast but shouldnt have been as potent as they were.

Show love to other races yet mostly uncommented.

Good to see such interesting replies from people.

I think it has been said before multiple times and it goes in line with my analogy: if you have two knives and one is rusty and we use both to cut the same steak, that doesn't mean the first knife is overpowered. It just means it is better made and better kept, so it looks overpowered by comparison. I believe Faeling is an example of a well-built and well-adjusted race - especially if you reduce their speed is level 2, so they lose a net of 1% balance speed (essentially an invisible loss).

Then, since Faeling is so popular, it is obvious that it is a better choice over races that are clearly not well-built or are not as well-designed. Simply make Faeling the general standard of power for races.

EDIT: I guess maybe the analogy works better if you consider a wide drawer of knives.
EDIT2: This is also assuming things like forcefield and other skills that essentially allow mages to have 19-con-that-is-actually-better-than-19-con are brought in to check.

I agree that vulnerabilities are more harmful than resistances are helpful, but this isn't true at all. Most guilds only have one real damage attack, and for the few that have a choice, one of those choices is almost always inferior in terms of formula. It's not like mages in Aetolia where they get to choose their damage type; no guild here really has that luxury.

Monks, Druids - all physical
Warriors - all physical unless they buy elemental runes
Bards, Moondancers - all magic
Guardians - magic, with the option of dealing fire/magic with an inferior formula
Shadowdancers - cold/asphyx, option of magic with inferior formula
Pyromancers - all fire
Other mages - vary, option of fire with inferior formula, telepaths have access to psychic but mindblast is fairly weak these days

I'm really not seeing how anybody is able to "target" weaknesses, for the most part; not too many guilds have access to multiple damage attacks, and most of them have to sacrifice some damage to use them. The only exception is elemental rune warriors, who can buy their elemental runes according to the way the racial metagame is swinging, but then they're just buying and hoping to encounter a lot of the race/guild they bought it to fight, they're not targeting YOU specifically.

Monks can buy elemental runes too.

78 points in warriors, when you know all of those aren't Ebonguard (or even specced Shadowlord).

69 points in mages, when you know none of them are Glomdoring whatsoever.

And then a large number of points in other guilds where you know a significant chunk of them aren't Glomdoring whatsoever and are primarily influencers. Though I am rather surprised by the large distribution of Monks.

I don't see how you can say it "sucks" when real numbers defeat sweeping, "unproven" generalizations; I'd say that they actually go towards proving them!

Doesn't help that it includes "fairly inactive by general standards" numbers though.

Now, if you wanted to split that up by guild / activity, that's a better set of numbers. This set can be easily read either way.

Just quoting my statement again for you, which the numbers were in response to and which they do not disprove in any way:

I'm in Glomdoring and I'm not even Faeling (Elfen powaaaaaah)

In clarification to my above post; it is important to distinguish between Glomdoring and non-Glomdoring guilds for the following reason.

If you are a specced Faeling, you are more likely to be using the race as your all-around race (much as if you were a specialized Elfen in Serenwilde). This means for hunting, influencing, and fighting. It is not an indication of general proclivity / preference.
If you are an unspecced Faeling, you are more likely to be using the race primarily as an influencing race, unless you have a way to fully negate the low constitution entirely while keeping all the benefits (ala Forcefield).
(Edit: Obviously there are some exceptions both ways here, but as a general rule I feel that it is pretty close)

Influencers are not going to be anywhere near as hurt by a change to the sip bonus; high base ego and a level 2 sip bonus is still nice. Force-field users similarly will not be greatly affected; 19+ 'constitution' and a level 2 sip bonus, along with the inherent damage reduction.

ShadowFaelings being used in other areas (hunting, fighting) however are in a completely different boat. Shadowlords pay for their +con and +strength by losing a good chunk of int and charisma, so there we have a tradeoff. The others retain low constitution and are now getting a sip penalty thrown on top of that, which is going to affect constitution-use far more significantly than ego use. Lower base pools == more need for the bonus.

Note that you are once again using Domoths in your balancing arguments, when you cannot rely on or expect them to remain constant forever.

I was referring specifically to artifact elemental runes, with which we can and have seen cases of specific targetting, apart from fire/electric being the best all around. While they may not be targetting a guild or person specifically, they can target the weakness.


Regarding faelings, again (and using the current, in game mechanics), if Akui went SL faeling, my stats would look like this:

Baseline:

STR: 13
DEX: 20
CON: 13
INT: 14
CHA: 15
Size: 6


Adding Athletics-Flex, Geburah (assuming high magic, else the point is in CON instead of STR. Either is a winner in this case), and Athletics weathering, we get:

STR: 16
DEX: 20
CON: 14
INT: 14
CHA: 15
Size: 6

Now, consider the surge value for an INT of 14. Add in Spiritbond bear to strength (I didn't 'cause I couldn't remember/find the weighting for it). I could buy expand if I wanted to (but not shrink, which is why I haven't- need 6 power points, have 5. HINT HINT ADMIN. LUMP THEM TOGETHER AND MAKE THE COST 5. YEESH. BUT I DIGRESS.), and since I have plenty of dex to safely sacrifice, I could pump my STR a little more even, and add a nominal amount of health. There's lots of room to expand from size 6, after all.

Now, to extend it further into the specifics of what *I* would do? I'd take Night, get 24 DMP from Nightkiss, and 17 more magic/poison DMP from garb. Considering my life/regen runes, and a lvl 3 sip bonus, I'd be "pretty freakin' tanky". And have a LVL 3 balance bonus on top of it. Haiya! Oh, and no maluses whatsoever. Oh yeah, and I could fly. I'd paint a big "A" on my armour and keep the basin safe from appropriately thematic ridiculous miscreants.

Of course, I would be a statistical outlier. An extreme. For a typical BT non demi blacktalon, they look more like this:

baseline:
STR: 7
DEX: 15
CON: 10
INT: 16
CHA: 16
Size: 5

I wouldn't have crazy Night based DMP, nor surge, nor demistats, nor the various other crap I could, with almost no effort or cost, pile on to Akui. As a druid, I would have the toughness of a rotten avacado, level 3 sip bonus or no.

That 10 CON is nasty- but hey! At least they aren't imperial merians, who have 10 CON, NO SIP BONUS, and TWO elemental maluses!! (But I digress again).

High elfen have 11 con, no sip bonus, no malus.
Cloud trill have 11 con, no sip bonus, lvl 1 fire malus
Prismatic Lucidian have 13 con, a slew of resists, two maluses, no sip bonus
Illuminated Dracnari have 15 con, a few resists, a level 2 sip malus, and a lvl 3 cold weakness.
As stated, Imperial merian have 10 con, no sip bonus, two elemental maluses
Master Viscanti have 14 con, a chunk of resistances, and a level 2 sip malus.
Shadowcaster faelings have 10 con, a level 3 sip bonus, and no malus.

It seems to me that, as far as caster specializations go?

Even without the sip bonus, faelings are better off than imperial merians by a wide margin. They trade 1 con for the level 3 sip bonus compared to High elfen. Cloud trill have 1 more con, no bous, and a malus. Viscanti, Dracnari, and Lucidian are sort of different animals- but on the whole, the "spec faeling are super squisher than everyone and so need a level 3 sip bonus to compensate" just is sort of myth.

If anything, this points out just how bad off Merians are!- they are JUST as squishy as the faelings, with no sip bonus, and TWO elemental maluses.

Now, is our blacktalon shadowcaster druid friend still a wet paper bag? Yes. Yes they are. Should we consider "omg psionics/sacraments/whatever" when evaluating the other races? Maybe. But by that rationale, we should consider Night too, which as mentioned, is DMP heavy.

After all this? Maybe we need to add CON to a few of the above, faelings included. It comes down to how squishy we want our casters. I don't have a problem per se with the general toughness disparity between trill/merian/elfen/faeling and Lucidian/Drac/Viscanti (the latter two having sip maluses anyway), so long as they are properly compensated for their softness.

But that sip bonus, in the context of the other caster specializations?

And considering how much someone like Akui would benefit, very easily and excessively from it?

Yeah, lose it. Drop it. Give them more CON if we need to (and if we need to, trill and merians and maybe elfen certainly need it to).

But as it stands, that sip bonus is just gratuitous.

P.S.- all that said, the -STR to faelings just seems arbitrary to me. the STR wasn't the problem!

You are exploding my mind, man. What are you even trying to argue? You said, "because a significant portion of those Faelings are mages." Eventru gave you the number of Faeling mages - 69 - which is roughly 8.5% of all Faelings. That is not a significant portion of Faelings in my book. Hell, mage Faelings are basically tied for second to last place being as monks were sitting at 68. So... yes, the numbers did indeed prove your statement to be incorrect.

Secondly, I don't know that "a significant chunk of them aren't Glomdoring whatsoever and are primarily influencers." and in no way do you know that either. Just like you didn't know how many Faelings were actually mages. A god could give us the numbers of Faelings in Glom vs Faelings not in Glom, but there's no real way to prove that any one of them is primarily an influencer (I'll clarify. Theoretically they could work some code voodoo that recorded influence actions vs other actions over logged in time to give a percentage, but I in no way think they would ever care enough to do that nor is it worth it). Again, you're just pulling sweeping statements out of who knows where and treating them as gospel.

Ok. Maybe you're arguing to other people about suggested nerfs to Faeling, if so, I'll just ignore that. I want to reiterate that I haven't called for any nerfs. I just said dropping speed to 2 to keep them even was cool beans. I'm not really getting what your point is with the spec'd vs unspec'd thing. So what if they're going unspec'd Faeling for influencing. How is that hurting you? They eat the low con. I'd also be hard pressed to believe that the only unspec'd Faelings that partake in fighting and/or high end bashing are TK mages... that just seems like an unreasonable assumption based on the fact that there are only 69 Faeling mages in existence, which probably are not all active (I know I can't pull 69 mage names out of my head) and some of whom probably decided not to roll with the TK train. Again, I'm not calling this fact, I'm calling it assumption, because I don't have the numbers (Beyond knowing that 69 Faeling mages exist) and neither do you.

I guess what you have me confused on is that you were originally arguing that the reason why there are so many Faelings is because Faeling mages were inflating the numbers. So you used that as an argument that Faelings are not flawed, it's forcefield. It's be proven that Faeling mages aren't really inflating the numbers.

Again, since I'm not asking for Faeling nerfs, I'm not using them in balancing arguments. I did say that yes, any class - ANY CLASS - can mitigate the low con with ease right now because Faelings HAVE held domoths for a long time. I didn't say balance around that, I said that they made the low con even easier to get around, using no class specific skills.

Honestly, I think I must be tired - I haven't gone to bed yet - because I have no idea where you're going with these arguments.

"Low con is highly mitigatable. Especially at demigod. This differs from the races balanced with elemental weaknesses, which are very finite in their ability to mitigate."

Please explain. A demigod can get a max of +2 con, and still be a wimp against a monk who does half of their health a go.

I'd love proof that Demigod makes people tanky. They get no additional resistances, titans only get +1 stats, demigod can spend hours to buy a max of +1 to another stat. It doesn't add up to be "highly mitigatable", at all.