Shattered Kingdoms

Why is this thread so focused on just the iron weakness of the fey races?

Maybe Rial wants to play a deep-elf merc?

Just make friends with a warlock.

New things happen in Sk big deal, you just have to learn how to adapt.

Adapting is one thing, but in order for a deep elf to adapt to holy damage, they have to have their suit enchanted all to hell and back. They have to have a good dexterity and reflex save for BoG (I think that's the right save.) nimbus, then on top of that, either massive mr or mp on top of shield and spell ward to negate enough damage to survive past 2-3 BoG's. Of course, the moment 1 holy word is shot off, chances are bye by shield / spell ward and any other buffs you have.

Adapting shouldn't be forcing a character to massively enchant their gear every time they die, which in any Deep Elf's case is a lot. And even then if you do enchant greater MR on all your gear, iron / cold iron weapons will totally destroy you unless you have iron guard, which is not available at all times (Atleast not that I'm aware of.) It can also be said it's th same way with Elves. Even if you enchant your gear to resist negative energy spells, iron will still destroy you. And for what? Max intelligence? Good dexterity? Come on, that really isn't that big of a boon to warrant the INSANE weaknesses of some of them.

Seriously, your average player can barely even play a Deep elf, and there aren't many people willing to sit for hours on end enchanting your things. A person shouldn't have to do that JUST to survive.

Or you can just make a human necromancer, mercenary, sorcerer or whatever other class you were going to create as a deep-elf and not have to worry about or deal with so many drawbacks.

I get the distinct impression Dulrik designed the vulnerabilities specifically to deter players from choosing non-human races. If Pyrathia is supposed to be a predominantly human world, the player base should reflect that. The vulnerabilities seem to be the design mechanic to encourage most players into picking humans.

You can still kick arse as a deep-elf, elf or half-elf, it just requires more work to do so. If it didn't, why pick a human? I could be wrong. Maybe Dulrik wants all the races played equally and these vulnerabilities are just an oversight. I'll let him answer that question, though.

Honestly, it seems that cold iron weaknesses were implemented to specifically offset the huge advantages that charisma gives. Why play a human when you can lose a point of constitution and level 3x as fast? lol

As for the rest of the weaknesses, they're mostly salt and pepper because, as has been stated before, the racial-weakness code is two-fold - it is based around both weapon damage type and weapon material type. Most weapons don't have both.

Dulrik is not exactly far-ranging with his vision. I think we all know and and have come to accept that.

I'll try and keep it positive though. Maybe this is all part of some master plan.

Humans are intended to be the most common race.

However, there seems to be a lot of cause and effect errors in the thread. For example:


Iron weakness has been in the game from the very beginning. Elves and deep-elves have always had it. The charisma stat is relatively recent, only having been implemented 5-6 years ago.

What people need to understand is that the environment of the game changes over time. Weapons used to break easier than they do now. Cold iron didn't used to exist. Upgrades to these things over a period of years have made the weakness more effective than it used to be.

As for my vision not being far enough, is 14 years not long enough to be called "far-ranging"? I have plans that I still want to do for this game that go back that far. And I'm comfortable with making plans for features for years in the future. From my vantage point, it seems the opposite problem - other people are often just too impatient.

*bearhugs Dulrik*

Dulrik !

Its easy to be patient with a birds eye view. When you only see the here and now, its not as easy.

Still, the point remains that if something was changed that makes a weakness which was balanced become more pronounced, perhaps something should be done to either bring it back down to balance, or bring the racial resistances/positive factors up to a balanced level.

Im going to give the chars I created a try out though first. Only fair to see first hand I suppose.

This is a silly topic and shouldn't even be up for debate.You have racial weaknesses and racial limits on your stat trains.Without weaknesses you might as well take out the caps.You play a race for whatever reasons you want and there will be pros and cons no matter how you cut it.