Shattered Kingdoms

Things that I think would go a long way to making certain races more viable.

helvs: Make their max stat bonus +2
Delves: Give them 4more stat pts (2 more in con, 2 wis), increase resistance
elves: Increase resistance
dwarves: Let them use medium sized wpns w/o restriction.

All races with weaknesses. Change from 150% to 125%.

All I can say is Archenar is 100% right. We need racial weaknesses and balances that even out. Right now you've got a bunch of races with a bunch of weaknesses and horrible bonuses, like elves, deep-elves, and sprites, and half-elfs. Take half-elves for example. Does anyone here actually think that a slight resistance to charm affects makes balancs out taking 1.5x as much damage from iron? I mean really, does anyone think that?

I thought the helf weakness to iron was less than it is for elves/delves. Also, I doubt the extra point of CON on a human makes any difference when people are perfectly willing to PK with asthmatic CON from multiple fatigues.

I agree that weaknesses need to be looked at, though.

There is one race with some heavy weaknesses that is being left out of all of this:

Griffons.

Griffons get the shaft on enchants, eq, eq building, and RP-enforced enemies.

What do they get to balance this? A few extra points at CC.

All that stuff in the help files about resistances to acid, charm, cold, etc is all a bunch crap. None of those resistances count for anything. The only time I've had a griffon resist a charm (and there have been plenty of opportunities for me to test this) was once when, after getting charmed for the twentieth time in a row I sent up a pray asking to have griffon charm resistance looked at. An annonymous imm showed up, created a "weak spell" wand of charm, and we did a little testing on the "resistance." Now, we're talking a charm spell that a lvl 15, max wis helf could resist 4 out of 5 times. My griffon resisted once. Out of something like six zaps.

The main race to look at if you want to see the complete and total imbalance of weaknesses vs strengths is griffons. All their supposed "resistances" are worth literally nothing.

Another example. A max con griffon shaman brewing, vs a low-Healthy con, naked human priest brewing. The griffon actually takes MORE damage from a critical fail brew acid blast than the human. So much for resistance to acid. So much for the toughness bonus to damage reduction.

Yet ANOTHER example involving griffons. Griffon weakness involving eq slot limitations (leaving building completely aside for this, just refering to the number of slots available). Easy enough to comprehend the effects of the weakness: succeptibility to massive, and I do mean massive, melee damage, and severe limits on enchants. This, in regards to spells, is made worse by the (imo, ridiculously low) max wis of 18. The melee side is made greatly worse by the max dex of 21. *21* for a cat-like race, when helf, delf, and bloody HALFLINGS (yes, little stumpy-legged halflings) get a dex of 22.

So, yes, lots of races have weaknesses and supposed benefits. The weaknesses outweigh the benefits by far, though, and especially in the case of griffons.

Elves are based more towards mental stats, and they get infravision, magic resistance, charm resistance.
In turn they are weak to iron, poison, plague and negative energy.

Half-elves are basically halfway in between elves and humans (fittingly) stat-wise, get infravision and charm resistance.
In turn they are weak to iron. That's one inherited weakness vs. two inherited advantages (Granted, iron vulnerability -sucks- for them.)

Now, elves and deep-elves aren't geared towards playing melee classes (Read: Low con and strength) but it isn't impossible. It is, however, very -hard- for one to win as a melee class against smart people without just being a lot better than they are, gear or otherwise.

The real question is, "Are half-elf stats, charm resistance, and infravision worth 1.5x damage from iron?" And again I will state that if warlocks didn't suck, the answer would be yes.

FIX WARLOCKS. That's the connection between elves and half-elves sucking in melee and being more on par.

And about griffons: Never played one. They are size large though. Eh, eh? [/sarcasm]

I'll agree with Muktar that I'd love to see the human/half-elf stat bonus reduced to two. I've never understood why human fighters are as strong as centaurs. I don't think Dulrik's interested in making SK less human-centric, though.

As for griffons, they do get significant bonuses. It's just that the bonuses are only important at low level. For example, at level 1, mastered self-defense and natural armor are really great. By level 40, anyone who cares has near-mastered self-defense, and most have better armor. Griffons could really use some innates that contribute mostly at high levels.

I notice you didn't touch at all on the "resistances" to acid, cold, or charm.

Why should I duplicate your good work, OA?

Besides, as annoying as these non-strengths are, I've not died a sngle time in PK to any of these. Griffons are easily enough chopped up by simpler means; that's the bigger problem, IMO.

Griffons are great at creation and by level 40 start to stink worse that old eggs. I agree with everything O_A said. The resistances to spells are a joke. Sure, we can go to 'revisionist history' island to the east and not get plagued every 5 minutes, but charm person lands on griffs with little trouble, same with acid blast. Those 'help-file resistances' are have been lost over the years as code has changed.

The ABSOLUTE WORST part about griffons is that any, and I mean any, kind of magical damage weapon destroys them. They have NO ARMOR or suitable enchant slots to gear up against it. They take it straight up the pooper from undead wrath and anyone having any sort of magical damage weapon. Maybe thats as intended, but there should be a huge warning label on them saying at creation: "You will have no trouble getting to 40, but the last ten levels and the end game PK are going to be hell for you, choose wisely."

I've since moved on from my Griffon. It saddens me. I liked the concept, but in practice, it wasn't worth getting creamed by NPCs everytime I wanted to do my job and police undead.

Please look into the resistance issues for Griffons. Please. N_G

Forsooth, Humans get +3 to max stat, while helves only get +1. I was suggesting that helves get +2 to max stat. I have no problem with humans having the strength of a centaur. Centaurs have other things to help them out.