Forsooth wrote:
It's been a long time since I played a griffon, and it'll be quite a bit longer. (Fun RP race, but I want to try some roles and mechanics that griffons can't do.) Combine that with very limited activity, and I'm sure I'm out of date on their power level. But I'd view griffons this way:
* Jardek's quite right, in that griffons die a lot and are meant to played aggressively in spite of that. My concern is that they have the offense to be a serious threat before they die, so those deaths don't seem pointless. That is something I've felt with most classes, though I should note I'm not very skilled. I'm especially worried about griffon barbarians, because it can look like a sensible combination to newbies.
* When people talk about griffon toughness and saves being so great, it makes me wonder if they've actually played one. Griffons don't have good wisdom; they're quite vulnerable to willpower spells. Griffon constitution gives a good fortitude save, but not enough extra HP to make up for all the damage they take from spell attacks or elemental weapons. Toughness doesn't compete with good armor, or even storebought heavy armor. Griffons really are fragile. As mentioned above, that's not a tragedy, but to talk as if they were strong here seems odd.
* I have to snicker just a bit when this is called a huge buff. Last I heard, reflex was still the enchantment that everyone hated. And unless they were monks, leveled griffons only used claws when their regular weapons were ineffective. Unless Fist griffons got to combine claw and cabal powers again, it's hard for me to understand some of the vehemence.
I'm probably the single biggest supporter of Griffons in the modern SK era, and I played along side most of the griffons that were around pre-att/toughness boosts. Myself and Mira helped come up with toughness. With all of this said I can say from a position of authority that griffons, while not the best race in the world, are far from the worst. Toughness is a lot better than you believe it is, and until code changes were put in specifically affecting heavy armor, toughness was just as good and still isn't horribly worse. Toughness is still better AC wise than most heavy armor, and all light armor except perhaps dragonhide, I wouldn't know. The only thing you're missing out on is enchant slots and the "heavy armor bonus". You're not going to get the heavy armor bonus for multiple reasons, one of which is that it'd be idiotic. So if you're that worried about campaigning for a griffon boost I'd choose a different tact altogether than the one you posted not too long ago.
Forsooth wrote:
Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 6:36 am Post subject:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry that this post on griffon power-ups is a bit off-topic, but it is a hot-button of mine. Feel free to skip over if you aren't interested.
Personally, I don't mind that griffons are fragile. How would you expect a contest between fur-and-feathers and the best magical crafting to go? It's just that they need some different ways to make a positive contribution. If programming changes could be made by a wish, I'd make three changes to their innates. (Besides fixing resistances, that is.)
First, I'd slightly improve their claws and hide at Master+. Griffons don't need heaps of free MP, but they should have some natural defense against trivial stuff like kick. (My griffons often took more damage from the naga tail sweeps in the demon city than from the normal attacks.) Also, griffons who sacrifice reaching weapons could use a little more combat-damage as reward.
Second, I'd create a new innate "Read Magic". This would let griffons use scrolls of no more than half their level, or provide a modest bonus to the scroll and scribe skills if they have them. The idea is to give griffons more defensive/utility prep opportunities. (Some increased power has to be prep-dependent, or lazy players like me will never play anything else.) I doubt that 25th-level scrolls will be PK-effective offensively. If I'm wrong, we could always tone this down more.
Third, I'd create a new innate "Flight Mastery". This would give griffons bonuses while in the air, weighted toward high-levels. I'd look at minor bonuses to dodge, and huge bonuses to reflex. (No griffon can afford to load up on reflex.) I'd also reduce their movement lag while flying, so they actually get something for the PE they spend on natural flight. Finally, this would give only heavy-armor griffons a "dive" attack for some extra damage when unarmed. Griffons get little from heavy-armor otherwise. This might make griffon barbarian and battlepriest players feel less foolish, anyway.
I think this is a good picture of griffons: mentally capable, good feral fighters, and superior mounts - all while retaining a sensible fragility in a world of magicans and metal-users. YMMV.
And my response, which still stands.
Griffons don't need much, if anything, but if you wanted to give them a few positive non game breaking tweaks.
1. Make their bonuses to Ref/Fort/Will from stats be somewhere around 2x to 3x of other races, it allows them to take advantage of their high stat line and extra stat points even for classes that don't use all of their stats and keeps their unique eqlessness.
2. Get rid of all of their random acid/cold resists, keep the poison immunity, and just give them the magic resistance every other magical race has like sprites/halflings.
3. A racial damage bonus to hand to hand stacking with anything and everything that uses hand to hand dependant on level wouldn't be horrible.
Any one of these would be something griffon players appreciated, any two would hopefully be enough to shut people up for a good long while, all three would be more than enough and would likely push griffons to around half-elf levels.
The only other thing I could suggest is an across the board boost to the amount of HP CON gives players, this would help most races, but griffons would get a bit larger boost than most because of their need for higher hp pools.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
