Shattered Kingdoms

I can't fathom a class/build where minotaur would be an optimal race selection. Can folks discuss the practicality of using a minotaur and the circumstances where it would be beneficial? I've never played a minotaur for this reason.

I agree that they aren’t optimized for any class. You aren’t going to be a top tier build.
But size large is a minor benefit to a fighter-type class.
Maybe if gore was buffed, it might make their starting attack a little more viable. A swashbuckler that could essentially headbutt (if it was buffed in such a way?)
Might see gore as a lower-tier cleave? Idk.

I saw Rorikos have an MC shaman mino. I dont know if he was very optimized. But he made it work. Maybe his name was Verinios?

Either way, i agree that they aren’t a top-tier race. But other than buffing gore, idk now we would make them viable.

I feel that their perks are outweighed by their weaknesses, particularly the lack of head armor. In every situation where I would roll a minotaur I would probably prefer a griffon instead because of their claw attack, immunity and innate fly.

A buff to gore would be cool. They definitely need some sort of perk to make them a viable race option.

I think minotaurs have toughness applicable at the head, but that's usually less effective at any given level than the armor that a character would typically be wearing; especially when you consider the number of potential enchantment slots that are lost.

Gore can only be used to start combat and has a cooldown (more like a backstab skill attack than a headbutt skill attack).

They have pretty good stats for warrior classes, but I think in just about every one of those categories (size/str/con/dex) they're second to or tied with a giant.

It seems like we introduced them a little on the weak side because we had concerns that some of the ideas for them could've made them too powerful. But then it seems like we never really found the best mechanism for balancing them. It's been a while, so I could be remembering wrongly, and the last one I played to any substantive level was in the first year of their rollout, so take me with a grain of salt. I wanted them to have a resistance to holy power, to reflect their troubled history with the gods, but I don't think that was ever implemented. Seems like there have been other suggestions too, such as giving them an innate tracking skill (reflective of their enhanced sense of smell/hearing), or an innate alertness/detect hidden/detect invis (also reflective of those senses), but those were never too warmly received. Everybody appears to be in agreement that minotaurs need something to help balance them with the other races, but it's one case that I don't think has ever found a good answer that would help them enough without overpowering them and without borrowing too much from existing class skills/spells.

Innate detections would go a long way - they would probably become the most viable MR Barb race that way. Would also love to see another race with innate weapon abilities, akin to dwarves. For minotaurs I could envision an accuracy bonus to 2-handed weapons. It's has to be juicy enough for someone to overlook their glaring weaknesses.

Curious what the other ideas were?

Bumping this thread just to see if any discussion was ever had surrounding a minorawr buff? I'm a little sad that there aren't more of them. I think small changes will go a long way to make the race more attractive.

Here are some random suggestions:
- innate detections/alertness
- innate self-defense & brawling
- innate toughness
- innate tracking
- increase the increased bonus to head butt (damage and probability to KO)
- increase damage from bash
- innate sword, bonus to sword (akin to dwarf axe bonus)
- gore re-work, make similar to kick
- innate skill: rampage - automatic increase probability to lob arms when aiming mid
- remove energy weakness, add resistance to holy & negative energy
- acid immunity (similar hide to centaurs)
- make harder to knock prone
- additional stat trains
- innate skill: herdsmanship (bonus to combat endurance when grouped with multiple minotaurs, stacks with each minotaur) - should probably give the same skill to centaurs

I'm going to preface this with the caveat that, as I've said elsewhere, we more or less have to accept the game as is for the time being. Dulrik's limited time to code has been dedicated to fixing crash bugs and other severe problems.

With that out of the way, I agree minotaurs should get alertness as a racial ability. That makes complete sense, given the rationale for their weakness to sonic attacks. Resistance to cold makes sense since they have fur, and presumably that's why griffons and centaurs are resistant to cold. I think a cool ability would be for a minotaur to know when they've returned to a room they've been in within the past two or three ticks. Upon entering the room they would see something below the room's description like "You feel that you have been here recently." This would make it much easier for them to navigate mazes in the game; they would instantly know which directions circle back on themselves.

On the builder side, we have made a few items that have special features that only work for minotaurs, and we can introduce a few more of those without risking any major imbalances.

Do people know what their weakness to energy actually does? It doesn't seem to apply to very much. It does not mean, for instance, that an energy weapon does more damage to a minotaur. Also, energy types that are already something else, the way lightning bolts are lightning or energy drain is negative energy, do not appear to do extra damage to minotaurs.