Races

[Antoine]

Hi all

I am considering proposing some changes to the V races to Andrew Sidwell, that hero of maintenance.

My intention is to create more differentiation between the races - giving some races a slightly different 'feel' - while not having a major impact on game balance.

What are people's thoughts on the following. I imagine many will be vetoed but some may be accepted.

1. Changes that I believe are uncontroversial:
- Giving hobbits 'ID on pickup' for mushrooms
- Giving dwarves a +2 tunneling bonus
- Going through and revising the character descriptions ("You have scabby green skin and blue hair", etc)

2. Mildly controversial:
- Giving dwarves faster pseudo-id of hard armor and shields
- Giving elves and high elves faster pseudo-id of shooters and ammo
- Making kobolds, half-trolls and half-orcs show as k, T and o respectively, instead of an @
- Allowing dwarves and gnomes to occasionally detect mineable treasure within a range of several grids

3. Quite controversial:
- Giving gnomes a much better Magic Device skill (over 20, c.f. 12 now)
- Allowing gnomes to ID rods, wands and staffs on pickup
- Splitting bows/throwing into two skills - bows, and slings/throwing. Would be equal for all classes and races, except hobbits, rogues and half-trolls would have better slings/throwing and elves and rangers would have better bows.
- Restricting hobbits from wielding super heavy melee weapons (25 lb or more), but giving them an intrinsic +1 speed to compensate
- Making half-elves much more able. Currently we have a D&D half-elf (basically a funny looking human) rather than a true Tolkien half-elf (who were exceptionally able at everything - look at Elrond). I'd like to see all their scores raised by several points and their experience modifier up to about 150.

4. Too controversial:
- Never allowing stats to rise above 18/(200 + 10X), where X is the stat racial bonus (so, for instance, a dwarf could never have Int over 18/170)

Feedback and/or more similar ideas, gratefully accepted.

A.

Folks, any more comment on this?

My current understanding is that the proposal is acceptable to oook, except for
- changes to half-elves - not thematically justified
- hobbit restrictions on very heavy weapons, and Speed bonus - not wanted
- k / T / o instead of @ - not wanted ("worst idea ever invented")
- racial stat limits - regarded with general bemusement.

A.

[takkaria]

Folks, any more comment on this?

My current understanding is that the proposal is acceptable to oook, except for
- changes to half-elves - not thematically justified
- hobbit restrictions on very heavy weapons, and Speed bonus - not wanted
- k / T / o instead of @ - not wanted ("worst idea ever invented")
- racial stat limits - regarded with general bemusement.

A.

Let me just put my note in that I would be quite happy to see Half-Elves removed and some other race put in their place, or no race put in their place.

[Antoine]

Let me just put my note in that I would be quite happy to see Half-Elves removed and some other race put in their place, or no race put in their place.

Guess that's savefile-breaking?

A.

[Big Al]

Just replace your half-elf savefile with a elf, they're pretty much identical anyway?

[Antoine]

Forgot to ask - what is the general view on removing 'Fighting' and 'Shooting' secondary skills from the character sheet, and instead including them in the melee and missile to-hit figures?

A.

[Donald Jonker]

Forgot to ask - what is the general view on removing 'Fighting' and 'Shooting' secondary skills from the character sheet, and instead including them in the melee and missile to-hit figures?

If you mean removing the dumbed-down 'superb'/'legendary'/&c skill statuses, I would miss them, even though they don't give you all that much information - they have a way of making one feel 'legendary'... If you incorporate them (the actual words) into the raw numbers and nothing's lost, then no problem.

[Nick]

Let me just put my note in that I would be quite happy to see Half-Elves removed and some other race put in their place, or no race put in their place.

OK, here's a concrete (but not complete) suggestion.

• Replace Half-Elf with Druadan (there is an FA one that has innate telepathy, but it need not be this one);
• Replace Elf with Wood-Elf, and tweak them a bit (I'd suggest adding stealth, and lots of it);
• Replace Human with something a bit more interesting (Man of Rohan? Breelander?).

This is a fairly easy, fairly undisruptive first step. We can leave the INT/WIS discussion for another time

[Antoine]

OK, here's a concrete (but not complete) suggestion.

• Replace Half-Elf with Druadan (there is an FA one that has innate telepathy, but it need not be this one);
• Replace Elf with Wood-Elf, and tweak them a bit (I'd suggest adding stealth, and lots of it);
• Replace Human with something a bit more interesting (Man of Rohan? Breelander?).

Seems good to me.

I can only see one problem and its a small one... this will disrupt searches by race on the oook ladder...

A.

[Antoine]

OK, here's a concrete (but not complete) suggestion.

• Replace Half-Elf with Druadan (there is an FA one that has innate telepathy, but it need not be this one);
• Replace Elf with Wood-Elf, and tweak them a bit (I'd suggest adding stealth, and lots of it);
• Replace Human with something a bit more interesting (Man of Rohan? Breelander?).

This is a fairly easy, fairly undisruptive first step. We can leave the INT/WIS discussion for another time

Having thought about it, here's a counter suggestion. Would there be support for any of the following proposals:

1. replace Half-Elf with Man of Gondor (in stats, somewhere between a normal Human and a Dunedain)
2. rename Elf to Wood-elf, improve stealth and missile skills radically
3. rename Gnome to Ainu, generally power-up a bit (higher Wis, etc)
4. give Dwarves lower Wis and higher Int (see discussion on rgra)
5. add new race, Man of Harad - like a standard human, with above average Dex, Con and missile skill, but poor mental stats and all round poor skills
6. add new race, Druadan - FA inspired, with a (limited, short-range) innate telepathy
7. split High Elves into Noldor, Vanyar, and Teleri - in stats, very similar to the current High Elf, with largely cosmetic differences.

A.

PS. If anyone thinks I'm going on too much about races, please tell me to shut up by private email

[Whelk]

I think it'd be great to add a little more 'personality' to the choice of Human (i.e. Breelander, etc.). I like to stick to my roots and often pick humans (silly, I know) but it's always a bit depressing that no amount of effort ever goes into making humans interesting just because they happen to be the same "race" as we players of the game.

"Oh, it's a human, you know about those - you are one. I don't need to add any flavor or interesting tidbits, so on to the next fantasy race."

Let humans break free of being the "baseline" race that's there simply to be the choice that has absolutely nothing interesting associated, no notable abilities and requires no tweaks on the part of the designer(s).

"Yay. Humans. I don't have to mess with stat bonuses or anything on this one. Done!"

Thankfully there are Dunedain, but their blood is tainted with that of the elves, or so some legends say. Please stop the inundation of elves in the fantasy worlds. We don't need thirteen different types of elf to play. It always seems strange to me that there's always a plethora of elf choices, but only ever just the one simple choice of "human" when they (humans) are so often considered such diverse and adaptive people when compared to the other fantasy races.

Anyhow, getting off the pro-human anti-elf zealot soapbox for a moment, I must say I'm looking forward to my mushroom-IDing hobbit.

[Atarlost]

I'd propose a different scheme.

First age there are five human groups and three elf groups. For the humans there are the three houses, the druadan, and the easterlings (of unknown relation to the easterlings of the third age, but described similarly) For elves there are no Vanyar in middle earth, and the Teleri are all moriquendi except for Elwe/Thingol. There are the Noldor/High Elves, the Sindar, and the Laiquendi. The differences between humans apart from the druadan are largely cosmetic. No racial stat adjustment would exceed +/- 1.

In the third age you lose the Laiquendi and add the Nandor(wood-elves). They're identical in gameplay terms. That's still 3 elf types. For men Easterling refers to a different people group that is similarly described. The druadan are still around but no longer attached to the civilized folk of Haleth so they may lose out on magic-device relative to their first age manifestation. The three houses of the edain are merged into the dunedain. What you have instead are the Northmen (including the rohirrim), the Dunlandings, and the southrons. That's 3 elf types and 5 human types. If you break out the descendants of Elros from the rest of the Dunedain it's 5 human types. Based on the Ainulindale hobbits must also be a race of men since they are mortal and far shorter lived than dwarves. That would make 6 human races.

If V wants to use first age races it should just pull from FAAngband, so I'm just going to break down the third age. I suspect the human races are associated with real races and where there isn't enough to go on in the books actual steriotypes can be substituted. The stat asjustments are extremely tentative. I don't actually know of any stat or skill related steriotypes about most of the races I think Tolkien was thinking of.

High Elves (unchanged)
Sindar (More robust and "fightery" than old elves; stealth should be nothing special)
Wood Elves (Less robust than old elves, but stealthier)

Northmen (Germanic tribes: Gauls, Franks, Lombards, etc; probably +str +con -dex; +fight -stealth)
Dunlendings (Celts?; +str +dex -con; balanced skills)
Easterlings (Probably inspired by the Huns; +dex +con -int; +bows -stealth)
Southrons (Saracens? Persians? Berbers?; probably +dex +int -wis; balanced skills)
Druadan (no real analogue; +str +con +wis -dex -chr; ++stealth +throw +infra)
Hobbits (no real analogue; as current)
Dunedain (Greece/Rome; mostly as current but ++bows)

That leaves Dunedain, HE as munchkin races; Druadan, Dwarves, and Sindar as the second tier; the other humans improved by one net skill point and with more focused skills for some, and Hobbits, Gnomes, and Kobolds remaining the fragile races as current.

[Nick]

I'd propose a different scheme.

I like your analysis. Here are some thoughts:
- The humans are not very different; maybe they could get some innate properties as well.
- What would you do with Half-Orcs and Half-Trolls?
- Changing from the current races to the ones you mention would be a very big change (I'm not sure if that's what you intended).

More generally, I think it's worth noting that V has gone along very nicely with few race changes up until now. A small change might be a good idea to start off with. It's all very well for variant maintainers to come swanning in and make sweeping changes, but Vanilla is different. This was behind my idea of making a few changes, and not changing the number of races.

I think, though, I would now amend my previous model so that half-elves were replaced by either your Sindar or one of your other human races, and probably replace Humans with your Northmen.

[Antoine]

Anyhow, getting off the pro-human anti-elf zealot soapbox for a moment, I must say I'm looking forward to my mushroom-IDing hobbit.

Farmer Maggot will get you!

A.

[Antoine]

More generally, I think it's worth noting that V has gone along very nicely with few race changes up until now. A small change might be a good idea to start off with. It's all very well for variant maintainers to come swanning in and make sweeping changes, but Vanilla is different. This was behind my idea of making a few changes, and not changing the number of races.

That's certainly a concern. I suspect what is accepted by Takkaria will be more modest than either my proposal or Atarlost's.

A.

[takkaria]

I like your analysis. Here are some thoughts:
- The humans are not very different; maybe they could get some innate properties as well.
- What would you do with Half-Orcs and Half-Trolls?
- Changing from the current races to the ones you mention would be a very big change (I'm not sure if that's what you intended).

More generally, I think it's worth noting that V has gone along very nicely with few race changes up until now. A small change might be a good idea to start off with. It's all very well for variant maintainers to come swanning in and make sweeping changes, but Vanilla is different. This was behind my idea of making a few changes, and not changing the number of races.

I think, though, I would now amend my previous model so that half-elves were replaced by either your Sindar or one of your other human races, and probably replace Humans with your Northmen.

Nick as the measure of it about right—major changes aren't what's needed in V, and I'm not too keen on adding new races. I'd also prefer to keep the names Elf and Human as race names if at all possible.

I do like what's being suggested, mind—I'm just not sure it would all fit in V.