Races

[Nick]

I'd also prefer to keep the names Elf and Human as race names if at all possible.

Should be straightforward - just don't change them

[takkaria]

Should be straightforward - just don't change them

Ah! That hadn't occured to me. I know where I was going wrong now.

[pav]

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.

Druedain? Harad? Gondor? Teleri? Vanyar? Wtf? Now you got me lost!

I'm afraid your regular player, who's not total Tolkien-addict, would be quite confused by these new entries. (I would be!)

[Donald Jonker]

I like your analysis. Here are some thoughts:
- The humans are not very different; maybe they could get some innate properties as well.
[snip]
and probably replace Humans with your Northmen.

Northmen (+STR,+CON,-DEX, +FIGHT,-STEALTH) pretty much =Dwarf, which would be fine, I guess.
Humans oughta get something though... how about one or more of the following:

1. Speed bonus (fantasy cliche - humans are short-lived, and scurry about, &c).
2. Intelligent (we make the games, goddammit!)
3. Wicked fast strong-pseudo regardless of class.

This last in particular I think would be theme-fitting...and it wouldn't be too unbalancing, and it would make humans fun.

[Mangojuice]

Hi all

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)

I think the ID on pickup for mushrooms is a good idea; I had been thinking about changing the hobbit racial ability to something like this in Z+.

Dwarves: +2 tunneling? I have to say I oppose this. Sure, Dwarves ought to be good at tunneling but dwarves are already extremely good, and this is a great ability to have. Dwarves only get a 20% penalty; it should be more like 30% to begin with and maybe 35% with the +2 tunneling.

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

I never thought gnomes were so mining-aligned; makes sense for dwarves, though.

Faster pseudo-id is not such a big deal, but again, there's no good reason for dwarves to be made even more awesome. I'd say that ability should go to dwarves, humans, dunadan, half-orcs, and half-trolls, maybe kobolds too. Or, to make it simpler, just make it a little faster across the board, except for elves and half-elves.

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.

Gnomes should not ID rods/wands/staves on pickup. Instead, they should be aware of charges on pickup; even, possibly, for unidentified wands and staves. (ID'ing rods/wands/staves is reasonably safe and fun by trial and error, and is probably what a gnome would do.) I agree Gnomes should have good magic device skill but I'm not sure about the calibration of that. Is it not high enough now?

Bows/Throwing is not the greatest idea, sorry. I think the best thing is to have a single skill that is modified by a piece of code depending on whether a throw or a shot is going on; it saves data. It could be on the character sheet as two skills, but it doesn't actually need to be tracked that way.

I disagree about making half-elves more able; I think they are right as-is. But they are kind of useless. If they were to be removed from V, my vote would be to add Dark Elves. They have the power level you're thinking of, but are differently flavored; they get See Invisible but not at level 1, they have good stats overall but not as good as high-elves and more slanted towards Int.

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)
A.

I kind of like the idea... except, I would make it 18/(220 + 10X), and create stat bonuses for 18/220, 18/230, up to 18/260, and do away with "18/***". (Or even make them all have the same bonuses, with the number displayed just for flavor.) It always struck me as strange that with enough magic, the stat differences between races in all stats could be completely wiped away. A maxed-out hobbit should not be as strong as a maxed-out dwarf, but they currently can be.

[Mangojuice]

Humans

People have been discussing the shortcomings of the Human race. I was thinking about what D&D does with Humans (because Humans have never seemed marginalized in D&D), and whether we could emulate that in a 'band.

D&D 2E (the old "Advanced D&D"), if I recall, imposed artificial level limits on races other than humans in various professions. So, you could play a Half-Orc Wizard but you'd never be able to get beyond level 15, or something like that. The idea was that for humans, there are no limits. Angband adaptation: let humans go up to level 60 instead of 50. The higher levels don't open up any new spells or such, but they do improve your HP and SP and skill levels.

Modern D&D is much more flexible; the main benefits of being human is that they get the most flexibility. Humans get extra skill points, and they get more "feats" (for those not familiar, feats are like special abilities, for instance, the ability to cast spells without hand movements or to make extra-powerful but less accurate attacks, etc.) Angband adaptation: if we were to add things like feats, humans could benefit but right now in V there are none. There are skills but the player doesn't choose them... so we could give humans a +1 bonus to every skill every 2 or 3 levels, and maybe give them +2 to all skills at the start. Also, we could make humans better at the standard stuff, like they could achieve multiple attacks a little better, or learn spells/prayers a little earlier.

[Atarlost]

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.

Whether Sindar or Nandor get the old elf slot is open to debate. Sindar are closer to the old half-elf in some ways, but are also the "higher" of the two. However the naming comes out they'd get those two slots.

If strapped for race slots I'd drop either half-orc or kobold for one of the human races. Half-orc is the less interesting, but kobold is the new kid on the block. I'd drop half-troll too on biological grounds if I thought I could get away with it, but in V it's probably not going to happen.

That would give something like
High-Elf -> High-Elf
Elf -> Sindar
Half-Elf -> Nandor
Half-Orc -> Easterlings
Human -> Northmen
Half-Troll -> Half-Troll
Kobold -> Kobold

[Daniel Fishman]

My feeling about all of this is that Angband is not trying to be true to Tolkein. A lot of the material is Tolkein, but not all; Atlas, Quylthulgs, Gabriel, the *thancs - none of these are Tolkein. Indeed the entire magic system isn't exactly Tolkein canon. So trying to get the races Tolkein-perfect seems pointless when no other aspect of the game is. Some variants (the ToME module Theme, FAA I believe, though I've not played it significantly) are aiming to be true to Tolkein - but Vanilla is not one of these.

[Donald Jonker]

People have been discussing the shortcomings of the Human race.
[snip]
Modern D&D is much more flexible; the main benefits of being human is that they get the most flexibility.
Angband adaptation: if we were to add things like feats, humans could benefit but right now in V there are none. There are skills but the player doesn't choose them... so we could give humans a +1 bonus to every skill every 2 or 3 levels, and maybe give them +2 to all skills at the start. Also, we could make humans better at the standard stuff, like they could achieve multiple attacks a little better, or learn spells/prayers a little earlier.

I agree that versatility is the appropriate mission statement for revising humans. In addition to giving humans perks, it might help to remove penalties that other races receive for choosing a given class.
1. I've already mentioned giving humans strong pseudo for any class... I think this would be an almost direct corollary to the D&D removal of class restrictions from humans.
2. You could remove or lighten penalties for human priests wielding sharp weapons.
3. You could remove or lighten penalties for human rogues and mages wearing gloves.
4. You could allow human mages to get 5 blows.
5. Other class restrictions that I'm forgetting?

[Antoine]

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.

Hey Takkaria

It seems that there is a need to add at most one new race - replacing Half-elf. And no other race should be renamed at this stage.

Based on this discussion, do you think a replacement should be created, or the Half-elf race slot should just be deleted? If a replacement, what should it be?

A.

[Antoine]

Druedain? Harad? Gondor? Teleri? Vanyar? Wtf? Now you got me lost!

I'm afraid your regular player, who's not total Tolkien-addict, would be quite confused by these new entries. (I would be!)

I guess I figured most people would have seen Men of Harad and Men of Gondor in the LOTR movies. ("Those dudes with the elephants" and "the nice people in ROTK").

Yes, the others are much more obscure and doubtless bad ideas for V.

A.

[Atarlost]

Druedain? Harad? Gondor? Teleri? Vanyar? Wtf? Now you got me lost!

I'm afraid your regular player, who's not total Tolkien-addict, would be quite confused by these new entries. (I would be!)

Think of it as pygmies, arabs, romans/greeks/byzantines, and two sets of elves that you can ignore because they never get involved because they're on the other side of an unnavigable ocean.

[rdermyer]

If you don't add/rename races (which is where I stand), you could add the Harad/Gondor/Teleri/Noldor/etc to the character description. Granted, this wouldn't affect each race, but similar information could be added to the other races (You hail from Buckland/the Iron Hills). Two birds with one stone!

[Antoine]

If you don't add/rename races (which is where I stand), you could add the Harad/Gondor/Teleri/Noldor/etc to the character description. Granted, this wouldn't affect each race, but similar information could be added to the other races (You hail from Buckland/the Iron Hills). Two birds with one stone!

Yea good thinking.

Still hoping for some guidance on the Half-elf slot.

A.

[Donald Jonker]

Still hoping for some guidance on the Half-elf slot.

How bout those invulnerable ghost people that basically rendered all fighting on the behalf of living human beings unnecessary in Return of the King? If anyone stands a chance against Morgoth et al., it's them.