overpowered races?

[Derakon]

The current Elf race is basically a D&D elf, and half-elves are D&D half-elves. It's been discussed before that elf could be renamed to "Wood-Elf" so it doesn't just look like a crappy High-Elf. I can't remember if we decided what to do about Half-Elves. Maybe just remove them? Tolkein half-elves, as I understand it, were either High-Elves or Dunadan; they chose which destiny to follow rather than having some kind of hybrid status.

[Mark]

I think that the high elves and dunadans have power more other races, but it corresponds to the way it was in Arda.

This is true and I like it.

For that reason I wish that Half-elves were awesome. Every half-elf in Arda/Middle earth was awesome, because of their heritages/parents.

Three of these unions occurred between members of the foremost dynasties of Elves and Men, the High Elves and the Edain: They were Lúthien and Beren, Idril and Tuor, and Arwen and Aragorn. From WikiPedia

I guess those are really "Half High-elves". There were no half (regular) elves in Tolkien's universe.

[MattB]

I too find Half-Trolls to be the most OP (no, not OP, just 'highly-powered').
I am currently discovering that H-T rogues are surprisingly good. Superb stealth is bizarrely easy to come by as a half-troll.

[Nick]

I think that the high elves and dunadans have power more other races, but it corresponds to the way it was in Arda.

Indeed. Also, I am fine with races being different difficulty - I think the important thing is to have them all play differently.

[Angrist]

I think that the high elves and dunadans have power more other races, but it corresponds to the way it was in Arda.

[Derakon]

The best race really depends on what class you want to play as. Half-trolls are so much better at being warriors than everyone else that it's not even funny. Hobbits and kobolds are fantastic rogues. Dwarves are great priests and paladins. And so on.

Dunadan and High-Elf are sort of "generically good" in that they have bonuses to most stats and decent hit dice, but for any given class there's generally a race that will be at least as good at that class as the "super races" are, with a much lower XP penalty and more interesting intrinsic abilities.

If I had to rank the races without giving consideration to class, though, they'd probably go something like this:

Half-troll
Dwarf
Kobold
Hobbit
Human
High-Elf
Gnome
Dunadan
Half-Orc
Half-Elf
Elf

This doesn't say much about any objective ranking; it's more how inclined I am to play as each race. That's why Human ranks so highly; sometimes I just want to play someone who sucks at everything.

[PowerWyrm]

I always thought that the most overpowered race was dwarf. Unless you play a mage, you have good stats, infravision and resistance to blindness. Not mentionning high skill values...

[Tibarius]

I just managed to win the game with a dunadan mage. I consider dunadan and high-elf races overpowered compared to other races. The big XP modifier is no drawback in game-mechanics, it just forces the player to do more grinding to compensate the XP requirements. How do others feel/think about it?