By pure chance I did a bunch of Ghoul changes the other day:
https://git.net-core.org/tome/t-engine4 ... quests/478First thing to keep in mind is improving the runes is being considered a large Ghoul buff, which is why my changes are not in the massive overhaul category, Gnaw aside.
Ghoul: I strongly disagree that this isn't useful. It will trigger very rarely and be incredibly good when it does, the same style of effect as Cauterize. I agree that it is out of theme and has antisynergy with the high HP pool, though. Completely changing this effect seems like a good idea. Could do something like your proposal, or maybe gain a % of life as die_at, or whatever.
Retch: I came to the same conclusion about Retch you did as soon as I looked at it, heh. I'm happy with the existing functionality though, and even with the scaling nerfed (fixed to 10 radius) it comes out to 200-400 total life+damage early game.
Gnaw: Similar thinking here as well. I love the idea of focusing on the ghoul summon part of this, and I spent a pretty good amount of time tuning the new ghoul stats to keep them from being useless. Its pretty fun to wind up with 3+ ghouls from 1 Gnaw cast, and Gnaw is a solid melee talent now. If we went with a permaghoul model the ghoul stats would have to be adjusted until they're pretty underwhelming which is kinda boring. Pet stats are hard to get right though so this might still need adjustment.
While I'm here, a couple other racial proposals:
Halfling: Change Militant Mind to add +5..40% of their Cunning as all powers (Mind, Phys, Spell, Steam, ...). Really nice for hybrids.
Yeek: Allow Dominant Mind to work on all ranks but only last 2 turns if the rank is above elite, add an extra effect to Quickened that gives you a full turn of energy anytime damage puts you below or is taken while below 30%. Probably 18..10 CD or so on the effect. Should reliably make your turn start when you get low in most situations. Awkward interaction with die_at, though.