Micbran wrote:
Honestly, I think skeleton is mostly fine and after stun gets changed
:O Stun is gonna get changed? Any link where I can read more? Hadn't heard about this.
Micbran wrote:
If you really wanted to buff them you could hit their XP penalty and pretend that does something.
I've been playing on and off, and remember it mattering a lot before. Has the general amount of XP gained increased? I feel like before, I didn't have a prodigy until somewhere in the far east, but now I have them around Dreadfell.
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Ghoul is a little different, I can't really think of a class they pair well with besides bulwark.
They pair decently with necromancer (if going with minions), and might maybe work with archmage? Don't know. Though there's obviously stronger choices for all these. However, I think it's a bit of an identity crisis; they're identified as being capable warriors, yet their abilities and limitations seem fitted to classes that don't need to move around a lot, and that have fairly low HP but large shields. That's mainly spellcasters. The new bursty speed feature of ghoul leap helps a lot, but it's fiddly to use.
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Their racials are actually pretty decent as racials go (good luck beating out the shalore master race).
Well, that's an issue with Shaloren, not the other races ;P. I do think Shaloren need to be taken down a notch, as they bypass too many design limitations. I think races should be balanced around tier B-C in general, but an A here and there isn't a big deal (I like Cornacs being good, though I'm genetically partial towards humankind). All races should have at least one class where they're considered a one of the strongest combinations, a few more that they're good but not great in, and for the rest, you should still feel like the race gives you _something_, even if it's not as good as what others have.
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Make it so ghouls don't have to breathe and maybe play around with a passive on their retch: "Your heal mod cannot drop below 80% + 10% per TL or something.
Yeah, ghouls breathing is just strange. I can understand vampires needing to breath, but not ghouls. If it was an explicit part of the fluff (e.g. they had a racial ability called Residues of Life) I could get behind it, but now, just... no.
Thing is, I'm considering making a tiny mod to just move the races a bit closer together in power level. Mostly for personal use, and to get a bit more used to modding again before going on to bigger projects. Most of the races are either in a fairly good place, or are obvious in what makes them stick out. As undead are played quite differently, I wanted to ask here to try to pinpoint what could be done without changing their nature too much.
One thing I consider is whether the Ghoul's speed penalty should be only to movement, spell and mind speed. This wouldn't be thematically off or change their nature too much, and might also steer them in a martial direction. I've also considered granting a bonus to unarmed attacks for ghouls, as it seems to fit both with their whole "feral" theme and might steer them further towards martial characters (plus, a ghoul brawler is an awesome concept). However, these changes are a bit bigger and would need more explaining (e.g. in the race selection window), and I'd like to keep it small and clean (at least on the surface).
EDIT: The more I think about it, the more I question the nature of undead's starting racial talent. The main thing the talent does is increase your stats. From a thematic viewpoint, it's not great; how does one "improve their skeletal condition" (unless, say, a necromancer)?. From a gameplay perspective, they're effective, but boooring. So very, very, boring. And considering how difficult the start can be for undead, I'm wondering if maybe they shouldn't just have better stats to begin with, and a 1st-level racial that does something more interesting? I'm not saying skeletons should get a free +15/+15 Str/Dex or anything, but giving them a higher starting statline and replacing that ability with something triggered, sustained or activated might make the undead more fun to play.