ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Please improve the descriptions or change the racials of the elven races.

Most of my characters are cornacs. Sometimes I take dwarves or higher, but I never really play elves. Why? Because of the counterintuitive design.
If I take a look at Thalore and Shalore, this is what I expect:
Thalore: high dexterity bonus with some strength and a little willpower. This must be a nimble race that syncs great with archers and rogues. Turns out, the racials improve with Willpower. So no, that's not where I want to spend my general points and waste a cat point as an archer or rogue.
Shalore: magic folk description and magic and willpower bonusses. Must be great for Mages! ...scales with dexterity. As a mage, dexterity is a stat I will never ever put a point in.

The racial trees are opposite of what the character creation screen implies. The magic bonus race seems great for archers, with the dex scale and invisiblity that is otherwise unavailable to that class. The high dex/str race works best with high willpower classes. So anytime I start up these races, I think "this isn't what I wanted" and quit that char.

I agree it would be nice to be able to see the talents characters get from their race (and class, while we're at it), rather than just some vague descriptions, before starting the game.
Another possibility would be to have the game suggest classes for each race (and maybe vice versa), like DCSS does.

I think you're only looking at the first skill in each tree.

Thalore has 2 skills that scale with Willpower and 2 that can go with any character. That's not a racial tree I want to put points in when I'm not going for willpower.
Shalore has 1 skill that scales with dex and 3 that can go with any character. I admit, Shalore can go with any class and probably does wonders on, say, shadowblade. That doesn't change that when I select a magic orientated race and see the first racial scale with dex, I will be disappointed. I don't believe it's really nessesary to change the racials, but it would be great if at least the description on the character screen was changed.

Shalore invisibility skill scales with Magic. And the initial skill is still useful to any class, even without high dex.

I do think the racial skills should be more stat-agnostic myself though.

I think in SVN some of the racials kind of do this. I seem to remember seeing some of them scale with Dex OR wil whichever is higher, or Mag OR Str, etc.


Maybe im dreaming.

But for me racials always come last. Racials are there as more of a bonus, outside undead I rarely put points into racials because the class generics are almost always worth more to invest it.

They do need some scaling, though. Hm... what about basing them off character level, instead?

Mewtarthio wrote:They do need some scaling, though. Hm... what about basing them off character level, instead?

+1

Why was this not thought of before

I like the way it works at the moment.
It means that you can play as a Thaloren Caster or a Shaloren Fighter without getting nerfed by the racial stats.