ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The main distinctintion between races is the racial talent tree, and this works beautifully for all of the main races. Apart from this, hit points make a difference, but every other factor can be completely ignored.

XP
The main point is experience bonus/penalty. I only play adventure mode, but in my experience this has no effect on play balance whatsoever. More powerful classes are need more grinding to get to level 50 by High Peak. This is not a balancing factor, so much as a way to reward grind.

Instead I suggest giving different races more or fewer generic skill points. This would be particularly thematic for Cornacs. I reckon the only races it would not suit are Yeeks and Thalorin. The Yeeks could be allowed to go over level 50. Thalorin might just be overpowered.


STATS
These make a difference up to level 10 maybe. I tend to forget about this even before then. (Exception, I have a mid level Halfling struggling with his encumberance).

You could make the upper limit on stats dependent on the racial limits as well. A factor if 3 to 5 times the race bonus seems sensible. Of course this might make specific race/class cominations too much of a no-brainer.

HP
Hit points have little impact on game-play and a large impact on survival. It would be better if these varied less.

Maybe give the stat bonuses again every 10th level?

Corporal, I disagree about XP. The risk of dying while grinding for XP is not zero: even if you consider it to be zero on Normal, it's probably higher in higher difficulties. Therefore, yeeks expose themselves to less risk on the way to level 50 than skeletons do.

Grayswandir, I like that way of doing it.

I have played Nightmate difficulty, though mostly I was surprised at how fast all characters gain levels. I don't play infinite dungeon or arena, so could not say how xp rates affect these.

There are problems with grayswandir's suggestion. Racial stats can go down as well as up, so would need some way to mitigate this. Also some races just get a bigger total stat boost than others, so simply multiplying this could be bad for balance.

The main issue with racial stat bonuses / penalties is that there has been SO MUCH STAT INFLATION in the last few revisions, the original racial bonuses are just lost in the tsunami of huge new bonuses.

I assume that +3 used to be worth something. Now that small a bonus is laughable after level 10 or so.

So, you want racial bonuses to matter, get rid of stat inflation.