Half-Drow >>> Half-Elf && Human STAT balance.

Ok as we all know, Half-drows were a new race added to the game, and an wonderful addiction. But now that we all use them, perhaps it's time to balance the half-elf and humans in line with the half-drows. Half drows have amazing stats (comparatively with the others. Ok the others just suck.)

Half-Drow: 23 is amazing. 0 xp penalty. Far off recall point. Can be DK's, Blm and Necros

**Humans: **The 21 STR for meeles warriors/rangers make them more interesting than the others races. But in the other classes, I'm not making a human if I can make a half-drow. 100xp penalty, regular 3 hometowns. Can be Berzerkers, but can't be Blm..

Half-Elf: 21 Int, which is nice for mages. But humans also get 21 int and 20 Con. 0xp penalty, regular 3 hometowns. Can be Paladins, Blm, rangers and Monks.

So my suggestion is:

Bump half-elves CON to 19. So they have the same HP as the h-drow. Add +1 Wisdom to make them better mages than humans. Wisdom doesn't adds much, but a very tiny bit of mana. They probably going to end with ~+25 mana over the Half-drows but with less AC and no racial far-off home. Sounds very balanced to me.

Humans. Ideally they should be 0xp but I see the wisdom in them being 100xp, as it makes the half-xxx more attractive. I pondered suggesting them having +2 instead of +1 to prime stat, but that might make them a tad to OP by having +3 STR over the half-XXX. So my suggestion is bring back the OLD human bonus to magical affinity. I think this was done in the very old code by having the random durations of spells always favor with longer duration, but I'm probably wrong and it doesn't matter. It could be as simple as having longer sanctuary and protective shield. This could be done by directly extending the duration for humans, or by simply giving humans a +6 spell bonus to SPELL_PROTECTIVE. This has no impact on other players or saves, as these spells aren't saved, and impacts mainly: 'sanctuary', 'protective shield' and 'bless' , duration and chance to dispel/haymaker. I recall that the glimmering stave already provides L60 sanctuary, and it's easy to do a simple check to only apply the boost in case the spell is < L60.

INFO:

Rolling stats for half-drow : 

Max: Str: 19  Int: 20  Wis: 21  Dex: 23  Con: 19

Rolling stats for half-elf :

Max: Str: 19  Int: 21  Wis: 20  Dex: 22  Con: 18

Rolling stats for human :

Max: Str: 20  Int: 20  Wis: 20  Dex: 20  Con: 20

+1 in prime stat.

Half-Drow

 1. warrior         225 Exp     2. dark-knight     175 Exp    

 3. thief            75 Exp     4. ninja           150 Exp    

 5. cleric          250 Exp     6. invoker         350 Exp    

 7. battlemage      325 Exp     8. shaman          275 Exp    

 9. necromancer     425 Exp    10. bard            475 Exp    

1. blademaster     400 Exp

Half-Elf:

1. warrior         225 Exp     2. ranger          300 Exp    

2. paladin         175 Exp     4. thief            75 Exp    

3. ninja           150 Exp     6. cleric          250 Exp    

4. monk            100 Exp     8. invoker         350 Exp    

5. battlemage      325 Exp    10. bard            475 Exp    

6. blademaster     400 Exp

Human:

 1. warrior         325 Exp     2. berserker       125 Exp    

 3. ranger          400 Exp     4. paladin         275 Exp    

 5. dark-knight     300 Exp     6. thief           175 Exp    

 7. ninja           250 Exp     8. cleric          350 Exp    

 9. monk            200 Exp    10. invoker         450 Exp    

1. battlemage      425 Exp    12. necromancer     375 Exp    

2. bard            575 Exp

Since coming back I've definitely noticed quite a lot of power creep, be it the new race, the new class reworks or the new items available.

I think all the races sorta need a look at for example:

Halfling got overnerfed, they were kinda a niche pick in their unnerfed state and really only Blademasters were the problem (They could of gotten a reverse drow/elf blm treatment)

Stone giants are mostly overshadowed by Ogre, the same classes are available to both but I know personally I'd never pick a stone giant over an ogre (again).

Duergar seem mostly unpicked as well, they could honestly use some flavour (doesn't need to be a stat buff, think something similar to the spider summon spell, maybe a permanent alcoholic perk on top of the chosen one?)

Sliths seem very close to balanced, perhaps giving their perks to all alignments again wouldn't be that bad?

Gnomes suffer a similar problem but I can't think of something to make them more desirable, similar to storm giants.

Shaking up the meta is a good thing in video games, dota2 does it all the time without nerfing everything into similar varieties of vanilla. Hearthstone gets heavily critiqued for not changing values more often when traditional TCG's would love to have that ability.

Rant aside, I don't see why we shouldn't bump some stats and see how they go as long as the people behind the balancing are open to feedback.

+1

5 hours ago, mya said:

So my suggestion is bring back the OLD human bonus to magical affinity. I think this was done in the very old code by having the random durations of spells always favor with longer duration, but I'm probably wrong and it doesn't matter. It could be as simple as having longer sanctuary and protective shield. This could be done by directly extending the duration for humans...

To my knowledge, the human magic affinity was an increased duration to spells gained from items, not a favoring a longer duration due to some random spell length, like your suggestion and not your memory.  I don't recall any spells having a random duration, but that matters little at this point.  So the sparkling vials, for example, would provide three hours of sanctuary instead of just the two.  I cannot remember if that's still in effect for humans.  I honestly haven't bothered to check recently.

I've also not quite understood why humans were given the 100 xp penalty.  Was it due to this affinity?  Something else like, as Mya speculates, to make half-elves more attractive?  I thought they were supposed to be the baseline in which all the other races were based on for their penalties.

5 hours ago, mya said:

I recall that the glimmering stave already provides L60 sanctuary, and it's easy to do a simple check to only apply the boost in case the spell is < L60.

Mya?  Every time I see you mention this, I come close to crying out with a combination of rage and frustration.  You're like a dog with a bone; you won't let it go.  And now that I see you post it again after I recently showed you a 4 year old glimmering staff ID showing you that since at least then, both the level of the staff and the level of sanctuary provided has been L50.  To my knowledge, it's always been L50.

Seriously, please stop with the L60 glimmering staff.  Nobody likes to see a grown man cry.

Humans do have some bonuses that aren't explicitly stated as well - I was very surprised when both flesh and stone golem went up to 110 when I was training Teldrin.  I expected flesh to go above, as that was my expertise, but stone just wouldn't stop at 100 either.  I wouldn't be shocked if they have a few other little tricks for various classes that people just don't discover because another race is more appealing.

Didn't Viri himself hint that human berserkers had some kind of tricks?

I'm pretty sure Viri insisted that humans were the best race for everything. ;)

12 minutes ago, Pali said:

I'm pretty sure Viri insisted that humans were the best race for everything. ;)

No, not Viri.

We had another code who insisted that, and made them be so iirc.

Who am I remembering, then?  My money would've been on Viri, but I admit it wouldn't be a confident bet.

1 hour ago, Pali said:

Who am I remembering, then?  My money would've been on Viri, but I admit it wouldn't be a confident bet.

Behrens. Aka Irumeru.

Behrens was very vocal about humans being the best race for the majority of classes.  To be fair he also played a ton of really successful human characters.

There's a better chance to hit serk stuff in the code if you are human. We left it there.

58 minutes ago, English lad said:

Behrens was very vocal about humans being the best race for the majority of classes.

When you are the coder, you can always claim ridiculous stuff and get away with it.

When you are the coder, you can always play ridiculous stuff and be successful with it.

If you get what I mean :P

His big name humans were pre immortal status as i remember - to be honest i don't think he was ever claiming that Humans had some big secret - more that they provided a good all round base, that was flexible to different situations.

This was far more important back in the day with a higher playerbase.

48 minutes ago, English lad said:

His big name humans were pre immortal status as i remember

You didn't even remember his forum handle, so don't be offended if I don't take your "as far as I remember" argument seriously :P

His most successful character, pre-IMM, was Tylith. Human Avatar Monk Praetorian L.

Seems like half drow got much better stats than half elf, why is that? Same str, one less int in exchange for one more wis dex and con.

8 minutes ago, Manual Labour said:

Seems like half drow got much better stats than half elf, why is that? Same str, one less int in exchange for one more wis dex and con.

Dwarves get 0/+1/+1/-2/+3 for a net gain over duergars, elves brake even with 0/+1/0/-1/0 compared to drow.  So the half-elves down 0/1/-1/-1/-1 is the only time the evil variants comes out ahead stat wise.

Because even half-breed whelps maintain a LITTLE bit of my power. Please, do kill them, though. They're ugly. And they smell funny. Must be all the sunlight. Gross.

8 hours ago, Magick said:

I've also not quite understood why humans were given the 100 xp penalty.  Was it due to this affinity?  Something else like, as Mya speculates, to make half-elves more attractive?  I thought they were supposed to be the baseline in which all the other races were based on for their penalties.

I thought that some races were 'worse' than humans, so they got a lower penalty. I didn't want to go negative, so humans ended up at 100.

17 minutes ago, Celerity said:

I thought that some races were 'worse' than humans, so they got a lower penalty. I didn't want to go negative, so humans ended up at 100.

I had this long thing written out, then realized I had misread the post.

This explanation does make sense, thank you.  My mind briefly thought to 'buff' or otherwise make said races 'better' than humans to bring humans back down to 0, but thought ... why?  Do we have to have all other races 'better' than humans?  To answer the rhetorical, no.  No we don't.