What if we took restrings a step further, What if you spent RP points to custom build a race? It would require effort on your part to get something truly unique. Make it similar to the weapon point system, and make it like a qclass where you can only have X custom built races available at time. Give them a higher min RP count as well maybe.
You want to be resistance to negative? It comes with a vuln to holy.
you want to be giant size? Your dex now has a cap of whatever it needs to be capped at.
You want to be small? Your str is now capped.
I am sure there are a thousand things to take into account, but I also think it really opens up the chance to not only improve player activity, but actually create new base races. If a race goes through being played, and isnt horrifically imbalanced, why not just implement it as a selectable race? You got players here who brainstorm awesome RP ideas constantly. This also takes the burden off imms to not only brainstorm, but test as well. At this point people are theory crafting off the code to generate extremely powerful synergies anyway. I don't really think imms are going to let something that is blatantly OP get through the creation process, and if something unseen slips through just squash what is making it OP.
It would be fun on paper. I'd love to design my own class based upon stats I'd want/like. If you could pick and choose as well from a list of perks/vulns that would be awesome for RP. We could finally have our tiny imps and devils. We could create Ents and treants. We could get kobolds with relevant stats. It would make FL a much wider selection of races and RP that could enhance the lore.
I can also see how this would be impossible to balance in the current game. EQ is based upon class/race/align restrictions. Now, if this game did not have EQ at all, then something like this could work. But, with skills/EQ/Cabals and everything else, the IMMS would eat up the majority of their time trying to balance the combos vs. the armor available.
I am not so fond of this idea for reasons I can not really fully articulate. It just messes with the game's core balance framework in a way that's not very transparent.
Also, you can have imps and devils as restrings already. It just might not be small or tiny in terms of game mechanics, but description/roleplay/etc trumps your base race's stats anyway.
Its a non-trivial amount of work to do some of these things though. Spending all that time to create a new race only for one character seems like a miss to me. Creating a new combo of dex/str/int/con/wis isn't that hard, but our races go far beyond their stats in most cases. What I'd prefer see are "seasonal races". Like let's introduce trolls for 2-3 months and do an RP plot of trolls raiding val miran. At the end of the 2-3 months. trolls can't be rolled anymore, so only the "survivors" exist. Then in a couple years we can "bring back trolls" for a limited engagement. Do 3-4 races a year centered around plots, but only 1 active at a time.
Isn't this what restrings are for? 🤔
29 minutes ago, Lexi said:
Isn't this what restrings are for? 🤔
Restrings aren't really a new race, though. Its pure RP, vs a new race which can have coded advantages/disadvantages. Like you could make an angelic race that is perma-fly, resists holy/light/fire damage, but takes 2x dmg to disease/poison, as a random example, or a low int/wis Titan who has perma-sanc + perma-protection but is always slowed and can't fly or get on a mount. Two random, bad examples, which show the kind of "advanced customization" you can do on real races you can't do on restrings.
For an individual, customized race, that's probably a bit more trouble than it's worth.
If it were a on a repeatable cycle or available from the start, it would be a different story.