The question of RACE.

[Jaros]

I am officially looking for input on races.

What do we do with them?

Personally I hate them all and think they should go, but that's what this thread is here to discuss.

Right now characters are basically pigeonholed into a style of play before they even know how to play thanks to the attributes their race has.  For example an elf like myself has +speed, +magic damage and +attack, and then less melee damage and defense to compensate.

That doesn't make me any stronger or weaker (theoretically), just less flexible, which seems silly in a world with so much wonderful potential for flexibility.

Beyond that there are also imbalances between the races and whispered rules about which ones are the best and worst and so on.  For something basically set in stone that's a flaw.

(Don't get me started on the flimsy Gringo/Indian premise, and of all the possible aliens out there we chose furries and martians..?  All the rest... meh.  But that's neither here nor there.)

Possible solutions to the actual mechanics:

Remove race attributes, leaving all with a horizontal base a la gringo/indian.  This would be easy and I think it should be done.

Add an inbuilt mechanic along the lines of a bioengineering lab for changing race.  That's also easy and also should be looked at ASAP in my opinion.

Beyond that, a bioengineering/cybernetics lab would open up a lot of options for race/character augmentations available to EVERYONE and not decided upon at creation.  I think a set of chop&changeable wear_locs would be a good solution to imbalances between races (aside from neutering the attributes that is) and also quite cool.

What are peoples' thoughts?

[Virisin]

I agree with everything stated here, I hate the way our characters are so monotonous but there's no easy solution.

As Jaros said, removing the race 'bonuses' would be a great start:

It seems stupid that we think Elves should be better at magic than Dwarves just because that's what some old Dungeons and Dragons player read from Lord of the Rings. Race should be something totally aesthetic and simply help the RPing side of things.

Also, the benefits currently are not equal: Centaurs get +10% melee damage, which is a solid bonus, as well as +10 attack, which is practically unnoticeable, and those stats are actually called accuracy and evasion now, not attack and defense. Dwarves get -10% melee damage, which is quite the detriment, the same +10 attack (also the same speed bonus), and then +40 defense is supposed to weigh up against the -20% damage Dwarves have compared to Centaurs. +200 defense would hardly be worth -20% damage let alone +40. Add to this the fact that Dwarves are forced to have hips and 2 ankles which are quite shitty wear locations, when Centaurs get a tail, legs and feet, all of which are very good wear locations. Centaurs then also get to be permanently mounted... It's no wonder there are no dwarves around?

This imbalance is not unique to the Centaur/Dwarf example, basically the only race attribute that is worth a dollar is the % increase in melee or magic damage, so if you're a Spacewolf, forget going caster.. -20% magic damage, pfffffft. (Wait, what? I have to go through all the caster classes to reach GM? Fuck a donkey, that blows).

Martians, innate infravision is kinda nice for a newbie, but the advantage quickly slips away when everyone and their mum can just get an infravision potion or cast it on themselves. +180 speed is pretty good for a newbie rogue or fighter, and with no -% in the melee or magic damage columns martians are at least not too far behind. +5 attack is negligible, and even -40 defense is no bother.

This brings me to another point though: why do we have natural accuracy and natural evasion stats? Anyone with more than a remort or two will have them capped at 100 for each, however newbies have to start at 0.. Seems a silly to needlessly weaken newbies relative to anyone else with a stat that is so ambiguous it's just confusing.

Elves, -10% melee damage, +10% magic damage: stick to caster, you'll only have a tougher time of it otherwise.

Fauns, -20% magic damage.. dayum definitely steer clear of going caster that ones gonna hurt.

All this seems really odd when every race is expected to traverse their way through all the classes anyway, both melee and magic.

[Virisin]

Bioengineering/Cybernetics, now that's a fascinating idea!

This is one I'm surprised 4d hasn't had as a major feature for a long time now. It seems to fit perfectly in our time travel world, that someone could buy or sell body parts. This does away with a huge irritation that I mentioned above, by allowing players to choose the wear locations that they are best suited too for their RP or fighting capabilities.

It is also another great use of Trade Points, hopefully with the new spaceships future trading will really take off to match the prehistoric trading. The potential is there in spades.

I have always been of the opinion that a classless/raceless system would be best for 4d, to provide more dynamic character customization and diversity. It's always been a huge issue how to implement it though, and it would require a lot of work, not to mention forgetting vast amounts of 4d history if we were to abandon races/classes.

By adding a bioengineering/cybernetics feature, it would be a way of creating a really cool new feature without taking anything from the mud. It would solve a lot of balance issues, and hopefully be a really fun thing for players to do. If it was implemented so we had the option of going 'raceless' or basically creating our own race, it would also pave the way for potentially allowing a 'classless' option in the future.

Great idea, I hope more people have a think about it.

[Jaros]

EDIT:  THIS IS NOW IN A NEW THREAD TITLED "CYBERNETICS"


Imagine you have at the end of your prompt a little white 'o'.  This represents your bio-augment.

Each time you take a hit it either turns red, green, or remains white.  If it turns red, it means your augment is vulnerable to theirs.  Green means it's strong, white means it's neutral.  The strength/vulnerability then affects the damage you take.  So if your augment is vulnerable, you take an extra 10% damage, if yours is strong it means theirs is vulnerable, so they take an extra 10%, be it melee or magic.

Now imagine you have three augments available to you to place in your augment slot: fire, water, and leaf.  Fire is vulnerable to water, strong against leaf and neutral to itself.  Pretty self-evident, I'm just using them because they're easy to follow, they could be anything.  The key here is that you can swap them at any point.  So based on what you have and whether it turns red, green or neutral, you can guess what your opponent has and swap your augment accordingly.

Now imagine there aren't just three possible augments, there are say 10, each with a strength and a vulnerability.  Now when you take a hit and your bio-augment turns red or green you don't know immediately what theirs is - at best you can narrow it down and guess between two or three.

Now imagine you don't just have one 'o' at the end of your prompt, you have three.  Maybe they correspond to speed, damage and accuracy; maybe you have five and their aggregate vulnerabilities determine the percentage change in your damage taken, whatever.
.. Maybe you have three 'o's affecting damage, speed, accuracy, and each one has a sub-realm that can hold five augments and instead of turning red or green you get a value from 1-100 to represent that subset, where 1 is total vulnerability and 100 is perfect strength.  I don't know, the possibilities are endless  

The point is that regardless of how intense it is, the system is dynamic.  So now if you just sit there spamming behead or fireball all your opponent has to do is work out your augment setup and adjust, and suddenly you're getting rolled unless you can also adapt.

I wouldn't like to see augments with actual stats attached to them (IE this one has +5 against water and that one only has +3 so this one's better), I prefer the idea of simple types with a strength and a vulnerability so there is no perfect set like there is with equipment.  It should always be dynamic.

I also like the idea of letting builders create their own types and choose the strengths and vulnerabilities, so I could make a purple augment that is strong against fire and vulnerable to jacaranda, as long as it doesn't have more strengths or less vulnerabilities than anything else.  Then you get trends in which random augments from far away make for unusual setups that are hard to pick, or are strong against popular types.

I think that's enough for now.  Work in progress, help me out

[Jaros]

I can't delete the post above which is now in a new thread but if someone else wants to that's fine.

I take it that since no one else is commenting no one cares what happens to races?

That's fine by me but don't complain when they change (IE when race attributes are gone) 

[Tor]

If race attributes are removed, can we do away with all of the !gringo on equipment as well? Or since gringos are already encumbered with hips and ankles and have no bonuses, do away with them any way? 

[horus]

Why are the two brothers posting to each other on the forum?

[Jaros]

Because we're bros.  Ignore that fact and explain to me where you're coming from regarding race attributes because I want to know.

It's a legit issue.  Share with me Horus.

[Jaros]

(Warning to people: post something or I will paraphrase you from conversation.)

So as far as I can gather (and I'm fucking trying here) your problem with removing race attributes is that the equilibrium will change.  IE: races are shit, but we know they're shit so until we replace the system with something new they should stay as they are.

That doesn't address my problem though.

If anyone can explain to me how something both restrictive and decided upon at creation AND unchangeable from that point on can add to the experience of playing the game I'd appreciate it, because so far no one has done so.

[Once]

FYI, here's some current damage modifiers. Spacewolf does 15% more non-magic damage. Elf and dwarf do 90%. Will be posting more formulas like this as we work through the new balance.


float race_dam_mod ( int race, int magic )
{
        float damage = 1.0f;

        switch ( race )
        {
                case ( RACE_SPACE_WOLF ) :
                                                if ( !magic )
                                                        damage = 1.15f;
                                else
                                        damage = 0.80f;
                        break;
                case ( RACE_DWARF ) :
                                                damage = 0.9f;
                        break;
                case ( RACE_ELF ) :
                                                if ( !magic )
                                                        damage = 0.9f;
                                else
                                        damage = 1.1f;
                        break;
                case ( RACE_MARTIAN ) :
                                                if ( magic )
                                                        damage = 1.05f;
                        break;

         case ( RACE_CENTAUR ) :
                                                if ( !magic )
                                                        damage = 1.10f;
                        break;
        }

        return damage;

[Once]

And some evasion data:


     switch ( ( int ) GET_RACE ( vict ) )
                {
                        case RACE_DWARF:
                                evasion_roll += 30;
                                break;
                        case RACE_ELF:
                                evasion_roll -= 30;
                                break;
                        case RACE_FAUN:
                                evasion_roll += 0;
                                break;
                        case RACE_CENTAUR:
                                evasion_roll += 40;
                                break;
                        case RACE_MARTIAN:
                                evasion_roll -= 40;
                                break;

                }

[Once]

Accuracy bonuses:


          {
                        case RACE_DWARF:
                                accuracy_roll += 10;
                                break;
                        case RACE_ELF:
                                accuracy_roll += 15;
                                break;
                        case RACE_FAUN:
                                accuracy_roll += 25;
                                break;
                        case RACE_CENTAUR:
                                accuracy_roll += 10;
                                break;
                        case RACE_MARTIAN:
                                accuracy_roll -= 5;
                                break;

                }