The wait is finally over. Non-human PCs now have the ability to purchase upgraded versions of their lowest-level racial abilities as they advance in level. Here's the breakdown:
- Angori can purchase improved versions of Ram.
- Dwarves can purchase improved versions of Unyielding Defense.
- Elves can purchase improved versions of Elven Precision.
- Empyreans can purchase improved versions of Music of the Spheres.
- Fairies have a new scaling racial ability called Winsome Verse that uses the Refresh effect.
- Gnomes can purchase improved versions of Calibrate.
- Ixifar can purchase improved versions of Phoenix Fire. (To anyone playing an ixifar, my apologies; I didn't realize I had restricted their racial abilities. That's fixed now.)
- Urdek can purchase improved versions of Umbral Touch.
Here's how it works. Because of how the system handles these skills, you don't purchase additional ranks in the same skill. Instead, you purchase progressively more powerful versions of the skill that become available at the appropriate levels. Thus, a fairy can learn Winsome Verse, Minor at 2nd level, Winsome Verse, Lesser at 4th level, Winsome Verse at 6th level, etc. Each step in the ladder requires you to know the previous step first and overwrites the previous action with an upgraded version.
As before, you're not required to purchase upgraded versions of a scaling racial ability. However, they don't improve unless you do. On the bright side, the cost is comparatively cheap; most upgrades only cost 1 or 2 skill points. And they're structured such that the skills only become available when the upgraded action is encounter frequency, so you don't have to worry about upgrading an action when you can only use the new version once per adventure. In case anyone is wondering, that's the reason the upgrades aren't always evenly divided across levels (e.g., elves can improve their Elven Precision at levels 2, 4, 8, and 12).
Note that any character who knew these skills before now knows the first, most basic level, so some of you may have a few more skill points with an action that's less powerful than it once was. If you want a partial respend in order to take advantage of the new racials, just send me a message and I'll make it happen.
Let me know what ya'll think. Enjoy!
Well, maybe I am bias, but I am not liking it. Already humans were at a great disadvantage. Now this is going to make it even worse. Personally, in a realm like this humans would not survive and would quickly die out. I understand you want to give people who are willing to wear the costumes bonuses and such, but is it really necessary to punish those who simply want to play a human? I understand humans get weak affinity to most skills, but that is hardly a bonus in comparison to the racial bonuses for any nonhuman race. Please don't make humans go exstinct :-)
I hear you, Tom, and I have nothing but respect for anyone who chooses to play a human as an honest-to-goodness preference rather than just an easy alternative to racial costuming requirements. The design goal here is to make humans a good general character option while making non-humans the more optimal choice for specific character types (e.g., humans make good wizards, but empyreans make the best wizards, etc.). That being said, if you feel we've gone overboard, I'm happy to hear suggestions that would better achieve that goal.
The main issue that was being addressed by this change was the fact that the lowest-level racial abilities were becoming useless at higher levels. Some characters were passing on them entirely at the levels they would be most useful so they wouldn't have to keep them later on after they'd lost effectiveness, completely invalidating one of the primary benefits of their race. This way, all of a character's racial abilities can stay useful throughout his or her entire level progression. They just require a heavier skill point investment to stay that way.
Honestly, I don't think this change will make humans extinct. Many players will still opt for the simplicity of being human. And, from a purely mathematical standpoint, humans are still a perfectly viable choice; skill points are a limited resource, after all, and a human with no racial skills to buy will have more to spend on other, equally useful skills.
That's my take on it. Feel free to share your thoughts on how we might better address the situation.
On a side note for my fellow empyreans, I just couldn't get past the fact that the racial Soothe was too flavorful and useful to drop. Thus, the empyreans will be the only race that can't begin play with a racial ability, since their lowest-level skill doesn't kick in until level three. On the plus side, it can now be upgraded to a retort at level 6 and a burst at level 8.
I guess my only suggestion would be to maybe give humans a slight bit higher affinity for certain skills. Showing their verstility, which is a humans only bonus in any fantasy game, maybe makeing all trade skills a moderate instead of a weak affinity. Since most of the time trade skills are only a money maker this wouldn't be too overpowered, yet it would make humans a good choice for craftsmen.
I was thinking something along the same lines for humans. The other thought was to grant humans affinity for all classes for a low skill point cost. This gives them an extra class action of their choice, which is arguably pretty powerful at low levels, but no more so than playing a class with race affinity as it is now.
The downside is, it doesn't really scale at all, but it is still an incredibly useful ability that humans are lacking and maintains the flavor of humans being good at everything.
When we first rolled Orn Beta, last season, humans had the affinities they enjoy now and had class affinities for every class. As you might have guessed everyone was human. It was too good. So naturally class affinities will not be added to human. As for the crafter argument, I?d be down with this proposal if we were talking about dwarves.
As it stands not much has changed, humans remain a skill based race and enjoy paying less for everything. The races now pay for racial abilities that define the race and don?t enjoy the vast number of skill points that the humans will have, for the same ranks in skills. Unless of course they choose only class appropriate skills that their race has an affinity for.
As for what I'm seeing, humans will still have more skills than the sub races. The sub races will have more actions. Seems balanced to me, but I have not done any mathematical calculations.
hear hear to the dwarven crafting bonus! I dont think that humans are getting as good a shake as other races, but i am not one to say it is being off setted by costuming requirements. Humans must still dress themselves in period appropriate attire, so make up and prosthetics are the only extra costuming requirements. I am not saying that it is not okay to reward non-human PCs for the extra cost of these items, but I am saying that humans could get a little help. As stated above, I dont believe that giving a bonus to crafting would be that great a fix. What I would propose is using the same bloodline concept towards humans. Different cultures of humans exist in the real world, so I would believe that they exist in Orn as well. Thad mentioned that it was this sort of idea that brought on the bloodline concept on to begin with. For example a gypsy may very well qualify for the types of mercantile bonuses already spoken of, while another nomadic people could be more geared towards being savages or rangers; likewise giving them a reduced cost on those skillsets. I am sure that it will require a little bit more work for those who are die hard human fans, but i feel this is a decent compromise for both sides. What I think has been the issue with non-human PC players is that they not only have put forth the effort to do extra costuming, but also to help flesh out and develop these races, which is a considerable amount of extra work. The problem I see with this would be trying to keep it simple for new players who just want a cookie cutter type of player to cut their teeth on. Just playing devil's advocate for both sides, feel free to bash this any way you see fit...
This is great! Now we just need to do all the monsterous races, and we're done.