Originally Posted by
Silfir
You'd give them an extra skill increase not only over Gray Elves, but over everyone else as well. Aielyn's calculation crucially misses that a lot of the grey elven stat advantage is in the very useless Appearance stat. Granted, Charisma isn't much better, so the "actual" difference is -1. If you play a fighting class, Mana doesn't matter, and it's +1.
Giving High Elves Archery with no downside will simply result in people using High Elves over Gray Elves for everything ever. Wizards like slaying ammo, too, after all, and with HP casting nerfed they have more use for missiles than before. High elven wizards are already barely weaker than gray elven wizards; it's because they are so similar that they're already used in the manner in which this RFE intends them to be used.
I've played tons of high elven fighter types; they have their own style compared to the "strong" fighting races such as orcs, dwarves, drakelings or trolls. I can't agree with the "middle child syndrome" image that Grey forms at all. If anything, I honestly think I've played more high elves than gray elves overall, and certainly a much greater variety of classes with a high elf rather than a gray elf, because there are only like five dedicated spellcasting classes, and for everything else high elf is the better elf. If anything, the "middle child syndrome" would be induced by the addition of mist elves (only it turns out gray elves are safe because mist elves are currently only really good at dying).
I want to stress that there's probably a good reason, from a lore perspective, that High Elves and Gray Elves share so many similarities. If there are to be significant differences between the two in talents or culture, it's up to Thomas to tell us what they are. Anything we're going to come up with is basically arbitrary at this point. After all, Gray Elves and High Elves both get Sun's Messenger and are divided by one point of Dx - on what basis do we presume that High Elves are significantly more talented at using bows?
Well then, lets adjust the stats a little more. Perhaps take one point from Strength, and give it to Learning instead. No change in overall balance, but creates a bit of a counterbalance for High and Grey Elves, in that each specialises a different way for each style of fighting. For melee, the High Elves would be more dextrous and tougher, but weaker. For magic, the High Elves would have better learning, but less mana and willpower. In fact, if they gained one extra point of Learning as well, then it would balance out the differences in regular stats (Appearance and Charisma ignored) fairly nicely.
In other words, I'm proposing this spread:
St-1, Le+2, Wi-1, Dx+1, To+1, Ch+2, Ap-4, Ma-2
It works out that the High Elf has an extra point in physical stats, and one less in mental stats. It is somewhat easier to train High Elves up in terms of its weaker stats, but that's something that needs to be rebalanced, as stat training shouldn't be far easier for some stats than others. And to make things a little more interesting, how about modifying the High Elven starting skills to add and subtract a bit, to make things more mixed?
I'd propose dropping Stealth in favour of Alertness. Why? Because High Elves are too proud to be stealthy, but must compensate by being aware of what's going on around them. This would make High Elves the only beings (except maybe one of the new races or classes) to get Alertness, guaranteed.
12-18-2012 09:41 AM
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