PDA

View Full Version : Races



myrddin
03-18-2008, 11:13 PM
I'd like to see pc races expanded a bit in JADE.

Theres quite a few classes in ADOM but only 10 races total and 3 of them are elf-types which in my book really only makes that 8 races.

How about races like:

shadow, drow, faerie, etc.

Or maybe let the pc choose some races that are in adom that you can't pick now - like a goblin or ratling.

theotherhiveking
03-18-2008, 11:43 PM
Ratlings
elves
Humans
drakelings
Orcs
Evil shoelaces from hell
Centaur
Minotaur (a smarter troll)
Troll
Gnome
Dwarf
Ghoul (I wanna play undead!)
hurthlings
merfolk
Naga


and...


WERECOWS! (female version of the centaur)

spectre
03-19-2008, 12:50 AM
I vote for were-weres.
Normally they wander the land in their buffed animal form, but when irritated, they switch back to the wimpy human form in a 'Confused' state.

TB said there will be a couple new races in JADE.
I must disagree that all the three elves are the same. They differ in skills, attributes, aligment, eating habits, and how other races react to them. High and Grey elves are not that different, but Dark the variety is a different kind completely.
I believe these differences would be more distinct in JADE, since we'll get to see whole setlements of every race.

"How about races like:
shadow, drow, faerie, etc."

And, may I ask, how does the drow differ from the Dork Elves ADOM sports?

Grey
03-19-2008, 01:23 AM
TB has already stated there will be mist elves, hill dwarves and ratlings. I would welcome other races, but they'd have to be distinctly different to be worth including. All the races in ADOM do have a distinct feel to them, with their different stats and skills and some special abilities and effects. Extra evil races might be nice, since all the ones being added are neutral or lawful. Some of the ones suggested are, I feel, a tad on the unrealistic side (with the exception of shoelaces of course). Minotaurs would be nice, considering they already have some depth in ADOM - they could have high St, To, Wi, with Detect Traps and Alertness skills, and would be unable to wear helmets. Kobolds are an obvious choice too - they'd have generally poor stats other than Dex, with archery and stealth skills, and enemies would generally be unafraid of them (and thus have their guard low).

Ars
03-19-2008, 01:29 AM
Ogre? And, maybe, gnolls.

Dougy
03-19-2008, 03:32 AM
JADE seems like it's going to include as much as possible. So perhaps the races might be expanded too. We'll wait for the official word from TB, of course, but we can still suggest some.

Eg. Giants, quicklings, ghosts, mimics, dnyarri, etc.

Does the PC even need to be human? For example, a giant spider. Ore even: You begin your life as a rock. "Ugh, you try to move east but fail. Seventy-five million years pass."

Tannis
03-19-2008, 04:01 AM
JADE seems like it's going to include as much as possible. So perhaps the races might be expanded too. We'll wait for the official word from TB, of course, but we can still suggest some.

Eg. Giants, quicklings, ghosts, mimics, dnyarri, etc.

Does the PC even need to be human? For example, a giant spider. Ore even: You begin your life as a rock. "Ugh, you try to move east but fail. Seventy-five million years pass."

The Dwarven smith throws you into the forge. You melt! You die...

Sradac
03-19-2008, 04:02 AM
Does the PC even need to be human? For example, a giant spider. Ore even: You begin your life as a rock. "Ugh, you try to move east but fail. Seventy-five million years pass."

haha that made me laugh. After successfully moving you can 5 levels of experience woot! a chance to roll would be a check against your dexterity which starts at a whopping 1. Bet rocks got high sta and str though! and wil, who could possible influence a rock to think its anything more than what it is? they're old and they've seen it all.

Dougy
03-19-2008, 04:33 AM
The Dwarven smith throws you into the forge. You melt! You die...

That's even funnier after I realised I made the typo "ore" instead of "or."

Rocks have some really good skills though: incredibly stealthy, extremely long-lived, can survive under-water.

Dorten
03-19-2008, 04:37 AM
And enemies' weapons would break on them!

I vote for rocks... and for Moomintrolls of course (small Dx, big To, everything else on average)

Dougy
03-19-2008, 09:35 AM
Well, back on topic. This is probably going to be based upon TB's judgement. He didn't want to include everything in ADOM and most likely he wouldn't want to include everything in JADE. I'd be a bit surprised if he includes anything other than what he's mentioned in the past. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing, because sometimes having so many options at the start just makes choosing difficult and the difference is so small it shouldn't really matter.

Grey
03-19-2008, 09:58 AM
Yeah, too many can dilute things far too much. As things stand the races are varied anough to allow for different playstyles with each. Ogres might feel too much like a cross between orcs and trolls, kobolds too much like evil hurthlings, etc. If a race is added it has to add something unique in playstyle, and especially it should alter the way you play certain classes. More exotic races like giants I think would cause the current equipment size dilemna to be even more profound (unless a whole new set of equipment is made for them, which to be frank would be boring).

Popers
03-20-2008, 10:24 PM
Personally, I'd like to see something completely new and not based on races I've seen in other RPGs. A breathe of fresh air like Manbearpigs or even were-weres, as Spectre suggested. :D Now seriously - I'd be lovely if Biskup could create a new race. I don't dare suggesting anything ,because I'm not a creative type, but TB... let your creativity inspire you, mate!

Dougy
03-20-2008, 10:36 PM
An aquatic race that needs a "ring of air breathing" to survive. Maybe?

There does seem to be little gained from basically taking one type of race, eg. org, and copy/pasting them and calling them kobolds, goblins, gnolls, etc..

freekE
03-25-2008, 04:28 PM
only race i suggest is an VAMPIRE...but seriously any new "evil" race will be good - "its good to be bad" quoting the classic

Artran
03-26-2008, 11:17 AM
I think races are good as they are. Why have 100+1 almost indentical races? Every new race must be entirely unique by its function. Bad example: Angband variants.

Plausible
03-26-2008, 02:34 PM
Ore even: You begin your life as a rock.

:) I'm all for it.

For a more eventful game: stone golems would be quite different from anything else. I don't have the typical sledge-hammer fisted brute in mind here, but something a little more light-hearted.

* very slow and a bit clumsy in general;
* pretty fast when charging in a straight line as a boulder;
* very strong;
* very neutral (story-wise, disturbed by some folks tunneling in a mountain, as per ADOM's stone giants; or less dramatic and just out on a roll - I imagine them as a kind of slow surfer dudes);
* can pass through stone - slowly;
* tough (rock, you know), but damage heals exceedingly slowly, or not at all, or only by expensive artificial means, since we're talking about rock being chipped off.

They would be poor swimmers... but they could smoke a lot ;)

But I reckon Thomas knows quite well what he wants for races.

Dougy
03-26-2008, 10:42 PM
But I reckon Thomas knows quite well what he wants for races.

I'm sure he does. In Master of Orion (if I remember correctly) you could create your own race, they had a list of skills and options each with some point value. There was a maximum number of points your race could have. For example, the ability to eat rocks instead of food (lithovore) cost quite a lot, so you couldn't get much else.

Nezur
05-31-2008, 07:37 PM
More exotic races like giants I think would cause the current equipment size dilemna to be even more profound (unless a whole new set of equipment is made for them, which to be frank would be boring).
Grey made a good point about the need for larger clothing for giants. However I see another reason why they are not very good candidates for a new race. To my view giants are superhuman beings which are meant to be a challenge for an "ordinary" being. If giants were included as a playable race they would have to be made too powerful.

Minotaurs, Centaurs and such are basically human/animal hybrids. Because of that I don't feel they would fit in the game as a playable race. None of the existing races are real hybrids and in my opinion just combining animal features and human features is uncreative.



In ADoM trolls require a lot experience to advance a level. Many are very reluctant to play as a troll because of this. If there will be relevant levels in JADE (though I don't hope so) maybe this could be changed by replacing the huge need for experience with another disadvantage. Learning does not affect the experience needed to gain levels anyhow. Of course another option would be to make the XP need dependent on Learning (at low Le values at least).



I'd also like the idea of drakelings with thermal vision in the same way as snakes. They would be able to see in darkness with ease but they would have difficulties seeing in places where the background is hot like in ToEF in ADoM.

I've felt that ADoM is lacking an "intelligent" "evil" race. All the chaotic races have fairly low learning.

kapsi
06-04-2008, 04:41 PM
I've felt that ADoM is lacking an "intelligent" "evil" race. All the chaotic races have fairly low learning.
Dark elves are pretty intelligent.

Nezur
06-04-2008, 04:59 PM
Their learning is lower than that of humans. Dark elves' learning is just mediocre.

Gero
06-21-2008, 07:50 AM
Vampires can be that intelligent evil race. They're certainly unique: being only able drink blood for nourishment, being hurt by sunlight. Since they have infravision, it means they're spellcasters that are able to cast in the darkness. Sounds deadly! I imagine they would start out as lawful-evil or something.. not really sure how that system works though.

Grey
06-21-2008, 01:32 PM
Vampires are just way too overpowered for a PC. Plus you'd then have to consider what race of vampire - human, elf, gnome?

Nezur
06-21-2008, 05:06 PM
You may be able to become a vampire (or any other being) in JADE since one of the planned features is the possibility to turn into another monster.

electric_wizard
07-17-2008, 09:32 AM
Vampirism should be an intrinsic not a race.

LFk
07-17-2008, 10:10 AM
If "Intelligence" is relevant insofar as it's relation to spellcasting, Dark Elves are excellent casters already in ADOM, owed to their high Ma score. Assuming their JADE counterparts follow a similar theme, there's no lack of an intelligence based evil race.


If Intelligence refers only to Le, it's true that the stat is only average for them. But the difference between 1 or 2 points of learning is minor, while the 6 mana jump they have on non-casters is significant.

ivoryknight
10-17-2008, 04:46 PM
There should be the option to choose what alignment you begin with regardless of race. I mean, just because a particular race is known for lawfulness doesn't mean a specific character lived a lawful childhood/apprenticeship.

Sradac
10-18-2008, 10:09 AM
alignment will be handled differently in jade, not just the bland L+ to C- from adom.

ivoryknight
10-20-2008, 02:41 PM
Oh, so what will the new system of alignment be?

Sradac
10-20-2008, 02:43 PM
He said before i think it was in one of his blog posts, but it might even havae been on this forum somewhere that it will be a bit closer to that from D&D where as you have chaotic and lawful acts but also good and evil ones, but its not going to be exactly like D&Ds alignment system.

ivoryknight
10-20-2008, 02:45 PM
:DI'll bet keeping the gods happy will get even more wacky under that system.

Sradac
10-20-2008, 02:57 PM
Supposedly there will also be even more dieties than before, such as a neutral diety than anyone can worship just not one race, or an evil one that all evil races can worship not just dark elves, gods that prefer followers to be warriors, or ones that prefer magic users, etc. Sorta like dungeon crawls but hopefully a lot more interesting to use.

Krough Firender
02-04-2009, 03:27 AM
I really like that he's adding ratlings... they are distinctly different. Maybe have sub races? then they don't need to be completely different. ex.
There are elves...
then there are sea elves, Lava elves, high elves, wood elves, dark elves, grey elves, Fairy elves, half elves and/or insert-elfy-sounding-name-here-for-elf-who-truly-is-a-snob-and-is-very-secluded-and-hates-everybody elves.
Dwarves: hill, mountain, deep...
Drakeling: Drakeling, Dragonspawn, Serpentmen....
Men: Highmen (loke in AoW!), human and another-made-up-name-for-someone.
Giants: Ogres, trolls, Minotaurs...
Monster-folkish-people: Goblin, Kobold, Orc, a race of completely magical spiders who annot weild anything, but are forced to carry things in sacks only.
Peaceful folk: gnome, hurthling...
random randomness =)
all would be different enough in abilities to matter, but all mostly similar in stats.

Elone
02-04-2009, 05:55 AM
Add humans as a playable race plz. As for the other races, in ADOM they only different from each other by a few base stats. I mean, how different can a wood elf be different from a tree elf and a green elf? I will be happy if there are only several basic races, but if control over character creation is better. That way you could get any variety you want, all the same. I wont be happy if I have to see more races to choose from than fits the screen.

Ars
02-05-2009, 05:51 AM
I really like that he's adding ratlings... they are distinctly different. Maybe have sub races? then they don't need to be completely different. ex.
There are elves...
then there are sea elves, Lava elves, high elves, wood elves, dark elves, grey elves, Fairy elves, half elves and/or insert-elfy-sounding-name-here-for-elf-who-truly-is-a-snob-and-is-very-secluded-and-hates-everybody elves.
Dwarves: hill, mountain, deep...
Drakeling: Drakeling, Dragonspawn, Serpentmen....
Men: Highmen (loke in AoW!), human and another-made-up-name-for-someone.
Giants: Ogres, trolls, Minotaurs...
Monster-folkish-people: Goblin, Kobold, Orc, a race of completely magical spiders who annot weild anything, but are forced to carry things in sacks only.
Peaceful folk: gnome, hurthling...
random randomness =)
all would be different enough in abilities to matter, but all mostly similar in stats.
Really good... I'd just like to add a few...

Gremlin, you could get an army to support you by swimming around for a while...
A race of spiders that was only half magical... you would have 2 legs for walking and 6 for holding stuff! Also they would spit webs.
Tall guys, the longest people there is...
Goat men, who have horns and hooves (increased kicking damage, +3 melee damage).
Also cat men, grudgy dwarves, happy dwarves (like in Snowhite), brown elves, different half-elves mixed with all the races so far,.... List goes on...

And batmen, that's pretty much it... Or wait, doppelgangers also.

Sradac
02-05-2009, 05:56 PM
please tell me that was a joke Ars.



...catmen = thunder cats?

and we need biker mice from mars as a ratling subrace.

masters of the universe.

vogonpoet
02-09-2009, 03:09 PM
haha, youthful genetically modified pirate terrapins, heroes in a half shell, terrapin power.

and a teletubbie race, thats a must have race right there...

/thundercats, Ho!

nathrakh
02-09-2009, 04:25 PM
I'd wish for Barsoomian race. That's monkey race with 4 arms and 2 legs. Go figure what it means.. :-)

Zephyr
02-12-2009, 08:37 PM
Maybe an option to do advanced race/class selection. So, you could go basic and choose an elf, or go advanced and choose a specific breed of elf. Advanced could also include some races that would make the gameplay significantly different, like a giant class for players who are lame and just don't want to have to work to beat the game, and some more difficult classes to sort of make some built-in challenge games...

sangfroid
03-01-2009, 12:57 PM
In addition to the original ADOM races ,I would love to see ratlings for sure! You could add half breeds. Also other NPC races like pixie, ogre, should be available.

The guy above me has a point. There should be black hurthlings, hill orcs.

There should also be a race that has affinity for water (sea elf or merfolk?)

Also, how about treants/ents? (the great ball of fire hits you, you are burning!...)

Sradac
03-03-2009, 11:59 PM
Also, how about treants/ents? (the great ball of fire hits you, you are burning!...)

well this isnt LoTR and the only thing remotely like them in adom are animated trees. I personally would find the most horrible way to kill off an animated tree PC just cause i hate animated trees.

RndmNumGenerator
03-05-2009, 03:57 AM
That would be funny if, after obtaining level 12 on your rock, you turn into a Stone Giant.

Nezur
03-05-2009, 03:22 PM
In addition to the original ADOM races ,I would love to see ratlings for sure! You could add half breeds. Also other NPC races like pixie, ogre, should be available.

Pixies are even smaller than hurthlings so including them in the game would require a lot of special rules regarding the equipment they are able to use and so on. They are also inherently magical considering their teleportation ability. I think they are too exotic for a selectable race.

I wouldn't mind ogres, but like Grey said earlier in this thread, they, orcs and trolls may feel too much alike.


The guy above me has a point. There should be black hurthlings, hill orcs.

In my opinion they are okay if they will be made distinct from ordinary orcs and hurthlings and naturally all other races as well.


Also, how about treants/ents? (the great ball of fire hits you, you are burning!...)

Like pixies, they feel too extraordinary to my mind.


There should also be a race that has affinity for water (sea elf or merfolk?)

I don't like merfolk for the same reason as above. Sea elves, on the other hand... There will (apparently) be three types of elves already so I'm not so into adding a fourth one.

However, I do agree the game could do with a water-related race like an amphifian one, which, in my opinion, would increase the diversity of the existing set.

RndmNumGenerator
03-11-2009, 05:03 AM
Maybe there could be a relation to the Drakeling that doesn't have the spit acid ability but starts with water breathing?

Sradac
03-25-2009, 02:51 PM
Frogloks, Whoo!!!

Rokkomies
07-23-2009, 08:37 AM
I have had some tought on roleplaying games nowadays and what they can be at their best. The general trend today seems to be MMORPGs that copy Wow (which copies older mmos?). There rarely is anything new and exciting, some games seem to have some new ideas, but turns out they are just poor attempts to polish s**t (which can be done, look at Myth Busters. :P) What I would like to see is a moder, high tech, "eye candy" roguelike. "Eye candy" is in " since graphics is a bit sensitive matter to roguelikes.

I love ADOM and NetHack because they realy bring out the best aspects of role playing on computers. JADE seems to be an ambitious attempt to sum up all that we love in roguelikes and I see true potential in it by reading these forums.

Sorry bout that, now to the point and topic. Like I said, I have given a lot of tought to how to give some fresh air to computer rpgs. One thing is the races, we have seen orcs, elves and dwarves too many times. ADOM has some unique, interesting races like Drakelings and hurthlings, but still they are both humanoids with only slight differences to others, except stat wise. There have been some wild ideas on this thread some of whic I really like.

One thing that would make a race unique would be to make them non humanoid, or only half humanoid. What comes to my mind is for excample Heroes of Might and Magic 3 nagas. They are a snake people with the upper body of a human, except for multiple hands and lower body of a snake. They could use more weapons at the same time, but no lower body armor, no boots and perhaps some other restrictions too to make up the extra weapon slots. There could also be some items only wearable by races that have extra pairs of hands or snake like body. Nagas could also be very flexible, allowing them to slither around, entering smal holes or reaching high for a short period of time. Too bad they would have hard time fighting while cramming them selves in narrow places (something like the quickling tree, but so that the tight spot is not only the entrance).

This is just one excample of how you could make the equipment screen different for different races. A slightly less radical thing would be to have a tail. A drackeling could have a tail. You could equip some items in a tail and use it in combat, for excample tail spikes or even a dagger (see Albion iskaj). Tails would not be as powerful and accurate as arms, but having a poisoned dagger there could be a good strategy. Also having less fingers could reduce the amount of ring slots, having no neck would make wearing an amulet a bit hard, perhaps having two heads could give you two helm slots and two amulet slots (Ettins).

How about adding half breeds then? You could choose the races of your parents and see what comes out. Maby not every race could reproduce with each other and there sertainly would be consequences to consider, but this would really increase the possibilities.

Equipment sizes could be a problem. Giants and pixies sertainly cant wear the same items. One way to aproach this could be to take the items weight to consideration. A pixie could wield a normal sized dagger as a two handed sword and a human ring as a kind of waist band. Maby with a litle crafting pixie could fit a gauntlet to use it as a body armor. :P Also the other way round giants could wield human swords as daggers and twohanded swords as short swords. Maby they could easily throw huge rocks and up root trees to use as clubs. The hulking armor could perhaps be the only armor that fits a giant. Also with a bit of crafting a giant could fit several furs or leather armors together to make them fit him self. There could also be items crafted especially for the smaller or bigger races, which might be used as a medium race in some manner. A giant made ring could be a head band or a pixie ring could be worn around the neck in a string.

Epythic
07-23-2009, 05:42 PM
One thing that would make a race unique would be to make them non humanoid, or only half humanoid. What comes to my mind is for excample Heroes of Might and Magic 3 nagas. They are a snake people with the upper body of a human, except for multiple hands and lower body of a snake. They could use more weapons at the same time, but no lower body armor, no boots and perhaps some other restrictions too to make up the extra weapon slots. There could also be some items only wearable by races that have extra pairs of hands or snake like body. Nagas could also be very flexible, allowing them to slither around, entering smal holes or reaching high for a short period of time. Too bad they would have hard time fighting while cramming them selves in narrow places (something like the quickling tree, but so that the tight spot is not only the entrance).

I do like the idea, but it is not really new. It really comes down to the old bodyparts discussion. Very hard to do, lots of work, and not sure how rewarding it would be.

I noticed that even in your examples, you limited yourself to halfhuman beings. What about something a little bit more extreme?

Say, you play a fire dragon. Here are a few consequences:

Downside: No hands, no backpack, no taking on/off items yourself (but maybe one could think about having others equip items on you, maybe directly in the shop. Of course, those items would have to be supersize and special-shaped.) or using tools, and very limited carrying capacity (in your mouth). Maybe no speech.

Upside: large teeth, claws, maybe a barbed tail. Fire breathing. Fire immunity. Wings (maybe to fly with, maybe not). Scale armor. Maybe very high intelligence and wisdom and strength and thoughness to make up for lack of items. High hitspoints. Maybe night vision. Maybe superior seeing and listening and smelling capabilities.

Maybe not for all the time, but I think it would be quite a powerful spell...

Posting this because this topic has been brought up a number of times, but I havent seen it go beyond "chop off body parts" yet.

Sradac
07-23-2009, 07:11 PM
hurthling = hobbit = halfling.

not very unique, sorry.

Rokkomies
07-23-2009, 07:13 PM
I tried to keep my post short, as it was stretching out a bit too much. :)

How about an other out of the box race "polype". It has no spine, it's basically magical jelly with tentacles. High magical capabilities, maby even mind craft type of powers. It can take stuff in its jelly body to "equip" them, for excample get rings in you to use their powers. It can use it's tentacles to manipulate stuff, but could it equip weapons on them? Maby not... Oh, it's blind too, so it has to rely on its other sences and mindcraft powers. Tough to handle non-life creatures. It can carry only the items that it takes in. Tough luck if they are cursed. :)

Maybe if you want to make them a bit more "normal" you could add skin and one huge eye to them, so they wold be more like the homm evil eyes. With the skin they could not take stuff in their body tough, so then the tentacles had to be used to carry stuff.

Im not too interested on the dragon idea tough. That has been seen in nethack where you can be polymorphed in to one. Yes they are powerfull beasts, but I still considered it as a curse. Lets leave them as monsters to kill, so we can loot their treasure.

Epythic
07-23-2009, 07:24 PM
Im not too interested on the dragon idea tough. That has been seen in nethack where you can be polymorphed in to one. Yes they are powerfull beasts, but I still considered it as a curse. Lets leave them as monsters to kill, so we can loot their treasure.

I fail to see how your proposal is different.

Rokkomies
07-24-2009, 07:04 AM
Maby so, this is mainly a personal preference matter. I trust that TB can make any race interesting if he desides the race is worth adding. We shall see. Mean while we can throw in suggestions that may help him to get bright ideas.