Race/Class popularity in the rogueleague.org top 500

[Grond]

The orc lifespan is an issue, and with point buy they do get the worst stats out of all the races with decent max St/To. But I'd guess the biggest factor working against them is that for players more concerned with skills rather than stats, they are in direct competition with dark elves. People like Alertness as much as Find Weakness, and dark elves are better with casting classes and don't have aging troubles.

As a side note, the dislike for ratlings among old school players surprises me. Best non-troll toughness, good dex potential, no huge downsides. Maybe they suffer a bit from being introduced alongside the much more interesting (and terrible) mist elves.

[grobblewobble]

Yeah orcs have always been in competition with dark elves, but they used to win out for the non-magical classes because of massive Str and To advantage. But with point buy, they lost a lot of that appeal I guess.

About ratlings: I do like their funny look. The problem is their skillset; they add basically no good skills at all. Detect item status is not great and gets low values for non-priests to make it worse. So their selling point is decent stats, nothing more. But their raw stats aren't good enough to make them a top choice for any class. Not enough strength to stand out as a fighter, not enough mana / learning for caster. Archer.. maybe.

So all in all I don't hate them, I just feel they are an okayish race for most classes, but never great. Unlike orcs, who used to be stellar for melee classes without find weakness. For people playing the free version of ADOM they still are.