I was about to roll a felar the other day, and as I was trying to piece the char together, it struck me that I hadn't seen a badass felar in a long long time... Eventually I came to think that felars suck. Some arguments... Comparing a felar warrior to a human dex warrior:

Pros by going felar:
3 more con
resist cold(minor advantage)
dual wield hth attacks
a little extra dam on the hth.
don't have to prac hth(real nice actually)

Cons by going felar:
3 less str(17 str makes bash useless, which is a huge detriment to any warrior)
3 less int(annoying... skills go up real slowly anyway)
vuln cold(minor con)
vuln drowning/hydrophobia... (major con)
250 exp penalty
can't dual wield
hth attacks don't hit gnome vuln


and well there's the race specific eq but that's too shady to classify as a pro or con.

Nevertheless I think that felars could use a little powerup.

Bash is so, so not useless on a felar warrior.

Is it as reliable as for a cloud warrior? Of course not.

Have all of my felar warriors had a lot of bash-based kills? You better believe it.

the gear alone for felars is very impressive. As a felar warrior almost every piece of felar gear is enhancing you, giving you any combinations of str, dex, -svs spell, hp, dam, hit. Another benefit to this is that if you get looted they will either sac it or trade it to another felar, so you will know who has it.

>the gear alone for felars is very impressive. As a felar
>warrior almost every piece of felar gear is enhancing you,
>giving you any combinations of str, dex, -svs spell, hp, dam,
>hit. Another benefit to this is that if you get looted they
>will either sac it or trade it to another felar, so you will
>know who has it.

True, felar gear really makes you cry with envy, but really, until you start approaching hero, you're not likely to see any of it. Unless you meet some lowbie felar that got a lucky loot and kill him, or, you get a lucky loot, or, you have friends in high places.

And let's not forget that it's all highly limited, so unless you pk that random Herald felar that never seems to leave the inn, or just somehow always manages to evade you, only to camp at the inn, or, no longer applicable, but still, that one felar warder who always seems to get first dibs on the felar chief, you might be in for a long wait.

They're the third most popular race. If you think human-dex-warrior is the superior option, feel free to play it. Enough other people apparently disagree that I'm not too worried. I'd use the hand-spec argument- anything that makes you less doomed when someone disarms your warrior can't be all bad.

From another angle, not every race is going to be the number-crunchiest-bestest-optimized bestest option for each class anyway. For example, elves aren't naturally great warriors- their strengths and weaknesses don't really match up that well with the class's profile. They're playable, and people have done well with them, but I don't think it screams "make elves better!".

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Why not raise felar int some, seems strange that a race created from cats would be dumb as dirt.

The felar stats reflect the desires of the mages who created them. They didn't want smart followers. They did want strong followers, but constitution was the only way they could make felar stronger (rather than brute strength). There are certain disadvantages to not having been created by gods.

They evolved the use of magic ala shapeshifting, maybe they could slowly evolve some slightly better stats so that I'll actually play one. :)

I'm honestly not trying to nitpick, but...

That felar are the third most popular race does't necessarily mean the xp penalty is warranted. Their popularity could be due in part to felar having the ability to choose all three alignments and a variety of classes. A better comparison would be to look at the warrior class and examine each alignment seperately. For instance, how prevalent is the felar race among evil warriors? If certain races tend to dominate then it could be argued that those races xp penalties are too low. Vice versa if a race is under-represented.

Now, it's been stated that not all races are present in Thera in equal populations. Maybe there are just alot more humans than elves, so it makes sense that there would be more evil human warriors than drow warriors. That may be true, but achieving the right balance by making drow warriors disproportionately "unattractive" probably isn't the right way to go about it. Instead, the way minotaurs are handled seems more fair (albeit frustrating for prospective minotaur-players).

Main point: it may be that the disincentive to playing a race (xp penalty) should be proportionate the desirability of that race.

Random off-topic interjection:

I'd apply this to shifter forms as well. If players were allowed to choose 4th-tier shifter forms and certain forms began to dominate, using the current implementation of each form, perhaps those forms are unbalanced. Ideally, if the forms are equally desirable, player choice should generate about the same distribution as random assignment. Just a thought.

Pros by going felar:
3 more con
-yep

resist cold(minor advantage)
-yep, useful in more ways than you might think

dual wield hth attacks
-yep

a little extra dam on the hth.
-quite a lot I'd say

don't have to prac hth(real nice actually)
-true enough


Cons by going felar:
3 less str(17 str makes bash useless, which is a huge detriment to any warrior)
-There's a lot more to a warrior than bash. If you want to go bash-spec, play a fire giant warrior with axes like everyone else.

3 less int(annoying... skills go up real slowly anyway)
-Not that big a detriment compared to say, orcs

vuln cold(minor con)
-err... you said they were res_cold above, but I'll assume that you meant vuln_fire and yes, it's a minor thing in most cases

vuln drowning/hydrophobia... (major con)
-not compared to fire

250 exp penalty
-..and?

can't dual wield
-Saves a lot of trouble contemplating which weapons to wield/dual in a messy situation
with a lot of weaponswitching. Instead, you add on free damage from the claws which
are better than normal hands anyway.

hth attacks don't hit gnome vuln
-Honestly, I don't think the gnome off/air shifters in hero range are going to care about
this since they'll be in form.


So if you think you won't be successful with a felar, play your human. There's more to a race than raw stats and numbers, it's this itty bitty thing called roleplaying. Else you'd only see bashspecced fire giants and even more gnome shifters.

My $0.02