FYI, I recently took a read through some of the higher level orc adaptation skills and made some tweaks. They should be live next crash/reboot or so.

Of course, I'm not sure if there are any orcs high enough level to use the relevant skills, but there's a couple with the right adaptation(s) chosen, so we'll see. Enjoy.

Next crash/reboot or so, etc. Specifics:

Cower works marginally more. Take cover works marginally more. Generally speaking, both of these skills are about as great as they were before for a nearly dead orc, but they're better (if still a lot less effective) for a healthier orc.

Improved flee slightly reduces the chances of various things that block or interfere with fleeing to stop a character who's good at it. (I think a toggle is a reasonable addition to this skill, but I didn't get to it in this round and I'm not sure if or when I will.)

Dirty fighting fires marginally more and in a few cases is marginally more effective. All of these so far are auto-skills, so we'll see if a little goes a long way.

Soot ritual protects from the dangers of terrain fires, including the one created by using the skill. Fire damage from other sources are still fully effective. Soot ritual also provides a little help against offensive spells.

One or two of the potions that Blood Ritual can create were improved a bit, and these potions are slower to decay.

Items created by Fetish last longer (and in some cases may not decay), and in most of the PC cases have slightly improved stats.

Rush is marginally more effective.

Damage on Punt was increased a bit; shig-ru chiefs won't see much difference, but other level 50 orcs will now do just a little damage less than the chief, instead of a lot less.

Fixed a bug with high-end Pillage weapons; it's possible this bug never actually occured in play so maybe this is a transparent change.

>One or two of the potions that Blood Ritual can create were
>improved a bit, and these potions are slower to decay.
>
>Items created by Fetish last longer (and in some cases may not
>decay), and in most of the PC cases have slightly improved
>stats.

Any reason they have to decay at all? It's not like orcs have a large lifespan (even the most deadly orc was 59%) and there is some fear of the orc hording overpowered things like phylacteries. Considering these are generally less popular adaptations anyways, why not? It'd also bring about more cross-orc loving.

I think the current decay rules are pretty fair -- in some cases, the major incentive to get one from a PC instead of an NPC is that the NPC one will eventually decay and the PC one won't. (In other cases there are other big incentives.)

Edited to add: by current, I mean, as of my previous post.

Actually, this reminds me. If I recall from my last (only) Mundungu, all my Mundungu stuff (fetishes, maybe even the blood ritual potions) was only wearable/useable by me. Is this still the case, and intentional?

Yes, and yes.

The four orc 'stat' edges (lug, agile coward, bloodmage's cunning and masochist's endurance, I think?) now also increase their relevant current stats in addition to the max stats. The costs of these edges has been adjusted (still expensive, no longer tied with something else for the most expensive edge), and these edges have been improved slightly in other ways which probably will make it into their helpfiles eventually.

Based on their toughness and grit skills, a berserker has a chance to have their regeneration penalized less than most characters by bleeding, especially multiple kinds of bleeding.

This set of changes was done over the course of about a week about five minutes at a time; I think that's all I did in that pass, but if I forgot something I'll try to add it later.

I also just made pin slightly better.

I'm still not convinced using this skill is a good idea, but. . .

To me, the time to use pin is when you are trying to bash down that very agile character. Then you get nice damage from the pin, and my impression was that you get to exploit vulns in the process.

Can make it worthwhile.

enn teee

I've changed bloodsteep such that a piercing polearm (basically, one you can thrust with) can be used as well. That'll be possible in the next couple crash/reboots or so.

Maybe I like you, Daev. MAYBE.

Don't take it as a "lol i liek u" though.
It's like a....... I'm considering it.

Tell me and I'll make a donation.

Basically a year or so ago I'd gone through the Mamlauk skills and made the changes I thought were necessary to them, but then got distracted before I made it all the way through the other adaptation skills.

This time around I think I touched:

Cower (works just slightly more often in some cases)

Take Cover (works slightly more often in general)

Fetish (longer duration on created objects)

Gravesleep (allowed faster after combat -- this may still get
tweaked a back up some as I see how it works out in play, sleep process 1 tick faster than before)

Masochism (can fire at a slightly lower threshold of damage, slightly more likely to fire in most cases)

Or a new change?

The answer to that is many-part:

1) The helpfile says "slight protection against all physical
damage", which isn't all damage,

2) The helpfile always said that, as far as I know,

3) I don't think it ever worked quite right, so add that to the list. I'll fix it now.

If what you want is the ability to soak up physical damage, Shig-ru will probably still be king of that orcish mountain even still, though.

Shig-ru is just masochism?

.

I assume that Nepenthism refers to Skrugga being able to AVOID said physical damage, rather than soaking it up, but I'm curious....

Mundungu have soot ritual for redux, but I've seen nothing in ANY other adapt as far as soaking up damage. Is there some inherent nicety for being shig-ru, or does it come with masochism?

Mostly, I've played a LOT of orcs, though mostly Skrugga/Mundungu, but never ran into anything even suggesting Shig-ru = good for absorbing damage besides the theory of doing more back via masochism.

.

lol

Not sure how. Send me an e-mail if you want, I guess.

Are skills going to work more often, or just do more when they do?

And is this THE fix for orcs or can we expect some kind of inherent dam redux in the pipe?

>And is this THE fix for orcs or can we expect some kind of
>inherent dam redux in the pipe?

I don't have any other plans to modify them at this time.

You'd just tell us which skills you tweaked? You know, in case I'm about to adapt or something.