I was pretty excited for Saurians at first and rolled a couple up almost immediately after the announcement. After playing with them for almost a week I have a few observations:

1 - Their main benefit, acute vision, may be great for shamans, maybe to a lesser extent warriors/healers, but it is pretty much wasted on rangers. I can't find anything else in the race that makes them decent as rangers, they could really use some sort of marsh powerboost like wood-elves get, otherwise Felar is superior to them in almost all ways with their better tanking and better claw attack options.

2 - Maybe I'm missing something with coalesce, but how does it work for evils? I've already mastered it by trying to invoke it every way I can think of but it always just says "You snort, unable to attune yourself to any form of death." Do I need to be someplace special to invoke it or does it just work for specific spheres or with certain locations? Maybe the helpfile could be updated with command usage examples to help the noobs.

3 - the cabal options are way too limited like the other newish race releases. It feels like the ethos restriction was specifically so we can't have outlander hunters in Tribunal/Empire, which I understand, but why do outlanders get to be mostly safe from all the new acute-vision races? it also sucks that we're going to be limited to the usual outlander/rager/fort/herald unless we get immortal involvement, which from my experience is very unlikely to happen.

4 - I mentioned they are inferior to Felar in all types of combat, is there anything... hidden I'm overlooking that makes them stand out in combat? I'm really wanting them to shine, but I'm not seeing anything special yet.

Please reply and let me know I'm an idiot or if I'm missing anything, I'm hoping I'm wrong and just haven't found the cool parts yet.

I was kind of bummed on the lack of classes personally, it really hampers the innovative builds that could turn into something neat. Bards, necromancers (death focus? Maltrakis?), thieves (there are trap/poisoner items in their regions and bandit theme fits) but a fun one could have been let them be non-neutral druids. It'd be really neat to see some good and evil druids running around as they've only been done through special cases.

We might actually see a druid then (considering in the last year I've seen about two hero druids, one being a murder druid and they just disappeared into nothing because the cabal options are meh).

**Big** no to evil/good druids.

But given that druids are meant to be excessively rare among Saurians, not non-existent, I'm holding on to the idea that druid will be given sort of as a "unique combo" - with a maximum of one at a time, due to the nature of Saurian lore.

Otherwise, a personal thought of mine is that more classes may become available - as the race becomes a 'staple' of Theran society. One of the reasons they are so class-limited is that they truly just ventured out from their homeland, leaving them highly stuck to their traditional nature. But how players handle it... what neat saurian roles they do... Who knows what will open up to them in the future! :)

Which is nice. I'm surprised they live longer than elves.

1- each race has pros and cons to it, if you want them to be a felar you will be disappointed. If you take the things about saurians that make them unique, you may find them more interesting. Their stat spread offers some unique upsides that felars lack and their res/vuln is also something that shouldn't be scoffed at.

2- Can't really answer on this because I don't fully know what it does.

3- game balance mostly. also, there are tons of ways to make an Outlander hunter... like a non saurian ranger as a really simple example

4- this statement is just factually inaccurate. One huge difference that isnt even hidden is the fact they can utilize a real dual wield. If you're fixated on JUST the fact that both races have a 17 strength then youre going to miss everything else.

I mean this to be constructive, because I really like the idea of the race and appreciate all the hard work that went into making them.

I guess my point isn't just to do with 17 strength or putting them against felar specifically, but that they don't really seem to stand out at anything. Their lower HP from a feeble con plus above-mediocre dex plus dismal strength means they stack up poorly against everybody in some way or another except as shaman/healer where those don't matter as much. They feel like they were pre-balanced a little too harshly and may be borderline crippled in their current state for half the class options.

Every other race/class has some kind of niche use that makes them good for something. Look at Svirf rangers, they aren't great on paper but they have some really strong abilities when in caves and they are fantastic with dodging-type attacks due to their small size.

Wood-elf rangers/druids have a lot of boosts to wilderness powers in general.

Giant rangers have the whole bear charge thing in their favor. Storms are amazing mariners.

Gnomes and elves are pretty fantastic for mastering everything fast.

Human rangers have the strength and PK range advantage.

I'm just struggling with why I'd play Saurian ranger over anything other than for strictly RP reasons, it seems like for a race that lives in swamps they'd have something more than just seeing camo to help them. They just feel like they are missing something to give them a niche.

Think of a saurian ranger as a cloud healer. You'd only play one knowing you're playing a nerfed character.

Saurian make great healers and shamans. Super shamans.

Also for "Coalesce" as an evil you need to stand over a corpse. Just kill any mob and leave the corpse then use the inherent.

..if you don’t like them you don’t have to play them, as with any race/build. Pretty sure one single person having power leveled up one single class combo without even using the ‘death’ inherent isn’t really gonna hold a lot of water.

...that the powerful inherent ability that this player has not used is a major factor in the race's balance. It can be a game changer for saurians of either alignment once you figure it out.

That giant wisdom goes a long way in a lot of things, one of which just so happens to be an excess of practices which can used either to artifically lengthen a characters life you happen to die a lot or to increase they HP pool by a lot. And then there is also the resistance to poison/disease present in saurian. Thats huge.

Pretty sure that svirf rangers don't get any special perks for being in caves, they are just like any other cave ranger while in caves.

W-elfs are vuln to one of the most common materials in the game, that makes a huge difference in how easily they die vs saurian who are vuln to an element. I'd argue that your ability to not die at lower lvls as a saurian is higher than other races because its less common to find a vuln exploiting weapon for them pre 20 than other races.

Giant rangers also are worse at creep than a saurian is so its a give and take, also they are worse tanks so their leveling is slower which makes it harder to get to said bearcharge that can be useful.

Gnome and elf suffer from the same issue as w-elf, huge easy to exploit vuln. Sure you can master stuff easier but you still are gonna have to eat that vuln forever.

Human rangers are well, human rangers. Sure they have a few upsides here and there, but I think everyone knows why you dont see them very often.... They are just pretty bleh.

>3- game balance mostly. also, there are tons of ways to make
>an Outlander hunter... like a non saurian ranger as a really
>simple example
>

Or just roll up a Saurian "ally" to Tribunal or Empire. You can be their Tracker, finding rangers and Outlanders for them. Just because you aren't inducted into a cabal doesn't mean that you can't be involved in cabal wars.