I would say by the stats that Arial has too small an exp penalty, or the others too large.

If you compare Dark-Elf, say to Arial, what we have is:

Dark Elf: 18str, 24int, 21wis, 24dex, 16con, 18chr
Arial: 19str, 23int, 20wis, 25dex, 18con, 18chr

So Arial has +1 str -1 int -1 wis +1 dex +2 con and 0 chr

For a total bonus of +2 for the Arial.

Not only does the Arial have a total bonus, but it is also in important stats. As well as a max stat exponential advantage, ie 25 being the largest difference from the value one lower. We could also arguably write off 21 wis, as that does not confer much advantage at all.

Now let's look at abilities:

Arial: Pro: Flight Con: Hydrophobia, Water vuln, Lightning vuln
Dark Elf: Pro: Sneak, Faerie Fire Con: Mithril vuln, Cannot use mithril equipment

For the pros we could call perma fly as of the same caliber as sneak. Faerie fire as an ability is negligible. Okay about even. Now the cons. Hydrophobia is about the same caliber as cannot use mithril equipment.
Water and lightning vuln together are not as bad as mithril vuln. This is because mithril is much, MUCH easier to find as a weapon than water and lightning combined. Even considering greater damage from invoker and anti-paladin spells, mithril vuln is still worse. Not only that, but at least lightning vuln can be covered easily, not so with the metal vuln.

So roughly equal good abilities and a slight edge for the Arial in bad abilities.

Arial can also be many alignments and classes, and have their own hometown.

I could make the same comparison to Arial with most other races.

Given all this, shouldn't Dark Elves and similar races have lower exp penalties than Arials? It just doesn't make sense. To me it is so obvious that it reflects poorly on the developers of this game.

1,423,409

Three hundred and thirty seven.


92


78


Now, take a look at these CF race stats (which are all probably wrong so don't pay any attention to these stats):

STR/INT/WIS/DEX/CON/CHR


Wood-Elf:
19/23/21/24/17/22
Total: 126
Racial EXP Penalty: 400

Elf:
18/25/21/23/16/21
Total: 124
Racial EXP Penalty: 500

Half-Drow/Half-Elf:
22/21/21/21/19/20
Total: 124
Racial EXP Penalty: 100

Arial:
19/23/20/25/18/18
Total: 123
Racial EXP Penalty: 250

Gnome:
18/23/25/20/18/19
Total: 123
Racial EXP Penalty: 300

Human:
23/20/20/20/20/20
Total: 123
Racial EXP Penalty: 0

Svirf:
22/18/22/20/22/19
Total: 123
Racial EXP Penalty: 250

Dark-Elf:
18/24/21/24/16/18
Total: 121
Racial EXP Penalty: 500

Dwarf:
22/19/19/18/25/18
Total: 121
Racial EXP Penalty: 250

Duergar:
23/16/18/22/22/16
Total: 117
Racial EXP Penalty: 250

Felar:
17/17/20/23/23/17
Total: 117
Racial EXP Penalty: 250

Cloud:
25/16/17/16/22/18
Total: 114
Racial EXP Penalty: 500

Fire:
25/15/17/16/23/17
Total: 113
Racial EXP Penalty: 500

Storm:
24/17/17/17/21/17
Total: 113
Racial EXP Penalty: 500

Minotaur:
23/16/22/19/21/11
Total: 112
Racial EXP Penalty: 450

Orc:
23/15/16/18/24/13
Total: 109
Racial EXP Penalty: 100


I don't really know what any of this means, except it looks like orcs got the short end of the stick

- Perma-fly is not the same caliber as perma-sneak. Flight is relatively easy to get. Sneak is limited to get at best.

- While mithril vuln is a terrible vuln, it *can* conceivably be covered (albeit with difficulty). Hydrophobia can't be covered. Lightning is hard to cover. Mixed with permafly, arials become invoker meat.

- Anatomy differences can suck when you consider finding something for wings, for feet, for face/head, there are some nice items out there which can't be used by arials, but drow have no limitations to wear.

- There are certain hidden drow bonuses which arials don't get that make drow the preferable choice in some cases

- never underestimate the difference of that single point of intelligence. Assuming that you spend one practice, all arial skills will be 4% lower than drow and take longer to learn overall. An arial invoker with 7 paths would be insanely difficult to play versus a drow invoker with 7 paths.

- good drow RP is cooler than good arial RP

>- While mithril vuln is a terrible vuln, it *can* conceivably
>be covered (albeit with difficulty).

Not to dispute the overall point of your post, but I don't think the above is true. Specifically, I don't think resist metal overrides vuln_mithril and vuln_iron the way resist heat overrides vuln_fire. Could be wrong.

And die horribly to iron wielding orcs a few times.
Let us know!




(Really, you are wrong. Its the same afaik)

Protection v. metals is not equal to "resist metal" so it does not move you from vuln iron to resist iron on say an elf. It moves you from vuln iron to very slightly vuln_iron. This is easy to test, roll a wood elf druid, fight something using an iron weapon with and without protection v. metals and fight something using metal non-iron weapon. The difference is obviously noticable.

If you want to search for the post confirming what I've said, feel free. The forum search is too finicky for me to bother.

I forgot completely that its "Protection" from metals and not "resistance" to metals.
The two are completely different.
Ones like 34.~ % "resistance"
and the others like 24.~ % "protection"
I think anyway

.

it varies because it is almost exclusively used by druids in practice (yeah there is a prep and yeah savage rangers can get it but thats not how it is put into play most of the time)

druid herbs/moon/other druid mechnicy stuff affects the dam redux delivered through protection from metal.

I think you are wrong. But then again, I could be wrong...

As expected a bunch of red herrings and weak attempts at refutation for the sake of doing so.

- Perma-fly is not the same caliber as perma-sneak. Flight is relatively easy to get. Sneak is limited to get at best.

Perma-fly is of the same caliber as sneak. Sneak is harder to get but it is also more limited in usefulness. I could go either way on this one, but they are in the same caliber.


- While mithril vuln is a terrible vuln, it *can* conceivably be covered (albeit with difficulty). Hydrophobia can't be covered. Lightning is hard to cover. Mixed with permafly, arials become invoker meat.

Hydrophobia isn't a vuln. Why mention it? Inability to use mithril equipment can't be covered either. Lightning vuln is one of the easiest vulns to cover. Given this, and the fact that invokers either destroy you utterly- or get destroyed by you utterly... even if Arial doesn't cover the vuln, their vuln will rarely come in to significant play.

- Anatomy differences can suck when you consider finding something for wings, for feet, for face/head, there are some nice items out there which can't be used by arials, but drow have no limitations to wear.

Actually, yes Dark Elves do have limitations to wear. For one, they can't wear gear which Arials can (Arial gear). It is a roughly equal trade off between what Dark Elves can and can't wear with respect to Arials. Even if it wasn't this is hardly a factor.

- There are certain hidden drow bonuses which arials don't get that make drow the preferable choice in some cases

Explain.

- never underestimate the difference of that single point of intelligence. Assuming that you spend one practice, all arial skills will be 4% lower than drow and take longer to learn overall. An arial invoker with 7 paths would be insanely difficult to play versus a drow invoker with 7 paths.

Right, let's not underestimate a single point of dex either. That point Arials have over Dark Elves in (25 vs 24) gives greater benefit than the point of int (24 vs 23) Dark Elves have over Arials. This is because stat benefits grow exponentially the higher the stat is.

- good drow RP is cooler than good arial RP

Not relevant.

First, you draw conclusions without much to support them. They are your opinions, which might be valid and well thought out, but they are not fact. So really, your statements are no different than any others unless you have true evidencve about any of them. Discuss ideas instead of being dismissive of them.

Permafly/sneak
(you forgot to put wingsweep in as an arial perk, which is nice since it is an area attack that can blind) Permafly is nice, nobody can deny that. Depending on your class, permasneak is much better. You can't make blanket statements about them. Fly helps you avoid trip and a few invoker spells. Sneak lets you surprise people, and covers your movements making you harder for people to follow/chase when you flee. Perma sneak is nice since you don't have to ever remember to enter the command, which on classes that rely on stealth (assassin/thief/ bard & transmuter to a lesser extent) is just a nice thing to have. Ragged cloak sucks wearing, yet it is hard to get because people find sneak useful. Flight is useful, but so widely available it hardly matters. 150 coppers in high tower or something. Dispellable, yes, but again, I'd take perma sneak over perma fly anyday. I think you really overvalue the usefulness of flight and undervalue the usefulness of sneak.

Vulns
Hydrophobia I think was a reference to the water vuln. All classes that have hydrophobia are vuln water. Which is near impossible to cover, since only an invoker shield will do it. So you play an invoker, travel with one, or hope to get the one legendary item that grants the shield. Mithril is hard to cover too. Having lightning vuln makes the general vulns of an arial worse. (lightning control a-p. - lots of weapons made of lightning or lightning attack, or do lightning prog attacks, and then invokers who will geyser if you cover lightning) And the hydrophobia about underwater is very annoying and can easily get you killed. It just causes massive time wasting. The thing about the mithril vuln is this. Mithil is ONLY from weapons. Which dark elves in melee can dodge, parry, block. Yes they are vuln mithril, but you have to hit them with it.
It's hard to hit a dark elf tranny with a weapon.
It's hard to hit a dark elf thief/assassin/warrior with a weapon.
A shifter it's irrelevant.
An invoker can put up greater lighthing and watch you kill yourself.
That leaves a-ps, healers, shamans and necros. All of them have ABS or sanc to help deal with the vuln.

Yes, it's harder to hit an arial, but the thing is I can exploit water/lightning vulns without relying on melee to do it.

Gear
No mithril is rough. Arial gear that is limited to arials is generally not great, unless you can manage some of the rarer pieces. Given the number of arials, having and keeping them is unlikely. I'd give the edge to the dark elf. A lot of armors are not mithril, and if they are are anti-evil anyway so does not matter. where you lose out tends to be in weapons. Oddly, Arials can wield weapons made of water or lightning. I think the two are about equal.

25 dex
The int/dex is relevant dependant upon the class. Why would an arial invoker care about 25 or 24 dex? Really unless they have dodge/evade or malleability, the dex is almost a non factor. Arials make great melee classes that capitalize on the dex. A dark elf with 24 does extremely well, and don't think 25 to 24 is so very noticeable that you'll go from getting hit all the time to untouchable. You're overvaluing the 25 dex a bit here. And dex maladicts are pretty common. 24 int is a minor time saver with learn rates, but 23/24 both prac things once so a wash there.

I'd say dark elves make better mages and arials make better melee generally.

The RP angles are irrelevant. That means so are abilities to be any align/ethos.

You also have to remember xp penalties are about rarity of the race as well.

Now, I would not mind a bump in arial xp penalties, but I think you negate too much of other people points without much support. And relying on comparisons to just elves is silly. Compare them to all races across the board if you really want to make the argument.

I think I agree with this. An arial rager is extremely powerful for exactly the reason you say - you can avoid vuln-hitting spells as well as rely on high dex to avoid melee long enough to waste the guy hitting you with vuln weapons (perma-ABS APs with lightning control are an obvious exception). But an arial non-rager is going to get destroyed by a decent invoker, and it's not a remotely close battle. Personally, if we're comparing both sets of vulns in a vacuum, I'd rather have a mithril/iron vuln than a vuln that makes me near-defenseless against a common class. But that's just me :)

I also agree with the part about comparing any race with elves/drow. If anything, people should be discussing whether elves/drow exp penalties are too high, rather than using them as a benchmark for other races' exp penalties.

I've always been of the mindset it should be lowered at least a little, since it does seem large but it's also a very common "newbie" race. How many people play elves/dark-elves who are absolutely terrible? It's a common "cool" race to pick and the benefits are more obscure than a giants obvious ones.

Give dark-elves the power to pk people at ranks lower than them. (muwahhahahah?)

Having come off of playing a seven path arial invoker (Arkellin), I had all seven paths mastered and had heroed in about 100 hours. The one point of int for an arial invoker is a negligible difference, and you get a bonus to one path as an arial (the air path).

On the flip side, arials were typically one of the easiest things for me to kill. Typically, two-three spells and I had a dead arial, depending if it was safe to use pillar or not. The same did not apply against dark-elves.

>Having come off of playing a seven path arial invoker
>(Arkellin), I had all seven paths mastered and had heroed in
>about 100 hours. The one point of int for an arial invoker is
>a negligible difference, and you get a bonus to one path as an
>arial (the air path).
>

Speaking of your ease in mastering 7 paths, one thing I was always curious about is how Arkellin managed to get 45 affinity points.

You only took extra affinity once, and that added to the 2/3 arial air bonus doesn't account for 10 extra points. Can you satisfy my curiosity?

I took extra affinity more than once, think it was four times total, might have been five. Not sure why it shows up as once. That covers the increase in the frost path. And I think I was given one extra point, either intentionally or accidentally, on the air path when I started off putting two points in, then decided to add another and asked why it didn't give the arial bonus to it as well. I think the math on that came out to 9.something, so when I asked, it was set to 10.