I'm curious as to why dwarves are only a 250 xp penalty.

My talking points:

Arguably the best inherent ability - being able to beef up that much hit/dam on weapons (and dual wielding them) is very very nice - especially when edged

Naturally resistant to magic AKA all elements (with the exception of water)

best con/decent str/good stats

Vuln: Drowning - not many drowning weaps in the game...

Giant: 500 XP penalty

With the exception of storm, arguably worthless inherents (not sure if flight is counted as an 'inherent skill' for clouds)

Resistant to 3 types of damage - Bash/slash/pierce (all phys dmg)

Best STR/good con - crap other stats

Vulns: Fire giant - cold dmg (easier than drowning to obtain)
Cloud Giant - pos/neg (extremely easy to obtain)
Storm Giant - nada

All in all, dwarf is resistant to more forms of damage, has a lesser XP penalty..more HP..and an inherent that curb-stomps anything a giant can bring to the table. With the exception of Storm Giants, who out of giants have the best inherent, resists, etc.

While yes, resist phys is arguably very nice, its really only super-good for truly low lvl, or very specific matchups (non offense shapeshifter). Pretty much by lvl 30, any melee class should be able to do non phys dmg and negate this 'benefit'.

Honestly, I feel that perhaps the giant xp penalty/reward should be revisited. Especially since they are no longer the 'best' choice for warrior always...as they once were.

A large part of this is the pre-lvl 25 bash nerf. If giants were still running around (literally) perma-lagging people @ 15, I would understand the steep penalty - this is no longer the case.

Any chance you guys would consider lowering giant XP penalties? Or, adjusting other races in the interest of balance? If anything, maybe work out some 'good' inherents for giants? Has anyone actually used lavawalk? I mean, I can't imagine anyone comes gunning for a fire giant with flaming weapons...

Not sure why you think dwarves have good stats...as a warrior at least they have pretty awful stats. 22 strength is not very high for a 'brute force' spec like axe and mace. 18 dex is absymal for a finesse spec. And they're human sized, so they can be bashed pretty easily.

I don't think they're bad, I think they're balanced pretty well actually, but they're certainly not "too good".

I think it's fine/correct as is.

My opinion is just that..an opinion

While you may not want to tweak xp penalties...could I maybe convince you to bring fire/cloud giant 'inherents' in line with storm? Frost giants have a good one as is as well..

Fire giants, with their 25 strength and 23 con, are actually really good mechanically. There's a world of difference for some skills like flurry/double thrust between a 22 strength, 23 strength and a 25 strength.

Likewise, you can consider a 23 con as being significantly better at avoiding plague and poison than a 21 con.

Just because they don't have good resists on 'score exp' doesn't mean they don't have good resists . In fact, the things they resist - like dropping weapons and getting plagued, are generally much nicer than lightning and water that very rarely come into play. I'm going to enjoy having 25 strength and 23 con in every single fight, it's much more rare that I'll enjoy elemental resistances.

You missed out PERMA +1 size for giant... which makes them very hard to lag. Can't bash them. If they enlarge, you can't trip them, you can't cranial them, you can't throw them, etc.

Resis phys goes beyond low levels as a high avg non=phys weapon is not that common. At hero levels high avg phys weapons are the norm, and enemies get torn between choosing a lower avg weapon (maybe around 22-24?) to get past resist, or a high avg one and suffer 1/3 dam reduction.

Good call on the +1 perm size as a benefit, it is a good one.

In regards to resist phys - I am still not that impressed.

Lets look at it this way, From looking at PBF's statistically...

Giant warriors seem to have 900-1k hp
Dwarf warriors have 1.25k to 1.3k hp

For sake of argument we'll round giants up to 1k and dwarves we will assume 1.3k hp

When you look at it this way, it completely nullifies giant resist phys in my mind...because while yes the giant takes 33% less dmg from physical sources...the dwarf has 33% more hp(or very close to it)

This makes their 'effective HP' the same..they can both absorb the same (or very close to it) amount of physical damage before dying

you switch to a wrathing weapon, or ANY non phys weapon for that matter, and its immediately better to be the dwarf (speaking from a pure HP sponge standpoint)

I just think the giant xp penalty is a bit high, because when I look at giants nowadays there are very few combo's I rate as 'the best' to have. And: those combo's involve classes that used to have XP penalties

Example:

I don't believe cloud warrior should share the same XP penalty as cloud ranger savage.

In my mind, one is clearly a 'better combo' than the other.

Same goes for storm warrior/storm paladin


Would the staff maybe consider re-working the xp penalty system yet again, so that class is taken into account, but maybe keeping the "maximum" xp penalty to 500?

It just seems to me that 500xp for a giant x is too much of a penalty. Especially when it comes to post-dex change warriors.

There are some important tricks that rely on it.

And I've used flaming weapons on fire giants before, because it's no worse than using physical weapons, and had them used on me. It's also not unheard of for them to use a particular item that negates both the fire resist and cold vulnerability.

I would agree that storm giants seem better off. No vulns at all, the lightning resist at 50% beats the fire giant fire resist and cloud giant cold resist at 33%, and on top of that they have a 90% resist. I've died to call lightning more times than I care to remember. And only needing 2 pracs to get 75% reduces the practicing headache a great deal.

Bash isn't as effective below level 25? I haven't heard that.

especially with only 2 pracs per level. And are you dieing to call lightning from storm giants, or Rangers and Druids?

I agree on lavawalk actually being pretty good once you figure out where it's useful.

And for some classes I imagine the dex makes up for the lower strength. The resistance profiles are hugely different, though.

IMHO, knowing the mechanics and breakpoints, storm giants have the worst set of stats in the entire game. Take that for what you will.

(But they also have the best set of resists/vulns/etc.)

Without knowing all the mechanics, 1 str for 1 dex doesn't seem it's always a terrible disadvantage.

of course for that class the 1 str didn't matter that much either though. However for hp gains (both were savages) the fire giant got 16-18 (with a lot more 18s than anything else) and the storm got 14-16 fairly scattered out. I also did a frost savage and he got 17-18, so I guess 18 is the hp cap for rangers.

For warriors, the storm should get 14-17 (13s might be possible, I forget), the fire 15-18 (I am sure on this one) and the frosty I beleive gets 17-20 (like an orc berserker). From what I've seen, 20 con gets the same hp gains as 21 con, so in most instances human anything will have more hp than a storm giant in the same class because of the extra pracices.

I've also done storm and fire shaman and the fire got a whole lot more 15 hp gains than the storm did 13 hp gains.

However also keep in mind I played four chars in 2013. Three of those had 15 int, and one had 16 so I am kinda numb to dumb race practicing. In the end it come down to getting a 100is extra hps (or more for a frost giant) vs less practice time. Also there is a lot more kick ass evil giant gear around than good giant gear.

That a stat point isn't always equal to another stat point.

What I mean by that is, for example, the difference between 24 CON and 25 CON is overall much, much bigger than the difference between 20 CON and 21 CON.

People seem to be pretty successful with them. So maybe they do not need a change. But if you feel they have the worst stats then maybe a small adjustment would fix that.

Plus, fire giant and frost giant can fairly easily cover their vulns. Even if they cannot find gear that covers it all the time. Cloud giant had their vuln reduced with the revamp.

On a secondary note, I have always wondered about the races that have 2 vulns and why they had their 2 vulns.

That their stats being so meh is why they have so many resists, free water breathing, decent int for a giant, decent wis for a giant, etc.

Storm giants aren't bad at all. But what they lose in con they make up for in resists basically.

I would not call 17 int that much better than 15 or 16 int.
I somehow doubt that the difference between the two is going to save them very often. It might help some though as far as saves go.
Free water breathing is nice though.

I do agree that the resists are why. But, I've always been disappointed with their con. 21 is really just not that great.

>That their stats being so meh is why they have so many
>resists, free water breathing

Yep, this is exactly my point. Worst race one one respect, best in another and overall they're about where I think they should be.