I want to know why Storm giants are exempt from a vulnerability
when every other (14) non-human races has one. They are clearly
unbalanced.

Storm giant (warrior) stats add up to 115
2 resists, 0 vuln, 1 special ability

Fire giant (warrior) stats add up to 113
2 resists, 1 elemental vuln

Cloud giant (warrior) stats add up to 113
2 resists, 3 vulns, 1 special ability

Josiah. Play a storm. Prove they are overpowered.

They aren't. That lower strength makes a big different to the weapon weights you can use. Makes it easier for you to lose a given weapon to strength loss.

Any competant player of a fire giant will have the cold vuln covered.

I have to agree, they have nice stats.

Resist to lightning is so-so.

Water IMMUNITY is great.
( invokers and conjurers may delete,
especially if this certain storm giant is a maran. )

Waterbreathing is cool as well,
you don't have to worry about dispel underwater
and all those seaweeds.

Their only real "vulnirability": they have to be good.
Considering that average pk skill of goodies is lower
that one of evils... That's a balancing factor.

Should they allowed to be neutral for example,
they would receive 3 more vulnirabilities

I honestly think that you're too n00b to understand half of what's posted to this board. Which means that you're WAY too n00b to be posting here.

The PROPER post would have been - to the new player forum - "I'm not sure that I understand why..."

You're making a very strange attempt at crunching numbers, without any idea how to do it properly. In the land of CF 1 + 1 != 2, much of the time.

On vulnerabilities/resistances/special abilities:

Waterbreathing is a convenience. Even ragers can use seaweed, and it's available cheap and pleantifully. Fly, on the other hand, grants you immunity to:
Trip(and thief cheap shot)
Legsweep
Quicksand
Gel
Iceslick
Grease


Leaving you able to wander freely through traps, the ability to avoid quicksand(so huge that I won't even begin to explain it), and only laggable via bash(not very effective against a giant) or special skills. The convenience factor of fly - not needing a boat - is equivalent to the entirety of water breathing.

Vulernerability to wrath - on a neutral character - is less of a problem than vulnerability to fire. Why? Because weapons are weapons are weapons. A vulnerability to wrath, or fire, or lightning is a bad thing. But the REALLY bad thing is spells. Having a MASSACRE go up to a DEM from a weapon is painful - but having an ANI go to UNSPEAK off a nova is huge. So why is vuln wrath less of a big deal on a cloud giant? Because the only holy attack spells don't work on neutrals.

On stats:
Higher is better, right? But not in the way you seem to think.

Everything has tiers. Within a tier, a one point difference is a one point difference. Between tiers, a one point difference is huge.

The reason that storm giants stats suck so rediculously badly is that the ONLY stat that is exceptional is strength - and it's not 25. The difference between a 20 and a 21 con is pretty much insignificant. The difference between a 17 and a 20 int? Pretty much insignificant.

Think about the wisdom stat. For a wisdom of x through y, you get 1 practice a level. For y+1 through z you get 2 practices a level. For z+1 through q you get 3 practices a level. So what's the difference between x, x+1, x+2, x+3, and y? Not a whole helluva lot. Oh, there's something. More than one thing. But nothing huge. What's the difference between y and y+1? 51 practices.

Your attempt to demonstrate "clearly unbalanced" is laughable. In a warrior on warrior fight I'd take fire giant every time. If you can't figure out why, you shouldn't be posting here.

Yes, some stat effects are on tiers, but there are also more applications
of stats then you are aware of. The obvious difference between 17 and
18 wisdom is 2 vs 3 practices, you may not know (as a fictitious example),
that the 17 dex (storm war) vs 16 dex (fire war) relates to a +5% chance
to dodge. That sort of stuff would be behind the scenes. You see the
tip of the iceburg, while you ignore the bulk of the iceburg.

Why the hell are you contrasting vuln wrath vs vuln fire? For the sake of
simplicity, we're talking about giants. No giant is vuln fire. Compare
apples to apples (giants to giants), and storm giants are clearly head and
shoulders better then the rest. The only thing I can glean from your post
is that cloud giant vuln is nicer then the fire giant vuln.. WHOOPIE.

You want to stack two giant warriors against each other? Fine, grab your
fire giant. I'll grab my Storm with a cold damage noun.
A fire giant with +1 str, and +2 con compared to Storm is not going to make
up the deficit for having a vuln. I'll take as much INT, DEX, and CHA as I
can take. They're just as good as STR and CON, even for a fighting class.

I'll take as much INT, DEX, and CHA as I can take. They're just as good as STR and CON, even for a fighting class.

That is going into the "Josiah Hall of Fame".

For what it's worth, I'd prefer fire giant to storm giant in a head-to-head pure stats kind of way as well. You're right that there's a lot of things stats influence. You're wrong that you have a good grasp on what they are, especially given the class selctions available to the two races. You're also wrong that adding them is meaningful in any way- a lot of things swing on stats in a non-linear fashion. Vulns are also less amazing than they are often made out to be.

I'd explain more, but I'm not willing to encourage this level of trolling by feeding you useful information. It might lead to more obnoxious posts, and no one wants that.

It's also possible that you're entirely right, everyone else is entirely wrong, and you will spend the next few months reaping the benefit of being enlightened beyond the rest of us, and tearing CF up with your invincible storm giant. It is also possible that CF will rename itself 'Rainbow Prancing FooFooLand' and change all of the violent skills to revolve around pillow fighting and hopscotch. Possible, however, does not mean probable.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>You want to stack two giant warriors against each other?
>Fine, grab your
>fire giant. I'll grab my Storm with a cold damage noun.
>A fire giant with +1 str, and +2 con compared to Storm is not
>going to make
>up the deficit for having a vuln.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

You can draw up a scenario where anything is better than anything else, if you get to assume that one of the players will be stupid.

Frankly, if I'm playing a fire warrior and you're playing a storm warrior, you have no chance of catching me without my cold vuln covered in some way (probably a resist cold armor) unless I am absolutely certain it won't swing the fight. None. Bring on the frostbrand and deal me damage I'm resistant to all day.

Is this equally possible for all vulns and characters? No. Is it possible for fire giants and cold? Sure is.

I love tacking "clearly" onto an untrue statement as much as the next man, but I'm going to have to disagree with you here.

If you think you can just add the stats up and figure out which is better, you still have a lot to learn. IMHO storms arguably have the worst set of stats in the game (and no, I'm not interested in arguing about that for the nth time. Get some forum search action on if you really care.) No offense, but at times you remind me of the boy who cried wolf, except as I recall that story the boy only cried wolf fraudulently twice.

What would you like to say about the racial precident that has been set. That is.. the one where every race sans human has a vulnerability? Except Storms.

I'm not adding up stats to prove one is better. I'm adding up stats to prove their is no huge deficit for Stormies. Unless you want to argue that (-1str -2con) compared to Fire Giants is worth a vuln, I'd prefer to leave stats out of it.

Since the board ate most of Nep's really *biting* responses
on this topic, I thought I'd offer this brief FAQ for future
searchers.

Why don't Storm Giants have vulnerabilities?

Due to the way the race has been balanced, we do not feel
they need a 'racial vuln' at this time.

But why just Storm Giants (and humans of course)?

Some guy did that a while back. It works really well so
we just let it be.

But then why do you keep adding vulns to new races?

We already have a couple races with no vulns, a couple with
varying metal vulns and a bunch with elemental/holy/poison/
disease/etc vulns. It's a real wild hair up someone's rear
that gets a new race put in and, quite frankly, someone who
is that motivated wants to make their new race interesting.
A lack of vulns is just too boring for these visionaries.

Shouldn't you go back and 'even it out' with a vuln?

We just don't see fixing something that isn't broken worth all
the wailing and gnashing of teeth that will inevitably result.
You may have noticed that in the last year the vulns of the
other vuln-having races are significantly less exploitable
than they were before.

What about removing some of the other vulns then?

Everything, including vulns, is rebalanced from time to time.
For example, Duergars lost their drowning vuln. And items in
the game are always being rebalanced in regards to exploiting
the other racial vulns. Hydrophobia is far less a drawback
than the finality of never going underwater. It's a process.

I still think it's unfair that Storm Giants have no vuln.

If that's the biggest injustice you have to face today, you're
having a pretty darn good day.

>Unless
>you want to argue that (-1str -2con) compared to Fire Giants
>is worth a vuln, I'd prefer to leave stats out of it.

Is 1str and 2con at all points worth a vuln? No.

Is 24str vs 25str and 21con vs 23con worth a vuln? #### yes.

>I want to know why Storm giants are exempt from a
>vulnerability when every other (14) non-human races has one.

They're good_only with a less-than-stellar stats distribution.
Considering the number of people who play them, they don't
seem clearly unbalanced.