Increase elf strength

[evilcabbage]

i think batman is a lot stronger than you've given him credit for.

[Narf]

There's a reason why football players are huge, combat sports have weight classes, and why comic book heroes are jacked.

Strength wins battles.

Strength impact on combat in Armageddon doesn't need to be changed.

Celves definitely could use some love and adjustment, but I think there's far more jarring obstacles to get your around than the race being physically weak.

Black widow, batman, daredevil, bruce lee, ninjas, pretty much most martial artists really. All are primarily agility/technique/cunning based fighters, not strength focused ones. Your example, in my opinion, is bad Roughneck.

Well, I always thought that martial artists had weight classes in competition to protect the smaller competitors, but I could be wrong. Maybe it's to protect the big strong guys from the unfairly fast smaller ones.

Size in martial arts is more important than it is for fights with weapons. They don't have weight classes in fencing, or SCA events for that matter.

[Heade]

There's a reason why football players are huge, combat sports have weight classes, and why comic book heroes are jacked.

Strength wins battles.

Strength impact on combat in Armageddon doesn't need to be changed.

Celves definitely could use some love and adjustment, but I think there's far more jarring obstacles to get your around than the race being physically weak.

Black widow, batman, daredevil, bruce lee, ninjas, pretty much most martial artists really. All are primarily agility/technique/cunning based fighters, not strength focused ones. Your example, in my opinion, is bad Roughneck.

Well, I always thought that martial artists had weight classes in competition to protect the smaller competitors, but I could be wrong. Maybe it's to protect the big strong guys from the unfairly fast smaller ones.

Yeah, this. Those are mostly fictional characters, with the exception of the one actor you put in there(who was, in any account, an exceptional example). But the Ultimate Fighting Championship(UFC) has sort of dispelled the notion that size doesn't matter. Unless you're using some style that is so obscure that no one has trained to be able to counter it(such as Royce Gracie in the early UFCs), strength matters a lot. Royce Gracie basically altered the face of MMA by using a style that was so effective if not countered, that every other future MMA fighter would end up having to train in that style. That's why brazilian jiu jitsu is so prolific now. But once they did, strength became super-important again.

Further, almost all of those characters you mentioned use indirect forms of combat to level the playing field. Batman has all sorts of tools and gadgets, and attacks from surprise, daredevil often forces his opponents into blindfighting situations with his MASTER level blindfighting skillz, ninjas poison your fucking tea and don't even bother fighting you, and/or slit your throat while you sleep.

[Cabooze]

I think a major fix for most of this would be to have encumbrance split evenly between two stats: Strength and Endurance.

[Narf]

I think a major fix for most of this would be to have encumbrance split evenly between two stats: Strength and Endurance.

The two stats city elves get penalties to?

[Marauder Moe]

Size in martial arts is more important than it is for fights with weapons. They don't have weight classes in fencing, or SCA events for that matter.

Modern fencing is really really far from mortal combat.  All you have to do is touch, making size/bulk kind of a disadvantage.  Even there, though, they do separate men and women.

SCA indeed doesn't have weight classes or gender divisions.  However, it's openly acknowledged that it is not an even playing field.  If you are short, if you are skinny, if you are a woman, you are absolutely at a disadvantage.

[Dar]

Further, almost all of those characters you mentioned use indirect forms of combat to level the playing field. Batman has all sorts of tools and gadgets, and attacks from surprise, daredevil often forces his opponents into blindfighting situations with his MASTER level blindfighting skillz, ninjas poison your fucking tea and don't even bother fighting you, and/or slit your throat while you sleep.

Exactly. All of what you describe, should theoretically be what elves are so much better at, compared to the big brawny others. Due to agility and wits.

Only problem is that this is not the case, not with how skills work in Arm. 

Which sort of makes this entire comparison to anything RL related to be invalid.

[roughneck]

Further, almost all of those characters you mentioned use indirect forms of combat to level the playing field. Batman has all sorts of tools and gadgets, and attacks from surprise, daredevil often forces his opponents into blindfighting situations with his MASTER level blindfighting skillz, ninjas poison your fucking tea and don't even bother fighting you, and/or slit your throat while you sleep.

Exactly. All of what you describe, should theoretically be what elves are so much better at, compared to the big brawny others. Due to agility and wits.

Only problem is that this is not the case, not with how skills work in Arm. 

Which sort of makes this entire comparison to anything RL related to be invalid.

Backstab
Sap
Archery
Poisoning
Stealth skill gang-ambush

[Dar]

Is there a point to the list of these skills? You're not implying that these skills are more effective with agility, instead of strength, do you?

[roughneck]

Is there a point to the list of these skills? You're not implying that these skills are more effective with agility, instead of strength, do you?

I'm just saying there's lots of options, although for some of those skills agility is arguably superior than strength.

[Nao]

Further, almost all of those characters you mentioned use indirect forms of combat to level the playing field. Batman has all sorts of tools and gadgets, and attacks from surprise, daredevil often forces his opponents into blindfighting situations with his MASTER level blindfighting skillz, ninjas poison your fucking tea and don't even bother fighting you, and/or slit your throat while you sleep.

This sort of thing is... exactly what elves are good at.

[Heade]

Further, almost all of those characters you mentioned use indirect forms of combat to level the playing field. Batman has all sorts of tools and gadgets, and attacks from surprise, daredevil often forces his opponents into blindfighting situations with his MASTER level blindfighting skillz, ninjas poison your fucking tea and don't even bother fighting you, and/or slit your throat while you sleep.

This sort of thing is... exactly what elves are good at.

Yeah, that was my point. Elves are good at doing things in an indirect way, due to high agility giving them the ghostlike stealth capability that those various characters were known for. As others have said, if you're trying to win an evenly matched, fair fight with an Elf, you're doing it wrong. Poison their tea and slit their throat while they sleep.

[roughneck]

This thread really just highlights how far we've come as a species.

I mean, shelter/water/food/security are sooooo far from my day to day concerns, that I can focus some of my energy to debate with other internet people about the representation of physical attributes in a combat system for a text-based fantasy land.

Humans won.

[tapas]

The fuck am I even reading? I don't care if Bruce Lee would win in a fight against Jet Li.

I just want a stat system that doesn't punish me for rolling shitty or picking the wrong combination.

[Heade]

I like the random stats. I like that all characters aren't numerically equal out of the gate, and that all characters don't have the same potential for "success" in everything.

I generally like the stat system as it is.

[Speciation]

Elf strength isn't that bad... then again I've only played one elf and it was warrior/thief with a really good strength roll. I think even with 20+ days played on it his hits still bounced off of a rat but pretty sure he was unarmed at the time.

Encumbrance is really difficult to manage even with a really good strength roll so I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to manage on a sneaky/agile character with mid/low strength since it feels like it just cripples your agility.

Since I've only played the one elf and had the thief subclass I'm not even 100% sure what skills you get for playing c-elf but none of them surpassed the cap I got from picking thief, which even with very good extremely good c-elf agility feel pretty useless against anything with scan or watch.

In my opinion I think c-elves should get some decent racial skills like hide/sneak/climb/steal because if you don't pick a criminal class and be the stereotype rinthi c-elf you can't really do much code wise in the city and it feels like you are playing a single player game in the rinth without scan until you get backstabbed.

TL;DR: Half the classes c-elf can play don't give the skills you need to "elf" in the city without using karma. Low strength leads to being encumbered which hurts one of c-elf's main strengths, agility.

Just my perspective after playing 1700+ hours as a c-elf.

[zztri]

I'm fairly, very new.. But.. doesn't your damage improve over time with your weapon skill even when your strength doesn't change at all?

My current experience is this: Day 0, creature X, my few attacks that managed to land bounced off, got butchered to half my hp quickly and ran. 2 days played, just yesterday night, two of same creature at the same time; solid strikes that land at least once every combat round, neither of them could even touch me. And in those two days, I didn't seriously prioritize combat.

My character didn't get stronger. He got more skilled only. Thinking how the skills work; kick, bash, disarm, parry etc, most possibly the elf would be deadlier quite fast with the incredible wisdom he has.

So maybe there's a cap and an elf won't ever do "frightening damage" ever, I haven't played to experiment about it. So what? He'll do four "wound"s in no time, dodging the single crude strike the other person does. Higher wisdom and higher agility should catch up with high strength in no time.

Of course this doesn't help the fact that we're basically like D&D characters, murder-hobos who carry everything in their backpacks. Your elf wants to wash himself? No luck, there's going to be rain in Zalanthas before your elf can add a strigil and a jug of oil to his encumbrance. Or stonecarving tools, a single chisel and a couple of rocks to carve would make it drag his feet, most possibly. Instead of a raise in strength, maybe ask for more housing in 'rinth based on the strength of a city-elf?

[Bushranger]

This is true Zztri but also take into account that creatures roll attributes (and to a lesser extent train skills) the same as a player so not every scrab or whatever is exactly the same. While you might have been barely hitting day 0 and then getting in more solid hits on day 2 due to a little but of skill increase (and when you say it's been 2 days and barely any combat training then it really is just a smidgen increase) it could also be that the creatures on day 2 rolled poor agility and/or poor endurance and this were not as tanky as the ones you fought day 0.

This can be worse when it happens in reverse and you meet a sickly creature day 0 that your newbie breezes through so you think these types of creatures are easy and then you run into a buff one on day 2 that wrecks face!

[zztri]

Yeah I know. One day you kill the same creature with moderate difficulty but the other day a freak one appears to die in two solid strikes or quite the opposite, solidly mangle your limbs one by one until you realize you're gonna die and flee. But there's an obvious average, especially if you assess -v the creature and take its height, weight and age category to account.

But in my case, pretty, pretty good wisdom roll, I rolled.. My weapon skill got raised one notch, so did my fighting style skill. So I believe it was a measurable rise in skill.

Actually thinking about it, in a powerplayer's viewpoint, I'd love low strength. It's unrealistic to enter the hunting ground and kill 10 creatures, so you'd realistically fight let's say, three creatures at the absolute most?

For maximum "fail"s to raise the skill, low strength allows the target creature to stay alive longer. Of course, if I was the coder I'd give folks a "maximum failure that allows raise in skill" timer to dissuade powerplayers from hunting/crafting/sneaking all day and I remember reading something like that here in the forum. So some of the extended time wouldn't be useful in raising your skill but at least you'd ensure you'd hit the maximum with minimum amount of activity. More time for cooking emotes!

Being a newbie and a coward I don't know where I can hunt what and I already nearly died once because of my lack of OOC information. I'm not willing to risk my character to explore any more, I love him/her/them. So finding only a couple creatures and still fighting them for a looooong time possibly aided in my skill gain.

[oggotale]

I think it would be useful to have some "bumping" of minimum strength, because I unwittingly realized you can REALLY gimp yourself.

That being said, there seem to be enough elf players even with the current setup soo...

[Lizzie]

Being a newbie and a coward I don't know where I can hunt what and I already nearly died once because of my lack of OOC information. I'm not willing to risk my character to explore any more, I love him/her/them. So finding only a couple creatures and still fighting them for a looooong time possibly aided in my skill gain.

This is why the official docs, most of the new player threads, and discord all recommend VERY strongly that new players try playing humans that join the Byn. Because anyone can say "yeah jozhals are stupidly easy to kill." But not everyone remembers to mention "you have to be capable of seeing them first." Or "you have to not only be capable of seeing them, you also have to be capable of catching them."

Joining the Byn gives you *the* best first-hand experience at actually trying some of the things you're wondering about, with regards to combat.

[zztri]

Being a newbie and a coward I don't know where I can hunt what and I already nearly died once because of my lack of OOC information. I'm not willing to risk my character to explore any more, I love him/her/them. So finding only a couple creatures and still fighting them for a looooong time possibly aided in my skill gain.

This is why the official docs, most of the new player threads, and discord all recommend VERY strongly that new players try playing humans that join the Byn. Because anyone can say "yeah jozhals are stupidly easy to kill." But not everyone remembers to mention "you have to be capable of seeing them first." Or "you have to not only be capable of seeing them, you also have to be capable of catching them."

Joining the Byn gives you *the* best first-hand experience at actually trying some of the things you're wondering about, with regards to combat.

I have two daughters going to school and I'm +7 EST.. I doubt I'll find a sergeant in Byn. I had tried in my previous character.

[Krath]

Im against this.

[titansfan]

I agree more with adjusting encumbrance than making city elves stronger.  Below above average in strength for elves is extremely gimping, I think it does in more with carry weight and such.

[Cind]

I like the idea of adjusting endurance for everyone a little bit, but the current classes probably help with stats better than the old ones did. If you're out of ideas for a subguild you can always pick mercenary---- no karma, and it states right there that it helps you hold your liquor better, which is mostly endurance I think?