Race/Stats severity in relation to class. Also Horkval

Tempforum

First off, I apologize for the garbage account, but since forum account is tied to your character, and this thread will determine my actual character, it was necessary as far as I know.

I'm rather new to the game, despite experience with other MUDs, and I found a lot of conflicting and weird information on racial abilities and how stats work.
It's partially disconcerting because, while I'm up in the air and slightly confused on what I want to play (but leaning towards a Horkval), I'd hate to be permanently gimped and cursed because of an aesthetic/RP choice.
I guess my main question here is, how much do stats matter when it comes to success with a class, will a Horkval always be ~14.5% weaker than a Grook at caster classes and thus will "always be picked last for the football team?" --for lack of a better phrase.
Or will they make up for it in survivablity? Since this game has a DnD-like Class-based Armor Proficiency, what grade of armor is their shell equal to?
I remember reading somewhere that it's based on your health because resistance behaves differently, so assuming 13 con, could you could pin grades of armor into level ranges?

All in all I'm liable to change, and believe I can pull an RP well for whatever I eventually choose, but for the sake of clarity and prosperity:
What are the race/class combinations that are advised against, due to stats or inapplicable racial powers?

Sena

Horkval armour can't be easily compared to armour. It depends on the attack used, your health (which depends on both con and level, as well as some other possible health bonuses), and some other things. As a very broad generalisation though, I'd say horkval resistance is usually better than leather, and usually worse than chainmail or good scalemail. Armour stats also vary a lot though; really amazing leather could have better cutting protection than mediocre splintmail, so that further complicated things. Another thing to keep in mind is that sometime in the near future, forging will be changed to remove the randomness in stats, and we don't know what the new armour stats will be then.

My advice would be to avoid horkval if you choose a class that can use chainmail or better. If you use ringmail or scalemail, horkval might often be worse than armour, but it usually won't be a huge difference (and you'll save some effort/gold by not having to buy armour).

As for stats, there's not an huge difference. Having 14 strength instead of 16 will definitely be noticeably worse, but it won't be crippling.

Sena

I forgot about the "inapplicable racial powers" part. Blademasters, bards, serpents, jesters, and anyone mounted with enough skill in riding will have an ability equivalent to (or better than) horkval's leap. Similarly, Tsol'aa racial abilities are pointless for serpents and sentinels (and the swinging part can be done by anyone with enough survival). I don't think any other racial abilities are completely replaced by another ability, though some might just be useless in general (like Satyr's headstomp, perhaps).

Kei

Also check out HELP REINCARNATE, race isn't a permanent choice. You can always change the racial specialisation and traits you pick along the way (which have more effect than the base race stats) too.

Basically, from my view: Don't worry, pick a race you'd like to RP as and have at. Any disadvantages of racial stats can always be made up through a slight change in tactics, if it's even large enough to matter, so it's not going to cripple anyone.

Bukariin

What Kei said - racial choice isn't permanent.  Also, even if you do blow your race change, if you feel it's worth it in the future, you can still use a Gem to switch race again.

In my experience Horkval is always a decent choice, very rarely the best choice but almost never the worst choice (except for classes that can wear the heaviest armors).  Your racial spec and trait configuration will matter more.  Even Tsol'aa can make a decent Monk and Horkvals can definitely be decent Alchemists.

Tempforum

Sena said:

Horkval armour can't be easily compared to armour. It depends on the attack used, your health (which depends on both con and level, as well as some other possible health bonuses), and some other things. As a very broad generalisation though, I'd say horkval resistance is usually better than leather, and usually worse than chainmail or good scalemail. 

So essentially it's like health scaling leather-to-chainmail that ignore armor penetration/backstabs?

Bukariin said:

Horkvals can definitely be decent Alchemists.

Oddly enough does the Horkval Resistance stack multiplicative or additive? Because if at later levels Horkval Resistance is equal to or beats Ringmail then that's wonderful
How much does the loss of 1 - 2 potential Int hurt them? I'm sure it messes with Iron damage and Mana, but everything with them looks like it's state based status effects.
It's not going to somehow affect the quality of my Transmuted items, is it?

Sena said:

I forgot about the "inapplicable racial powers" part.

Is there any conflict with Siren and class based pacifism/control related powers?
Are there any flying options that put Atavians to shame?
Mhun and low-light vision?
Also out of curiosity, what exactly makes Headstomp useless?

Thanks for all your help guys.

Florentino

Alternative flying options include 400cr artefact ring of flying (very expensive as a newbie), a flying mount (also difficult as you're not likely to put many lessons in riding early on), and magi/sylvan abilities. In short, it's fantastic for almost all classes. I'm an atavian serpent and I make extremely frequent use of flying abilities.

Sena

I think you're misunderstanding horkval resistance. It doesn't scale with your health or level, it's simply a flat 10% damage reduction. The reason it's different from armour is that resistance applies to the full damage, while armour only applies to part of the damage. Health only matters because it can change how much of an attack is reducible by armour when the attack's damage scales with health (so higher health can make armour worse if the health scaling portion of the damage isn't reduced by armour, or higher health can make armour better if the health scaling portion is reduced by armour).

I'm not 100% sure on siren. Occultists and jesters can give the same effect, but I'm not sure what the balance/restrictions on seduce is, so I'm not sure whether the tarot equivalent is always superior.

There are several classes that have a way to fly, but all of them have a restriction of some kind, so there are still advantages to atavian flying (unless you buy a ring of flying, which is entirely better).

I forgot about Mhun's low-light vision, that is available in vision, but it takes quite a few lessons to get there.

Nikodemus

Uh, for the headstomp part, I understand it's useless because it's almost impossible to score (Enemy needs to be prone and impale or other abilities are much better use of that). Plus it doesn't do all that much damage at all. Basically, no one uses it, ever.

As for flying options, there's also the Chariot Tarot for Jesters and Occultists. Given, you have to actually summon the hellish thing and mount it, it's not nearly as nice as having actual wings, but it's certainly useful.

The low-light vision can also be solved with a myriad of abilities in Elementalism and Tarot, some morphs in Metamorphosis as well.

Aerek

The admin have done a lot of work in recent years to nominalize mechanics so that you actually can choose race based on RP/aesthetics and not gimp yourself. Grooks will have a slight advantage in Magi, and Trolls/Xorans will have a slight advantage as Monks, but the differences aren't as big as you're worried about, no. Anyone can play any class as any race with reasonable success as long as they choose the right stat pack for it.

Unless you're trying to min/max to the extreme and want every last point of your class-favored stat, you're looking more at what Sena was pointing out, that some races have special abilities that may overlap with class abilities. Even in those cases, you're not gimped, just not optimized to the extreme.

Iocun

Yeah. And even if you have some overlapping abilities, there may still be RP reasons to sometimes use one ability, sometimes the other. Unique race abilities aren't ever important enough to force you to go with a specific race/class combination over another, so feel free to really pick your race based on what you think you'd enjoy.

Xith

And definitely pick Mhun. It's bestest.