Race Idea: Mountain Man (naming help needed)

[Schizophrenic]

This is an original race concept so far as I know.  The concept is what's most important to me.  The mechanics are just what seems to make sense to me, and the name, well, I'm horrible at coming up with names.

Race #1

Concept:
The somewhat creepy but wise old mountain man, with a dash of Treebeard and a pinch of sasquatch thrown in for good measure, taken to an extreme, mud style.

Niche:
A stealthy race that is wise, slow, strong and tough, rather than witty, quick, weak and fragile like the rest of the cookie cutter clan.

Description:
A very humanoid, though not human race.  They are very tall, with rangy builds, long arms and legs, and broad shoulders.  They're fairly powerfully built, though not nearly so much as a half ogre.  Their bodies are covered in a very thin, fine, soft, smooth fur, which lays flat to their body, rather than being shaggy.  Their hair grows very thick, long and fine.  A few who spend more time than others in human society may cut it short, but most do not.  Males can range from 8 to 10 feet in height if they stand up completely straight, which they rarely do.  Their facial hair also tends to be very long and fine, growing from much of the face, even from the cheeks.  In their hair and fur, dark and neutral colors predominate, though not exclusively.  Females go from 7 to 9 feet in height.  They share the fine soft fur, but lack the facial hair and stooped stance of the males (because what girl in an rpg wants to be a hairy hunchback?).

Their movements tend to be slow and deliberate.  They are somewhat graceful, but certainly not quick.  While they are intelligent, they are also slow and deliberate of both thought and speech, tending more towards wisdom than wit.  They are independent and aloof, though not unfriendly if a person is patient enough to get to know them.  They are active during the day when necessary, but prefer the quiet and solitude of the night.

Their most unique attribute is that, while apparently fairly numerous, nobody seems to know exactly where they come from, or where they go when they leave.  They simply appear from the forest when they feel a need to enter a human town, and dissappear back into it afterwords.  A hypnotic aura of "I'm not here, don't look at me" seems to emanate from them when they don't feel like being noticed, which is most of the time.  Despite their powerful bodies, they typically defend themselves by vanishing, rather than fighting.  A would-be attacker often finds himself not entirely sure what happened, or where his quarry went, only knowing that they are indeed gone.

Culture:
Though almost completely unknown by the other races, they are a very civilized people, though civilized by their own standards rather than the norms of human-dominated society.  The forest is their preferred home, and their villages are built to blend into nature, such that a person could walk right past one without ever seeing it if nobody drew their attention to it.  A typical village will have growers as well as hunters and gatherers.  They prefer simple clothing, some of woven materials and some of leather, chosen generally for comfort, ease of movement, and ability to blend in without attracting attention to one's self.  Many of them practice magic, usually, though not exclusively, of the druidic or priestly variety.

Stats and Abilities:

Strength:     (50 to 120)
Intellect:      (40 to 100)
Willpower:   (50 to 120)
Agility:         (30 to 70) - (30 to 80?)  Too much, or not?
Health:        (50 to 110)
Charm:        (30 to 80)
(Total CP = 1290)
Racial Stealth
Night Vision

Notes:
Agility is low, to prevent it from being overpowered in combat.  Half Ogres, Kangs, Dwarves and Half Orcs should all remain superior melee races.  The intent is to bring stealth to the table in a big-race package, just for variety's sake.

So.. thoughts?

[Edit:  Added notes about culture, some details to the physical description, and Animal's suggested agility change.]

[Krusty]

Jeremiah Johnson

[The Crazy Animal]

I'd probably say something to lines of woodwose for a name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodwose

Its a fairly similar creature idea to me.

The stats are solid enough and I see this would be a fairly usable race.. Although I'm not sure how much use of stealth it could make with the low agility if it was paired with a non-stealth class. If I were to make one stat change I'd probably bring agility up just a little maybe to 75-80 on the max side but I wouldn't go any higher with it. However this is mostly because 50 is considered the game norm in most calculations. If you look at kangs as being fast and half-ogres as slow it would still fall in the middle of the two.

It might be interesting to give it some type of better hide ability too which would be fairly unique. Perhaps more difficult to find on a search or better chance of hiding per its stats. This would be more usefull to it if the agil stays at 70.

[Schizophrenic]

I checked out your link.  The concept does seem similar, but it is also different.  The woodwoses as described there appear to be more of a wilderness savage type of human/neanderthal.  What I am describing is a seperate race, not human, though humanoid, which is very civilized in it's own way, just not in the typical big-city human kind of way.  For comparison, look at the Night-Elf culture from World of Warcraft.

Regarding Agility:  I just don't want the non-sneaking melees getting their toes stepped on.  If, at 80 agility, there were still plenty of reason for people to play dwarves and kangs, it wouldn't be a problem.  That's the only real issue.  Yes, the low agility would impact hiding and sneaking.  The idea of a special hide skill would be interesting, how would it work, and would see-hidden still work against it?  Consider that it's a factor of mental compulsion, not merely a requirement of good eyesight.. Hmmmmm...

http://www.wowwiki.com/Image:Malfurion2.jpg
Visually speaking, good old Malfurion here could be similar to what I'm talking about if he lost the horns and gained some fur. 

Note, by the way,  that I'm talking about animal-like fur, that's short and lays flat to the body.  I'm not talking about just really hairy humans as in the wild-man pictures.

[The Crazy Animal]

The descriptions on the page were more to what I was talking about.

A woodwose is described in Konungs skuggsj? (Speculum Regale or "the King's Mirror"), written in Norway around 1250:

"It had the human shape, however, in every detail, both as to hands and face and feet; but the entire body was covered with hair as the beasts are, and down the back it had a long coarse mane like that of a horse, which fell to both sides and trailed along the ground when the creature stooped in walking."

As for being civilized everyone had to start somewhere. Not that I want to argue but in the grand theme of things differing cultures often regard eachother as savages even if they are not.

I kind of like the horns on Malfurion btw probably would look cool furry too.

Regarding Agility:  I just don't want the non-sneaking melees getting their toes stepped on.  If, at 80 agility, there were still plenty of reason for people to play dwarves and kangs, it wouldn't be a problem.  That's the only real issue.  Yes, the low agility would impact hiding and sneaking.  The idea of a special hide skill would be interesting, how would it work, and would see-hidden still work against it?  Consider that it's a factor of mental compulsion, not merely a requirement of good eyesight.. Hmmmmm...

If 80 comes out to be to high then we could back them down to 75 with not much of a problem. Even if the stats get close there are other reasons to be a dwarf like that +enc%. As for kang you can't forget that +5ac and poison immunity too.

As far as mechanics go it would probably just be a modifying factor to the normal hide calculations all the rest of the rules regarding them would be the same. However it would be intresting to have something that goes beyond see hidden even though I'm not sure it thats really needed.

[Schizophrenic]

I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you on this.  On weekends, though, there are other things to occupy my time and attention.

"It had the human shape, however, in every detail, both as to hands and face and feet; but the entire body was covered with hair as the beasts are, and down the back it had a long coarse mane like that of a horse, which fell to both sides and trailed along the ground when the creature stooped in walking."

This is part of what I was referring to, when I said it was similar yet still different from what I was imagining.  Rather than long shaggy hair like a horse's mane, I'm talking about short, smooth deer-like fur.  I'm still thinking about the antlers thing.. the right kind actually could look pretty cool...  Also, except for being big and hairy, the woodwose still essentially is a human, while I'm talking about something more exotic.

Anyway, some mechanics thoughts: 
Hiding.  Under the category of really awesome though potentially overpowered, the ability to hide during combat.  This race can attempt, instead of fighting, to mentally focus and vanish from view. 

The way it could work in-game would be like this:  A person is in combat, and decides they want to flee, so they "hide".  This initiates an effect with a two round timer, that does the following: 

1)  Their combat is instantly ended, whether they succeed or fail.  They cannot initiate combat with anyone for the two round duration, though they can still move around (and maybe cast non-evil-in-combat spells).  The storyline reason for combat is this:  They're trying to get away, not keep banging with their opponent.  The game mechanic reason is so that a player cannot abuse it by repeatedly backstabbing, or if they do, they'll be losing combat rounds to do it, and not come out ahead in the equation.

2)  Anyone targetting them during this duration acquires an accuracy and spellcasting penalty based upon the level of the person trying to hide.  The storyline reason behind this is that, even if the hider does not succeed in totally vanishing from view, he is still able to partially disrupt the concentration of anyone attempting to kill him, making it harder for them to mentally focus while trying to cast spells, aim weapons and generally try to do bad things to the hider.  The game mechanics reason is that if you give yourself a 2 round no-combat lag in pvp, and don't succeed, you're dead, unless the other guy is slowed down at least a little bit.  Having played DAoC, I don't like abilities which guarantee either win or loss depending on whether they succeed or fail a dice roll.  Chance for success should be fairly high, since nobody will live long enough to try it more than a couple times in pvp.

[The Crazy Animal]

I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you on this.  On weekends, though, there are other things to occupy my time and attention.

Don't worry about it.

This is part of what I was referring to, when I said it was similar yet still different from what I was imagining.  Rather than long shaggy hair like a horse's mane, I'm talking about short, smooth deer-like fur.  I'm still thinking about the antlers thing.. the right kind actually could look pretty cool...  Also, except for being big and hairy, the woodwose still essentially is a human, while I'm talking about something more exotic.

I guess it depends on what you qualify beast like hair as. I know the idea of a horse like mane kind of gives the idea of long hair but thats just down the back rather then the whole body. Not a big issue for me just kind of liked the sound of the name so I'm not going to push it if you don't think it fits.

Anyway, some mechanics thoughts: 
Hiding.  Under the category of really awesome though potentially overpowered, the ability to hide during combat.  This race can attempt, instead of fighting, to mentally focus and vanish from view. 

I like the premise of it but I don't see it fitting real well with the slow and deliberate movements you mentioned in the description. Not to mention the huge disadvantage that hiding in battle without being able to attack would put the player at. Now strategically withdrawing from the the room into a hidden state would be a much better option but still you have the icky mess of the round counter. Which would still put them at a disadvantage to players or mobs jumping on the opportunity to pumble them for 2 rounds with out a defence if they failed to hide.

Now as far as vanishing from view I would consider that more of an invisibility ability and we have come up with rules to go along with that already. Invisibility would act as a superhidden state where the player could take no actions, any action initiated by the player other then looking around would cancel the invisibility state. This means you can't BS from it and you can't communicate from it but as long as you stay still no one can (search) find you or engage you in combat. However if I were to give something like this to a race I would probably go for a race that has maybe high wisdom 60-140 range and low health because I'd look at this as a survival ability for a race that isn't necessarily cut out for prolonged or heavy combat.

What we have in terms of stats for the suggested race though is a race that could stand on its own two feet in combat even if it would rather vanish. So I'd still probably just go with mechanics that alter the abillity succeed or be to detected with in the normal functions of stealth. And I'd back that up with their slow and deliberate steps and that bit about the hypnotic aura of I'm not here.