An overhaul of races: let us choose our parents

[pentagruel]

If you read the description of a half-orc, it says its a result of an orc raid on a human village.  A half-ogre is part ogre part orc.  A half elf is part elf part human.  I was thinking of designing a dual race system, where there are a certain number of primary races, and then you choose two of them to be your parents.

Idea for races:

Human
Elf
Orc
Dwarf
Guant
Nekojin
Ogre
Kang
gnome
Perhaps 1-2 more
(maybe d-elf, but elf/delf seem too similar).

Each of the above races would have certain starting stats/max stats, and when you pick your two parents, you get the average of their stats.  The abilities would go according to say your mother, and i guess the exp chart would follow the mother line (to coincide with the abilities). 

This would greatly increase the variety in the game without having to come up with 30+new races.  If you start with 10 base races, you could have almost 100 possibilities.

[Rhinehold]

This is a very creative and original idea that I like.

Unfortunately the amount of coding that would have to be done to achieve this is fairly big, at least in my opinion.

REALLY good idea though.

-DR

[pentagruel]

This is a very creative and original idea that I like.

Unfortunately the amount of coding that would have to be done to achieve this is fairly big, at least in my opinion.

REALLY good idea though.

-DR

I cant imagine something like this would be hard to code.  Once we make up the races, putting them together should be elementary.  Maybe Im wrong, could we get some comment from dc/vitoc?

[Darmius]

If momma was a gnome and daddy was an ogre... there are going to be some seriously messed up family history that would impart a large amount of mental scaring on your new character.

[pentagruel]

If momma was a gnome and daddy was an ogre... there are going to be some seriously messed up family history that would impart a large amount of mental scaring on your new character.

i was thinking of say restricting some of the combinations.  Like, ogre cant have kids with halfling or gnome, hehe, on the other hand, there is always rape.

[geeogree]

I say if you want to make strange combos then so be it.... your character might get screwed up in the process :P

I like this idea. It would allow you to combine traits from 2 races that you want for a certain class or pick both the same and take advantage of a single bonus.

I think it would add a LOT more to the game that wasn't there before. It might even make certain classes more playable than before (thief) depending on what sorts of bonuses there are.

[Rhinehold]

You could make sure that all the bonuses are numerically even numbers, then just halve them, or odd, and third them for combining races.

-DR

[pentagruel]

So it seems like there is a fair bit of support for my idea, so Ill try to start with basic guidelines for player stats:
I decided to make the base stats to add up to 240, except for ogre, which is a little lower as a result of the extremely high str/health.  In particular, I weighed the stats as follows:  start with 40,  if you add 10 points, it costs 10 "cps", if you add 20, to get 60, it costs 30 "cps", if you have 70 base stat, it costs 60 "cps".
Here are some race ideas:

S      A   I   W  H  C Human   40   40  40   40  40   40            100 100 100 100 100 100 Dwarf    50   30   30   60  50  20            110   90  90  120 110 80    Kang     60   30   30   50  50  20            120   90  90  110 110 80 Orc        50  40   30   40  60  20            110  100 90  100 120 80 Elf         30  50   50   30  20  60             90  110 110  90  80 120 Ogre      70  20   20   20  70  20            150  60   70   70 150 60 Nekojin  40  60   40   20  30  50            100 130 100  80  80 110

Im tired, gonna post some more races up later.

[DeathCow]

I do like the idea.  But ..

If you think about starting a new character...right now its like choose your race then choose your class..fairly straight forward, would we change the options to be choose your mommy, choose your daddy, choose your class?

There is an option, which was the first thing I thought of...to allow mixed races, but only as the spawn of Player characters.

Anywho thats just details, we would probably be better served coming up how stats should work.  I'd personally prefer to coming up with stats and abilities for each mixture rather than having it automated, that would mean removing the current half races, or at least renaming them.(like you already seem to have done, half-elves could simply be renamed to grey elves, and have a new history written for them).

As for changes in coding I can't see this being too overly difficult, one option would just to have a gamete 1, gamete 2 ability listed with each race, so that to be a human, you'd have gamete 1 1, gamete 2 1, to be an elf you'd have gamete 1 4, gamete 2 4, and to be a half-elf either gamete 1 1, gamete 2 4 or gamete 1 4, gamete 2 1.

First I'd like to work out the naming convientions, or just pick names for all the possible hybrid races.

[Gardner Denver]

I like the idea.  Perhaps we could implement something along the lines of, say you picked a hog as yer daddy and a halfling as yer momma.  You won't want the char to have 150 str AND 150 agil....  Well ok, YOU would, but we wouldn't heh...

Perhaps something along these lines though.  Since  your mixing types, you don't get the full amount of any of them.  Take the hog/halfling example.  Hog str maxes at 150, halfling at 60.  That's 90 points difference.  Take half of that, or 45, add it to the max of the weaker race, and your hogling can have 105 strength and 105 agility.  Perhaps on the strongest stats per race you get less than half, maybe 1/3.  That still gives your hogling 90 str and 90 agility. 

[DeathCow]

I was thinking of something more like an average of the two stats.

[Grim]

I am in total agreement with that, DC. An avg would be the fairest way to do it. I really like this idea and feel it should be implemented.

[Rhinehold]

In every situation in gaming there is always a balance.  You give something to get something.

Example: You pick a Hogre for the strength and health, but you will lack in crits, and many other areas due to low stats.

If the whole idea to blending the races is to achieve a more perfect character there should be a point to going blended, versus pure.  There should be both a benefit AND a draw back, other wise we are not just creating blended characters, we are, in effect, redoing all the races with the intention of deleting the old ones.

Thoughts?

-DR

[The Crazy Animal]

You could work it in as a reroll option rather then just a pick a father/mother thing... I.e. last race you had plus a new pick. Then perhaps have a small bonus for doing so like rather then 10% you keep 15% exp. You take an avg stats and perhaps random skills from the two and then in the long run it would then add to realm diversity and replay value.

[pentagruel]

I was thinking of something more like an average of the two stats.

I said in the first post, your stats would get the average of the 2 parents.  So if you choose ogre/halfling, your stats would be averaged.  The issue that needs to be addressed are how the abilities are distributed.  An easy way would be your abilities/exp+ go according to the mother.  So you will just get the abilities of one parent and your exp% will come from same race.