Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

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cowboy
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Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by cowboy »

There are way too many wild elves and hardly anyone doing any of the RP tropes around wild elves. They should be inflated like the other "wild races" to a minor reward; wild elves are the least numerous and geographically most isolated group of elves from the rest.

Ghostwise Halflings are also one of the wild races and are racially isolationist. They are as a race essentially undertaking a vow of silence and few if any ever leave the geographic region where they dwell.

Adventurers are obviously breaking from the norm, but, like after meeting 30 or so people who know little to nothing of wild elves/ghostwise playing them very likely for their mechanical stats alone and the inconsistency with the other "wild races" that we have (forest gnome, wild dwarf) in the reward sync - I at least would like to see that.

I don't mean to be some lore snob but its just goofy.

(also they probably should be taken back to the drawing board and shot for their outrageous gains and re-balanced - but a minor reward would keep slightly reduced)
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Zavandar »

my name is zavandar, and this is my favorite post in the feedback forum

wild elves especially are very strong and deserving of a reward requirement just for that. when compared to forest gnome, which DOES require a minor, it's a little boggling
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Dr. B »

Zavandar wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 1:50 am my name is zavandar, and this is my favorite post in the feedback forum
For the the record, it begins with "I'm Commander Shepard," not "My name is Commander Shepard".
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

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f
Intelligence is too important
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Exordius »

Which Shepard? You have like several Commander Shepard's to my knowledge. The one from Stargate, the one from Mass Effect, the one from Halflife, and im pretty sure there were a few more. All of them are awesome in their own way.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Archnon »

cowboy wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 1:44 am Adventurers are obviously breaking from the norm, but, like after meeting 30 or so people who know little to nothing of wild elves/ghostwise playing them very likely for their mechanical stats alone and the inconsistency with the other "wild races" that we have (forest gnome, wild dwarf) in the reward sync - I at least would like to see that.
I agree with part of this. I think playing the wild, reclusive races on Arelith is really really difficult to RP and counter to much of the RP philosophy. So in the end, I don;t begrudge a wild elf in cordor, anymore than a wild dwarf in Brog or a svirfneblin in andunor. In the end, the point is to RP. Could they act a little more reclusive, maybe. But that can be a real turn off for people.

However, their stats/gains are pretty much a head above most other races with no ECL penalty, and I think consistency could help with numbers.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Eira »

As a player of both subraces, I would rather have them be locked under an award. The amount of people that do not do any sort of basic reading of culture is pretty demoralizing. There's so much that could be done with it.

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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Quidix »

For Wild Elves (which I tend to encounter far more often that Ghostwise hins):

I agree. The problem is that it's a very powerful race - make it in line with other races (at least remove the random +1 AC which is just unnecessary).
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Aniel »

Personally I think wild elves are very strong in that they can keep up with other very strong races such as human and dwarf. I also think the reason why you see a disproportionate amount of wild elves is because people want to play elves, but elves as a whole tend to be pretty weak or below average. If the other elves were brought up to match human/dwarf/wild elf then I imagine there'd be a more healthy representation of a variety of elves.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by CptJonas »

Quidix wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 9:40 am For Wild Elves (which I tend to encounter far more often that Ghostwise hins):

I agree. The problem is that it's a very powerful race - make it in line with other races (at least remove the random +1 AC which is just unnecessary).
That wouldnt help much....reason why its played is that thx to + str -2 con its strongest WM base race on server...

Only other easy acces race which is similar or even more powerfull for WM curently is wild dwarf which is actualy reward race...
(but once falchion is added it would lose its apeal and wild elf will be true WM master race right behind minotaur which is Major reward)
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by CptJonas »

Aniel wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:22 am Personally I think wild elves are very strong in that they can keep up with other very strong races such as human and dwarf. I also think the reason why you see a disproportionate amount of wild elves is because people want to play elves, but elves as a whole tend to be pretty weak or below average. If the other elves were brought up to match human/dwarf/wild elf then I imagine there'd be a more healthy representation of a variety of elves.
Dwarfs are actualy nearly same power level to elves...
They lose less usable stat for many builds which dont dip pala....and have option to take subrace which lose dex insted which opens even cha based builds to them...

But elves have bonus to Dex which is for many builds better then con bonus (Con is nice...yeah..but its allways secondary atribute)
And have subrace which have +2 Int which is only non reward option for it...
Curently elves are stronger race then dwarfs thx to base/Sun/Wild combo which gives you acces to 3 major attribute bonuses Dex/Int/Str...

And lets not talk about human master race....they are problem...we know about it...
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Aniel »

CptJonas wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:31 am
Aniel wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:22 am Personally I think wild elves are very strong in that they can keep up with other very strong races such as human and dwarf. I also think the reason why you see a disproportionate amount of wild elves is because people want to play elves, but elves as a whole tend to be pretty weak or below average. If the other elves were brought up to match human/dwarf/wild elf then I imagine there'd be a more healthy representation of a variety of elves.
Dwarfs are actualy nearly same power level to elves...
They lose less usable stat for many builds which dont dip pala....and have option to take subrace which lose dex insted which opens even cha based builds to them...

But elves have bonus to Dex which is for many builds better then con bonus (Con is nice...yeah..but its allways secondary atribute)
And have subrace which have +2 Int which is only non reward option for it...
Curently elves are stronger race then dwarfs thx to base/Sun/Wild combo which gives you acces to 3 major attribute bonuses Dex/Int/Str...

And lets not talk about human master race....they are problem...we know about it...
Sure, let's walk through this then.

Human is a good baseline. +1 feat, +33 skill points. A solid race that works for about anything.
Sun elves lose a feat and 2 con (read: 30 hp and 1 fort) for keen senses. They remain skill point neutral. If you're building as a wizard you also happen to get +1 on spell DC which I'm uncertain if that's particularly impactful. There's also the moonblade.
Shield dwarves gain +2 con (read: 30 hp and +1 fort, this is actually better than toughness and is effectively a bonus feat), a variety of bonuses in different situations, and most importantly they gain +2 on saves vs. spells, effectively +2 uni. So you end up feat neutral except you have +1 fort and you trade 33 skill points for +2 uni. That's not so bad at all. There's also the dwarven runeaxe.

You can do charisma dwarf just fine with gold dwarf.

Moon elf and wood elf are situationally alright, they trade a feat, 30 hp, 1 fort and 33 skill points for keen senses, +1 ab and a few other minor benefits depending on their exact pick.

Wild elves manage to hold themselves up by remaining feat neutral, gaining +2 dex, +1 ac, and keen senses while only paying for it with -66 skill points. In the quest to qualify for expertise however they tend to end up gifting intelligence instead of constitution which in a way is -30 hp and -1 fort in exchange for their benefits.

It's for these that I think most elves are weak and wild elves standout by being most comparable to humans and dwarves.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by CptJonas »

Aniel wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:45 am
CptJonas wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:31 am
Aniel wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:22 am Personally I think wild elves are very strong in that they can keep up with other very strong races such as human and dwarf. I also think the reason why you see a disproportionate amount of wild elves is because people want to play elves, but elves as a whole tend to be pretty weak or below average. If the other elves were brought up to match human/dwarf/wild elf then I imagine there'd be a more healthy representation of a variety of elves.
Dwarfs are actualy nearly same power level to elves...
They lose less usable stat for many builds which dont dip pala....and have option to take subrace which lose dex insted which opens even cha based builds to them...

But elves have bonus to Dex which is for many builds better then con bonus (Con is nice...yeah..but its allways secondary atribute)
And have subrace which have +2 Int which is only non reward option for it...
Curently elves are stronger race then dwarfs thx to base/Sun/Wild combo which gives you acces to 3 major attribute bonuses Dex/Int/Str...

And lets not talk about human master race....they are problem...we know about it...
Sure, let's walk through this then.

Human is a good baseline. +1 feat, +33 skill points. A solid race that works for about anything.
Sun elves lose a feat and 2 con (read: 30 hp and 1 fort) for keen senses. They remain skill point neutral. If you're building as a wizard you also happen to get +1 on spell DC which I'm uncertain if that's particularly impactful. There's also the moonblade.
Shield dwarves gain +2 con (read: 30 hp and +1 fort, this is actually better than toughness and is effectively a bonus feat), a variety of bonuses in different situations, and most importantly they gain +2 on saves vs. spells, effectively +2 uni. So you end up feat neutral except you have +1 fort and you trade 33 skill points for +2 uni. That's not so bad at all. There's also the dwarven runeaxe.

You can do charisma dwarf just fine with gold dwarf.

Moon elf and wood elf are situationally alright, they trade a feat, 30 hp, 1 fort and 33 skill points for keen senses, +1 ab and a few other minor benefits depending on their exact pick.

Wild elves manage to hold themselves up by remaining feat neutral, gaining +2 dex, +1 ac, and keen senses while only paying for it with -66 skill points. In the quest to qualify for expertise however they tend to end up gifting intelligence instead of constitution which in a way is -30 hp and -1 fort in exchange for their benefits.

It's for these that I think most elves are weak and wild elves standout by being most comparable to humans and dwarves.
Thing is...all bonuses and gifts are usefull for maxing atributes...and noone is maxing CON...
If you build for example WM, you will need to to have high STR, and INT and DEX on 13 (in curent meta you would actualy go for atleast 14 int)....

So even as human/dwarf/elf you would not benefit from bonus CON bcs cost in point will be same for all...bcs you will not have higher con then 14 (before gift) anyway. (on human aray is curently 17/13/14/14 in STR/DEX/CON/INT)...

And on wild elf....you can go...19/13/12/14 which is objectivly better then later bcs WM benefit more from bonus AB, Damage, Then from 30 hp and 1 fort save (both are realy not thing you are worried about in that build...you have around 400+hp and 36+ fort anyways....more likely more of both)

And on another look...dwarf can go 17/13/16/14 which is cool...but point still remains...Main attribute is allways better then secondary...and con is allways secondary....its usefull to everyone....but its not main focus for anyone....

Dwarfs are actualy realy above elves just in 2 things.....Barbarian/EDR builds and SS.....one bcs you want high con....other one bcs you can go 16/18/16 STR/CON/INT before gifts and get to 18/18/18 after gifts....
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Ork »

comparing elves to dwarves isn't the point of this thread. Wild Elves are being over-represented in the population of elves & that's effecting the roleplay environment - which is a fair thing to argue about. I agree that these should be reward races & the reasoning is exactly why we have reward races to begin with.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by malcolm_mountainslayer »

cowboy wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 1:44 am There are way too many wild elves and hardly anyone doing any of the RP tropes around wild elves. They should be inflated like the other "wild races" to a minor reward; wild elves are the least numerous and geographically most isolated group of elves from the rest.

Ghostwise Halflings are also one of the wild races and are racially isolationist. They are as a race essentially undertaking a vow of silence and few if any ever leave the geographic region where they dwell.

Adventurers are obviously breaking from the norm, but, like after meeting 30 or so people who know little to nothing of wild elves/ghostwise playing them very likely for their mechanical stats alone and the inconsistency with the other "wild races" that we have (forest gnome, wild dwarf) in the reward sync - I at least would like to see that.

I don't mean to be some lore snob but its just goofy.

(also they probably should be taken back to the drawing board and shot for their outrageous gains and re-balanced - but a minor reward would keep slightly reduced)
So I agree about wild elves

But, I am really confused about ghostwise halflings, which according to arelith wiki are extremely common and its the default halfling stats, where is this random ac?
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by cowboy »

Ghostwise halflings don't actually have any mechanical benefits beyond I think maybe animal language and not leaving tracks.

Ghostwise halflings do not, canonically, really leave the region they are from. They are also psionic and communicate with one another in a hive mind because they have a vow of silence. They're atoning for what was effectively a Malar corruption of their subrace and the race war that came about because of it.

The reason why there are three halfling subraces, basically, is because of Ghostwise halflings. In the current timeline they are basically living in a specific forest and staying away from everyone else. Adventurers from among their race are probably fairly rare (though obviously not impossible, how else would you get to be half-pint Conan?)

---

The idea is just in the case of Ghostwise; they are a "ungah bungah wild" version of halflings, a rare subrace because they are geographically VERY far from Arelith.

Wild elves might be a bit closer, but, are also a fairly rare subrace. Where they exist are mostly in untouched forest, mountain rangers, jungles - they're nomads and in general stay away from other races. The only population of wild elves "close" to Arelith are on Evermeet.

It's weird that Forest Gnomes and Wild Dwarves are restricted, but these are not - and they really should be to help with the appearance that they're semi-rare as well as counter the fact they have some very "juicy" bonuses in the case of Wild Elves.

I am also not trying to come at this from the position of Dr. RP POLICE ESQ, its just its kind lame at how common the wild elves are on the server and how very rarely they are even roleplayed as that. Part of that is ignorance (which is okay! we aren't all wkis or .pdf files), but I think its just because of how mechanically potent they are for some specific builds. They're basically a better version of the moon elf.

Both beyond their mechanical weirdness; I think wild races should be given a reward tier to help artificially lower their appearance.

If wild elves don't mechanically change they should probably be a normal reward.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Drogo Gyslain »

Eira wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 9:35 am As a player of both subraces, I would rather have them be locked under an award. The amount of people that do not do any sort of basic reading of culture is pretty demoralizing. There's so much that could be done with it.
As having started and played as a Wild Elf, I have mixed emotions about this and I both agree, and disagree at the same time with many of the other statements but above all else this rings true to me.

I created and played from her start as a very odd, quirky but different Wild Elf. I took a lot of source description from the days she started to really mold and craft her into her own being. She was always a unique, special character to me that i did take some very unique roleplay liberties with. Should she maybe have been played more as a Moon Elf instead of a Wild Elf? Possibly, but at the same time it always comes down to one thing:

Your skills as a roleplayer.

I've seen Good Roleplay from unconventional characters, and I've seen people play races like stereotypical cookie cutters at the same time. It all comes down to, "Do you have what it takes to create a good story".

I don't think that by locking more races behind the Prestige line would achieve that however. If anything it would really stunt the growth of further player bases because Sun Elves and Moon Elves have such dynamically opposed playstyles as it is, a Wild Elf really gives a flexibility to have a 3rd option without being just another mold form character. Having Wood elves behind the wall totally makes sense too.

But beyond a roleplay sense... If you want to consider the demographics...

Elves aren't all that populous in general. There are far, far more Elves on Arelith than you would ever find in Faerûn normally anyway. And that's ok. Because at the end of the day, Good roleplay trumps 100% cohesion with source material. This is our story and really I think putting more races behind the prestige wall is not necessary.

Now if we wanted to make further races of Elves available like Sea Elves, then I could totally see those being behind Prestige walls with Wood Elves.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by JubJub »

Putting the wild elf / ghostwise halfling as a reward race doesn't mean people will play them better. It just means they will need to spend a reward. Which I am guessing would just be a minor or normal at the most, not hard to get. If it's they need to rp it better then you will need to get DM approval maybe 30 rp rating, or an application. Which seems like an awful big hassle for just a wild elf or ghostwise halfling.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Ork »

It will however limit their numbers - which is what OP is suggesting.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Drogo Gyslain »

Ork wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 2:28 pm It will however limit their numbers - which is what OP is suggesting.
Simply limiting the numbers because it doesn't fit with Existing Source Material, for the sake of adhering to source material, is not a good reason though.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Ork »

Drogo Gyslain wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 3:13 pm
Ork wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 2:28 pm It will however limit their numbers - which is what OP is suggesting.
Simply limiting the numbers because it doesn't fit with Existing Source Material, for the sake of adhering to source material, is not a good reason though.
And yet that is exactly Arelith's paradigm. Tieflings are limited. Ogres are limited. Wild Dwarves are limited. Why? Because they limit the numbers of these races to more conform with their population in existing source material.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire »

This entire thread is the equivalent of Arelith opening Pandora's box, but if we are going to start caring about what makes sense in relation to forgotten realms I have a long list. One I suspect would make everyone miserable in one way or another by the time I was done :).

Anyways, I have no issues or strong feelings toward the original point of this thread. Wild elves should be rare, the question is does anyone really care enough to make it so? I don't think they are overly powerful personally, giving up Int is as big as giving up Con and all you get is dex in return, which is good but its not strength.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Zavandar »

this here illustrates the biggest problem to me:

Image

Image

one of these races gets 2 bonus stats (+2 dex/con), a bonus feat, and a bonus ac, at the cost of 1 stat reduction (-2 int)

one of these races gets 1 bonus stat (+2 con) and 1 stat reduction (-2 str)

the second one takes the reward
Intelligence is too important
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire »

It only gets plus con because the base elf has con taken away though. So you are basically trading -2 con for -2 intelligence from a moon elf. Which one is more important, especially on arelith where skills are so very important, is highly debatable.


EDIT
that being said, comparing it to a forest gnome it does seem silly that one is locked and the other isn't.
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Re: Please make Wild Elves & Ghostwise Halflings a reward.

Post by Zavandar »

except the wild elf also gets toughness and 1 ac
Intelligence is too important
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