new player species: Giant

[Majang]

Since everyone is presenting ideas for new species these days, I want to throw in my few cents.
Of course giant species have been suggested before, and I grabbed some obvious ideas from those proposals. So here he is, the stupid giant:

Main feature: no intelligence. That's right - we are not talking about abysmally low intelligence here, but no INT value at all. This means that our stupid giant can't read, neither scrolls nor books. His other two base stats are 15 STR and 2 DEX. On the plus side, the giant cannot get below zero in INT, because the value is just not relevant for it. All books it finds just say "this is a book full of written pages". Each scroll just announces itself "as a piece of animal skin with dark lines on it".

Giants can walk through deep water, but slowly.
The giant has a throwing aptitude of +1, and can throw large rocks. Invocations are at +3. All other aptitudes are -2. HP are +30%, MP at -20%. Experience gain and magic resistance like a human. There is no spellcasting and no spell school available for the giant, and no armour, as it cannot wear any body armour, not even scales. It can carry a cloak, a hat, and a scarf. Only large shields can be carried, but they provide less protection than for smaller races (like a normal shield). Penalties for shields are zero with a shields skill of 15. A giant has a very hard skin, starting out with 4AC, and gaining another AC pip every experience level. GDR is 20% to begin with, but it becomes 35 at XL 15. The giant can swing all weapons 1-handed, except for giant club and GSC, which are both 2-handed weapons. Unfortunately, it has no great aptitude for any melee weapon. It likes chucking things.

Every 4 levels another STR is added, plus a STR or DEX chosen by the player every three levels.

Our giant cannot worship gods that require reading - Sif Muna, Vehumet, Kiku. None of the book backgrounds are available from the start menu.

Okay, now pick it apart...

[Lavandula]

So, basically, GrBe with 40% more HP.

[Majang]

Yes I guess it could be recommended for beginners...

[VeryAngryFelid]

I wouldn't call it easy, IMHO it's harder than Fo who can have good EV and at least can use scrolls of enchant weapon/armour etc.

[Majang]

It is easier in the sense that the player has a lot less choices to deal with. Not necessarily easier in the sense that you are more likely to win than with Mi.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It is easier in the sense that the player has a lot less choices to deal with. Not necessarily easier in the sense that you are more likely to win than with Mu.

FTFY.
Yes, it can be fun, I agree.

[Siegurt]

Hm, no remove curse and no identify seem like it'd be pretty annoying.

[Shtopit]

Would this race be just about positioning?

[njvack]

I can kind of get behind a race that doesn't get identify, even if just to see what it would be like. For curses, either the species could be immune, or have an ability to remove them at the cost of some drain. Ash should also reject worship, as scrolls are pretty central to that religion.

[Majang]

Thanks, all, for the pointer to cursed equipment. I certainly didn't intend that to be a feature of the race, but really did not think about that. I like the idea of uncursing equipment paid for by skill drain. Some such solution would be necessary.

Positioning: I'm not sure what you mean by that. Giant would be as fast or slow as most species (10 aut per move), so it should have the usual escape options, except scroll- or spell-induced teleportation. Blink and Tele are also available as egos on jewellery and equipment, and such a giant would look at the ring of teleportation very differently than most other species. That the giant does not have good melee aptitudes would not mean that it could not train a melee weapon. It probably should, it just takes longer. -2 is not exactly terrible. It would probably require the player to make a principled choice and stick with it. But since there is no training of armour or any magical skill, the giant would actually have extra capacities for experience points to be invested.

One could consider to give the giant a malus similar to the 8 LOS of the Barachi; after all, a giant tends to stick out from the crowd...

Thanks also for the note about Ash. Somehow I thought Ash would be a good god for the giant, identifying stuff without the need for scrolls of identification. But Ash does require scrolls to be read, indeed. For now I would rather opt then for adding Ash to the list of gods that are not accessible for the giant. Maybe there are others which I did not think of.

[Fingolfin]

Ash should give cursing and uncursing abilities (not just to Giants)

[Majang]

Ash should give cursing and uncursing abilities (not just to Giants)

Cursing, yes. Uncursing? That would sort of defeat the purpose of Ash, unless it comes with a hefty price.

[Shtopit]

My "positioning" question boils down to: what choices does the player have to make with this race?

Skilling:
-Fighting
-Weapon(s)
-Dodging
-Shield
-Stealth
-Evo?

So you get the choice of melee vs ranged and giant mace vs shield, and that's pretty much it. You can use half the consumables and maybe find a randart with blink. What I am worried about is lack of differentiation among games, especially because I don't see a big difference from troll. That's what I meant with the positioning comment - your in game choices will be very limited, and positioning is almost the only thing left.

Otherwise, I like the idea of a giant race (because sizes don't get used as much as they should, and giant is different from large with immunity to drowning, ensnare, and most sources of constriction). And, in general, the mix of formicid + troll might be fun as a challenge, but I think that, until weapon class differentiation has made some steps forward, it would probably get tiresome after a while.

How about using HP instead of MP, having no MP at all, and being immune to antimagic and MP drain?

[Majang]

My "positioning" question boils down to: what choices does the player have to make with this race?

Skilling:
-Fighting
-Weapon(s)
-Dodging
-Shield
-Stealth
-Evo?

So you get the choice of melee vs ranged and giant mace vs shield, and that's pretty much it. You can use half the consumables and maybe find a randart with blink. What I am worried about is lack of differentiation among games, especially because I don't see a big difference from troll. That's what I meant with the positioning comment - your in game choices will be very limited, and positioning is almost the only thing left.

Otherwise, I like the idea of a giant race (because sizes don't get used as much as they should, and giant is different from large with immunity to drowning, ensnare, and most sources of constriction). And, in general, the mix of formicid + troll might be fun as a challenge, but I think that, until weapon class differentiation has made some steps forward, it would probably get tiresome after a while.

How about using HP instead of MP, having no MP at all, and being immune to antimagic and MP drain?

Okay, now I understand you. You are right about the lack of choices for this species, which I think would be one of its distinctive features, if not the most salient one. The inability to read is of course a disadvantage in many respects, but it also has its perks: Your inventory would be quite uncluttered, allowing you to carry around stuff that others have to leave in a stash. All kinds of evocables would be at your fingertips, and your throwing arsenal could be fearsome. Even if evo is at -2, training this skill would give you a good return with this character.
The choice to make throwing your main offensive option would go well with your inability to enchant your weapons. You can't enchant missiles anyway, and for throwing you don't need a launcher.
I think religion would give you a more impactful choice than for most other players. You could go for the regular enhancer gods, like Makhleb or Chei, but your need for enchanted weapons and equipment might drive you to gifting gods or Gozag.
Stealth does not seem to be an obvious choice for a giant, but the lack of heavy armour would also allow for good returns on this. Particularly if there really is a LOS of 8, good stealth would be costly, but welcome. It may even be a reason to go for Dithmenos as a God.
I was thinking about having no MP for the giant before I made the proposal, but I thought that would take even more gods from the list of available deities. If there is a way to have a species pay in HP what others do in MP, that would be a solution, but I'm afraid that this would make the proposal a lot more complicated than it should be.
Your noted similarity to trolls (I'd have rather thought about Ogres, minus their magic aptitudes) is probably the biggest problem of this proposal. Having three monstrous species competing with each other would eventually lead to one of them being removed, and I'd hate to see either Ogres or Trolls go for this. Then again, there are spriggans, felids, halflings and kobolds on the other side of the spectrum. I think giant's limitations make it unique enough to stand out as a species. The proposal would not have been worth showing here without the INT removal.

[stoneychips]

The giant can swing all weapons 1-handed, except for giant club and GSC, which are both 2-handed weapons. Unfortunately, it has no great aptitude for any melee weapon.

Unless I'm missing something, it wouldn't be tremendously worse in the long run with weapons than an ogre with the current (0.20 stable) attributes. (Just a touch worse with maces, and somewhat worse with polearms. The lack of bonuses to shields would show through more than the weapon training after around Vaults, I'd think -- but then you have a whole lot of natural armor bonus (albeit terrible Dex to start). And it would actually be slightly better with bows and crossbows, assuming everything is -2.

Thematically, I have a rather hard time picturing "good with rocks" along with only 2 Dex, but I'm sure gamey "just gimme ease of play" people will have no problem with that...

Just to be nitpicky, does Vehumet actually "require reading"? I was always under the impression you just got fed spells from some reservoir of knowledge, as that deity doesn't actually provide books. Though they are still spells to be sure.

+3 Invocations is pretty huge, even for something that can't cast book spells. (Which gets to huge damage faster, +1 aptitude with slow-mastery large rocks or +3 Inv with the various smite targeted deity abilities? I don't really know, although I'd just guess rocks might have higher ultimate single target damage?) This would still be quite the bomb with Qaz or TSO I suspect. Not guessing yet if it would be OP or not but I'd definitely drive one that way.

I'm still sort of taken with the idea of one of these giant proposals getting a gimick tactic to make it more flavorful. For example: When do we get to toss around some sheep or creatures of our own, dammit. Quit letting Robin have all the fun...

[Majang]

Unless I'm missing something, it wouldn't be tremendously worse in the long run with weapons than an ogre with the current (0.20 stable) attributes. (Just a touch worse with maces, and somewhat worse with polearms. The lack of bonuses to shields would show through more than the weapon training after around Vaults, I'd think -- but then you have a whole lot of natural armor bonus (albeit terrible Dex to start). And it would actually be slightly better with bows and crossbows, assuming everything is -2.

Right, the aptitudes are not brilliant, but they actually don't stop anything from happening if you want it to happen.

Just to be nitpicky, does Vehumet actually "require reading"? I was always under the impression you just got fed spells from some reservoir of knowledge, as that deity doesn't actually provide books. Though they are still spells to be sure.

Fair enough, technically there is no reading involved. In the old days Vehumet actually came with book gifts, so that is still strong in my mind. In any case, no INT means no spells, with or without reading.

+3 Invocations is pretty huge, even for something that can't cast book spells. (Which gets to huge damage faster, +1 aptitude with slow-mastery large rocks or +3 Inv with the various smite targeted deity abilities? I don't really know, although I'd just guess rocks might have higher ultimate single target damage?) This would still be quite the bomb with Qaz or TSO I suspect. Not guessing yet if it would be OP or not but I'd definitely drive one that way.

The invocations boost is certainly negotiable. I put it in there to give it something exciting to look at on the skills screen. I personally think that the invocations aptitude is quite inconsequential, as for most gods you wouldn't train it beyond 10 anyway. The +1 in throwing I see as much more important to this guy, and having played a dedicated thrower recently I suspect that this would give the giant quite an edge.

I'm still sort of taken with the idea of one of these giant proposals getting a gimick tactic to make it more flavorful. For example: When do we get to toss around some sheep or creatures of our own, dammit. Quit letting Robin have all the fun...

Throwing monsters sounds a bit too strange to me, but what about trampling? You're annoyed about some Yak blocking your access to the next set of stairs? Just push it away! That might come with some doable mechanics. Maybe in exchange for getting invocations down to +1.
Thanks for your feedback!

[tasonir]

So, basically, GrBe with 40% more HP.

Gargoyles have 80% of normal hp, so starting from .8, going up to 1.3 is a 62.5% increase. And if I'm reading the AC part correctly, they'll end up at 30 AC at level 27, which is more than gargoyles get naturally, but without the ability to also wear a body armor on top of that, they'll actually have somewhat less AC.

I'm not sure I really like the no magic/scrolls part. It seems like it'd just force giants to all play very similar to one another, and it definitely pushes them hard towards trog as you now give up nothing...

[Majang]

I'm not sure I really like the no magic/scrolls part. It seems like it'd just force giants to all play very similar to one another, and it definitely pushes them hard towards trog as you now give up nothing...

I don't think so. The lack of reliable AC in the early game makes berserking a somewhat iffy proposition. I would certainly try to start out with Trog, but would probably find that that gets me killed rather often, and then look for different options. Chei comes to mind, as his extra powers will help to kill monsters fast before they can hurt me.
From the mid-game onwards giant will feel much more like a tank, but by that time the god-choice will already have been made, and I think not very often in favour of Trog.

[tasonir]

I'm not sure chei would be a good choice when you can't blink (either from the scroll or the spell - uncontrolled blinks through evocations are possible) or teleport and you completely waste the +15 int effect. Early teleports are usually very important for escaping from things while you are building piety, and with no ability to cast you're losing 1/3 of chei's (passive) benefits.

It would be about the only way to get decent EV on a giant, but that seems like it might not be enough to justify the cost. I'd totally do chei if giants could cast spells, though.

[stoneychips]

Throwing monsters sounds a bit too strange to me, but what about trampling? You're annoyed about some Yak blocking your access to the next set of stairs? Just push it away! That might come with some doable mechanics. Maybe in exchange for getting invocations down to +1.

Oh, the tossing sheep was a feature someone had suggested for a Cyclops race based on Polyphemus. I still have an itch to see that put in someplace!

Although trample/push sounds rather fun, too. It might be a good thematic, somewhat useful attack that would make more flavor sense than super high invocations. I imagine it'd be more useful against slower, low-EV, and perhaps large to giant targets. And it could be fun if you could make them ram other monsters, either simply by being adjacent or pushing them into solid terrain.

Kind of dubious on how survivable the whole concept is myself... But it's definitely an interesting start. I'd probably mix up the skills table a little more, if only because seeing species with strings of the same numbers for everything sort of nags me.