chequers wrote:If you want to play a glass cannon with good weapon and spell skills but poor defense, consider Tengu or Merfolk.
If you want to play a warrior that can cast a few spells, consider Hill Orc or Human.
If you want to play a mage that can make a passable attempt at fighting, try Deep Elf or Halfling.
Except that this is wrong. Halflings are terrible as mages now so that is just flat out wrong it doesn't even require explaining maybe you meant kobold.
Tengu have worse HP (which is one of the two most important starting traits) AND lose a slot AND have trouble filling another slot AND they are fucking awful at charms, hexes, translocations and tramutations. Claiming they replace a High Elf is assinine. Merfolk don't have poor defense, they have excellent dodge Apt and normal HP nor are they good "glass cannons" they bad conjurations and are only passable at ice magic conjurations.
Neither of these species replace High Elf they each have VERY large weaknesses. High Elves served as a happy medium between the two, you can play a skald and still be a good conjurer without the seriously crappy drawbacks of Tengu or Deep Elves while also not having the absolutely horrible armor apt of Merfolk. Claiming -10% HP is minor while putting together entire lists of ranking the species from best to worst mostly based on speed and starting HP is so incredibly out of whack I am rather amazed.
The game is meant to have emergent gameplay, that is why there are sometimes somewhat fine gradations between species. Both Merfolk and Tengu have very large negative apts in things High Elves either have a minor -1 or an actual positive score in. Additionaly High Elves have much better stats than either one. If you want to play a skald with heavier armor a High Elf is MUCH better than either a Tengu or a merfolk.
They each have their tradeoffs. High Elves can be a magic enhanced fighter and conjurer at the same time. Tengu suck at being a magic enhanced fighter. Merfolk are poor, although doable, as a conjurer. Tengu are good at armor but suck at being a skald. Merfolk suck at armor but are good at being a skald. High Elf are passable at armor and good at skald and have the high stats to actually leverage heavier armor that neither of the other two species have. The cost of this is that HE are the worst at using pets/necro.
How are people just blithely passing over the gigantic downsides of two of the species that claim, wrongly, replace HE?
As for claiming humans can do some job HE can do? Seriously? Human are meant to be versatile, they can passably do anything, that is the whole frigging point. And how the hell are you putting Human and HO is the same category? The logic is so twisted you could have put every damn species in that category. Every species can be a warrior with a little spellcasting. I have done it with Op.