byrel wrote:Troll monks have decent dodging scaling (because they start with a decent amount of dex and will never suffer from too heavy of armour), great shield scaling, and have gained a lot of midgame armour options since I first started playing. Three years ago, I'd have agreed with your assessment. Now... they're really not stuck in robes very often at all. And of course, there's the obvious point that +30% HP, 3 AC and regen is a lot of defense in and of itself.
(I know that large size decreases dodging returns, but it's only by 1/11th; you still get good returns if you have good dex. Monks start with decent dex and end up with good dex as you raise it.)
Combine that with starting with an excellent endgame weapon and having an easy game till your god is fully online, and you really don't have a weak race at all.
"Not weak" isn't the same as "newbie freindly" although maybe we should define what that is, for me that means "doing the most obvious thing with no in depth knowledge of the game isn't too counterproductive" and "is somewhat forgiving when common newbie mistakes are made"
Monks don't get *any* immediate or obvious advantages, and using their advantage (without an in-depth knowledge of what gods do) isn't something a novice will immediately or obviously understand, much less be able to take advantage of.
Trolls get a great weapon good hps, and bad defense out of the gate, newbies tend to die a lot by charging in and dying because they don't understand basic tactics, trolls provide nothing to soften that at all, with halfway decent tactics trolls are pretty strong, with *bad* tactics they're weaker than another race that can at least wear body armour.
If you're going to start a newbie with a troll, TrFi at least goes somewhat of the way towards helping with that, as you pair their excellent starting weapon with some SH defense, TrBe pairs their offense at the start with berserk, which at least is a way to reduce the damage taken by using bad tactics (although it's obviously a dangerous tool for newbies to use before they understand it). TrHu is also not a bad newbie background, because throwing stones at stuff to kill things in the early D actually encourages better tactics, and also helps prevent some of the damage you'd otherwise suffer from charging in. TrMo starts with..... a slightly higher dex that gives them maybe 1 more point of EV to start, which will not do anything to help soften early bad decisions.
Troll isn't a terrible newbie race, but it's not awesome either, it's maybe somewhat above average, Mo is a terrible starting newbie background, it gives no guidance and no obvious and immediate path to success for a newbie to follow, and gives them no advantages they can use to soften the blow of early tactical mistakes out of the box. None of that says that TrMo is a *weak combo* (no troll is actually *weak*, I guess maybe if you don't attack with melee), it's just that newbies don't understand how to safely take advantage of the strengths and weaknesses inherent in a TrMo start.
You have to remember that new players rarely make it *to* the lair, their entire game experience is D:1-7 or so, getting to the temple is a milestone, getting into the lair is pretty much the graduation from "novice" to "inexperienced player" in that context, of course trolls will be in robes the entire time, getting a shield from the ground is pretty uncommon, and finding your preferred god is by no means guaranteed, and you certainly aren't going to be able get a lot of use out them yet.
Once you're an "inexperienced player" you should have enough knowledge that branching out into all different sorts of characters is pretty reasonable.