Barkeep
Posts: 3890
Joined: Wednesday, 14th August 2013, 23:25
Location: USA
Proposal: Damageable Skin (Gargoyle Nerf)
As it stands, though, gargoyles have some problems. You have bad HP growth and fairly slow leveling, and a nasty but only rarely relevant weakness to certain spells, but no other real drawbacks to speak of. Nevertheless you get pretty stellar aptitudes and a suite of extremely powerful intrinsics. I gave GrBe a spin and I found that very soon into the game I was only using good tactics as a matter of principle, and even then I had to constantly remind myself to do so. Having it this easy to get such huge levels of AC (backed up with innate GDR even) very early on meant that you could get surrounded by anything that's not OOD and it would barely register. I'd still retreat to hallways, limit number of enemies on screen, etc., but more often I did this out of habit rather than necessity. My forays into GrEE and the like make me think that the problem is even deeper, and gargoyles even more broken, when it comes to magic backgrounds.
Gargoyles are a great "starter species," as they are very strong, but perhaps so much so that I worry they might actually encourage rather than punish bad tactics.
So here's my proposal, which I think would be thematic and would keep gargoyles very powerful, yet while also obviating these concerns:
Gargoyle's tough stone skin is not impenetrable. As you take hard blows (physical and earth / non-elemental magic damage) in combat, bits of your stone carapace are blown off, reducing your defenses. Your stone skin replenishes itself naturally over time.
So you may start out with +15 AC or whatever, but as you take a few tough blows, that gets knocked momentarily down to +10 AC or even lower.
Optional: If you take sufficient AC damage, you also lose your insulation (rElec) and/or your poison resistance until you regenerate.
So you may start out nearly every fight with a huge advantage, but as you absorb blows you begin to lose it. This seems to be in keeping with the "very tough, but low stamina" theme that gargoyles already have going for them with lower HP, while encouraging better play and providing a small brake on the overpoweredness of gargs.
Optional (flavor/cosmetic): Instead of or in addition to blood splatter, when a gargoyle player takes a nasty hit that lowers AC, a bunch of stones are sprayed around, signifying that chunks of your thick armor-like skin are being knocked loose.