What is the viability of a no-reading race?

[Zalbag]

another option might be to have the race be able to automatically ID things to a lesser degree if scrolls are 100% restricted

For instance, they can "smell" if a potion is safe to drink or not. It wouldn't ID a potion, but would flag potions of degeneration, mutation, confusion, poison, and strong poison as "unsafe." You'd still have to quaff-ID but it would be far less dangerous.

Likewise, they could have a "mana-sense" or other magical ESP that tells you if an item is cursed whenever you pick it up, but it would not tell you what the item IS.
That would prevent a PC from equipping cursed items while trying to ID them, but it wouldn't solve the problem of mummy curses or make Ashenzari a playable option. But hey, maybe Ash and Sif flat out wont' take illiterate followers.

[Gene_]

Okay, let's assume there has to be some way of granting ID and Remove Curse, thus leaving: tele/blink, which are already doable without (see: stasis and formicids,) enchant armor/weapon+ brand weapon, (which are useful, but could be balanced out by giving the race some intrinsic stuff?) recharging (this one hurts quite a bit,) fog (now we're getting into dangerous territory...but wait a bit, I have an idea,) silence/holy word (for late game,) magic mapping, noise, Vuln, immolation, and amnesia.

So here's my spin on it: A divine-flavored race with tweaked perma-fog surrounding it, making it unable to read normal scrolls due to poor visibility (you can explain away spellbooks by saying the words glow or something.) Taking a cue from earlier in thread, cursed items break on equip, due to how dang holy the creature is, but lets give the race an intrinsic that lets them sacrifice HP or something to remove curses on equipped items that were cursed after the fact (or just were never equipped): make it cause exh and breath statuses, so it can't be used all at once. ID could be taken care of in a number of ways: maybe the race auto-IDs things in their inventory eventually, maybe you create a special artifact rod of ID, maybe you just make ID wands, I dunno. The race can emit light, making Dith despise the dang things, to explain why LOS isn't completely destroyed by the fog. Give them a variant on the DD's recharge ability that lets them enchant weapons or armor for perma-MP and HP loss, and let it go by +2 instead of +1 so that the race isn't completely crippled. Amnesia, Vuln, Immolation, Noise, Fear, Brand Weapon, Magic Mapping, Silence, and Recharging are all very helpful (the last 3 most of all,) but I'm certain the game can be played without them.

The specifics should be worked on later but the idea /can/ be implemented, you just need to account for the specific uses scrolls have and get creative. Intrinsic abilities can be used to make up for many of these scrolls, and specific items can be created for the purpose of making the race viable.

[nilsbloodaxe]

What I don't like about most of these ideas is that they are of the sort, "get rid of scroll use...but not really." And I think part of the problem there is that a good number of scrolls are not really designed for combat use and are more strategic in nature (enchant scrolls, brand weapon, acquire, amnesia, identify, remove curse, mapping, recharging [sort of], curse scrolls for Ash) and others are ok at best (silence, summoning, holy word, torment, immo, noise). On the other hand, most potions are combat buffs or trash items (with the exceptions of experience, restore abilities [most of the time], benemut, cure mut, blood, and porridge). Moreover mummies would only be able to take advantage of 2 of those 6 mentioned strategic potions: experience and restore abilities, since they cannot mutate and do not need satiation. And of these two potions, experience is rare and frankly there is plenty of XP in the game as is, and mummies have the restore ability to make up for the latter.

[Gene_]

What I don't like about most of these ideas is that they are of the sort, "get rid of scroll use...but not really." And I think part of the problem there is that a good number of scrolls are not really designed for combat use and are more strategic in nature (enchant scrolls, brand weapon, acquire, amnesia, identify, remove curse, mapping, recharging [sort of], curse scrolls for Ash) and others are ok at best (silence, summoning, holy word, torment, immo, noise). On the other hand, most potions are combat buffs or trash items (with the exceptions of experience, restore abilities [most of the time], benemut, cure mut, blood, and porridge). Moreover mummies would only be able to take advantage of 2 of those 6 mentioned strategic potions: experience and restore abilities, since they cannot mutate and do not need satiation. And of these two potions, experience is rare and frankly there is plenty of XP in the game as is, and mummies have the restore ability to make up for the latter.

Pretty much. Specific things that scrolls allow you to do are integral to the game, in a way that potions are not. It's the same reason why deep dwarves have the ability to recharge wands: healing is too important an aspect of the game to be removed for a race.
Specifically, remove curse and/or ID scrolls are absolutely essential barring massive luck. It's theoretically possible that, by quaff-IDing, wield-IDing, and read-IDing, ID scrolls could be done without. But that doesn't account for the remove curse scrolls that are almost required by late game, and wield-IDing suddenly becomes a massive and incredibly dangerous game of russian roulette. You pretty much need at least one of the two, again, barring massive luck (or playing, say, FeBe and hoping for the best.)

Basically, some of the things scrolls do are too important to the game to be completely done away with, so any idea for a race/god/whatever that removes scroll use has to account for at least the ability to ID or remove curses. Again, I think the comparison to DD is the best one to make here.

[Sprucery]

What I don't like about most of these ideas is that they are of the sort, "get rid of scroll use...but not really."

Me neither. All in all it seems more like a deity thing: you join a god and give up reading. Then the god provides some abilities to cope with no reading. But there's already Ash.

[BobIsDead]

I think the idea of a no-reading race would cause an interesting change in strategy. I know that I rely on scrolls a whole lot, even when playing the least magical of builds. I don't think any set scrolls are necessary, save for remove curse, which can be easily replaced with another ability. Perhaps the ability to forcibly tear cursed items from oneself, albeit at the expense of something (temporarily/permanently reduced HP, MP or stats, for example).

In my mind, this would work best with some kind of beastmen race. Human/animal hybrids, presumably built by wizards as slaves long ago. They are either simply plain unable to decipher text (as in they can't read), or they're unable to pronounce the magic words of spells in books and on scrolls. If the latter, then other things that require talking (praying, communicating with allies, etc.) would be handwaved away as them communicating via growls and suchlike. The only thing it would change would be that they could still read manuals.

Anyway, fluff aside, they'd likely be yet another big, tough, monstrous fighting creature. Sort of like mash-up between minotaurs and trolls. A minotaur's ability to wear armour and skill with weapons, crossed with the trolls regenerative abilities and other beneficial innate traits. Naturally, they would have high Strength, high dexterity and low Intelligence. They would probably also need to be at least average at invocations and evocations as well. Innate spirit shield would also be a good way of making use of their MP, which would be borderline useless otherwise.

That's just my thoughts on how I'd make it work. I still think it would be tough to play, and a little uninspired without something else working for it. I agree with others that doing the no reading thing half-hearted would be a bad idea. I also agree that this sounds more like a god-related restriction. That said, I think a lot of the more exotic racial abilities and restrictions sound like something that should be related to the gods, so it's not like this is an either-or thing.

[varsovie]

You'd have to remove the few Vaults with "inscriptions on the door" and also all descriptions on objects like some God altar.

I think a no reading 3rune is viable (e.g. big hand to hand Troll) if you don't get unlucky with cursed items and are very diligent about engagements (can't teleport/blink).