Race proposal: Hill Goblin

[jjormang]

Description

Goblins are smaller, handier, and timider cousin of orcs. Unlike their underground counterparts, they tend to avoid battle at all costs.

Racial traits
Normal size, average stat(higher in dex than str), -10% health, -10% magic, -1 exp.
Orcish: Beogh will accept them as his followers. In addition, hill goblins will get bonus power when using elyvilon's heal other ability on orcs(and of course, goblins.)
Cowardice: hill goblins suffer with slaying/spell power malus when enemies are in sight. They cannot sacrifice courage when believing Ru. In addition, Okawaru will not accept them as follower(or, start with penance). When berserked, this trait will be suppressed.
Pious: hill goblins have innate faith(like amulet of faith), and can stack piety up to 250(points only; no extra piety levels/abilities/titles, etc.)
Skilled technician: when using evocable devices with random effects, hill goblins can block the effect their god hates(haste, fire, etc). Item charge/turn/hunger will still be wasted.
Forgettable: enemies tend to forget them a little bit faster.

Aptitudes
-Melee
Very bad fighting(-2~-3), very bad melee weapon skills except short blades(which is still quite bad), normal ranged weapon skills.
-Defense
Good in overall. (+1~+2)
-Magic
Bad spellcasting, very bad conjuration/hex/transmutation/elemental schools, OK with charms/summoning, very good with necromancy/translocation.
-Invocation/Evocation/Stealth
Extremely good overall (+3~+4).

Suggested combo

Hunter, assassin, artificer, berserker, abyssal knight, warper, summoner, necromancer.

[Marbit]

Sounds like lots of quirky purely cosmetic details into one species.
I think the most interesting mechanic is the intrinsic amulet of faith.
I'd suggest dropping most of the quirks and just keep the meaty stuff.

[Shard1697]

Why do they have both very bad weapon skills and very bad spellcasting? I don't fancy a species which can basically do nothing but evo/invo, there are species which are fine at that and also fine at other things already.

[Lasty]

"Forgettable: enemies tend to forget them a little bit faster" -- this is a normal effect of a good stealth rating.

[Quazifuji]

Sounds like lots of quirky purely cosmetic details into one species.
I think the most interesting mechanic is the intrinsic amulet of faith.
I'd suggest dropping most of the quirks and just keep the meaty stuff.

It seems like the most notable feature of this race is the "pious" bonus. "Skilled Technician" is very situational and just strengthens their ability to work with some gods a little (although I also think this is something that should be added for every race/god anyway), and everything else is just "Halfings, but worse." So my thoughts are:

1. There should be a much stronger connection between "Pious" and the race's flavor. The race's most notable benefit shouldn't be buried in the middle of a big list of less interesting features with no mention in the flavor description whatsoever. It's not even that flavor is that important, so much as this is just completely opaque.

2. Aside from "Pious", this race just seems really, really bad. Terrible aptitudes, bad health, bad mana, bad exp, and cowardice. It just seems like too much.