Remove Human, Keep Gnoll

[VeronicaDemononica]

Currently gnolls are suffering from severe reverse power creep as some sort of means of differentiating them sufficiently from humans. While I understand the sentiment here, the main problem is that humans themselves are not interesting enough and gnolls are being saddled with a bizarre and unbalanced gimmick to justify their existence as a monstrous human that's interesting to play. My suggestion is that Humans finally go the way of the Mountain Dwarf and the Sludge Elf and be removed entirely. And also, that gnolls be adjusted to neither have bonuses nor penalties to skill advancement, but rather just have the inability to train skills continuously, with each skill level having a random chance of making the gnoll bored. As a result, once the gnoll is bored, it would have to focus on other skills, perhaps needing to become bored 2 or 3 more times, before the first skill would become interesting again. The aim of this is to make the short attention more of something that is perpetually interesting rather than eventually frustrating.

[dolemite99]

I'm agnostic as to whether Humans stay or not. I think gnolls are super interesting but I really struggle to keep them alive late-game, with the -6 aptitude that occurs at skills hitting 11 points .... it's too much of an impediment to the Fighting and Spellcasting skills. The innately super low MR on the species also seems like a cruel and unnecessary drawback.

[Sprucery]

Humans are one of the most fun species to play, so definitely don't remove them.

[VeronicaDemononica]

Please justify your statements instead of making vague negative comments in gut reaction to something that makes you uncomfortable.

[Doesnt]

Currently gnolls are suffering from severe reverse power creep as some sort of means of differentiating them sufficiently from humans. While I understand the sentiment here, the main problem is that humans themselves are not interesting enough and gnolls are being saddled with a bizarre and unbalanced gimmick to justify their existence as a monstrous human that's interesting to play. My suggestion is that Humans finally go the way of the Mountain Dwarf and the Sludge Elf and be removed entirely. And also, that gnolls be adjusted to neither have bonuses nor penalties to skill advancement, but rather just have the inability to train skills continuously, with each skill level having a random chance of making the gnoll bored. As a result, once the gnoll is bored, it would have to focus on other skills, perhaps needing to become bored 2 or 3 more times, before the first skill would become interesting again. The aim of this is to make the short attention more of something that is perpetually interesting rather than eventually frustrating.

Please justify your statements instead of making vague negative comments in gut reaction to something that makes you uncomfortable.

[amaril]

Humans who have flat aptitudes and no mutations to bias their character development one way or another can (and often must) be played adaptively. 100 different human games played to win will probably be more varied than 100 tengu games, because tengu have lopsided aptitudes that discourage them from using, say, hexes, and bias them towards conjurations and combat skills instead. Tengu also have aux muts which indirectly make shields/fast one-handed weapons more desirable for them, further inclining characters towards specific play styles.

Gnolls are also limited in terms of what they can feasibly accomplish by their aptitudes. They can't use anything that costs more than 10 skill! By contrast, humans can (and often should) train a variety of skills, but they can also commit to a few high-leveled skills if the dungeon's drops thus far make such a strategy viable.

[Chicken]

Humans are fun, and they are the baseline everything else is compared to. Everything else, you might say, is a some odd kind of human, and trust a Nethack initiate to tell you that if you genocide them, you'll end up taking out a lot more than you intended.

[tasonir]

While I've been playing fairly sloppily and also had some really bad luck (landing multiple bad teleports), one thing that really feels unfair is gnoll's very low natural MR. I've lost a few promising gnolls to basilisks in lair, which is something that almost never happens on other races. Requiring gnolls to find an MR ring early on to avoid having a random chance of death in lair or orc seems unfair. Give them the normal 3 MR per level, let their aptitudes be their gimmick (it's already a very large change to the game, and imho, an interesting one).

At least, this is what I take OP's claim of "reverse power creep" to mean - gnolls being weakened to move them away from humans. IMHO it's unnecessary, their short attention span mutation is more than enough to make them a unique race - no need to remove or forcefully distance them from humans.

[Leszczynek]

I think Humans have a place in the game just because they're the base race to compare everything to. I'm fine with this being their only purpose even if i don't agree they're fun to play.

Gnolls on the other hand are literally Train Everything To 11 Or Maybe 12: The Race. I think this is about as diverse in terms of gameplay as old Ogres (which is okay to me because I liked old Ogres) and I wonder if this was the intended goal for the new species.

[GravitySqueeze]

I think Humans have a place in the game just because they're the base race to compare everything to. I'm fine with this being their only purpose even if i don't agree they're fun to play.

Gnolls on the other hand are literally Train Everything To 11 Or Maybe 12: The Race. I think this is about as diverse in terms of gameplay as old Ogres (which is okay to me because I liked old Ogres) and I wonder if this was the intended goal for the new species.

They are way more diverse than old Ogres.

Old Ogres had the amazing strategic diversity of choosing between Giant Club and Large Rocks or Giant Spiked Club and Large Rocks.

If anything, they are more diverse than other races because you can't rely on just getting an endgame crusher like a big conjuration or mindelay 2 hander in heavy armour. I think they end up feeling samey sometimes because certain spells can carry you really, really hard(Lightning Spire, Meph Cloud, and Spectral Weapon come to mind) while a lot of stuff is pretty lackluster, so even though you know 10 different spells you just end up putting down a Lightning Spire and then using Mephitic Cloud on everything.

[Deso]

Or make demigod inherent human aptitudes (and balanced stats +1 every three levels)