Temple Termagant
Posts: 5
Joined: Tuesday, 1st November 2011, 16:55
White and Red Draconians or Red headed step children?
White Draconians are in my humble opinion one of the worst races in all of crawl. They have all of the usual disadvantages of a Draconian with none of the advantages, in their current format you may as well stay brown. Why? Well lets look over it nice and slow.
1. No real resistances or defensive bonuses. White draconians receive an amazing +1 to cold resistance, Reds receive a +1 to fire. White's bonus here is almost useless, almost no exceptionally dangerous spells are ice based and even if you are unlucky enough to get slapped by an Ice storm or a bolt of cold, you are still going to take more than enough damage to make you run away with tears in your eyes. Red fairs only slightly better, since fire spells are more common early on when the pathetic amount of resistance you have will make a difference. I feel that it's important to note that every other dragon gets an immunity of some sort, with the exception of Yellow (who makes up for it with more potent offensive abilities). I've found even a pale dragon's extremely specific immunity, to be far more useful in many situations.
1A. I feel that both of these should be, at the very least, given +2 to resistances, yes fire and ice are common spell types, but honestly they gain no immunity, lose any semblance of being able to effectively cast their opposite school of magic, and lack of utility on their breaths and secondary offensive attacks make this a viable and balanced game play wise. As well as make it fit the fluff a bit better, it's laughable to think that fire is almost as effective against an red dragon as it is to a white dragon. If we are trying to be unique maybe have frost dragons radiate cold, sort of like a weak repulsion field or an aura of very weak slowing and have reds do a very moderate amount of passive fire damage around them. If nothing else I feel they should at least be able to protect items against their element (reds protect scrolls from fire, whites protect potions from cold).
2. Subpar breath weapons. I don't think I'm understating when I say that a wand of frost is probably the least powerful offensive wand in the game by several magnitudes. Well, this is basically all a white draconian gets when they mature. The knock back against flying targets is laughable, the very most I've ever seen a killer bee or a bat fly back is a single square. And to make maters even worse, as far as I can tell it only hits a single enemy before stopping! It does horrible damage, and offers zero utility. Utility which is what saves the Red Draconian from being in the same boat as his icy kin. Red dragon breath in its self is weakish, about the equivalent to a want of flame. However it passes through multiple enemies and, more importantly, leaves a wall of fire where it lands, making it excellent for running away or moving an unique into a corner and letting the pillar of flame burn it to a crisp.
2A. Compared to the breath weapons of other dragons Reds is acceptable, and I don't feel should be changed. White's however is underwhelming in every sense of the word. The easiest way I can see it is to change it to a bolt of cold, however that may be overpowered. Maybe have it create a wall of cold vapor 2 tiles thick around you (give them immunity towards it). Give it a long recharge time and maybe make it grow at different levels (1 tile around you at level 8 up to 3 at level 15). If not that maybe have it stay frost, only change it to hit everything in a line, and give it a slowing effect or random clouds of freezing vapor mixed in.
If anyone else has any suggestions or comments please leave them. As I said before I really like the Draconian race, but the fact that these two colors are so useless in comparison to the others, which offer so much more defensive and offensive options doesn't really seem to be in the Crawl spirit.