TwilightPhoenix wrote:I'm reading your arguments and and all that, but I've totally lost what your point is now. What are we trying to do here? Buff Draconians? Revert them back to having body armor with no auxilllary slots? Be more realisitic? Slice off their vestigial wings? Come up with some weird, complicated synergy/anti-syngery with Draconian color and the color of dragon armor? Allow Felids to create kitty sweaters out of dragon hides?
Seriously, not trolling, I'm lost and no longer can tell what you're trying to accomplish.
More or less! Not buff really, if anything try to keep them about the same, just with a different pacing based on player choice, diversifying into armor should be where the majority of the AC comes from, passive AC is fine for balancing some things, but absurdly high natural AC and no armor starts to make things less diverse, more floor trash, less choice, and that is a bad thing. Figuring out a way to keep the most interesting slot and the balance of the species is a good start, the devs have noted the current system is suboptimal and considered reverting them. We can get creative to help make draconians stand out while still having interesting choices for defense and still be balanced, it's hard but I know it can be done.
Also why dragon-armor wouldn't already HAVE wings or at least places where wings used to be baffles me. If you can't justify giving all dragon armors limited flight, which I can totally agree with about that being a bad idea, I can't see why having wings stick out of what used to have wings be a really big problem.
Ok let me itemize it if that helps.
Possible New System:
-Drop natural scales bonuses to +3 AC(+1 every 4 levels) for a total of +9 natural AC, less as needed, or faster bonuses with a lower cap, depends on how it plays from early-mid-end game.
-Make robes, animal skins, and dragon armor fit as per the old system
-Expanding draconian interactions with dragon armor. Example, match color=tempting bonus(breathe timeout/foodcost halved or damage bonus etc.), mismatch color=nothing or limited malus. Opposing color=significant malus. Imperfect, problems with odd colors, ie. steam opposite of mottled? there is no 'grey' or earth/iron dragon armor for black draconians, or opposite to yellow draconians either.
-Making breath weapons more interesting for more parts of the game. Possible system, finer controls over a bigger power to cost scale. Too many options clutter micromanagement, keep it 2 or 3.
-The previous lack of boots, gloves and bucklers isn't ideal, limiting slots is in my opinion a poor and unintuitive way to balance a species if it isn't directly related to bodily mutations like claws or talons. But with 9 AC, roughly boots, gloves, and a helmet at max enchantment the later game egos are pretty much (save artifacts) the only thing bad about losing them, and you get the AC over 27 levels or so, seems about equivalent to the rate you'd find/enchant maxed secondary armor. I'm open to suggestions for this one, I can't justify the unarmed attack bonus, except that it fits well into the dragon theme, having armor and mutations means choosing attack over defense, or later on, egos.
-leave helmets out still, consider expanding growth mutations like branded bites, low level fangs, short range breaths. Visored helmets will not block beak attacks in 11 from the changelog, something to consider if helmets somehow make it in.
-If this is too generous to them, give them their opposite element as a weakness, slow down their leveling, tone down health etc. Interesting and unique is fine until a species gets under or overpowered.
On Felids and Octopodes:
Is it really that strange that Felids could wear armor only after having read a magical scroll to make it change shape?
Why it would change shape into a one sized fits all dragon armor and only be able to change size and shape to non-dragon humanoids? And if you've ever seen a cat try to fit into something you'd know that it WOULD get into that armor if it fit.
Magical armor has always seemed to be the exception wearable to most if not all species except for the recent, more beastly additions, it was for Draconians in the old version.
Felids 'could' do with late game armor, it beats extra lives which seems really anti-crawl permadeath, I wouldn't suspect an armored war elephant to put on it's own armor, but a felid might just be clever enough for dragon armor which you have to survive to get to anyway. He-Man fans would appreciate battle tigers, disturbing trends under image searches for "cat armor" suggest it is not a new idea. Or they could remain beastly and niche, if not a bit gimmicky. Octopodes and to a lesser extent Felids have a source of AC in rings, but it's not guaranteed, though it has amazingly high potential with 8 ring slots. They don't have any bones though so armor is less realistic, if not armor, robes for them to stick 6 legs out of and 2 for the sleeves perhaps. I really like Octopode Berzerkers, but they rely quite a bit on the RNG. Is the early game trouble worth it for the awesomeness that is Octopodes or should they just be made a bit worse at things for a little extra AC early game? Debatable.