Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs


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Post Thursday, 25th July 2013, 13:40

Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Lava Orcs are like Hill Orcs only better. Don't get me wrong, I love Lava Orcs, but really why play a Hill Orc when you can play a Lava Orc? At the very least Lava Orcs should probably have lower invocations since invocations were one of the few things that made Hill Orcs different than just a Minotaur that can worship Beogh.

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Post Thursday, 25th July 2013, 14:40

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

HO are way better spell casters IIRC. -3 spellcasting is pretty annoying.

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Post Thursday, 25th July 2013, 14:51

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

HOrcs have -3 too, and it's not really as annoying as it sounds.

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Post Thursday, 25th July 2013, 15:08

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

I think lava orcs get xp slower or something, kind of like high elves.
If not, they should.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 25th July 2013, 16:02

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

I don't think Lava Orcs should be orcs at all. Wouldn't it make more sense if they were Lava Golems? Thus they wouldn't have the small benefit of the orc race.

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Post Thursday, 25th July 2013, 18:46

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Lava Orcs do get xp slower that Hill Orcs: -1 xp apt vs. +0.

HOs also have aptitudes 1 better than LOs for Axes and all ranged attacks (although LO wins slightly for Fire/Earth and heavily for Tmut).

The only other relative disadvantages of LO's are slow movement at low temp (which doesn't really matter), rC- at high temp (annoying, but fixable with items) and no scrolls at max temp (actually bad, but manageable with wands/spells/careful play).

I agree that these disadvantages don't seem enough to offset the ability of Lava Orcs to turn into swifted flaming angels of death when threatened. Their abilities might fall off in the late game, but I haven't taken a LO that far. Would any of the blues around here take a HO over a LO? Why?
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Post Thursday, 25th July 2013, 22:59

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Ya I agree. Lava orcs shouldn't be orcs, or they need some serious down sides. Actually looking them on wiki page i feel like they are too strong compared to other classes. I feel that their aptitudes are far too good for race with such good abilities.
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Post Friday, 26th July 2013, 05:09

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

I really don't see how anyone can consider "being an Orc" to actually be a meaningful bonus. You get to worship one extra God who really isn't anything amazing and gain an unnoticeable bonus from otherwise generally shitty equipment. Removing those wouldn't somehow make LO more balanced.
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Post Friday, 26th July 2013, 05:28

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

I'd take a HO over a LO for some types of characters.

The fire aura isn't that great at high level (The extra damage done is Ok, but not really exciting)
The movement penalty is a hassle, I lost a few LO's to centaurs before I figured out I needed to pay extra attention to my temperature and manage accordingly.
Begoh is actually pretty sweet as gods go, but playing a LO Begohite is a hassle because your orcs can be burned.
And as mentioned the no scroll panic buttons at high temperature is something *else* to manage


Overall, I find that LOs play a lot like HOs unless I'm going for the whole fire-magic thing, but are more complicated. If I'm not going to exploit the LO's affinity for fire I'd rather play a HO than a LO because I'm not really sacrificing much damage wise and it's one less thing I have to pay attention to all the time.
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Post Friday, 26th July 2013, 05:46

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Siegurt wrote:LO Begohite is a hassle because your orcs can be burned.


This isn't actually true, by the way. Beogh suppresses your heat aura.
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Post Friday, 26th July 2013, 06:08

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Hm, I distinctly recall that happening at some point, of course that was a while ago, perhaps it's been changed since.
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Post Friday, 26th July 2013, 13:53

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Siegurt wrote:Hm, I distinctly recall that happening at some point, of course that was a while ago, perhaps it's been changed since.

  Code:
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75d496b | Neil Moore | 2013-06-30 15:06:55 -0400

Turn off heat aura for Lava Orcs of Beogh.

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Post Friday, 26th July 2013, 17:27

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

battaile wrote:
Siegurt wrote:Hm, I distinctly recall that happening at some point, of course that was a while ago, perhaps it's been changed since.

  Code:
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75d496b | Neil Moore | 2013-06-30 15:06:55 -0400

Turn off heat aura for Lava Orcs of Beogh.

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Yeah, it's about 15-20 minutes after the "Lava Orcs can worship Beogh" commit, Either I happened to pull a build down between the two commits and built and played a LO of Beogh (Which actually doesn't sound as unlikely as you might think, if I saw a commit like "Lava orcs can worship Beogh" I might pull, build and try it out.) or I'm just insane, or possibly both.
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Post Thursday, 1st August 2013, 20:11

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

I've gotten one through 15 runes and I've played several others to a decent depth, and I've got to say they could use some nerfing. Finding a source of berserk in the early game is phenomenally useful, to the point that I've focused Evocations just to get my amulet of berserk rage online ASAP. That's sort of the point of the race though...

I think the issue here is that, while they're slightly worse at most things than hill orcs, that gap should be larger. Ignoring the whole "Why are these things orcs at all?" debate, the aptitude disadvantage should be significantly worse; they're still better than average in almost all melee brute skills, and their magical aptitudes are viable for a decent number of caster backgrounds. I don't see why they're good at Transmutations at all. While merfolk have a good one because they willingly switch between legs and tails all the time, lava orcs have such awful physiological control that they melt every time they panic. I'd say their wonderful innate abilities deserves some serious aptitude penalties, maybe not troll level, but more in line with gargoyles. Keep the temperature gauge, as that's a lot of fun to mess with and screws you over often enough when careless to be balanced, but lose the combat masteries.
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Post Friday, 23rd August 2013, 05:12

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Completely agree with everyone saying that they should be reclassified as something besides orcs, not just as balancing but also as a flavor element. Some possible ideas:
Fire Giants - from Norse mythology. Would also give the race an appropriate nerf by the virtue of being large.
Salamanders - Greek mythology; commonly appears in all sorts of fantasy games in various stylistic iterations. Nerfs here would depend on the design. If it's portrayed as a lizard, then it would pretty much become like felids, for which it would definitely need buffs to compensate. If it's a half snake it could be made slower like the nagas. Could also go in some sort of a lizard-men route and be locked out of boots and helmets.
Cherufe - lava monster from native South American folklore. Obscure, but still a better choice than lava orcs in my opinion.
Efreeti - Arabic folklore. Unfortunately efreeti are already present in the game as monsters, so some redesign for their enemy counterpart may be needed.
Fire Elemental - suffers from all the same problems as the efreet, but a viable choice nonetheless.

Or as citronvand suggested they could become lava golems; though I would prefer stone golems myself. I definitely remember seeing suggestions for a golem player character in the past, so this could be a great opportunity to make one without doing any extra work.

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Post Friday, 23rd August 2013, 08:59

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Lava Orcs' passive heat is very powerful in the early game. Whenever you're in trouble, passive heat kicks in and takes care of enemies for you. Kind of like demonic guardian without the XP loss. With such a strong racial ability, I think LO's could stand some nerfs.

As to whether they should be orcs or not. I'm kind of partial to Salamanders, myself. Keeping in mind that monster Salamanders already exist, but any difference in the player species can be explained away I suppose (Cave Salamanders vs Deep Salamanders, etc). But ultimately the flavor is not a big deal to me either way.

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Post Friday, 23rd August 2013, 14:08

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

DracheReborn wrote:Lava Orcs' passive heat is very powerful in the early game. Whenever you're in trouble, passive heat kicks in and takes care of enemies for you. Kind of like demonic guardian without the XP loss. With such a strong racial ability, I think LO's could stand some nerfs.

Currently the damage range is fixed. Maybe scaling it to character level would make it less powerful in the very early game?

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Post Friday, 23rd August 2013, 14:31

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Maybe. But then you'd have the problem of a too strong effect later on.

I actually like it as is right now (maybe the fixed damage can be shaved a bit). I'd rather other areas be nerfed while keeping this as LO's defining feature.

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Post Friday, 23rd August 2013, 14:34

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Team Impy wrote:Unfortunately efreeti are already present in the game as monsters, so some redesign for their enemy counterpart may be needed.

Fire giants and Salamanders are game enemies as well.

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Post Friday, 23rd August 2013, 14:55

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Their main drawback is the rC hit (especially against non-fire-vulnerable enemies with ice spells), and being unable to use your scrolls of GTFO when you need them most.

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Post Friday, 23rd August 2013, 23:17

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

jejorda2 wrote:
Team Impy wrote:Unfortunately efreeti are already present in the game as monsters, so some redesign for their enemy counterpart may be needed.

Fire giants and Salamanders are game enemies as well.


I think leaving them as Orcs is the best choice, just to continue to irritate these complainers.
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Post Saturday, 24th August 2013, 00:57

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Lava Mountain Dwarves
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Post Saturday, 24th August 2013, 23:51

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

ebarrett wrote:Lava Mountain Dwarves

:D Maybe just Lava Dwarves. Awesome idea nevertheless.

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Post Sunday, 25th August 2013, 00:11

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

Volcano Dwarves!
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Post Sunday, 25th August 2013, 21:05

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

I say keep them as orcs, so the orcish mines can have a little more variety in its enemies soon enough. Slow moving fire and earth elementalists that melt, catch fire and run away when threatened would be more interesting then the current mobs of nothing but bruisers and priests.

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Post Wednesday, 28th August 2013, 11:06

Re: Lava Orcs vs. Hill Orcs

ebarrett wrote:Lava Mountain Dwarves


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