New Species: Gargoyle

[battaile]

Cloaks with wing holes.

[Tindalos]

Gargoyles seem very strong. I like them, but I think some of their attributes need to be toned down a bit. All of the innate abilities do make sense thematically for a Gargoyle/unliving pile of stones to have, but the -2 health just doesn't seem to balance it all out.

[prozacelf]

I'm sure there's more tinkering to be done, but I think the +1 staves and conjurations aptitudes in particular feel like too much.

[Bloax]

  Code:

Staves: Mi: 2!, Dj: 1, Gr: 1, Te: 1, Op: 0, Dr: 0, Hu: 0, HE: 0, DE: 0, Ds: -1, Ko: -1, Gh: -1, HO: -1, Dg: -1, LO: -1, DD: -1, Ce: -1, Na: -1, Og: -1, Mu: -2, Ha: -2, Vp: -2, Mf: -2, Tr: -2, Sp: -3*, Fe: N/A

  Code:

Gr: Fighting: 1, Short: -1, Long: -1, Axes: -1, Maces: 1, Polearms: -1, Staves: 1 ..

Huh? They're one of the few races to have above 0 staves, yes. Their other weapon aptitudes aren't particularly interesting however.

[dck]

They're particularly good at weapons that don't take a whole lot of investment to use well (and then UC) but can still do just fine with other types, sounds good to me.

[XuaXua]

Gargoyles seem overall overpowered. I don't really see enough of a downside to Gargoyles. They could use some skill toning down. I think +1 staves is good though.

[Volteccer_Jack]

um tengu are not overpowered fyi

[XuaXua]

um tengu are not overpowered fyi

Good for tengu; this is the Gargoyle chat.

[Volteccer_Jack]

gargoyle is tengu with worse aptitudes and slower movement fyi

[ajon]

and made from stone and immune to a bunch of stuff?

[dck]

And with no EV and shit for dex.
Gargoyles are fine for release, unlike LO and Dj.

[Volteccer_Jack]

The thing about resistances is that for the majority of the game they do nothing. Immunity to poison is excellent in Snake/Spider and nice in Lair, and most of the rest of the time it doesn't matter. Resist elec makes Nikola and electric golems significantly less dangerous and protects you from one spell ogre mages cast. Petrification immunity is basically just flavour that virtually never matters. Rot and torment resistance don't matter unless you do extended, and extended isn't even on speaking terms with the concept of balance. Resist negative is good for shadow dragons and wights and not a lot else.

as for the ac:

  Code:

While the massive racial AC bonus looks extremely good on paper (perhaps
even too large), in practice it still leaves them a lot squishier than one
might expect. In fact, when compared to other -2 hp races, even tengu (a
race hardly known for its durability) with similar xp investment in defensive
skills and dex, take less average melee damage than gargoyles in a variety of
situations beyond earlygame, and kobolds take noticably less than even that.
This is especially true in lighter armour, or against hard-hitting ranged
attacks (which tend to be the most dangerous things anyway).

http://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commit ... 4f6a4a78cf

Anyway -2 HP is a big deal and you need a big advantage to make up for it. Even if Gargoyles were clearly better than the other three -2 HP races (they aren't), they still wouldn't be as strong as races like HO and DD.

[zugundertherug]

Immunity to poison is excellent in Snake/Spider and nice in Lair, and most of the rest of the time it doesn't matter.

Also nice in swamp (especially poison ending obviously) and very nice in early dungeon (adders, scorpions, and kobolds with poison needles). Also maringally useful in zot against draconian callers who summon swamp drakes, and forest for needling spriggans.

they still wouldn't be as strong as races like HO and DD.

Agree. Extra hp is sweet and can be viewed as "resist everything" imo.

[Mankeli]

snip

Well, as the commit kind of says the AC bonus could very well have been a bit overpowered in the very early levels before the adjustment because it made the very early game noticeably easier IMO and the very early game is the difficult part of the game. I wrote about my impressions of gargoyle in the other thread (due note that my impression were based on 2450 so pre-inner ac change). In short, I think gargoyles are very fun because some of their traits lessen the need to do some things I find tedious in crawl (chunking, fiving after poison, etc.)

How big is the inner GDR percentage by the way?

My original post: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8393

[Volteccer_Jack]

I am actually fine with gargoyles being too strong in the early game, because in my opinion it is bad that the early game is more difficult than practically everything else.

How big is the inner GDR percentage by the way?

  Code:

6555       if (species == SP_GARGOYLE)
6556           gdr += 24 - (gdr/6);

So +24% in a robe (for a total of 24%) or +16% in crystal plate (for a total of 64%), with something inbetween for the other armours.

[Mankeli]

I am actually fine with gargoyles being too strong in the early game, because in my opinion it is bad that the early game is more difficult than practically everything else.

Yeah, maybe this is one additional reason why I seem to enjoy playing Gr: The power curve feels just a tad different compared to some other species because you start to feel the low HP on a, say GrFi, at the same time that, say, a MiFi is would start to feel like an unstoppable powerhouse (well, in absolute terms, MiFi may be easier already after like d:1-2 and onward but you get the point).