damiac wrote:I'd just like to say, if the same logic that's being thrown around in this thread was used in the development of the game, we wouldn't have HEs, HUs, MIs, HOs, MFs. Because I'm being told here that -1 apts and +2 are essentially the same, so if that's the case we should just remove all these extra races and just leave humans.
Well Mf have that whole water thing. But I think it is more the case that because there is
already a good foundation of "normal" species that don't have any major differences except aptitudes (including HP "aptitude"—HE, DE, Hu, HO [also have Beogh], etc.), that any further species need something more "out there" to distinguish them. Sure there might be a few specific game plans where you'd want this or that species to have +/-1 aptitude here or there, but that's not enough to justify a whole new species. If HE, Hu, etc. did
not exist, there would be more numerous and larger gaps in species differentiation, even at the level of aptitudes, which would then make it reasonable to add species that are different largely on the basis of apts.
Sandman25 wrote: Yes, that's funny indeed. -1 apts and +2 are essentially the same, aptitudes +3/+4 (Mf and Polearms, Ogre and M&F) are very bad to have. So we should have only 2 species: Hu and bad Hu (Hu with -4 in everything) and call it difficulty setting.
A difference of 2 and definitely 3 in an aptitude is large enough to be noticeable. Nonetheless, having one bad aptitude in a skill that you want to increase eventually (i.e., not right from D1) is not a big deal. Having multiple bad aptitudes in skills that you want to raise, on the other hand, does noticeably slow down a character's development and tends to put you behind on the power curve. (Note that -1 is not a really bad aptitude tho.) Aptitudes aren't meaningless, they just aren't the most interesting way to differentiate species since they don't
greatly alter how you play, outside of rather extreme circumstances. For example, if I find blink, control teleport, and phase shift on a Te, I am likely to want to get those castable eventually, despite the poor tloc aptitude. It just takes me longer to get the spell failure down. However, the poor tloc apt does mean that I probably won't want to start as a TeWr.
Sar wrote:though Blink is one of those spells I get very often but barely use. So I guess I can skip it. I just like having it, though.
Blink is really great for those times you round a corner into a scary giant or w/e. Since a "caster" will on average have poorer defenses the more "pure" it is, compared to a character that is not casting so much (all else being equal), I'd think blink is *more* useful for a 24-karat caster (karaster?).
Basically, the worse you are at taking a hit, the more useful spells like blink and swiftness and the like tend to be. I mean, Sandman, going by your logic, blink and swiftness are best for a Troll. I've generally found Trolls don't need them (though of course I'll occasionally pick them up eventually even on Tr, since they sometimes come in handy, even if "handy" here only means "saves me a consumable, so I end game with 12 scrolls of tele rather than just 11"). Sure a conjurer or elementalist or what have you can and often will want to kill stuff at a distance, but sometimes things go awry.