Designing a race: Seeking feedback

[Shin Majin]

I'm currently adding in a sphinx race for personal use, but would like some advice on the design end (not the coding end!) It's supposed to be a felid-esque race, but with more strength, HP, and eventually flight, in exchange for the felid's dexterity, stealth, and extra lives. I have a basic design, but don't know much about balancing races for fun play. Here's what I have so far:

Innate Abilities
Cannot wear armor aside from helmets and hats
Cannot wield weapons, throw items, or evoke rods or staves
Claws 1 (2?)
Carnivorous 3
Fast 1
Tough Skin 1
Base Str: 8
Base Int: 10
Base Dex: 6
HP: ?
MP: ?
Level Bonuses:
+1 Str or Int every 4th level
+4 magic resistance per level
Additional AC?
Flight?

Aptitudes
Fighting: 0
Unarmed Combat: 0
Dodging: 0
Stealth: 1
Spellcasting: 1
Fire Magic: 0
Ice Magic: -1
Air Magic: -1
Earth Magic: 2
Poison Magic: -1
Conjurations: 0
Hexes: 0
Charms: 1
Summonings: 0
Necromancy: 0
Translocations: 1
Transmutations: 1
Invocations: 1
Evocations: 1

Experience: -1

Any suggestions?

[VeryAngryFelid]

Str is not that useful when you cannot wear body armour, I don't see how the species is going to get Fe's Dex (Fe has basic Dex 11 and gets Int/Dex on level ups). I remember some fsims which showed that statue form with Str 3 still was better than any weapon.
There is no such thing as balancing fun IMHO but currently it is very similar to harder Felid (worse aptitudes, less EV)

[Shin Majin]

Huh...and Fe's pretty tricky as is. Any ideas on how to make this more playable while preserving the flavor?

[VeryAngryFelid]

Do you want a felid with more HP or sphinx?
Personally I like gimmicks, maybe add a 4 tiles long "breathing" fire attack (like sphinx from age of wonders 3) or ability to clone enemy to fight on your side (like in heroes of might and magic series when you must fight copy of your own army if you failed to answer sphinx' question)?

[Shin Majin]

Hrm. Neither of those sound very...sphinx-like. Instead of basing it on a specific video game sphinx, I'd rather base it on the original sphinx from Greek mythology, or better yet: this game's lore. That said, that really doesn't give us more than a bigger felid, but I'm fine with that as long as it can be well-balanced against existing races.

[VeryAngryFelid]

as long as it can be well-balanced against existing races.

Crawl does not have balance within species realm, we have DD/Tr/Mi and Mu/Op in the same game.

[Shin Majin]

Eeeh, I suppose that's true.

In that case...I suppose I just want it to be somewhere in that power range. Better than Mu, but not quite Mi good.

[Quazifuji]

Well, with the way you've currently presented it, the race seems really bad to me. Being fast is good, but why play this race when I could be a centaur or a Spriggan, and be fast while also being able to use some equipment?

I think this is sort of a core problem with the "Felid, but with more health but less stealth and no extra lives" concept. There are already fast races that are tankier than felids. Right now, this race has the massive downside of barely being able to use any equipment, and the only big upside is fast 1, which is a very big upside but there are still other fast races with smaller downsides. Granted, one could also argue that Spriggans and Centaurs are at the extremely strong end of the spectrum so maybe weaker than them is fine, but overall I think this race just needs a more compelling hook to make me want to play it.