Tengu should have an Air Magic aptitude of +3. They are so in sync with the air that they perma-fly without wings at Level 15 , yet their Air Magic ability is equal to that of a halfling or sludge elf. Deep dwarves, for example, have an intrinsic connection with the earth (passive mapping) and also have +3 in Earth Magic, so the change is both logical and has precedent. The change would make Tengu a little more interesting as the preeminent air mages of Crawl. – RangerC
DD have -3 air to go with 3 earth, whereas Tengu have -1 earth and 1 air. If air goes up, earth should go down. — og17 2010-09-25 22:34
+1; just forgot to put that in the original proposal. If Tengu are not even touching the ground for most of the game, how can they have just slightly bad sympathy towards Earth magic? +3 Air -3 Earth is pretty logical for an airborne race. — rangerc 2010-09-25 23:21
Now that Tornado is in and the rest of the air conjurations seem to also be objects of discussion, is this change possible? The other proposed aptitude changes can be debated back and forth, but there seems to be a relative consensus that Crawl's only airborne race should be the game's top air mages as well. — RangerC 2010-11-24 08:00
Done. — galehar 2010-12-03 09:45
Tengu have a pretty arbitrary 1 fire and -1 ice - I'd suggest 1 for both. There's nothing thematic about this, and ice better complements their melee abilities. — og17 2010-09-25 22:34
Why should they have 1 in both? Why not 0 or -1? — dpeg 2010-09-26 23:14
Tengu are supposed to be good conjurers, so -1 in the two main conjuring schools would be odd. 0 would work, but it'd be a clear nerf; fire and ice are opposing and largely incompatible schools, so 1 in each would simply prompt players to pick between the two instead of favoring fire by default. It wouldn't be an overall power increase (ignoring ice casters with sticky flame, as that's only because sticky flame is broken in itself). — og17 2010-09-27 15:16
This all has been debated before on sourceforge, i believe it went stale due to small nitpicks in apts. However I agree then and now that Ke air magic buff would be very fitting. I would suggest the following changes: Conj+2, Fire-1, Ice-1, Air+3, Earth-3. Unsure, but maybe Slings and/or fighting could be buffed to +1 also. — porkchop 2010-09-27 14:09
Since Tengu can't shut off their perma-flight ability, they should take regular damage from monster Airstrike (meeting a Titan in Vault 8 as a Tengu is not fun, or fair). This can easily be rationalized: the same control over the air that allows Tengu to perma-fly without wings should allow them to mimimize the impact of the Airstrike spell. The messaging could look something like this: “The air twists around and strikes you! Your control over the air softens the impact.”. Also, when monster Tengu are added, this would prevent them from being too weak against Air mages. I'll code a patch for this change, if it gets OKed. — rangerc 2010-09-25 23:21
Since two weeks ago, they can stop flying now. — kilobyte 2010-09-25 23:29
In the wild a bird of prey doesn't use a knife to cut up meat. Tengu beaks should be able to chop corpses similar to ghouls claws. I also think +1AC from feathers, similar to soft scales, wouldn't be overpowered considering the 2 missing armor slots and very low hitpoints. — solar
As an alternative to butchering, an 'e'at command has been suggested for Tengu in the past. — Porkchop 2010-10-24 22:47