Race level balancing

I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of opinions on this one.

Use this thread to discuss level balancing for races!

This OP previously said don’t use this thread to discuss things like “Bothans should get more diplomacy” but that was dumb.

Disregard me, this post is better suited to another topic.

I’m all for getting rid of leadership, putting call as a low level diplo skill and making jail a low level combat skill. Teach can be put in science and percentage points for taught skills should be dependent upon ones level in that category. I.E. combat mains can teach blastery mastery to 90%, non-combat mains can teach it to 75%. I know this will cause an issue with flurry, but w/e flurry isn’t a big deal.

Secondly I say we let each and every race pick a main class and a sub-class. Combat mains medic subclass, engy main science subclass. I would suggest that bounty hunting not be allowed to be chosen as a subclass.

Just an idea to toss around.

To clarify, non-combat mains who have 150 levels in combat can teach blaster mastery to 75%. While combat mains with 150 in combat can teach it to 90%.

This sounds interesting. Loosing and entire class and dividing it’s few skills up among other classes. IMO Leadership and Diplomacy always seemed to similar to be separated.

As for the suggestion of picking sub classes that would increase the diversity of character compositions and level variances on LotJ. I would say not restricting which sub class you can pick (except for BH, I agree with that) and letting the player decide.
characters already get a bonus from picking a main so any bonus in levels for a subclass should be minimal but certain combinations, as suggested above, could give a larger bonus.
As for teach I like that concept. Teach falling under science at a mid level range, and teaching to higher percentages only by class mains. Not sure if 90% should be the max teach percentage though, maybe with a feat. I was thinking non mains would teach around 65% and mains teaching around 80% without any feat like assistance.

EDIT: I feel like my post was better suited for the OTHER skill and class tweaks thread. I don’t really have many complaints about race level balancing right now.

EDIT x2: I take that back. Why can’t Corellian Engineering mains get a 5 in Engineering? After all, didn’t they reverse engineer the Rakatan Force Drives and basically create the first modern hyperdrive?

At one point Rojan discussed the idea of making a list of the current active race/class combos available to view. I think looking at such a list in itself would speak volumes to what races and classes need to be worked on. Look at the list, everything that is at a 0-X% should be tweaked to make them more playable. Do their levels suck? Do they cost too much? Do they cost to much AND their levels suck? When I have more time I’m going to venture back into this thread and offer some of my opinions on the various races that I think needs help.

I’d be very down with basically just merging diplo/leader, as well as medical/engineering. I’m not actually of the opinion that EVERYTHING should just be raised like it was last TL, but there are some very specific awkward bits of levels in various races.

I’d second Paco’s ideas.

The level discrepancies are pretty vast and limiting when you go into making a character and are limited by what race you have to pick to build the character you want. I know some people will argue “its an rp environment, you can be whatever you want” but that ideology isn’t supported by code so you can be a nabooian gladiator all you want, doesn’t mean that slug isn’t going to kick the crap out of you in your loin cloth and makeshift vibroblade.

The code for subclassing is already ingame and the idea posted by Paco seems to fix alot of skill level problems that will be brought up, a 30 point boost in a second skill of your choice seems like a really easy fix to what is a very intricate problem presented by racial restrictions.
Not that this’ll fix the issues completely, just that it’d go a long way to bridging some of the gaps currently brought about by racial profiling for lack of a better description.

This thread is for discussing level balancing for races. We are not getting rid of leadership, but if you want to talk about that, take it to the idea subforum.

I’m always disappointed when I roll a race/class that has a 5 in the combination’s main, and I end up with like 146-147 after leveling and cybernetics. I’ve since stopped experimenting so I can’t name any offhand, but I tend to see it most with classes like slicer and smuggling. It’d be nice if we could find a way to ensure race/class mains with a “5” in their main received 150.

Or maybe, that mains cap whatever category they are in for the mains only.

I.E. A mandalorian medical main (or smuggler!) is guaranteed to have no more or less than 130 in medical (or smuggling!).

Just a thought though, how’s anyone else feel about this?

I really like the way certain races are limited to only three word bursts. I get that this is actually an INT thing, but since INT is tied to race…

I would like to see more of that sort of thing. A simple example would be races that don’t have lips can’t speak basic.. Verpine, for instance. Conversely, why can my human speak verpine? Is there a way to limit who can speak what, even if they understand it? So my human can understand what his wookiee friend is saying, but can’t speak shyriwook himself.

Also, I wonder if something similar to the INT/3-word-sentence thing can’t be done in other areas. If your wisdom is 3, maybe you aren’t going to be able to upgrade a droid better than 50% of the time, for instance. Or maybe if your dex is 5, you can’t sneak. Or you fail almost all of the time.

Again, I get these are stat issues, but stats are pretty closely related to race, so it becomes a race issue.

Also.. and I know this is likely a VERY BAD IDEA.. but what if the race modifiers apply to both starting _and_ maximum stats? So no matter how hard I try, my mon calamarian will never be as strong as my talz. Because as it is now, they have the same strength. That’s.. bizarre. So maybe the Starting Stat is 18, the Max Stat is … doesn’t really matter.. call it 23. So a whiphid can have a max of 28 str, while a bothan would cap at 21. (It might surprise you that I don’t actually have this stuff memorized.. I don’t remember what the actual racial bonuses are. But I think the idea comes across).

If we did that, then wookiees really would be stronger than the human standing next to them. And that’d be cool. And of course, this would apply to all stats.. so my duros is more dextrous than … a race that isn’t dextrous. I really don’t have this stuff memorized…

Sticked this thread as we are looking to lock in any race tweaks.

Here is a topic for discussion: free races. What get played, what don’t, and why? Here are some very raw numbers for this timeline. Certainly there are a lot of factors that go into these numbers. I think free races should be those that are generally most familiar to Star Wars fans?

Human: 1313
Twi’lek: 266
Bothan: 130
Hutt: 66
Zabrak: 284
Muun: 54
Ithorian: 40
Besalisk: 55
Iktotchi: 92
Neimoidian: 18
Quermian: 41
Vurk: 30
Utai: 24
Gran: 20

IMO level spread has a huge factor on who plays what race when it comes to free races and how often someone will re-roll said race.

twi’leks and zabraks make good out of the box combat mains and they can have pretty generic RP. Twi’leks with their BH and espi levels are particularly attractive as a freebie combat main. I’d almost go as far as to say Twi’leks are common ‘OP’ characters due to very few limitations. Perfect point grinding races too.

Bothans are (or were? it has been a while since I rolled one) good free espi or smuggling mains. They come very close to the ‘magic trio’ of 150×3. As a side note very first character on LOTJ was a Bothan slicer because of that ONE line in the SW movies about Bothans.

Some of the other free races are just weird to RP (or bland) or just have terrible level spreads for variety. Some also fall into expected RP/motives such as Hutts, Bothans (see a bothan? must be a spy! watch him! A Hutt? Must be a criminal) I personally would like to see more free ‘human variations’ such as Naboo and Hapans that we saw at the start of the TL but if they are free possibly scale back leves so they are ‘slightly’ better than baseline humans in minor ways. By tacking on a planet/variant name to a human it also helps nudge someone in a possible RP direction that they might not have thought of before.

It would be nice to see Rodians lowered considering how iconic of a Star Wars race they are.