dwarves

i love dwarves. that's to say, i've been reading fantasy and playing rpg's since i was a little kid, and dwarves have always captured my imagination. whenever i can i like to play them.

so it was pretty disappointing to find that dwarves in wizardry are so neutered. low intelligence, low speed, low senses. there's very few classes out there that dont need two of these - and of those classes, there's better choices than dwarves (even the obvious priest/lord/valk (due to piety) have better alternatives.)

as a result, i've played very few in wizardry, and with those i've been disappointed.

can anyone relate successful dwarf development stories or tips?
thanks.

[Scatter]

No. In fact, i think there are big problems with most of the races. Humans and Hobbits have a noticably higher total in attributes, and then maybe Liz, Faerie, and Mook are useful for their extreme exceptions in stats/equipment. Most of the others don't have enough special abilities or equipment to offset the lower Attribute total. Dwarves i think probably are the worst example of this; thier damage resistance never seemed to amount to much, and certainly doesn't make up for their lacks in stats. I played a couple randomly-determined parties, and the only Dwarf i liked the eventual development of started as a Rogue, so the Dex and Speed got at least a reasonable start. (I made a Lord out of her after the randomly-determined 7-level period was up)

[Malach Cha Movis]

Hi Sultan,
Please bear with me if you think that I am a bit off topic; I'll connect it all up soon.

I just got my hand on a wiz 8 editor, which seems pretty good. Now using an editor indiscriminately can and will ruin a game for the player using it. Nevertheless, he/she is the only one to suffer, since it is a single player game.

There are certain uses that can be valid, at least to some players. If a player believes training is okay, then why spend six real hours building up stealth against green slime, or the locks & traps skill against the 8 tumbler lock, or music skill by constantly using the viola, or continuous charm to build up the psi realm. Why engage in two hundred battles against the same opponent to try to get the 'Light' Sword. When a player gets to the point in the game where he is going to spend a great deal of unpleasant, unproductive time, just imagine that the time was already spent, use the editor and continue with the game.

Another possible legitimate use is when a player discovers that he might have allocated attribute or skill points differently. Rather than starting all over, just add and subtract points where appropriate.

This brings me to your problem. You like to play a dwarf for role playing reasons. There is no reason a dwarf should not be intelligent or dexterous or lack senses. If you want a dwarf warrior, raise senses and dexterity. Dwarves, in fantasy literature have often been skillful weapon makers and armorers. Dwarves live underground, which means that they have to rely on other senses other than sight. So both are justified. They won't be speedy but there is no reason that a dwarf with cleric abilities wouldn't also be very intelligent.

There is no reason any longer to complain that the races are unbalanced. Just balance them the way you like.

That brings me to my last question. Does anyone know of any attempts to alter the game itself: from modifying monsters or weapons, to creating new weapons or monsters? How about full blown mods?

Excellence is not a skill; it's a habit! (See Aristotle)

[ 09-08-2003, 01:07 AM: Message edited by: Malach Cha Movis ]

[EEWorzelle]

Regarding the proposal to use an editor, Malach, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it, if it is fun.

There a "Dogbert" (Dilbert) cartoon where the dog (!?) puts the cards in various piles, moves them around, then declares himself the winner.

"That was amazingly satisfying," is what he says.

Similarly, using the editor to change the game and characters can be satisfying. If there is actually a way to do that with stability, without inadvertently breaking anything, and there is a way to label these and distribute them... what we would have is mods, which would be very cool.

The designers in this game did not intend to support mods, however, so code can, and probably does, make assumptions that will break this.

Editing the game to make the character of ones dreams (or using training/tricks for that matter), throws off the balance, makes the game easier, and one has to ask what they are really doing or trying to accomplish. If the answer is "fun," and what they do with an editor is, in fact, fun, then I say go for it.

In my personal view, the limitations of the game give it character. The dwarf is a consumate defensive character in a game system that rewards offense. Make a Lord with Iron Will, Iron Skin and you have a character tough to kill. However, the creatures in this game can easily kill "tough to kill" characters, unless they are killed first.

I think the Dwarf can excell in parties, perhaps small ones, when there is little time for casting defenses in the heat of battle and the characters, due to choice of battle tactics, must sometimes be able to stand up to 20-40 rounds.

For character creation in general, if one is forced to ignore a race's strengths, and has to try to patch more than one of its weaknesses, then that race is probably a bad choice for one's character. With the Dwarf, IMO, at least two of it's low capabilities need to turn high. However when there are two, that need to change, but just that, it might still be just barely possible to do something effective.

Ironically, a slow Mage is possible. With a minimum Intelligence of 60 and Dexterity of 55, that uses up 50 of the 60 Bonus points right there, but that extra ten bonus points can be used to make Intelligence 62, Dexterity 58 and then, at level-up one can increase those two. That would allow effective use of a Sling and/or Staff. Eagle Eye is out of reach but Dexterity and that good starting Strength will help To Hit and Attack Rating a lot. Powercast will obtained at Level 12, which is a little later then optimum, but not too bad. The extra Hit Points and resistance will be very welcome.

Similarly, an Alchemist is possible, but since starting Intelligence is 55 (after bonus usage) and there are still only 10 Bonus points to distribute due to Dexterity of 60), that means Powercast at Level 14 (Or can one distribute 4/10 instead of just 3/10 to Intelligence? I don't remember, and am not with the game at the moment. That would make it possible to get Powercast at Level 13, a big difference). This one might work better in a smaller party, where there are more levels (and so Powercast is gotten earlier in the game and has longer to rise).

Both of these ideas use the fact that Profession minimums boost stats that can then be boosted further with any remaining Bonus Points. In the first case Intelligence is raised by 32, or over half of the Bonus Points. In both of these, two weaknesses (Intelligence, Dexterity) are directly turned around into strengths, with a little to spare to boost them further. Thus, in general, when a race is excellent in everything you want, except what the profession you need has a high minimum in, that can turn out excellent, if there are still some Bonus Points to distribute). When there are two weaknesses that must change, however, like the case of the Dwarf, there will probably be no or very few extra Bonus points to distribute, and it becomes tougher.

If the Ranger had no Intelligence requirement, blowing off magic entirely, that would work too, but it does and would leave no Bonus Points to distribute for a Dwarf Ranger. It is still possible to do that, I guess. A fighter is possible, but Close and Ranged Combat would suffer (with both Senses and Intelligence low), same deal goes for a Lord.

I would guess, Malach, that this would be an example of what you were saying. One could, if it was stable, use an editor to go ahead and give your starting Dwarf Ranger, as an example, Intelligence of 30, Dexterity and Senses of 61 (after putting 6 of the 20 remaining Bonus Points in each) and put the other 8 points somewhere (Strength, Speed). If possible, it would let you to try something reasonable, that would be possible in the game if the rules were only slightly different.

I guess when I think of the Dwarf character (ala LOTR) I think of axes, which are also very weak in this game.

[ 09-08-2003, 04:43 PM: Message edited by: EEWorzelle ]

hey everyeone, thanks for the responses.

scatter - on the back of your response i checked the point total for the races. no matter which class you choose, each race has a fixed total of points.

human - 375
hobbit - 370
elf, felpurr, rawulf, gnome - 365
faerie, lizardman, dracon, mook, dwarf - 360

so for classes with a wide range of needs (eg hybrids) or if you are looking for a balanced party, humans and hobbits have the clear advantage.

i suppose the thinking is that those races with fewer total stat points have benefits to compensate, but it's just not born out in practice. in some cases, the races are quite applicable to specific roles, or as you say scatter, their extreme stats make them exceptions. faeries for spellcasting, liz/drac for fighting, mook for bard, ranger, fighter, psionicist (interesting combination of classes there). but for the dwarf, they arent even well suited for the classes most appropriate for their stats.

eew - i like your thinking on the dwarf. i was messing around with the classes trying to work out a best "all dwarf" party and came up with fighter, rogue, alchemist, mage, bard. (i was tempted to toss in a samurai for fun - a dwarf samurai makes me giggle for some reason) this party just might be playable using the bard's drums and planning for the alchemist and mage to contribute to the combat beyond spellcasting.

have you considered that, given your opinion of the weak contribution of piety to the game, perhaps the dwarf's strength is simply not that valuable?

perhaps the conclusion is that wizardry 8 slights dwarves, through overlaps (with other races) and oversights (with few good thematic items).

[
as an aside, i also took a look at the 3 races with 35 in speed (gnome, mook, dwarf) and considered the best small party using them. interestingly, i came up with a mook bard and mook psionicist with a gnome alchemist and gnome mage. the best fifth to add would be the dwarf fighter. this is interesting because it's indicative of the dwarf's weaknesses - even amongst their *slow* peers, they just dont have the advantages to rate serious consideration. (note, i did exclude the dwarf priest because i find priests a bit boring to play - style choice, i admit).

oh, and a second aside, i recently developed a lord (human) in a party that went to ascension peak. in addition to his natural hp regen, he was wearing the ring of regen, a cameo locket, gown of divinemail (l), and infinity helm. he regenerated damage so fast i dont know if he could be killed. i probably should have put robes of regen on him as well, but he needed the MR of the golden breastplate. and too bad i didnt have excalibur for an extra +1 from that too!
]

malach - i have to admit, your reasoning for using an editor has merit. putting those thoughts together with the analysis of races i posted above, i would be tempted to drop 5 or 10 or 15 points on any non-human at the start of the game to level the playing field. or, alternately, to simply tweak the dwarf starting stats (+5 here, -5 there) to keep the balance but make it more playable. however, i had trouble digging up the editors, and the only one i found was not compatible with the patch, and even then it only had facilities for adding points, not subtracting them as well.

perhaps in the end it is for the best. if i ever want to take a dwarf to ascension peak, i'm gonna have to solve the puzzle of how to make them effective.

[EEWorzelle]

Originally posted by sultan: have you considered that, given your opinion of the weak contribution of piety to the game, perhaps the dwarf's strength is simply not that valuable?

Yep.

One expert player on the VN boards, Lanastashia, did a party of all casters where she raised both Intelligence and Piety to 100. I think she had a couple Dwarves (Priests) in that party. Yes:

http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?...start=50775198

She found that when all of them had Iron Will it was very effective. Vitality helped also (IIRC). There are a few innovative uses of Dwarves, but overall I agree with your assessment.

By the way, I did a table of starting Attribute points. something like yours. Your numbers look correct, but be aware that the manual is not entirely correct. To check to make certain you have the right numbers, use the character creation screen, leave profession alone, and scroll through races to see what the game actually gives you. You may have already done this. I found three instances where the numbers were different than the manual. I think the Flamestryke site is correct, I submitted the corrections there and the site either was or will be updated for them.

It is only when there is a particular Attribute, such as Piety, that you don't happen to care about for a particular character, that some of the other races give a gain in other attributes. I agree that very few special race abilities matter as much as any significant number of attribute points.

[ 09-08-2003, 10:13 PM: Message edited by: EEWorzelle ]

yes, when my wife and i build the spreadsheet with the race/class stats, one of us sat ticking through the character generation screen menus, reading out attributes and the other dutifully typing away in excel.

i've since built a vba front-end with a pull-down menu for class and a collection of tick-boxes you can use to select the attributes you're interested in. then a table shows the starting stats for the races (including bonus) as well as a ranking by total stats (incl bonus) for the selected attributes.

ranking is not the only consideration in selecting races for classes, but it helps get my thoughts organised.

thanks for the link, that definitely sparks some new ideas, particularly for priests that i havent historically enjoyed playing. i just might breathe some life into these dwarves yet!

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

I like Dwarves too! I do think they are a bit limited though. I'm not even sure their Damage Resistance does very much?

agreed, variol. if i remember correctly, dwarves get 1% damage resistance for each 10 of vitality. 10% DR doesnt amount to much if you're wearing a bunch of armour at 20+ AC nor does it really help a character with twice as many hitpoints as the rest of the party (with the HP benefits of running up vitality).

more so, if you open iron skin, you get 5% DR immediately, then 1% additional for each 4 points of DR, to a maximum of 30 (25 + 5). so the dwarf gets 40% DR instead of 30% for other races - again, negligible. the dwarf monk would get 50% DR (with 10% bonus for being a monk with 100 vitality) which is starting to get serious (50 vs 30), but there's so much else a monk needs to work on, vitality seems a luxury (at least 3rd or 4th down the list, depending on your style).

[choking]

Sultan, hope this isn't to isn't too late but i made a dwarf character and she rocks. I've played her since wizardry 7, when she was a fighter/valkryie/lord and before i finished i switched to a monk for wizardry 8. In the tranlation she started out at a -5 penalty rather than the -15 as regular dwarven monks. As she leveled i just increase her Str and Vit. now at lvl 17 she kicks, 6 attacks doing 20+ damage. this isn't as good as a tank but with haste and Superman, it increases to 40+ damage at 9 attacks.