Shattered Kingdoms

I agree 100%!

This is the end of the griffon help file.

Griffons have almost no weaknesses as they possess great strength, a sturdy
build and a keen mind. They learn to fight with their powerful claws from
birth and infravision allows them to spot prey even at night. Their fur hide
makes them resistant to minor wounds and they shake off both cold and acid
with ease. The nature of their creation provides them with almost innate
immunity to poison and disease, strong resistance to charm effects and an
unflagging endurance, which they can use to carry a rider while in flight.

Now last time I played a griffon he was charmed every time it was cast on him. How is that strong resistance ? I like the idea of races having strengths and weakness. I also like the idea of using stat trains to help strengthen weakness at the cost of stats and enhance strengths again at the cost of stats. Sure you might have + 5 will but your cha is 5. It would add more options. I see this idea extending into other races elves with their cold iron poison etc, centaurs with their fire risks. At the cost of stats that could go on your actual stats or HP PE etc you can alter your body in other ways though training and learning tricks.

This caused me to go double-check the code, and it turns out there was a bug that caused the "resistance to mental attacks" attribute to be ignored. Fixed next update.

YAY pity that griffon was 3 chars ago but still a win for griffon kind. I am guessing your checking other races with such bonuses as well.

First people don't play centaurs for a combination of two things: High lvl fire magic and no armor on legs(which is the same problem as griffons).

People don't play griffons because they get owned by all magic. SK is a magic heavy world [edit: plane since sk is flat] and to have that severe of a disadvantage makes you get pked more often than not. And to rely on force shield to protect you . . .I laugh. That means either you have it or someone else will have to cast it on you. And force shield requires concentration . . .That is not an effective way to deal with the problem. That is why so many people complain about cloth vs. hvy armor priests.

Oh crap, that means I won't be able to put Adan to sleep every time I see him.

Was that the only thing that wasn't working in the code?

Maybe griffons should be like sprites/halflings and just generally magically protected? They could keep all their current (now fixed) bonus's, and then be given that half-damage to spells thing.

If griffon resistance includes sleep and fear/intimidation as well as charm, then I vote for more testing before another re-balancing. Being so susceptible to such group spells/staves was a huge part of a griffon's woes.

If there's more to be done yet, I'd -really- like to see a solution that caters more to fighers and hybrids than to pure priests and mages. More HP/move per train, or an aerial combat maneuver, or more claw damage, or an innate armor spell, or ... something.

Yes, magic vulnerability is a pain. But griffons need some pains to compensate for their advantages. I'm more interested in getting the race concept working well - and in harmony with the allowed classes - than in covering that hole.

This made me laugh and cry.

Every time I come back to lurk for a bit, before deciding to try and play again or not I always see some kind of buff griffons thread, specifically talking about their weakness to magical damage.

Just stop. Magical damage is the griffon races biggest weakness, the other being the simple lack of normal reach which everyone has, but effects griffons more since they're all about being somewhat prepared with zero actual prep.

Simply put, unless code has changed so much my brain would hurt thinking about it, I doubt there is any more class/race combo that is better against melee damage. Yes, there are thousands of damage subtypes now and such, but AFAIK, that doesn't change the damage reduction from the physical portion of the attacks.

If you gave them a big chunk of MP for whatever reason Griffons would flat out be the best race in the game. Hands down.

As far as Forsooth's idea goes, if you wanted to do something to cater more to the fighters and hybrids, and not give MP which I honestly think would be impossible to balance between near useless, and completely overpowered.

Make art significantly less useful against griffons. They are magical creatures. It makes some sort of sense, and helps make them somewhat even more unique. Want a random number pulled out of my [REDACTED]? 50%. Then to help tie in one of the griffon's main boons, give them an increased amount of REF/FORT/WILL for their base stats. Let us say double.

It's been forever since I've looked at anything, so going solely on random numbers, and not actually looking at how many art trains each class gets, lets say random joe necro has 16 trains in art.

Now lets say random joe griffarb has his Con Maxed, which would normally give +4 Fort.

That'd turn that saving throw on FoD from a -12 scenario to an even keel. You could take it even further by using your 6 eq slots to focus on one or two of the saving throws. Such as Fort/Ref.

Is this too powerful? Probably. However, if you're going to give them assitance, I'd like it to be something akin to one of these, or both. I want to see griffons taking damage from spells, they are supposed to. However, I wouldn't have a problem with a griffon being able to stack Fort/Reflex/Will to be extremely difficult to deal with with that one school of spell saves, or somewhat difficult to deal with for two, and well with Art, you're correct that their 6 eq slots just aren't enough to effectively do that.