I've made a bunch of changes to race today. The idea is to balance the
races with humans. Now, this isn't really completely possible since
balance depends on ever-evolving skillsets and player
ability/cleverness, but when looking at some races it was clear that
some were pretty much indisputably better than humans and some were
pretty much indisputably worse. If not indisputably, the preponderence
of evidence seemed to indicate that some races were better and some were
worse, again, overall.

The first big change is that all racial advantages or disadvantages for
bashing have been removed. We did this because almost everything else
with races mainly affects PvP combat. Yes, strength and balance/eq
advantages/disadvantages are affect bashing, but they also affect PvP
combat, which takes precedence as we try to always place precedence (95%
of the time) on player interaction rather than player-world interaction.
So, the problem is that there's no real way to provide a meaningful
counter to an xp advantage or disadvantage, as any counter affects a
totally different arena from bashing/question: PvP combat.

Other changes:
1. We made an herb balance advantage/disadvantage. It's fairly small
because it has to be. Rajamala have gotten a level 1 disadvantage here.

2. We created a stun advantage, and given it to trolls at level 2. This
means that about 10% of the time during an attack 'round' (even though
we don't really have rounds), a troll doing blunt damage will stun
someone as well as do damage.

3. Horkval intelligence is now 9.

4. Horkval cutting resistance is now level 3.

5. Increased the power of headstomp.

6. Rajamala now heal more slowly from elixirs, level 2.

7. Xoran intelligence is now 13.

8. The overall effect of strength has been amplied a bit. 12 strength is
the norm, so differences between 12 and higher or lower stats have been
amplied somewhat.

9. Reduced the balance time on seduce.

10. Reduced Tsol'aa constitution to 10.

11. Lowered dwarf dexterity to 9.

12. Raised dwarf resistance to blunt damage to level 2.

I'm also giving everyone -who doesn't already have one- a free
reincarnation so that if you feel all gimped by these changes you can
change race. You're probably wondering why rajamala got the shaft, and
the answer is just that it's generally agreed (not by everyone,
naturally) that rajamala are kind of universally a great race for most
classes and perhaps the best race period. This is largely due to their
fast balance. We had the option of reducing the fast balance advantage
or adding other disadvantages, and chose the latter route just in the
name of diversity of capability among races. I think having races 'feel'
distinctly different combat-wise is a good thing as long as it's not
taken too far and so becomes too hard to balance.

I should also add that you shouldn't necessarily consider these changes
final. I'm going to monitor how these changes impact things and if more
adjustments are needed, we'll do so. If the adjustments are major, we'll
give people another free reincarnaton if they need it.

Penned by my hand on the 19th of Sarapin, in the year 342 AF.