Character Traits Update - Feedback Requested

[Siddhe]

Most people recognize that an update to the trait system was badly needed. What we are hearing is that where players are feeling out of line with the recent change, is that you feel that it has acted as a hamstring for older characters that fall outside the new trait system.

Please take a moment to provide your constructive feedback on how you would remedy this perceived hamstring.

Would simply allowing everyone to reselect traits be considered equitable? Is the main concern with Cineran characters and the extra freebie? If this was modified to be more in line with what is perceived for other nationalities, would that suffice? Is everything basically fine now that people have had time to digest things?

Note that this is your chance to provide *constructive* input. Name calling, bashing each other, etc. will result in this thread being locked.

[Infiniti]

First of all, thanks for taking player feedback. It really is much appreciated. Secondly, I think a lot of people are going to fall into one of two camps, either

• A: Reset all traits and allow for old characters to re-pick them; or
• B: Everything is OK as it is.

A may be much more complicated from a coding standpoint, especially when re-selecting traits that modify stats, but maybe not. There is also the potential argument that this could benefit veteran players too much, e.g. high-rank players now selecting self-trained, even though they have benefited from other traits while getting to this point where self-training is the only effective training method, and so forth. B is obviously the easy choice, but based on the feedback you're soliciting, maybe it's the unpopular one.

Some nice middle ground, maybe, is to freeze traits as they are, however allow for older characters to add traits that they could not because they were blocked by a National bonus. For example if my character from Cinera has only two positives and two negatives, allow her to choose another positive (now that Blade Mastery no longer takes a slot), and a negative to balance it. The thought occurred that maybe you could even re-choose your negative traits, but that, for me, only serves to further complicate things.

I really like the balancing/trait changes, even though my older characters and current main don't benefit from it. For what it's worth, of the above scenarios, I think the middle-ground option the most balanced and fair to everyone, both new and old alike.

[Kered]

I ❤️ Siddhe, middle ground is ideal the new system is logical but older folks like me shouldn’t be left behind.

Added #1 Iridine Citizenship has become fairly obsolete, a normalized trait should be "always at war" since the game started Iridine has been at war, increase in endurance or combat stat xyz. Let's face it, literally never ending war should make people of the republic a bit adept at combat/war/throwing fish at Evag

[Travius]

I feel as if the recent change is more like the last straw.

I reroll every few years and start over because of various changes, and I still always find a way to get something wrong.

My favorite solution isnt as likely. A meteor kills us all, RPs spent on characters are refunded to go towards a new balanced trait/stat system.

Ideally a trait and stat system that allow characters to choose priority stats based on what they want to do, and not one cookie cutter build for every weapon and play style.

This would put everyone on an equal playing ground and provide exciting new RP. I would anticipate some players who quit as a result, but even a larger amount coming back to the game because of it.

I think a large portion of the player base would dedicate their time to testing and modifying the stat system to be as balanced as possible.

[Elowynn]

More choices hopefully increases the variety of viable builds. A few additional trait suggestions are below:

Specialist +3
- Choose one non-combatant skill set to specialize in, reducing SP cost by 25%.

Impatient -2
- Due to inability to focus for lengthy amounts of time, tasks that take more than (7?) seconds have an additional 25% penalty to roundtime.

[Lantraste]

Trait changes made a year and a half ago were essentially a death sentence for many who min/max character builds for specific combat purposes. The current system does a pretty good job of allowing more specialized characters and I am personally a fan of it. With a few tweaks the most recent changes could further improve the whole system.

National bonus traits need to be looked at and better thought out to actually see more than one or two nations picked by min/maxing players. If Tuchean Resistance gave a 10% bonus to endurance without losing a trait slot people would probably pick it. If Aestivans had a "mastery" trait similar to Blade Mastery for stabbing critical hits with spears people would probably pick it. These variations allow the player to design a character for a niche advantage and will always drive diversity. Having a bonus like either of these is far more important than having +10 speed when coming out of the generator.

Giving strength a to-hit bonus somewhere in the neighborhood or perception would go a long way to balancing out the chasm between an ox's grace and a finesse character. It's currently laughable how crippling ox's grace is in pure numbers comparison.

Fix the stamina regeneration traits and allow stacking. Maybe even consider giving one of them a percentage bonus to endurance akin to steady hands/dexterity. Anyone who picks these isn't going to be competitive with someone picking traits for pure numbers anyway so who cares if they can script for 3 hours straight? Some folks like to only play PvE TEC and would rather be able to fight for a long time and carry a whole bunch of loot.

Give players a delete-for-vc option. This shouldn't be hard to automate since character age and rps spent are already being tracked. Limit it to one per month/quarter/year if you want. Take the ability away from anyone found abusing it (like what's already being done for @kudos). A fresh start is nice, especially when major changes are made and the influx of new characters from events like the culling has improved the game overall. We need character turnover and major changes seem to cause that.

[jkidd]

Cinerans will likely still be preferred because they get nimble feet/steady hands for free. No one really knows what BM does. Dexterity is too overpowered. Anyone going for OP combat character is going finesse/steady hands/nimble feet w/ 3rd positive trait ranging from (Athletic/iw/ad rush/etc).

Trait reset w/ expanded traits sounds like a win. It should not cost RPs (or at least 1 per char for free - then a cost if ppl want to keep tweaking). The mechanics are changing and players shouldn't have to pay a price to adjust to it.

[Vakrend]

I'd like it so we had a stat skill for strength, endurance, and willpower. Right now the only stat skills are for speed, dexterity, perception, and agility. This has given a TREMENDOUS boost to characters that pursue weapons like clubs, or axes, or in general if you go for a high strength/endurance build and then shoot for fixing average stats, while heavily penalizing other weapons like knives, that naturally have a big boost to speed/dex but if anything suffer a penalty to endurance/strength by comparison. This is incredibly unbalanced for a variety of reasons.

Now granted, that's not for the top 5 characters/players that have 22k ranks and 15k+ RPs invested into their characters. That would be a great balance for the vast majority of the rest of the players.

[Kjel]

No one really knows what BM does.

I can tell you what my BM from this morning did. WRECKED

[ArchMagi]

Would simply allowing everyone to reselect traits be considered equitable? Is the main concern with Cineran characters and the extra freebie? If this was modified to be more in line with what is perceived for other nationalities, would that suffice? Is everything basically fine now that people have had time to digest things?
.

Re-selecting traits without keeping the "grandfathered" bonus of having stats you don't qualify for, would allow everyone to be on even footing with the new characters with free traits for automatic traits.
Re-selecting traits WITH keeping the "grandfathered" bonus of having finesse and 200 strength, for example, would just make old characters over powered.
The reason people mention super cinerans so much is blade mastery is now free, so you get a bonus to fighting with a blade, plus it lets you take steady hands or nimble feet for free, letting you then go ahead and pick nimble feet, and athletic, where as before, you couldn't pick all three of the preferred combat traits because blade mastery got in the way, making a cineran more of a warlord, with less weaknesses because free super trait.
There isn't another nation that has such a lopsided advantage in combat.

If you really want to keep the new rules for automatic national traits not being held against you in trait selection for new characters, the fair way would be to allow people to pick up a new trait or two, depending on their nationality, without removing any of their current traits, and without keeping any grandfathered stats that they do not qualify for, without refund of rolepoints, considering there's no way of knowing if that 20 points in strength were bought at 1000 rps, or 500 rps.
If everyone wants to benefit from the new changes, they don't get to benefit from being currently overpowered because they spent a lot of role points before traits altered statistic caps.

If you allow people to KEEP those unfair advantages, and take advantage of getting an extra trait as well, then the old characters just get that much more out of balance with the rest of the game.

So, in my opinion, do nothing, encourage character turn-over for those who want the new hotness, after all, they're all like a hundred years old ic now. OR, do the stuff I suggested earlier in this post. But whatever you pick, no extra benefits for old characters, they either keep their stats that they don't qualify for, or they get to pick up a new trait or two, without changing any of the current traits, but lose the stats they don't qualify for due to traits.

[isgrimnur]

I personally wouldn't mind a chance to reselect my traits again, as I haven't bothered doing anything statswise with any of my newer toons, other than run courses to kill off my on hand points. I'm just waiting for all the folks who've dumped thousands of rp's into traits, to get the chance to reselect them, and have them bugger it all up in doing so for making a poor choice

[pineapple_shoes]

This is a conversation I have been waiting a decade to have so I am very excited to see that there is actually interest in addressing this. I wish I could say that I see an easy fix but I think the traits system is irrevocably flawed without major overhaul and so therefore there's a huge pile of issues that need to be addressed for a true solution to the problem. In the immediate, I agree with Elowynn in it should need a repeal of changes with maybe a couple of "grandfathered" characters but a true and more difficult solution is a major overhaul of traits system and some sort of means of addressing existing and old characters in a reasonable way.

Before I continue, I know that a major element of this discussion will devolve into "Well not everything has to be the best" or "Just RP it out, it's an RP game" but I think that those are arguments that accept that the system is broken and we should just work within it. I also realize not everyone wants to be "Top end" and I am one of those, but that doesn't mean that we can't still hope to make the system the best it can be for the most people involved and if you choose to RP it differently or in a pronounced/muted way you certainly still can.

Traits have drastically changed over time and it's important that the issue is adequately addressed for all characters considering how traits have serious in-game repercussions that do overall affect a lot of players. There are major re balances that need to be made to the value and functionality of stats that are unfortunately a huge issue to the overall health and diversity of characters which is why there's likely not some panacea to recent changes. That being said, the major elements that will need to be addressed is not just the traits themselves, but the open dialogue of the players, stats, and staff that has traditionally been shutdown heavily in the past by the staff. I want to thank you Siddhe for beginning this conversation but I'll state that I am cautiously pessimistic but I hope that there will be involvement from all staff members to find and work on a real solution the game needs.

I admire and support the commentary of the posts that precede mine because I think that Infiniti makes valid and solid points, while Elowynn has some well thought out and interesting contributions. The heart of the problem with "super Cinners" is that there's already hugely desirable stats innate to certain races (notable Cineran and Altenes) as well as then these massive trait buffs that lead a huge lack of diversity in the game and a failure to have viable options in many different ways. Each nation should really have some unique perks and or stats that are then weighed against other nations so that there's maybe more approaches to creating a top-end character if that is your chosen desire. Again I'll refer to Elowynn's post because there's some great solutions provided to that, but I think the innate bonuses outside of stats should also be looked into and balanced against other nations so that a certain 2 or 3 nations aren't the obvious choices for most every character.

Another major issue is the functionality of a good number of traits that just have little or no real contribution to the game. Weather, Absolute Time, Metal affinity, etc. are not even good roleplay options and have no actual viability within the game while other traits are either massively huge boons/detriments over other options that further limit the options. As a result, the options of traits that are actually viable are pretty much countable on both hands when considering both positive and negative options. To balance the system there needs to be a means of addressing the super strong/super weak options, and then adding unique qualities (crowd source/test this) that can make more trait and character diversity in the game. All of this can seem daunting but with adequate communication, testing from experts and lay-people, as well as a willingness to tweak things we can improve to a system that is awesome for many different people.

Another issue that needs to be addressed are hard penalties of traits that should likely go away as they make certain traits hugely awful/rigged. A trait like stutterer is excruciating because it is a hard change to the way a character works and deters actual roleplay options available to a player. Players have chosen to play mute, stutterers, etc and enjoyed it but many of these things are awful when there is a hard mechanic that is unyielding or very severe. Traits like Fear of magic or squeamish don't open roleplay options, they shut them down because there's no sliding scale that you get to work with, it's just you passing out and fainting from blood 80% of the time which becomes an incredibly un-fun mechanic. Fear of magic doesn't allow a player to play that role, but rather just forces them to deal with the flat out inability to do things while imposing significant penalties in other cases. Berserker is a neutral trait that just shuts down certain options and avenues for any sort of potential character-story progression and its losses are heavily outweighing any potential benefit where as some sort of sliding scale would be much more reasonable. To adjust this traits should be made to have penalties that aren't hard stops to RP. Illiterate (with mechanical tweaking hardly worth the tremendous amount of work) becomes Dyslexic and it jumbles the letters of words you read/write (that is likely a huge pain to code, i know and i'm just spit balling) . Squeamish makes you maybe fainting once in a GREAT while but has temporary penalties to actions when blood is present. It could even be on a scale were an ooze has a 1% chance to faint where as a spurting wound is a 50% chance to faint on sight. Adrenalin rush becomes a trait that is no longer explained simply with "They become the hulk at low HP" to perhaps be temporary boosts to attacks (sometimes) when a player suffers a critical blow thus making the trait trigger in more than low HP situations but in a way that can be RP'd other than hulk smash.

On the same line as the former, there's an awful lot of stats that need re balancing for the fact that they are entirely RP addressed and are often overlooked or just ignored and thus just become something people use to further penalize a "useless" useless stat. Gullible and introverted being the classic examples of traits that require no RP and are completely ignored as far as any in-game consequences save for a minor hit to stats that are often limited in their usability. Stats like this have long since been catch-alls for easy negative points but in reality they are often benefits to a character and zero harm.Traits like this it becomes an issue of balance and this is where the communities feedback can be incredibly important.

A major difficulty is going to be the balancing/addressing of stat-traits that just raise the potential threshold and how that then connects to stat-purchases. I will mostly ignore this one because while it's going to be important, I don't think I have enough commentary or opinion to weigh in on it in a meaningful way.

_________________

Ultimately the challenge here is two-fold

1) With the system as it is, it's been imbalanced, horridly flawed, and disenfranchising players pretty badly since 2005 and has only gotten worse over time as certain traits were made worse while other traits (like citizenship that was at one point a nation bonus mandatory to take) have become available in other ways (Worldly knowledge is languages I think? and now can learn these in the library). The recent changes only further worsened what it is and while it can be reverted to being the usual level of suck, the whole thing is jacked up. There's also traits that just don't actually work as has also been mentioned.

2) In order to REALLY fix this, it will require time, patience, collaboration and commitment from all people involved. Anything mechanic-wise has tended to be closely guarded by the GM's and input is seen as criticism which tends to make the staff defensive and hostile. Additionally, the biggest issue of all has been neglect of game functions and players which stems from some of that hostility and also apathy or staff-game disconnect. Tied to the former sentence, the idea of "That's _____'s project, I don't know where they were" has been the means for which much progress has been abandoned. The issue to this is that in order to really meet the demands of this challenge in a thorough way, it will require a lot from the staff and will actually require some relationship with the players. Players also need to understand that there's going to be a lot of opinions on this and that many voices need to be heard and your EXACT solution isn't the only one that will work.

__________________

As for trait adjustments. There will likely need to be some small short-term bandaid for players but maybe the simplest and most non-can-of-worms option is to just revert things. However in the long run there's a point that has been sorely overlooked and it is this: TEC is a game and people play games to have fun. There should be options to play your character however you want with some balance in mind. Traits have ruined the experience of a great many of us and the hardline 'NO' is disenfranchising to players. RP expenditure options should be a potential with elements of balance in mind when an official policy is made. There's nothing fun about making a character and being locked into game-changing things with absolutely no option of recourse. On the other hand, do it with balance in mind and prevent elements of pay-to-win. There's some pretty fantastic RP avenues that could make traits a lot of fun to potentially shift around a bit but it requires the willingess to make changes.

[Ariden]

It means a lot that this post was even started so thank you. And as far as I’m concerned the traits system right now is not ok. The reason people stopped talking about it was because there was an expectation that this was the way it was and why continue being aggravated by something that you cannot change?
I think what needs to happen is like El is saying take a look at rebalancing the traits, superstitious fears for instance should be a -4 trait. Currently most people probably pick the same traits because there are only so many ways to build a combat character, I don’t know anything about non-coms so I can’t speak to that. And it makes zero sense to pick a trait for RP reasons that is going to limit your character.
Then after traits are rebalanced then you should give everyone the ability to re-pick traits, one time. The people that had the old system where they could have 200 strength and 230 dex can either keep that setup or they can opt into the new system. This makes it fair for all current and future characters.
Then like El has suggested we should be able to re-pick our traits down the road because there will still be future changes that will change your good picks into less good. Every time there is a change to the trait system you should have the ability of one re-pick like jkidd suggested.
If the player wants to pick more than that make it a 10k RP expenditure to re-pick your traits and update to the newest system. The concern that someone will pick newbie traits and then switch to top-end traits in my opinion is a little overblown but for 10k, which is a lot of RP’s that gives you an option to undo a bad decision.
Vakrend also made a good point about stat skills and I agree with what he is saying and if there was a way to implement it that makes logical sense I’m all for it.
Once again thank you for starting this discussion.

[Elowynn]

[My previous post got flagged as spam, so I'm reposting, with additional trait suggestions.]

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I'm stoked to see a post like this. Thank you!

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The easiest:

• Undo it.
• And leave the people who rolled super Cinners. People who already rolled get to keep their grandfathered oddity.

The most complete:

• Implement a 10k rps option to reroll traits within your own nationality.
  • If you remove a trait that raised the cap of a stat over 200, your overage over 200 would be removed (those stats would be refunded) or disabled (hidden until you choose to regain this trait later.) (Background: a few years ago, a tweak to stats affected the normal "cap" of 200 points in stats by sometimes raising or lowering that cap. A "grandfathered" effect was that people who had a penalty with a trait like Finesse, which negatively impacts strength, were able to keep their 200/200 strength if they'd already maxed strength. If overage is removed when you choose to reroll, characters who grandfathered in benefits will have to choose between the grandfathered benefit and the option to reroll. I think being given this choice is fair.)
• Traits needs a rehaul, and National/Fourth Traits need to be tweaked/added to other Nationalities, to address the dominance of Super Cinners and Super Altenes. I shot off a post before that suggested some trait tweaks, but I think it deserves more thorough discussion, below.

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Now, to trait balancing suggestions... (This is be a revamped version of a previous post I wrote: http://forum.skotos.net/forum/our-ga...16#post1771416 )

For reference, this link has all of the traits listed: http://eternal-city.wikidot.com/traits
And this has all of the national bonuses: http://eternal-city.wikidot.com/national-bonuses

There will always be individuals who roll primarily a "max" build - and half the gameworld will copy them. For traits to be balanced, there needs to be: 1) more than one desirable build for combat oriented folks, 2) traits need offer flavor and RP-enhancement to non-combat oriented folks. 3) Traits need to be transparent and intuitive, since we're stuck with them essentailly forever, within characters that stick around for 10+ IRL years.

I would love to see more suggestions from folks for new National traits. Some of mine are below, albeit being more combat oriented.

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Trait tweaks

Athletic, Mountain Lungs, Frail Lungs, Intense Nightmares, Light Sleeper, all affect fatigue regen, but do not seem calibrated to each other correctly.

mountain lungs:
"increases fatigue recovery rate."
+4 trait.
athletic:
"reduced fatigue drain."
+3 trait.
increased metabolism:
"increased HP/fatigue recovery when full. No recovery when hungry."
+0 trait.
base (no traits):
light sleeper:
"reduced fatigue recovery benefits for sitting or laying down."
+0 trait
frail lungs:
"reduced fatigue recovery and increased fatigue drain."
-3 trait
intense nightmares:
"reduced fatigue recovery when asleep."
-3 trait

Laying in a non-resting area with a tester character with 100 HP:
mountain lungs: ~ 38m
athletic: ~49m [raises fatigue cap rather than raising recovery time?]
increased metabolism: ~36m
base (no traits): ~44m
light sleeper: 81m
frail lungs: ~60m

Light sleeper, as a +-0 trait, should not have a slower regen time than frail lungs.

Mountain lungs seems effectively the same or worse than Athletic, but costs 1 point more. Needs looked into and possible adjustment.

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Pack rat needs to be adjusted from a +2 to +1 cost.

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Weather sense needs to be adjusted from a +2 to +1 cost.

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Lucky should be removed from traits. Luck no longer functions the way it used to. I reported that Luck! did not apply to my attempts to hide in the forest - Sceadu replied that use of luck! should only affect a combat roll, and he then changed the description of luck. However, Sceadu's explanation seems incorrect as I seem to recall Luck! worked on locksmithing. Needs looked into. Trait worthless now.

Alternatively, Lucky trait could give a 1-5 bonus in one out of every 30 (or 50, or 100) rolls.

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Squeamish (currently -1) should be a -2 trait, or even -3 trait.

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New National Bonuses

Each National needs to be a viable pick - and not necessarily for combat. Otherwise, we'll continue to have blade-wielding super Cinners up the wazoo, because free Steady Hands is so good (and Blade Mastery is just a nice free bonus, why not.)

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Aestivans: Natural Builder should be renamed Steadfast Builder, and also give an approximately +10 bonus to Endurance, raising the cap, to make Aestivans an desirable combat roll, on par with Unpredictable or Blade Mastery.

Additionally, Hoplite Stance should include Wall Shields, not just Oval Shields, in the stance mechanic.

Build idea: This makes Steadfast Builder (Bonus to endurance), Iron will (free trait), Adrenaline Rush and an additional combat trait (like Vitality, Athletic, Steady Hands, etc.) an interesting gladiator or shield-wall pick.

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Add a tiny +1 (or even +0.05) to hit bonus for Altenes using Altene Skirmish Stance. Tie it into a new skill within Altene Ways, if you want to Tale-fy it (requiring 100 ranks for the bonus.) You'll have to selftrain it or teach it to one another.

Otherwise, the Altene roll (which gets Altene Ways free and Athletic as a free trait) is currently inferior to a Cineran roll (which gets Blade Mastery as a fourth, and Steady Hands free), which is a shame.

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No change to Cineran.

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Gadaene is a good example of a favored character pick for purposes other than combat. Gadaene is the favored pick for brokers.

Gadaene Unpredictability (fourth slot), and Innate Charm (free slot) is almost interesting combat wise, because Innate Charm raises the empathy cap over 200. It's not better than Cineran, however. Should Gadaenes be a combat pick? I think not. Thus, I think this is fine the way it is.

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Iridinian Citizenship should be tweaked as a trait, now that citizenship is relatively affordable in the VCC lounge. Call it "Fidelis" or "Long Live the Republic" or something, and give it approximately +10 to willpower over the cap, in addition to free citizenship.

The Steps could include Anonymity as a free talent (not a fourth talent.)

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Parcines gets Battlecry Bonus as a fourth free, and Mountain Lungs as a free. Mountain Lungs is worth +4, which is a higher value than any other National Advantage. Whether Mountain Lungs is as good as Athletic is a different discussion. I think this is largely fine.

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Remathens currently get free Iridinian, Cineran and an additional language. This is very similar to Worldly Knowledge (2 extra languages), which also gets a boost to Perception, which goes over the 200 cap. I suggest replacing the Remathen free auto with Worldly Knowledge. (Psst: For those who know a li'l something about a certain combat style, this would make Remathen an interesting build.)

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Sostaera: Disciplined Mind should be switched with Anonymity as the fourth free trait.

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Safelands: The current automatic National is free Outdoor Basics and Aversion to Violence. Add the beneficial half of Peaceful Spirit (SP boost to noncoms), or replace Aversion to Violence with Peaceful Spirit.

Or call it something new: Tender Heart, which includes Aversion to Violence and an over-the-cap boost to Empathy and Reasoning.

Another suggestion: A Great Outdoors trait, which gives a Reasoning and Endurance boost to being outside.

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The Tuchean national bonus is Resistance, which gives immunity to nausea and disease. Tale says this is a big deal because nausea is increasingly being used in coding. The free trait is Iron Gut, which gives increased resistance against poison, disease, and improved recovery time. I think Resistance needs a little bit of a boost - perhaps something RP oriented would be an inability to coma from alcohol. A Tuchean will KO, and always just "sleep it off."

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Windward: what the eff does Metal Affinity do? :P

Perhaps Metal Affinity could be tweaked to include: if boison/bronze/alanti/retalq/tin/etc. +1 to use/hit. Something small.

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New Traits

More choices hopefully increases the variety of viable builds. A few additional trait suggestions are below:

Specialist +3
- Choose one non-combatant skill set to specialize in, reducing SP cost by 25%.

Impatient -2
- Due to inability to focus for lengthy amounts of time, tasks that take more than (7?) seconds have an additional 25% penalty to roundtime.

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I hope the above is helpful to the discussion. I'm very much looking forward to reading what others come up with - with something big like this, I hope this encourages ideas none of us would have thought of on our own.

[ArchMagi]

A Tuchean will never puke from alcohol, or noxious fumes, or smelly stuff, like dead whales washing up on shore and putting everyone else around them into a vomit spiral of doom, the Tuchean will be just fine.
Iron gut just makes it that much better. A Tuchean will puke from poison, or raw food, but only for a short time, and if a Tuchean happens to get sick, it doesn't progress.
You're forgetting the additional language too, that also counts against the trait choices.

Tuchean's have two automatic, and one free, and then they are done, no negatives.
A Tuchean is over powered when it comes to fighting things that aren't knives stabbing them, they can kick the crap out of the viruses and diseases. I do like the idea of not comaing from booze, and just sleeping it off.

Metal Affinity is useful for locksmiths making better lockpicks, for example.