As I just summed up, a Human Ranger vs. Mook Ranger is very close (5 point stat sum in favor of the Mook, less than a level up, if you like being powerful; Strength, Dexterity, Speed, and Senses being maxed). This is a difference of level 29 vs level 30, clearly not a game breaker.

I generally hate gimmicks, such as the need to create a Fairy Ninja to get the Cane of Corpus.

Fairies start out with 25 Strength, 55 Intelligence, 35 Piety, 30 Vitality, 50 Dexterity, 60 Speed, 45 Senses.

Ninjas have a stat requirement of: Strength 50, Intelligence 50, Vitality 50, Dexterity 55, Speed 55, Senses 50.

This results in a a character with -55 points, to meet profession requirements, out of a total of 60 points (5 points left to distribute). This isn't exactly what any normal player would create, without the gimmick of the CoC.

If creating one Fairy Ninja, they would have an 80% chance of getting the CoC from Don Barlone (if playing Ironman, if you get the unlucky 20%, too bad).

With any more than one Fairy Ninja, assuming your first one got the CoC, you have 1 or more mediocre Fairy Ninjas.

This is like the 1 Bard/1 Gadgeteer rule: There are a finite amount of instruments and gadgets; Any more, and your party is forced to share said items. One Bard, and/or one Gadgeteer, is the optimal strategy.

Edit (since I can't reply to my own post, to shorten post length): Where I'm going with this, is that the (Mook only), Giant's Sword is only useable by the Fighter, Lord, Valkyrie, Ranger, and Samurai. This is fair, as these classes have to fight out in the open (unlike the Rogue, Ninja, and Monk, with Stealth skill).

Giant's Sword: To Hit +2, Initiative -2, Damage 9-33, Weight 35, Two-Handed, Extended-Range, Strength +5, KO 30%, 5% Earth resistance. These are guaranteed drops 4X, from Death Lords and the Keeper of the Crypt. Two in the Southeast Wilderness Temple, one guarding the Diamond Eyes in the Mountain Wilderness, and the last one guarding Marten's Tomb.

As already proven, a Human Ranger is almost on par with a Mook Ranger. They won't get the Giant's Sword, so will have to rely on Polearms for extended range. Note that the Human maxes 4 attributes only a level after the Mook, so will still be competitive. Also, while Intelligence and Vitality are roughly the same, the Human has a significant Piety advantage, meaning higher Stamina, Spell Points, and an easier time maxing realm skills.

The Polearms that a Human Ranger can use are: Awl Pike, Burning Spear, Dread Spear, Mystic Spear, Shock Rod, Spear, Spear of Death, Spiked Spear, Stun Rod.

Not a bad weapon selection.

Faerie ninja has always had some synchronicity. Sure, they are nowhere as "good" as the previous games in the trilogy, but they are not terrible when forgoing the CoC. Of course, I'm such an encumbrance ... (fanatic is too strong, and offensive terms are no bueno) that I dislike a faerie's two-thirds rate. That's how the race reduces a highlight of the class, also small polearm selection. The class prevents faerie armor, which is also sad. But faster magic regen—ha! So, yes, it works, but the major appeal really is the CoC, which was in Crusaders, so fans were expecting it anyway. Sir-Tech Canada made a "joke" by making it a permanently missable item. But, hey, I like the sub-optimal ranged-only ninja. (I wonder how well a sen/str version works. Would be better in end-game. See it has variety, even whether to use bows or slings. Also, there's the matter of locks & traps.)

Also, two bards works very well actually. Many take Saxx for that though. Gadgeteers can also work, but I've seen less people do it. Although there was the one person who played with four. His take away, beyond three has too many diminishing returns. I presume that one or two is the sweet spot for both, but I don't like the thief classes that much.

I brought up this thread because I was wondering if a single item in this game (the Giant's Sword, specifically, warrants picking a Mook Ranger over a Human Ranger. You're basically trading that weapon for terrible Piety.

With a Mook Fighter vs. Human Fighter, I like my Fighters to dual-wield, so the Mook's Giant's Sword becomes a moot point, and the Human's higher stat sum wins out.

I know of one player that dislikes low piety on hybrids. Being a hybrid fan, I understand completely, hybrid magic is so slow to develop early on, and the higher piety helps. Late game, piety differences don't matter that much.

And, yes, late enough, the giant's sword is potentially worth it. That is, depending on player preferences. That being said, a mook does have higher AR early and faster expert skills. The low speed is slightly annoying though. Then again, some players prefer lower speed; I like it high on warriors. The only low-speed build that I'm interested in is the dwarf priest.

It's hard enough maxing realm skills for caster classes, such as Bishops, Priests, Alchemists, Psionics, and Mages, who have decent Intelligence and/or Piety (it makes sense for them to develop these stats).

It's another matter entirely, when it comes to hybrids, who have many stats and skills to worry about (Powercast debatable, with -4 caster level penalty).

This is when a Human comes in: As it is, I'm having a hell of a time getting my Human Valkyrie and Ranger past the goalpost of 98 in realm skills. The Ranger's Divine realm stubbornly sticks to 98 skill (casting Draining Cloud almost every round), despite everybody else's realm skills being 99.

Imagine if I was trying to do this as a Mook (25 Piety). It would be even worse.

The Human Ranger does have a bright future, however: He will max Strength, Dexterity, Speed, and Senses at level 30, and have respectable Intelligence, Piety, and Vitality. Also, although he doesn't get any extra resistances (Who cares; Resistances can be fixed by Magic Screen, and Element and Soul Shields), The Mook's Giant's Sword can be supplemented with good Polearms.

I concur here. I'm not much of a fan of the mook ranger. I often take hobbits or dracons, though. See, I tend to just spec hybrids as warriors and cast often. I mean, if one doesn't build towards powercast, the offensive magic isn't as good, and realms don't have to be maxed to get a positive non-offensive usage. Not that offense will ever match casters. Now, firing off thinning spells is rolling the dice, but—if noting better—might as well. Melee can be rather slow, after all. Of course, if the party has high magical damage—meh. Nevertheless, the offensive capabilities can still be useful in the mid-game—to soften up mobs, if nothing else. I'm not that big of a fan of the giant's swords for many reasons, and part of it is that I love extended range too much, to wait that long. I will say that a mook sam seems silly enough to try, and the high sen isn't bad.

Where is dtgreene? She seems to have disappeared.

The Human is your standard, go-to character. Having the highest stat sum, no extra resistances (who cares?), and a minimum of 45 to all stats, he/she is your go-to guy/gal.

A funny thing I discovered is that the Human beats the Mook in the Fighter competition (assuming that you want Strength, Dexterity, Speed, and Senses to max as fast as possible). Take any other race to compete against the Human: Dracon, Dwarf, Hobbit, Lizardman, Mook.

A Fighter starts with profession requirements of: 55 Strength, 50 Vitality, 50 Dexterity. Let's sum their starting stats of Strength+Dexterity+Speed+Senses+Leftover points upon character creation (60 is the max, assuming that the race meets all profession requirements; Points will be deducted to meet profession requirements).

Dracon: 55 Strength, 35 Intelligence, 30 Piety, 60 Vitality, 50 Dexterity, 40 Speed, 30 Senses. 55+50+40+30+60=235.

Dwarf: 55, 30, 50, 60, 35, 35, 35. 55+35+35+35+45=205.

Hobbit: 40, 40, 30, 45, 55, 50, 50. 40+55+50+50+40=235.

Lizardman: 60+25+25+70+40+50+30. 60+40+50+30+50=230.

Mook: 50+50+25+50+35+35+55. 50+35+35+55+40=215.

Human: 45X7. 45+45+45+45+40=220.

So you have 6 races, vying for first place: Dracon and Hobbit win first place. Lizardman wins second place. Human wins third place. Mook wins fourth place. Dwarf wins fifth place.

Yes, where *did* that lady go?

In all seriousness, current events have forced me to rethink one aspect of my identity, and that has been emotionally draining to the point where I haven't had much energy to think of replies, plus I didn't have anything I wanted to say. (The events in question are a very hot political issue, so they're not something I could discuss here; it would just lead to arguments and result in the thread having to get locked or deleted (particularly since real-world politics is against the forum rules here).)

In any case, I'd rather discuss Wizardry 8 (and perhaps other Wizardry games), and I have a feeling everyone else reaind the topic would prefer that.. That doesn't, of course, account for racial traits.
* Dracon likely gets an edge due to the ability to breathe, which is one of the more powerful racial traits. Hence, I'd argue that Dracon > Hobbit here. Dracons do have slight penalties to mental and divine, resistance.
* Lizardman has severe penalties to mental and divine resistance, so unless you plan on getting Iron Will (you probably don't), or you plan on giving the character the Helm of Serenity (which means no Infinity Helm), being insane/turncoat becomes a bigger issue. (This is the sort of thing that risks forcing a reload or ending Ironman runs.) Hence, one might actually prefer Human to Lizardman.
* Humans don't get any resistance bonuses. While this isn't as bad as a resistance *penalty*, it's still not as good as many other races.
* Mook gets the Giant's Sword, giving them an advantage in the later half of the game.
* Dwarf gets damage resistance, but as I've pointed out, it doesn't usually matter, particularly if you're looking at a class that gets high HP and heavy armor.

Also, just for fun, here's how Fairy looks:
Fairy: 25 55 35 30 50 60 45. Factoring in stat requirements, we see 55+50+60+45 = 210, with 10 leftover points, for a total of 220, which would rank it pretty high up there.

Except that it seems you failed to account for something that I accounted for. Using your Hobbit analysis as an example, you take the Hobbit as starting at 40 Strength, before adding in bonus points. But, the thing is, the Hobbit Fighter will actually have 55 Strength before adding in bonus points, as you do get the class minimums when you choose a class (unless you're an Apprentice, but that doesn't apply here).

So, if we adjust your analysis to factor in this variable, we get:

* Dracon, unchanged, still 235.
* Dwarf: +15 Dexterity, so 220.
* Hobbit: +15 Strength, so 250.
* Lizardman: +10, so 240.
* Mook: +15 Dexterity, so 230.
* Human: +10 Strength, +5 Dexterity, so 235.

So, the ranking is (assuming my math is correct):
* Hobbit is 1st place.
* Lizardman is 2nd.
* Dracon and Human are tied for 3rd.
* Mook is 5th.
* Dwarf is 6th, and apparently tied with Fairy (but racial equipment restrictions make Fairy not a good choice here).

Edit: My my math is mostly correct. but for the Mook case I failed to account for 5 points of Strength from the class requirements.

Faeries do get to use plenty of good weapons, and a fighter gets to use faerie armor—not that it is anything special—unlike a ninja or a monk. And, yeah, late-game armor has nice additional properties. And one would lose a shield, but a fighter is still a decent meatwall even without all that armor. I like the idea of a faerie samurai, even if one would lose samurai armor and sp regen items. But that's most of a loss on infinity helm plus detect secrets, no? And that's the thing, the lack of late-game sp regen and the two-thirds cc are not that bad.They can be worked around easily, for most classes. Now, yes, it's probably the worst for casting thieves. Faeries can't use many of the stamina regen armor either, even. I mean, they can't even use bard armor. And, the loss of snakeskin boots and shields is bad for a speed bishop or priest. Yes, a faerie is going to have weaknesses for most classes, but they will still be useful characters if played into. A faerie monk is a fun concept, I'd say. The low starting strength means my typical monk build probably wouldn't be the way to go, but can still use Zatoichi.

I'm sorry, I screwed up. I'm only "Human".

I took the base stats, instead of the modified stats, screwing over races other than Dracon.

Let's do this again:

The Fighter has a profession requirement of: 55 Strength, 50 Vitality, 50 Dexterity.

The stat total is: Strength+Dexterity+Speed+Senses+Leftover points at character creation.

Dracon: 55+50+40+30+60=235

Dwarf: 55+50+35+35+45=220

Hobbit: 55+55+50+50+40=250

Human: 55+50+45+45+40=235

Lizardman: 60+50+50+30+50=240

Mook: 55+50+35+55+40=235

So, the modified stat sum (taking into account points distributed into stats to meet profession requirements, plus the leftover points), is this.

Hobbit 1st, Lizardman 2nd, Dracon, Human, Mook tied for 3rd, Dwarf a distant 4th.

Yeah, hobbit is one of the best races. They even make good bishops, decent monks, and viable lords and valks. Dex being the best stat, and pie the worst—arguable, of course—combined with their high stat total makes them so great. But, that dracon breath though. Then again, that low int and sen though. (Faeries get turncoated a lot, trust me, the resistances don't really matter much. Shame.)

Even as a massive Human-supporter, yes, I would agree that the Hobbit is the 2nd most useful class, across the board. But, usually, it's a matter of a few levels (in the Rogue's case, it's two levels). Once the Human catches up to the Hobbit, they will already have maxed 4 stats, and be working on expert skills. I suppose that it's all in the eye of the beholder.

Except that Hobbit isn't a class in this game; it's a race.

(If it were, I could ask you which is more useful: Hobbit or Fighter?)

You know what I meant. Hobbit is the 2nd most versatile race, behind the Human; Hobbits only have -5 total stat points behind the Human, while the other races have -10 or -15.

Using the Fighter example, the Hobbit would max out 1 level ahead of the Lizardman, while maxing out 2 levels ahead of the Dracon, Human, and Mook. What's amazing is that the Human maxes out at the same time as the Dracon and Mook, while having way better overall stats (I don't care for Dracon Breath, or the Giant's Sword, as a Fighter; I prefer to dual-wield).

Even taking the Hobbit's specialty, the Rogue class:

Rogues have profession requirements of: 55 Dexterity, 50 Speed, 50 Senses (which the Hobbit perfectly meets, giving them all 60 bonus points to distribute).

Taking into account Strength+Dexterity+Speed+Senses+Leftover points, we have:

Hobbit: 40+55+50+50+60=255.

Human: 45+55+50+50+40=240.

Humans only have -15 points, divided by 6 points per level up, is 2 1/2 levels behind the Hobbit, but will have better Intelligence and Piety (which the Hobbit will surely have worked on in those levels).

Ultimately, it comes down to preference. Would you rather max stats as quickly as possible, or would you rather have the highest stat sum?