Reptile Men -- Your thoughts?

[Bill_in_IN]

A friend of mine had small group of Reptile Men. Most of them were loaded up with unarmed combat skills. They were formidable and a challenge for a GM to make work hard for their EX points.

[hcobb]

The big nerf in Legacy fell on the reptile people who lost six attribute points from first edition.
They are non competitive against humans, elves, goblins, and halflings in melee or unarmed combat, but are decent crossbow snipers with the advantage that they don't have to worry about pulling out a dagger in the five seconds between being grappled and then pinned.

Longzhot, Reptile Person, age 20
ST 12, DX 11, IQ 9, MA 10
Talents include: Crossbow, Missile Weapons III, Pole Weapons, Toughness
Languages: Common, Reptile Person
Weapons: 2-h spear (1d+1), light crossbow (2d)
Attacks and Damage: Claws (1d; doubled in HTH), Tail (1d)
Armor: Toughness stops 1 hit

And an alternative as a wizard who doesn't need a dagger:

Zizzler, Reptile Person wizard, age 20
ST 12, DX 11, IQ 9, MA 10
Talents: Crossbow, Literacy, Missile Weapons
Spells: Aid, Fire, Staff
Languages: Common, Reptile Person
Weapons: steel light crossbow (2d), Staff holly maul (1d+2, 1d occult)
Attacks and Damage: Claws (1d; doubled in HTH), Tail (1d)

Note that Zizzler only has the base level of Missile Weapons so she will need to raise DX by two to get one shot per turn, but she is at least prepared for long range sniping. The steel in the crossbow doesn't hamper her as she can't cast any spells while holding anything other than her staff in claws so she might as well drop the crossbow to cast. She lacks the spear jab (from behind the protection of a front line human, elf, goblin or whatever), but she can still do a diagonal shot with the crossbow or cast a fire spell.
She will need a humanoid Naturalist, or painful experimentation, to tell her which targets are subject to thrown spells while immune to magical weapons to use the staff's occult blast on.

[phiwum]

"They are non competitive against humans, elves, goblins, and halflings in melee or unarmed combat."

I think that's the case only if you reckon ST 12 should be avoided. If, of course, you think ST 12 is too much for a beginning character, then a reptile man is worse than dwarves and orcs, too (as far as melee and unarmed combat goes).

But in bare-handed combat, an ST 12 reptile man does 1d damage (+2 bonus from claws). I think you're just wrong to reckon he does more poorly than these other races unarmed (unless you're speaking of those with UC abilities, which he won't have beyond U.C. I).

I am not at all convinced that high ST is all that bad. If your lizard is just a melee guy, ST 12, DX 11 and IQ 9 is not a bad starting point in my opinion. And the ability to dominate in HTH is quite important. You take away the other guy's skills with weapon, make DX differences almost inconsequential and do serious damage when the lizard man initiates HTH.

[Shostak]

Reptile Men are cool in that they are less trite than elves, dwarves, orcs, and halflings, and the rules for them yield perfectly competitive characters, despite Henry's assertion to the contrary. He's right that they definitely got nerfed from the TFT Classic era version though, but starting at 32 points isn't necessrily a bad thing. Give a Reptile Man the Running talent so that their MA is likely to be higher than most, and HTH becomes a more viable option, especially if they also have Brawling or, better, Unarmed Combat talents.

[TippetsTX]

Reptile-men (or Saurr in my campaign) are one of my favorite elements of Cidri. My main character back in the 80s was a reptile-man named Argas so it shouldn't be surprising that the Legacy edition changes to the race were not well received.

I prefer less balanced racial options (or at least, more asymmetrically balanced).

[larsdangly]

I understand why they were nerfed but think it went too far. Better might have been to allow for a greater range in starting total stats and balance it out with other racial traits (like Hobbits). But perhaps that would only have been satisfying if stat advances were expressed as increases over initial values rather than based on the total.

[tomc]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I understand why they were nerfed but think it went too far. Better might have been to allow for a greater range in starting total stats and balance it out with other racial traits (like Hobbits). But perhaps that would only have been satisfying if stat advances were expressed as increases over initial values rather than based on the total.

Reptile Men are like good steaks, medium rare and beefy.

[hcobb]

I house rule that Reptile People can advance ST for an eighth the XP price that humans pay in order to better match the ST levels of the listed Reptile Men NPCs.


Video of Reptile Man in combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXPflYdzuko

[phiwum]

Can someone summarize what Reptile Men used to be like? Thanks.

[hcobb]

Here are the changes I've noticed for Reptile Men in Legacy:
https://www.hcobb.com/tft/legacy_fir...#reptilepeople