Two Questions

[Mummy]

1) are certain races harder to blackjack than others? For example, I've never been able to blackjack an illithid, but I can almost always blackjack some of the others... is there some sort of race/blackjack thing?

2) If you're a drow (non-warrior), how do you keep your health up long enough to do any real damage to an opponent if they are human or something like that?

[MrCarb]

1) As far as I understand it, there are penalties to blackjacking charcters of greater size or level. The race only matters insofar as it determines relative size and pk range.

2) If your Drow is a rogue you keep your health up by having ridiculously good defences. Since intelligence now contriubutes to dodge a counterbalanced Drow is a real bitch to hit. Also autosneak helps you flee-murder the defecit away. That and you put every train into HP and use energy scrolls if you can be bothered with that sort of thing. Alternatively you can use backstab to win almost any fight. Emphasis on 'almost', there.

If you're a dark knight you either A) do so much damage that no one can stay in combat with you for more than two rounds (unholy strength + dual wield + charmie + fireball + harm) or you get a good piece of mal break and heal up a bit between skirmishes to get the upper hand. I'd reccomend the first one, though you might be able to manage the second FOLLOWED by the first if you really need to pull out all the stops. I doubt most would have the mana for that, though.

If you're a mage you delete and make a human or an avian. (Permafly still rocks the casbah)

[Davairus]

Drow thieves dont really have a hp disadvantage compared to human thieves. Because they train to 75% in 1 prac. Its up to you whether to put the extra trains into health or stats.

[Adebaldi]

[MrCarb]

I'd go for avian for the moves more than the trip protection, because I'm too lazy to use fly scrolls alot. But we shouldn't get into an 'are avians good mages?' debate in a thread about drow, I suppose. Avians rock - I Win - anyone who argues back will be thread-jacking.

[Davairus]

Avian is the lowest health race out of all the choices. Bad con + 2 prac. As for the illusionist being difficult to trip, it might have just been the effect of blur. Theres no point tripping someone with that up.

[MrCarb]

As a mage, particularly a necro or an illusionist, you'll be forever smacking people down to pretty hurt or awful before they scamper off (no lag skills, of course,) and so being able to fly all over the place looking for somone (Who'll normaly just require one more rend or whatever) will get you more killls than you can shake a stick at and save you from as many deaths. Ofcourse the *real* best mage would be another race that constantly used fly scrolls, but it's easier and more fun to just make an avian. That and they'll roll a 93 in the blink of an eye.

Fly is worth a huge amount to a mage, and now that the vuln is pretty timid (and there arn't many really good disease weapons around) avians are probably even easier to survive with than humans. If you're an invoker, on the other hand, you have that really crappy shield block to go with your already inferior parry and hp, so the case for human is stronger there. To make a drow I think you'd have to really value autosneak, though I suppose your weapon ward will be really cool too.

[Davairus]

I guess mostly he's asking about drows? Which are ok in pretty much every class choice EXCEPT warrior right now. I wouldnt recommend going drow warrior because the warrior class : (A) predominantely gains its total hp from level-ups. 15 hp ranks vs 11 hp ranks is going to be a 200 hp difference by level 50, one that trains just wont make up for. (B) uses strength checks in most of its lethal skills, and waters down the dex-based dirt kick. Just realise that those things don't apply to thieves and other classes, you will see why the "hp difference" argument is moot. Also, autosneak is very tactical and will make up for any hp disadvantage (even as warrior) if it is used correctly. Which you shouldnt even have to begin with (except as warrior).

[Adebaldi]

[Adebaldi]

Just remembered that because of high int drows get to put more trains in hp so health isnt that bad, but I also rememebered that drows have the highes exp cost which isn't pleasant for the worst class for ranking.

[Davairus]

Necros arent so rough to level with the new toxic flux and rend life stuff. Not sure why you are feeling argumentative about the drow issue since your rogue would have made a great example of a drow hp's being fine plus great dex and stuff.