Suggestions: Racial passive morphs

Lynx7386 · January 2018

I like that each race has different perks to differentiate them, but it's always bothered me that at the endgame meta you put yourself at a disadvantage using a race you like with an inappropriate build. I would like to suggest an enhancement to the current racial passives system to remedy that.

I'll use my preferred race (khajiit) as an example. Here are the current khajiit racials (I'm omitting racials related to things other than stamina/magicka, like the stealth racial or armor/weapon racials):

Nimble
Increases your health recovery by 6/13/20 and stamina recovery by 3/6/10%

Carnage
Increases your weapon critical by 2/5/8%

Now what I'd like to suggest is that each of these types of racial skills, once maxxed at 3 points, is given the option for a fourth point to morph the passive, just like we do with active skills. So what we'd end up with is the following:

Nimble (new)
Increases your health recovery by 6/13/20% and stamina recovery by 3/6/10%
Morph 1: Increases your health recovery by 20% and magicka recovery by 10%
Morph 2: Increases your health recovery by 20%, stamina recovery by 5%, and magicka recovery by 5%

Carnage (New)
Increases your weapon critial by 2/5/8%
Morph 1: Increases your spell critical by 8%
Morph 2: Increases your weapon and spell critical by 4%

So these 3 point racials now become 4 point racials, with the 4th point picking between an opposite spec type (either magicka or stamina, depending on what the original passive gives) and a hybrid spec type.

This now allows a khajiit player who's wanting to be a mage/spellcaster to spec entirely into magicka-boosting racials rather than only stamina/weapon racials, or a khajiit who wants to play more of a hybrid or tank character the option to spec into an even split between the two.

Here's another example using Breton Racials:

Gift of Magnus
Increases your max magicka by 4/7/10%
Morph 1: Increases your max stamina by 10%
Morph 2: Increases your max magicka and stamina by 5%

Magicka Mastery
Reduces the magicka cost of spells by 1/2/3%
Morph 1: Reduces the stamina cost of abilities by 3%
Morph 2: Reduces the magicka and stamina cost of spells and abilities by 2%

And another example for Nord:

Stalwart:
Increases your max stamina by 2/4/6% and health recovery by 6/13/20%
Morph 1: Increases your max magicka by 6% and health recovery by 20%
Morph 2: Increases your max magicka and stamina by 3% and health recovery by 20%

Not every race has to have these for all of their passives, only those which specifically apply to weapon, spell, magicka, or stamina costs and increases, as those are the primary passives which significantly improve or hinder each distinct playstyle (magicka, stamina, or hybrid).

starkerealm · January 2018

No. Partially for the simple reason that passives don't morph. If they did, then it might be a different story, but as the game exists now, they operate off of a different system from active abilities.

Second, not really. It would make your racial choices a lot muddier than they are now.

TheShadowScout · January 2018

Not this again!!!

Another "I want to cherry-pick my passives" idea???

I hate it already!
Various races having some advantage in soem fields IS a part of TES lore. And a good part. I would not want to see it changed... especially not when you want to remake stuff like "gift of magnus" and "magica mastery" into a stamina boost... hell-llooooo? "magica mastery"? How is that supposed to become stamina?
Elder Scrolls lore simply has it that altmer and bretons have magical affinity, nords and orcs are tough, redguards and imperials skilled warriors, khajiit and bosner sneaky, dunmer fire-cursed and argonians swamp-lizards... that's part of the lore, part of what makes an elder scrolls game an Elder Scrolls game!
If you want that changed, they should first remove the elder scrolls from the name.

...

Now, if we were to talk about changing the passives so they are not quite as "must have" for endgame super-effectiveness... (not that they are to enjoy the game, buuuutt, I guess the people who want to go for leaderbourds might see it differently then the casual player lorehounds like me)
Personally I would greatly enjoy it if the racial passives gave a big boost at the start, but much less at the end (kinda like the racial differences were in some older TES games)

...

One thing I would like to see is leaving the current passives as they are indicated in the lore, but -adding- something.
Like, say, "cultutal passives"... something depicting how that individual character grew up, if it was in a noble household with libraries and paid magic tutors (magica and social benefit), or in the city as commoner, working various jobs all day, possibly not all quite legal (stamina and stealth benefit), or as a farmhand in some rural cabin, helping in the fields all day long in every weather (health and toughness benefit)...
It would be easy to assign that to some depictions. Like... bretons, noble, commoner and countryborn. Or dunmer, noble, commoner and ashlander. Or redguard - crown, forebear, and ash'aba. Or orsimer - trinimac follower, malacath follower and wood orc. Et cetera.

There could be even more to that. One passive to reflect the birthplace (like, a bit of cold resistance if born in skyrim, or a bit of disease resistance if born in black marsh, a bit of this if born there and a bit of that if born here...), one passive to reflect the birth family (noble-worker-farmer), one passive to reflect the education (did your character sturdy as scholar, or get military training?), one passive to reflect the job the characters had before they got drawn into the whole heroing business... there could be a wide range of options, mixing combat and non-combat passives (so your main cyrodil-murderdeathkiller character might take all the combat passives, but your crafting alt might take the crafting passives, etc.)

I'd love to see that as addition.
Not a way for people to discard and cherry-pick their "racial" passives.

Solariken · January 2018

I like it!

xaraan · January 2018

Stop with the custom build your own passives for your preferred race as a suggestion threads (that are also almost always way out of balance suggestions).

Jade1986 · January 2018

I wouldnt be against racial passives being morphed. That would add a bit of variety.

ANGEL_BtVS · January 2018

I'm for getting rid of racial passives (quit stereotyping me!

). I just said the same thing in another thread, but basically each of us as the player-character should be as unique as it gets. There are exceptions to each racial "norm" in the game (e.g., powerful Nord mages (Shalidor) or strong Argonian warriors (Sees-All-Colors)) and we should be the biggest exception of all.

And there would be absolutely zero muddying of the racial choices - just choose your favorite race, which would make you far happier than being forced into a race. I'm not sure how people think we have balance now - want to be the best magicka dps? choose Altmer or Dunmer. Want to be the best stamina dps? choose Redguard. Shoehorning everyone into one or two races isn't diversity. There are too many races who are only good at questing and standing around Rawlka, Belkarth, etc. and looking cool, and not end-game content. Obviously the theory crafters would still come up with meta builds, but they do that now. The only difference I can think of is a beneficial one - you can now choose your race for that meta build instead of the current situation where where you can only choose the build (unless I'm wrong, in which case tell me

).

Protossyder · December 2018

Maybe some people would like to re-evaluate their opinion towards racial passive morphs in the face of "merciless nerfs"...

I don't fully agree with the OP's reasoning and his examples for morphs, but the idea goes in the right direction.
Instead of evening out all races and make it possible for a khajiit to "spec entirely into magicka-boosting racials" which would lead to each race losing its uniqueness, I would like to ease the edges just a tiny bit.

Examples:

Swift Warrior (Orc passive)
- Reduces sprint cost by 12%
- Increases sprint speed by 10%
- Increases dmg with melee weapons attacks by 4%

morphable to Robust Warrior
- Reduces block cost by 6%
- Increases dmg blocked by 6%
- Increases max health by 4%

Elemental Talent (Altmer passive)
- Increases dmg for Frost, Fire and Shock effects by 4%

morphable to new passive
- Increases dmg for Frost, Fire and Shock effects by 2%
- Reduces magicka costs by 3%

Stalwart (Nord passive)
- Increases max Stamina by 6%
- Increases Health recovery by 20%

morphable to Untiring
- Increases max Stamina by 6%
- Increases Stamina recovery by 9%

This way the players have more freedom when creating their builds, while the passives still fit into their race.

Latios · December 2018

Because of clever trial design, I wouldn’t mind having a race that allows you to do magicka/stamina in a viable, competitive way.

That way, I’d finally be able to go into those HM trials that are magicka biased and respec freely whenever I want to change the way I play.

Vapirko · December 2018

ZOS already implied something within this realm of possibility is coming next update, it seems the first few posters didn’t know that. I’d just like to see some of the unique passives like swift warrior, damage from stealth, argonian potion passive, etc remain intact so that at leas there is some unique reason to pick a race still.

BaylorCorvette · December 2018

Morphable passives would be pretty cool, but like @Vapirko said, they need to keep some iconic passives in game otherwise everyone is going to be the same.

Elwendryll · December 2018

Vapirko wrote: »

ZOS already implied something within this realm of possibility is coming next update, it seems the first few posters didn’t know that. I’d just like to see some of the unique passives like swift warrior, damage from stealth, argonian potion passive, etc remain intact so that at leas there is some unique reason to pick a race still.

Maybe they didn't know that because these posts are from January?

And I think that people just interpret what ZOS said the way they want to. They just said that we should have multiple effective options for a given gameplay role, when we have to choose our race. I understand that there should not be an absolute BiS race for magicka DD. Not that a khajiit should have optional passives for healing...

Deathlord92 · February 2019

I love this idea my main is a Breton stamblade all I’m ever going to play is Breton stamblade if I play anything else it will be a Breton stam build I suck with magic I love the idea to morph my Breton racial passives his a damn assassin cutthroat and all I played through oblivion and skyrim to was a Breton assassin