Favored Racial Enemy?

Abel

So, I'm actually not sure about what racial enemy to pick for my Archer and Cleric/Ranger. I'm sure it'll be of the undead kind. Maybe cadaverous?
What do you think would be best? Should I also choose a different enemy for each character?
I had to remove some races as polls can't have more than ten options. Goblins was obvious and I hesitated for the second one between Orcs, Spiders and Umber Hulks. Orcs I think, though more common than the other two are less dangerous so away they go.

deltago

Giants or one of the undead options. They are the only options with the widest scaling difficulty.

Archer could pick giants and the ranger cleric to choose one of the undead leaning towards Skeletal, however Cadaverous isn't a bad choice either.

Abel

I should add that I'm playing on HoF. So, since it's harder in the beginning, I'm thinking Skeletal Undead may be better.
I see several people voted Giants. I myself never saw them as, ironically, huge threats.

The_Reverend

I'm in the middle of a non-HoF walkthrough, and my Stalker (who is no slouch to begin with) gets absolutely silly when in undead heavy areas. If you're using a vanilla ranger or ranger/cleric with blunt weapons you might be better off choosing Skeletal Undead, but I'd say Cadaverous Undead is the way to go when running a Stalker. Especially since there are tons of UD throughout the game.

CutlassJack

I went Giants on my archer. No regrets. I'm planning Cadavers on a stalker if I do another playthrough.

Mathsorcerer

I went with Cadaverous Undead because that targets anything with the race category "ghoul" and includes zombies, zombie lords, mummies, greater mummies, poison zombies, drowned dead, imbued wights, etc.

Zyzzogeton

Caderevous HoF
Salamanders non HoF

macomeau

Protip: Don't make an Archer's racial enemy Skeletal Undead.

Nimran

macomeau said:

Protip: Don't make an Archer's racial enemy Skeletal Undead.

And yet, someone already did.

Zyzzogeton

If you're not playing HoF, Archers take down lots of enemies fairly quickly without favored enemy bonuses especially once they pick up Grandmastery in whichever bow they're using, so when all they have left to shoot is skeletons having a +4 THAC0 +2 damage bonus on the enemy that primarily resists their main source of damage isn't exactly a bad choice.

Shikao

macomeau said:

Protip: Don't make an Archer's racial enemy Skeletal Undead.

@macomeau, could you also give pro-reasoning for this, please?

Lord_Tansheron

Skeletal Undead fo sho', since all my Rangers ever are Archers, and Skeletons have high missile resistance. Extra damage against them is a godsend. Against other enemies, Archers already deal a lot of damage, so dealing EVEN MORE seems almost overkill.

Bit surprised so many people picked Giants, there's so few of them around and they're really not hard to kill at all...

Kenji

Good thread, I've been wondering about what people's choices are for their rangers (archers)

B4nJ0

Skelly ud is THE way to go if you are an archer

Lord_Tansheron

Gotta love how apparently 90% of rangers are archers, and the remaining 10% are probably 90% R/C in some form of another :P

macomeau

Shikao said:

macomeau said:

Protip: Don't make an Archer's racial enemy Skeletal Undead.

@macomeau, could you also give pro-reasoning for this, please?

That was mostly a joke, but...

Even with the Racial Enemy bonus, skeletons still resist all or all-1 (maybe all-2 sometimes) of an Archer's arrow damage (just tested using some Inferno Arrows and a magic bow). I guess you could use it with a blunt melee weapon, but that sort of seems like misusing an Archer. Or maybe a sling, but that still feels wasteful.

JuliusBorisov

I would say trolls. They hit hard and come early. You need everything to kill them faster.

Dee

@macomeau‌ The attacks in those screenshots are dealing 10 damage and 20 damage after the damage resistance. Skeletons have 50% resistance against missile damage--so your archer there is dealing 19 and 40 damage, but half of that damage is being resisted.

CrusherEAGLE

I remember Yuan-ti being a big pain in the ass when I played this game back in the day, so that's what I picked. I hope I chose correctly.

macomeau

Dee said:

@macomeau‌ The attacks in those screenshots are dealing 10 damage and 20 damage after the damage resistance. Skeletons have 50% resistance against missile damage--so your archer there is dealing 19 and 40 damage, but half of that damage is being resisted.

Today I learned something.

I might still argue that giving the bonus to something an Archer isn't particularly useful for killing is not a great idea. Could be fun role playing though. She hates those damn skeletons because they're so hard for her to kill.

Also:

lunar

The extra damage will be subject to damage resistance of the skeletal undead as well, thus I think the ability's potential is kinda wasted. Plus, skeletal undead are not that bad, they generally attack with weapons.

Cadaverous undead is more dangerous, IMHO, they are many, prolific and you need to kill them as fast as possible and preferably from afar. Because they often have nasty abilities that count as 'bad touch' like paralysis, disease, lvl or ability drain, etc.

And yet I misclicked and chose skeletal undead. Gah. No my vote is for the cadaverous. Plus they stink far worse than the dry bones of the skeletal undead.

Redrake

Giants here too. For those who don't know, in IWD1 Yetis are also giants.

Fandraxx

I hate Lizard men. bleh kill'em with knives. nuff said