Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-62.255.98.169-20130504143516/@comment-24081142-20131024092047

I think it would be interesting to play as a 'missing-link' stage of Falmer where they have recovered near-human intelligence but their sight is only barely re-emerging. Give them continously-active night-vision and short-ranged detect life/dead - this will make them harder to use effectively in well-lit areas, very hard to surprise, but the combination of visual effects will make it harder to visually identify just what you are fighting. They should have large penalties to archery (poor depth-perception and lack of visual detail) and speechcraft (due to a universal prejudice against them). Considering that they eat toxic fungi as a regular (in fact, essential) part of their diet, they should be almost immune to poison (75%?  Maybe even as high as 90%). They also should get high natural Sneak skill and a slight increase to One-Handed.

I see your point about heavy armour, but on the other hand most of them don't wear any armour at all. I would have thought that those who use it will develop this skill, like every other race, but they shouldn't have any innate affinity for it. The same goes for alchemy, though a different kind of bonus in this area might make sense. Possibly something like 'double the usual effects from consuming raw ingredients', which combined with high poison resistance makes it both safer and more useful to experiment - making it easier to develop this skill for those who choose to. Also, how often do you see alchemy tables in Falmer settlements? They probably have quite restricted access to proper potions, so they will be accustomed to doing without.

Finally, I would expect that their immune system is much stronger than ours, due to their unsanitary environment (and inability to tell what they're eating until after they've eaten it!). I wouldn't necessarily give them ordinary disease resistance, at least not to a high level, but they probably recover quicker (those who don't will be left to die!). So maybe the power to Cure Disease on themself once a day. This way, they can still get infected but they shake it off rapidly (it also allows you to intentionally remain infected, if you are psychopathic enough to want to play as a Falmer vampire!)