I dreamed up an addition to the game – viking body types – and I’m curious what you’d think.

The character creation screen needs some fleshing out, I think we all agree, and I bet the people at Iron Gate have some plans for that.

My new idea from a half-asleep state was that you'd be able to choose the body type of your viking. Visually, this would be a cool addition, but the interesting part is the stat changes that could come with it.

In fitness you would hear about body types (somatotypes), where the Ectomorph is lean, lightweight and doesn't put on fat or muscle easily, and the Endomorph on the other end is heavy-framed and strong. The Mesomorph is the sweet in between. I'll use these to refer to the types.

Stat changes:

The Ecto would be focused on speed and stamina, with buffs like

-5% stamina used when running, jumping or sneaking

5% movement speed increase when moving with no penalties.

+10% backstab bonus

The Meso would be focused on combat damage.

-5% stamina used when swinging a weapon. Also applies to woodcutting, mining, building and cultivating.

5% increase to melee damage

+0.1x increase to parry (that's a 4% increase for a buckler and a 7% increase for a shield)

The Endo would be focused on durability

5% increase to health and stamina pools

Ignore 50% of movement penalties (20% of frost)

10% increase to stagger and block. (no increase to parry)

The numbers are not so carefully balanced, but I think 5% bonuses are often in the sweet spot where it starts to be noticeable, but doesn't warp the game. Even if the bonuses would not be exactly balanced, it could add much to the roleplaying aspect of the game when playing with friends, and with no PvP, it's less about balance and more about what's fun to play.

This post is getting long, so I'll post other suggestions in a comment below.

What do you think? Discuss if you want!

1) which one would you pick, out of the three I listed?

2) Is something off? Unbalanced? Too unnoticable?

3) what bonuses do you think would make sense to add or change?

EDIT: Formatting, because on phone