My new mod: Is it balanced?

[Curwen]

As a first modding project, I decided to keep it small and simple. I made a new pretender god for Abysia -- the Lava Lord. I designed him as a competant combatant, but also a pretender that can fight alongside the Abysians (I learned the hard way that not every troop type should try this without a lot of careful arrangement).

His description: "Deep within the Smouldercone, a demigod of elemental heat rages in his pit of lava miles under the earth. Whether he was awakened by the foul experiments of the Abysians, or if he simply always was, no one can say. But one thing is for certain: He will not rest until he is the one True God, and the world lies burning under the feet of his Chosen People.

A towering colossus of living lava and fire, his upper body is vaguely human while his lower torso and legs are nothing but an amorphous mass of magma and smoke. The Lava Lord's body gives off great heat, and he is immune to fire. Skilled at Fire magic, he is indifferent to the other paths. He is able to throw balls of magma across a distance to smite his enemies."

What I'm really wondering is if his powers and stats are appropriate for his cost, so I thought I'd share it before formally subitting it to Illwind's mod page. I'd appreciate any feedback!

It can be downloaded here. He uses monster #2400, and his magma ball attack is weapon #998

With the lessons learned with this mod, I'm planning a new nation. I hope I can find some graphics that are good enough...I think it'll turn out really nice if I can do it right!

[Johan K]

Not a balance thing, but I have a grpahics suggestion. Make the unit picture 128x128 pixels large instead of 100x100 and put the lavalord in the bottom of the 128x128 picture. Using this size will make him less fuzzy when drawn in Dominions. Nice banner btw.

[Pickles]

Looks nice & interesting. I think the protection is far too high - noone else comes close to 25 & the King of Magma has 10 so I would go for 10 or if you must 15 tops. Also his attack skill is quite high & his precision very low. He would be more use as a wizard if this was not the case as it is he is a melee SC or nowt (fire will boost his attack still further.)

The magma bolt is just not good enough to use considering he could be smacking people with a big sword (or soon casting firey death spells). I would buff it a little - make it area 1 and lower precision to 1 (while boosting basic precision). The damage sounds OK though - possibly a tad low for usefulness with fire magic. Try to figure out how to keep it when you arm magic weapons (like Air queens do).

I also think he should not have body slot as he is blobby but that would be more useful if his prot was lower.
With the lower protection IMO he would be balanced regardleess of his stat split/Magmabolt weakness & boosting it would not change balance much (just the attacks he uses).

Pickles

[Graeme Dice]

All pretenders start with a magic resistance of 18, so his 15 is a bit low.

[PvK]

I mostly agree with the others' comments. MR should be 18 unless there is a thematic reason it should be lower than all other pretenders. Prot 25 is rather high - the 100 HP will make him plenty tough, so as Pickles said, I'd lower prot to more like 10, no higher than 15, and removing the body slot is probably appropriate, but perhaps not necessary. I would tend to compare to Red Dragon and Cyclops, looking at the dragon breath attack, hitpoints, protection, attack skill, precision, slots, and point cost.

In general it looks pretty good, though, IMO.

PvK

[Curwen]

I appreciate all the helpful comments!

I was wondering if the magma ball was a bit underpowered -- during playtesting it seemed like he tossed it all over the place, but it didn't seem to do much. I think I'll have to tweak that a little.

My thinking behind Prot being 25 while MR being only 15 was that he would be VERY difficult to hurt physically, but more vulnerable than most to magic spells to balance it out -- but I'm thinking now that the difference might be a little too stark. I think that I'll take your advice and lower that Prot while boosting the MR, taking a second look at some of the other pretenders' stats.

Again, I appreciate the feedback! I'm going to try and get these tweaks done and the graphics redone by the end of the week.