Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)

[Zen]

Cheezeninja said:
You could leave the human pretenders with their inferior stats but make them dirt cheap(er), possibly even making their basecost negative, if possible. I think of it as being able to take a rather unimpressive god to have points for dominion, just like you can cripple your dominion for points for your god. So what if a gust of air could take them out and they have high encumbrance, bad precision, and 1 tacitical movement, you can afford all the scales you want and still a couple paths of magic on them.

I thought about that approach. Or giving them a Pathcost of 0, so they don't need anything and every time you see a human it will at least be a 8 Path Raibow. In the end of my conclusions, it wasn't the fact that they were crappy, useless in battle, got owned by artillery spells, cast everything/search everything/have 1 hp in -1 dominion type of situations, it was the fact that you couldn't use your Pretender to swing the tide of a war because all his spellcasting strength lay in pure Rituals or Site Searching. With the negative impact of death (losing a level in all paths) that is *more* hurtful to Rainbows, this is a big "Uh, no" factor of them since not all of them have stealth and can avoid getting bombed by CT or Teleport if they are site searching/researching/ritual casting.

[Cainehill]

Hmm. That'd work for hags/crones, imo - give one incredibly flimsy pretender with 0 pathcost, for those who care to try it. In my opinion, it'd be iffy, but playable - even as a combat mage. One hell of an artillerist, with high skill in certain areas, and various spells reduce or eliminate the risk of dying and losing paths in a battle.

Also - getting owned by artillery spells? Unless / until the AI is changed, flyers might take out a judiciously setup pretender, but artillery won't, not before battlefield-affecting spells are researched.

Mind - I like the added HPs for the humans. But the one human pretender that is supposed to be fragile and weak could be left ... fragile and weak, but cheap and/or beefed up magically.

After all - if magic paths cost 0, it can afford 1 death and still be at least equal to any other human pretender in paths, depending on how it is set up. ( 8 1-point paths on a normal 10 point human is 80 points - 8 2 point paths on a 0 point human is 64? )

[Cainehill]

Oh - also, human pretenders _can_ swing the tides of war, I think. Yes, it's risky, but a high magic path human can do wonders. I once had great success with a human mage for one of the dead Ermors, and was in the HoF most of the game, since I got bored site searching. Didn't even have TwiceBorn on him, as I recall.

[Graeme Dice]

Cainehill said:
Also - getting owned by artillery spells? Unless / until the AI is changed, flyers might take out a judiciously setup pretender, but artillery won't, not before battlefield-affecting spells are researched.

Artillery spells refers to murdering winter and flames from the sky.

[Cainehill]

Ah well - it's only fire and frost, relatively cheap to equip a single commander against.

Hmmm. Give all human pretenders either stealth or glamour? (Glamour, because who notices one more puny human amongst the peasants?)

[Alneyan]

Do you have an idea about when will the Magic item part of your mod be available for public usage? I am asking this because a game using your mod is to be started on the French Boards (Net4war), and so we may add your Magic item mod if it is available before the game starts.

Thanks!
Alneyan

[Zen]

If you'd like I can release a Beta Version (with only confirmed good idea changes) in place as well as the newly updated Pretender's portion. If you are starting your game tommorow I will have it avaliable for you to try out.

Thanks,

JB

[Alneyan]

The game will be starting Wednesday or so, so I think the full item Version is not needed yet. If the list of the changes is already available, it would be helpful however; otherwise, feel free to upload the Beta Version instead.

Thanks a lot!
Alneyan

[Zen]

Alright, a few changes!

The latest Version is 1.5

I will try to have the Readme out as soon as possible with the total changes, for those browsers

Find the mod here at www.techno-mage.com/~zen/conceptp15.zip or as the attatchment to this post (I will bring down the other after this one has gotten out)

Dagon - +6 Def
Manticore - +8 Prot (Total: 18, like a Kithartic Lion) (In addition to other changes)
Prince of Death - 100 CR, 100 PR (Replacing other changes)
Arch Mage - Dominion: 2, Basecost: 25 (In addition to other changes)
Hag - Basecost: 25 (In addition to other changes)
Frost Father -> Rime Mariner - +Sailing (In addition to other changes)
Son of the Sun (Non-astral) +2 Fire Gems (Replacing other Changes)
Neried - +Mounted
Void Lord - Dominion: 3 (In addition to other changes)
Arch Seraph - +8 HP, Basecost: 50 (In addition to other changes)
Master Druid - +Swamp Survival (In addition to other changes)
Lord of the Gates - -100 CR (In addition to other changes)
***** Queen - +5 Prec (In addition to other Changes)
Shedu - -1 Enc (In addition to other changes)
Lord of the Night - Basecost: 125

I will have my editor get back with you for the full readme. As well as my next post will try to do some of the explaination why certain things were given certain traits.

[Ragnarok-X]

Quite good, thanks for making this, Zen