Pretender-Specific Holy Magic for Priests.

[Tiavals]

Because of the title as it is, it is misleading and therefore some people might not read it at all, mistaking it for general "whining" about giving pretenders holy magic, instead of a rather interesting discussion of ideas.

I do agree that it would certainly by interesting if there were god specific spells for priests. For example, if you have a snake-god of somekind, the priests might have a Holy 2 spell that gives poison resistance to a bunch of units, or summons a handful of snakes to the battle, or what-have-you.

Of course, this would not fit some pretenders too well(like the mage types) and for others it would be very thematic(the giant "god-like" pretenders). Then again, these kinds of things are already somewhat included in the nations themselves. If you take a mage pretender for Ulm that grants magic-bonuses, that would be stupid, or take the Forge Lord for Mictlan(Bad example, since you can't). Most pretenders are already placed on the nations in a manner that suits them thematically, but adding pretender-specific spells to the mix might be not-so-good in some cases.

[Ironhawk]

You can mod in national spells, yes. There is no capability for pretender-based spells tho and I think it unlikely that there will be in future patches. Its too far removed from the way that magic currently works (based solely on your nation). Then again, if you can fire up KO or JK's imagination, anything is possible...

jutetrea said:
Is it a mod command that allows a spell to be designated for a certain nation? Could a similar mod command (in a patch) allow pretender spell designation or is there currently no check for pretender chassis available?

[HoneyBadger]

Hopefully, by editing the above, it will help clear things up.

First of all, I am against Pretenders having holy magic, themselves. The magic comes from them, but isn't a part *OF* them. It's like the light cast by the sun. The sun isn't made of light, it just produces light.

Now, if you want an argument that Pretender chassis should, by their very nature, be sacred, then yes, I'll give you one. Just no holy magic.

My idea is that priest of a specific Pretender could be granted Pretender-specific spells, not that the Pretender should have access, him/her/itself.

Here are some of my ideas for implementation:
1, It could maybe be handled the way Dominion currently is-the higher the Pretender's Dominion, the greater range of spells that Pretender can grant, still on an individual basis.

So that, say, my Scorpion King at Dominion 2 would grant a spell that allows the summoning of a small but poisonous scorpion in combat. At Dominion 4, a holy spell that resists poison. At Dominion 8, maybe a ritual spell that permanently transforms the caster into a Scorpion Man, and at Dominion 10, a spell that makes all the units in an army do weak natural (non-weapon) poison damage, for the price of several gems.

This is just an example. Other effects could be the summoning of sand elementals or desert spirits, for the desert motif, heat/dehydration spells, other poison/scorpion effects, etc.

2, There's no reason holy magic can't be combined with other paths. Infact, I believe that modding is already set up to work this way. So, fire + holy, water + holy, etc. why not? Pretenders could also grant other spells, to their mages, but this should, imo, be rarer, because it's easier for it to get out of hand through the use of independents, and because doing it with too powerful/useful of an effect, for a specific Pretender, makes it harder for the other Pretender chassis to compete.

3, If this is implemented, then independent priests-and cheap priests, in general-should be given a good, hard look. If the spells require holiness of 3+, no problem, that level of priest is rare on the ground, anyway, and it shouldn't be so hard to even out the playing field by adding a few higher level priests to nations here and there, so that those higher level priest spells can be taken advantage of, where they're meant to be.

But if more level 1-2 spells are added, then they are going to have a much wider effect on the game, through independent priests.

4, if this is implemented, with the addition of higher level priests, banishment should be nerfed imo. My suggestion is to replace it with a level 1 undead-damaging spell that only does damage to 1 undead at a time, and add a mass demon/undead damaging spell at a higher level.

5, No holy gems. I'm against the idea, and if there's going to be holy spells that cost gems, then they should be holy + fire, and cost fire gems, etc.

6, Combat-Oriented Pretenders should also be given a good look at, unless they're given spells too. Rainbow mages are going to retain their usefulness throughout the game, and Pretenders that grant holy spells are too, naturally, through their priests. Combat Pretenders are already weaker than they were in Dominions 2, and this would just make them weaker, so there should be more reasons to build them.

Maybe Ancient Krakens spawn other krakens? or atleast can summon additional krakens with the kraken-summoning spell?
Maybe cyclopes gain a forging bonus? offset by the Forge Lord granting spells?
Wyrms could maybe have a poison cloud or gain hp like an Eater of the Dead, or have an extra head, or whatever.
Gorgons are plenty tough enough, as it is.
Maybe dragon Pretenders could grant a gold bonus and carrion dragons could have the ability to spawn carrion beings from corpses.
I can see Dagon granting spells that summon up Cthulhu-mythos critters. I'm not sure what the Living Statue would do, but maybe arm him with a gate cleaver?
The Destroyer of Worlds...well, somebody else can think of a solution for that guy, but no reason him and the Kali-lookalike can't grant spells or have a magical weapon in each hand or whatever.

The point is that I'd hate for this to make some Pretenders better, while at the same time reducing to uselessness Combat Pretenders. Hopefully, someone will stick up for Immobile Pretenders too, but I don't use them as much.

There's plenty of ways that this could be handled though, I'm just throwing out ideas, so take them or leave them.

I'm just happy that you actually like my idea

[DrPraetorious]

The way the game works now (as I understand it), the Pretender shows up and announces via his prophet, approximately "I am Bal-Shamharoth, the Soul Eater, God of your Fathers, though they did not know me by that name!"; which may or may not in fact be true, it isn't even important from a game standpoint, but He manages to convince your nation to worship Him.

So the existing national religious apparatus orients itself around the awakening God, who probably presents Himself as the fulfillment of some prophecy. Seemingly, the presence of the awakening God has no impact on the existing priests at all - for example, indie priests (as in, who fight for independents), who do not have a pretender but presumably worship nymphs or nature spirits or still follow the vanished Pantokrator or something, still get holy spells.

Now, it would be nice, but very difficult to implement, if your pretender could institute relatively minor religious changes when He proclaims Himself. This is one of the reasons I wanted to bring themes back, but restrict them around pretender builds, so, for example:

* Theme - The Awakening God demands blood! Requires: Blood 4+ on Pretender. Available to: various non-blood land nations. Effect: Alters the randoms on your national mages.

So this Theme would consist of a set of mod-script code blocks that would run, if you selected it for a given nation, and swap the magic around on the national mages.
It'd also give the nation #sacrificedom.

* Theme - The sword is my benediction! Requires: Only available to certain militant pretenders. Available to: Most nations. Effect: Most of your national commanders are now sacred and H1.

Again, mod script is loaded dynamically and the stats on your commanders are changed so they are priests.

Similarly, these themes could add new holy spells if you wanted, or do anything else you can do to a nation with mod script - you could add new national spells that summon sacred units ("The spirits of the flame are my children!"), you could have a theme that made your mages *weaker* and *stealthy* but gave you a national priest spell that feebleminds enemy wizards or even a national priest-spell astral duel ("Do not suffer a witch to live!") and so forth.

Anyway, this would be so hard to test (loading mod-script dynamically in a step after checking pretenders would, I'm going to assume, generally crash the game if you tried it) that I think it'll have to wait for dominions 4.

[Archonsod]

HoneyBadger said:
Here are some of my ideas for implementation:
1, It could maybe be handled the way Dominion currently is-the higher the Pretender's Dominion, the greater range of spells that Pretender can grant, still on an individual basis.

Perhaps simply having a pretender grant X spells, and the holy level of the priest dictating what may be cast might be better. In other words, holy spells become similar to any other magic path, except priests are harder to empower and of course there's no research required.
There's two parts to my reasoning for this. In the first, by keeping it similar to existing magic it reduces the complexity of needing to learn how the system works on top of that inherent in the magic system. Secondly, since Holy power levels are so static, you can more easily judge how powerful a spell is. Anything requiring a Holy level of 5 or 6 for example is going to require dedicated investment to get a caster. Dominion on the other hand can wax and wane as the game goes on, and you have the problem of overpowerment (i.e. a successful player can build more temples, more temples means better spells, better spells mean more success and so on).

2, There's no reason holy magic can't be combined with other paths.

It might be good to have some lesser versions of existing spells which can be powered with holy magic instead. Slightly nerfed because research wouldn't be required (presumably). Thematically, the priest is drawing on his connection to the Pretender to power the spell, while a mage uses his own knowledge and training for a similar effect.

5, No holy gems. I'm against the idea, and if there's going to be holy spells that cost gems, then they should be holy + fire, and cost fire gems, etc.

Holy Gems wouldn't really make sense. It's not like you could store your connection to God somewhere. Perhaps however one or two more Holy enhancing items might be useful (more in the line of a religious relic than a magical artefact).

6, Combat-Oriented Pretenders should also be given a good look at, unless they're given spells too.

It depends entirely how you handle the Holy spell list really. If using Holy level rather than Dominion then the pretender type is moot, since it will be the quality of the nation's priests which decide the issue. The danger would be more along unbalancing the religiously weak nations against those with a strong priesthood, although of course it depends on the power of the spells granted.
It could provide a neat way of differentiating between the more religious nations however, especially those where magic is shunned.

[jutetrea]

just as a quick example, check out the urdheim mod and the mytheology mod, both have holy requirements in spells. Mytheology introduces nation-neutral holy spells, for example:

A holy site searching spell
A holy "dome", 1 turn duration
A holy flames from the sky/fires from afar vs. undead

All seem to work very well and could be expanded upon. I like the idea of pretender specific spell boosts just to enhance some of the lesser used pretenders. Even if it was kept simple, say 3 spells per pretender 1H, 2H, 3H specific to that pretender "type/ethos/sphere". Could be very easily adapted from the D&D clerical spheres for general type, then customized heavily for dominions.