Humanoid Pretenders are too expensive

[Kel]

IMO, giving them a single path bonus would make them one trick ponies which, to me, is kind of against their nature as variety casters. Maybe if they had a small bonus to every path ?

Some ideas:
1) Automatically site search the province they are in during the appropriate phase (IE, without spending an extra turn to do it).
2) When they spend a turn to search a site, all adjacent provinces get a half strength search, rounded down.
3) Can use turn to remote search a province.

- Kel

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Slygar:
(such as the bog mummy and lich) but being so obviously superior in almost every way is pretty ridiculous.

The bog mummy and lich cost 110, and require 40 points to start a new oath of magic. They have 0 combat ability, and the only thing useful about them is their high starting death magic and immortality. There's absolutely no reason to make them 200 points.

Originally posted by Kel:
Some ideas:
1) Automatically site search the province they are in during the appropriate phase (IE, without spending an extra turn to do it).
2) When they spend a turn to search a site, all adjacent provinces get a half strength search, rounded down.
3) Can use turn to remote search a province.

I don't think that this would fill the gap and would make them autorainbows. If something like this is going to be implemented I would hope it would be after a certain point of paths (Like 9).

Enchantress : 20% bonus for Enchantment
Druid : 20% for Conjuration
Sage : 20% for Construction (or Forge bonus ?)
Frost Father : 20% for Alteration
(etc, fill the rest )

This is a good idea, I don't know if they should get 20% and if anyone should get a Forge Bonus it probably should be the Archmage. As that is the one real 'cross-magic bonus' that could be used for any paths.

[PDF]

Hey wait, I had a new idea : give those crappy human mages a SPELL CASTING bonus (as some sites do) !
Let's say :
Enchantress : 20% bonus for Enchantment
Druid : 20% for Conjuration
Sage : 20% for Construction (or Forge bonus ?)
Frost Father : 20% for Alteration
(etc, fill the rest )

Or stg along those lines...This will make them really "unique", and what they should be : magic specialists .
It will also give players a "strategic" reason to buy them when they want to try The_UberSpellCombo_of_Doom
And I think this should be *in addition* to the +1 dominion.
What do you think ?

[Cohen]

Well, I don't believe that having a reduced cost in casting rituals is so effective to get them unless it's very high.

An probably the best would be the one with Conjuration Bonus ... to have lot of troops, or if he returns, the Abysyan Great Warlock, with blood bonus.

[Vynd]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
By "Special" abilities that you'll hardly ever use, I guess the great druid's bonus to casting vinemen / ogres? Nice bonus in a sense, but using a pretender to summon vinemen is such an incredible waste that it's rarely going to be done.

Yes, exactly. That, the Freak Lord's trample ability, and the Frost Father having Cold Resistance, are almost worthless, seems to me. The Enchantress's free pearl every turn is nice enough, I'll grant you that. And the Arch Mage's "special" of having three strategic move is OK. Neither really compares with things like immortality or lots of hit points and attack power.

But my point is that not only are the various human-type pretenders not very good, they are also all but identical. So if I ran the show around here, I'd kill two birds with one stone by making each of the human pretenders good at something (something useful, not summoning vine men), instead of having all of them be jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none rainbow mages with slightly different color text.

[sergex]

I also agree that lots of pretenders are underpowered and thus not used in competitive play. I think if all pretenders were given recuperation then Immortality won't be as overpowered as it is now. Other than that, a total overhaul and rebalancing of costs and powers with MP in mind and not costing them in terms of roleplaying flavor would be helpful. The only problem is that the devs don't have much experience in MP it seems so it would be nice if they would host their own polls and discussions to arrive at a conclusion.

I really don't think they should leave it up to modders to balance pretenders.

[Cainehill]

Something else that might help balance immortality would be to slightly diminish the death penalty for non-immortals. Instead of all paths being reduced by one, maybe _half_ the paths being reduced by one, randomly determined. Or restoring a path costs half what the normal empowerment does, or reducing a path to 0 takes 2 deaths (thus allowing someone to empower up to 2 and start the clock ticking again).

Alternatively: Make "real" death for immortals worse; it'd balance things _slightly_ if immortals dropped 2 magic levels for a real death. Wouldn't help much - actually it'd just make certain that no one ever took their pretender near hostile domain.

Originally posted by sergex:
I also agree that lots of pretenders are underpowered and thus not used in competitive play. I think if all pretenders were given recuperation then Immortality won't be as overpowered as it is now. Other than that, a total overhaul and rebalancing of costs and powers with MP in mind and not costing them in terms of roleplaying flavor would be helpful. The only problem is that the devs don't have much experience in MP it seems so it would be nice if they would host their own polls and discussions to arrive at a conclusion.

I really don't think they should leave it up to modders to balance pretenders.

They haven't left balance up to the Modders, the Modders can 'balance' whatever they'd like and their Version of balance (whatever that may be) is achieved. Modding is a privilage so you can play the game how you envisioned it, not a tool for balance.

While the Dev's may not play 'hardcore' MP they do play MP because that is how the game is designed, though it is more aligned with Roleplay than efficency or 'fairness'.

[ May 03, 2004, 04:14: Message edited by: Zen ]

[PvK]

Many of the human pretenders have 10-point path costs. Since they also cost significantly fewer points, that is already like giving them the option of being rainbow pretenders.

I haven't heard anything convincing yet that the immortals or non-humans are better than their point costs. For supercombatant pretenders, well, it would be unnatural if it were otherwise.

PvK