Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Psycho

Why does nobody mention the boots of antaues? They seem like the least disruptive option to me. Just some regen and reinvigoration on top of +1 earth.

Just some regeneration and reinvigoration? Possibly the two best SC survival abilities? On misc slot?

The idea of the Pebble Skin Suit is that it has drawbacks and is in general an intresting item. If the options are Tome of Gaia/Boots of Antaneus/Pebble Skin Suit, the suit will have smallest effect and is hardest to abuse. Remember that getting turned into a troll isn't that awesome in all cases, not even for humans. Your mr gets reduced, you lose all other innate abilities (like the innate forgebonus for Ulm or FR and heat for Abysia). You become a bigger target with that additional hp, allowing the opponent to pinpoint your casters with spells (try incinerate with that -50% FR) or "attack largest" commands. Also remember that when you are a troll with the suit, you have base -50% in both FR and CR in all battles.

And even if the Troll transformation gets somehow abused (although I'm not seeing it), we can just edit the "Troll" unit to have -1 magicskill in all paths.

[Squirrelloid]

See, i'd say ToG has the smallest effect because the existence of *yet another* way to boost N in a misc slot has almost no effect on the game, since only an oracle/blood fountain has enough misc slots to use them all. (moonvine, RoS, RoW current - and for oracle/fountain there's no hand slot so still no ability to exceed current maximum boost across all chasses). And for single boosting of N you still go to the thistle mace because its cheaper. ie, it has little effect on common needs for an N booster (doesn't change 1 boost level choice or max possible boost).

At which point the only real reason to forge it will be for the earth booster.

Keep in mind that 'drawbacks' are not something we should be actively seeking out - Earth has *1* non-unique booster without bloodstones (2 if you count the staff of the elements, which is remarkably hard to forge without earth boosters!), compared to at least 2 such boosters for every other path of magic. This is a shortcoming that should be rectified.

So arguably the ToG adds less value than the bloodstone did (both have E, +1e/trn vs. +1N), and doesn't really change the metagame situation substantially for N boosters. Sure, its different paths than bloodstone, but that's not the most important part. (People can and will trade for items, the important part is that a second *non-cursed* non-unique earth booster exist)

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

Just some regeneration and reinvigoration? Possibly the two best SC survival abilities? On misc slot?

I know, but I just don't like the trollification and cursed effects. It's fine on national mages, but what about earth kings or tartarians. Do you think it would be such a superb item with E4B4 or E4N3 paths?

[Sombre]

I'm of the opinion that the best thing to do is to change the tome of gaea into an exact replica of the bloodstone (same graphic, same costs, same paths, same RL). The nature boosting part of it can make up for the loss of the gem genning.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Psycho

I know, but I just don't like the trollification and cursed effects. It's fine on national mages, but what about earth kings or tartarians. Do you think it would be such a superb item with E4B4 or E4N3 paths?

And making the second booster cost 30+ gems would kind miss the point completely (why not just forge elemental staves then?). The idea is to allow the nations that were hit hardest by the Blood Stone nerf (Ulm and Agartha) access to a secondary earth booster. How in the heck can they forge E4N3 item? Getting into blood 2 for stones is easy, just send scouts to hunt and empower. Not so much for nature.

Anyways, this argument is quite moot, since Squirreloid has a good point about the N boosting of ToG being a bit rebundant. It would likely have the least effect on the game and can be inexpensive enough on N to be somewhat forgeable by Ulm and Agartha.

I'm still for Pebble Skin Suit, thought. It's such an intresting and intriguing item and I just simply love it. Forged it everytime I've been able to do so.

[chrispedersen]

My solution was to change agartha and ulm.

[Psycho]

Well I thought the point was to get those E5 spells like earth attacks and earth kings. If that is the use for the booster then it needn't be cheap.

I agree with Chris here. Some nations are hit more badly then others by the lack of blood stones. The same goes for clams and fetishes. The idea should be to change those nations in some way to compensate for it, not add an item forgeable by everyone to do it.

I don't like the tome idea as it lets you get +3 nature too easily. Now everyone can do mother oak and gift of health etc.

[Quitti]

Well, certainly you can't give +1e just to all ulm mages. Nor Agartha.

Here. Have some rambling about the tome, nature and blood magic.
Currently from what I've gathered, the best way to get your bloodstone economy going on ulm would've been to take a forge lord with blood or something similar - now it would only change to force the forge lord take some nature instead of blood. For agartha I've always just hunted with indep scouts for the slaves, though I don't see why they couldn't have done something similar with blood access -pretender. Do also keep in mind that if you are taking nature on your pretender(+n4), your sacred units will get regen, boosting your sacreds usability a lot (priest smiths for ulm, ancient ones/lords/oracles etc for agartha). It would be an indirect boost. Combined with the fact that you'll be having earth on your pretender also - that's reinvig (and perhaps prot if you go all the way to 9 or 10). Again that synergies with your sacreds well. No-one will force you to take such a pretender though.

Now with blood - You'll still need earth (e1b3 is the suit in vanilla, can't remember if CBM modifies the values), You don't really need to invest to anything else than b3 on your pretender with e1, and the path isn't very useful for you for the rest of the game than simply few pebble skin suits just to replace the bloodstone economy it awarded before - the paths would effectively go to waste. Having b4 would grant a point or two of strength - while not useless, it's far from regen5 or whatever you'd be having with nature. In late game nature also awards you with GoRing wished sc's/summoned tartarians, which agartha nor (ma) ulm have no national access to. Granted - they neither do have high death mages (exception being la agartha and la ulm) or high-astral casters. MA Ulm could probably suit their SC need with Iron Angels, should they have the earth income. It's not the best chassis around, but it isn't too shabby either.

So. Should the pebble skin suit be made non-unique, it'd "hurt" the nations in comparison to the tome of gaia. Being cursed and turning the user into troll (not a very bad thing for ma ulm though), it'd see little use. Tome of Gaia is not cursed - it'd see probably more use, though the point to consider is if we would want another cheap earth booster, or something a bit more rare than the ubiquitious earth boots. Tome would also basically force them to have a pretender designed for it (whereas the suit doesn't explictly need it, but it very much hastens the process of making them), but it complements to their sacred units and/or mages. It also opens up the possibility of getting into race to gift of nature's bounty / oak / gift of health. For example, Nature's bounty is in enchantment, which I believe ma Agartha likes, and I don't see it as too bad a path for ulm either, with earth well in the end, and fire fend in the way.

Just points to consider. /ramble off

[Kheldron]

Well, if the point is that nations that could make bloodstone should still be able to access an earth booster, why not change the bloodstone into E1B1 : +1E. constr 4.
Simply remove the gemgen part and make it cheaper. It would cost the equivalent of 10 gems, same as the +1E boots.
done.

[rdonj]

Gemgen part can't be removed. That's why everyone is talking about the unique earth boosters. Making one of them non-unique is the only way to get a new earth booster.