What are the Mechanics Behind Cross Breeding?

[AlgaeNymph]

What are the chances of getting particular monsters? How do scales affect those chances?

How could I mod a variant of the Cross Breeding spells?

[Lingchih]

Well, the manual says that Luck helps. I've cast it with Luck 3 and mage with a pendant of luck though, and all I have ever gotten was crap. I don't personally like the spell.

[vfb]

It's the scales in the province where you cast it that counts. After about 6 casts in a Luck-3 province you end up with some pretty funky stuff, like size 6 monsters, fliers, along with a load of chaff. I think it's fun, but I didn't use it in MP.

Sombre's amazing Skaven mods Cross Breeding like this Code:

---

#newspell^M

#copyspell "cross breeding"^M

#name "Moulder Pitbreeding"^M

#descr "Pitbreeding ... (snip)" ^M

#school 6^M

#restricted 73^M

#researchlevel 2^M

#path 0 7^M

#path 1 3^M

#pathlevel 0 1^M

#pathlevel 1 1^M

#fatiguecost 1000^M

#end^M

---

It changes the casting cost, paths, research level, etc, but not the result.

[Wick]

In Dom:PPP I got these test results:

Bog Beast 1
Chimera 1
Dragonfly 1
Foul Spawn, 4 claw 1
Foul Spawn, dog head 1
Great Lion 1
Wolf 1
Wyvern 1
Black Hawk 2
Gryphon 2
Ice Drake 2
Scorpion Beast 2
Fire Drake 3
Boar 5
Cave Drake 7
31

The foul spawns and dragonfiles were feeble-minded and unfortunately I have no record of the scales.

[vfb]

Here are two tests from Dom3.14:

(1) Misfortune 3, 10 casts of Cross Breeding:

All Foul Spawn:
Size-4 Spider 27
Size-2 Pink (Life Drain/Leprosy) 46
Size-2 Green (Regenerates/Amphibious/Tentacles/Spit) 88
Size-2 Chaff 56

(2) Luck 3, 10 casts of Cross Breeding:

Foul Spawn:
Size-4 Spider 21
Size-2 Pink (Life Drain/Leprosy) 37
Size-2 Green (Regenerates/Amphibious/Tentacles/Spit) 71
Size-2 Chaff 65

Monsters (Sizes 4-6)
Four claws 1
Cockatrice 2
Grotesque 1
Draco Lion 1
Chimera 1

---

So, with misfortune, no super-cool flying poison and fire-spitting monsters were generated in 10 casts. But even with luck-3, it's 50/50 if you'll get one cool creature per cast.

Nearly all the small Foul Spawn are slow and have horrible protection, so will get severely owned by any missile fire including slings and javelins.

But they do have a variety of interesting attributes, like the poison spit or triple armor piercing tentacles, or do-not-eat. And even the smallest are strength 11 and not mindless, so, good luck with that siege!

[Saulot]

Hm, do those results look dissapointing to anyone else?

I guess the follow up is, does anyone use this spell in MP?