Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

@Sombre -
Well, it *is* a competitive game and I think people are still expected to have a strategy, and to play-to-win, yeah? I just don't like seeing Vanheim screwed over.

Instead, you could let everyone take whatever pretender *chassis* they want, but require that everyone's god be at least A2B1 (where A and B are the primary and secondary team paths), and require the path scores for every pretender to be A > B > any other path. This would enable us to have a red dragon with A3 (say), but seriously discourage that because it would need to shell out even more points for B5 and N4.

Alternately, a plan that I now think is stupid: add a moderately-expensive, official-path heavy pretender based on the national signature-chassis for each nation, and require everyone to take it.

For example, we could have:
Great Warlock, B3N2S1F1, domstr 3, 175 pts
Bog Mummy, B3N2D1W1, domstr 3, 250 pts
All-father, B3N2A1D1, domstr 3, 225 pts
Gorgon, B3N3E2, domstr 3, 250 pts

And boost all the path-costs to 80.

Note that these are marginally cheaper than taking B3 on the relevant deities, and a *lot* cheaper if we were then to take B7 or B8 - which we would be organically encouraged-but-not-required to do.

You could make a similar set of 175-250 pt, 8 pick domstr 3 chassis for each of the nations in play.

But this would require a lot of modding and whining while simply requiring everyone on team X to take more-blood-on-their-god-than-any-other-path is I think more fair and easier to enforce.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

I sympathize with Dr. P. Vamp Queen is unplayably bad. Heck, she's barely playable in CBM, and her cost has been *drastically* slashed.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

I originally had the Green Dragon and the Manticore over on the Sanguinarium side to give Van and Jottun more choices. I moved the Green Dragon over to the Supplicants side as I felt it more in keeping with the serpents/poison theme of the death team. But DrP, if having the Green Dragon available for Vanheim/Jotunheim will satisfy your team, that's no problem. The death team can certainly live without it.

Alternatively, as rdonj and DrP hinted, I might certainly consider allowing certain thematic rainbow pretenders for each team as well (the ones that do not conflict with the other main paths of teams) but yes you'd be restricted to a single path for simplicity sake. So a great Warlock with only blood magic would be fine by me. As would a Great Sage for the Usurpers restricted to Astral. As would a Crone with only death on the death team, etc. If we wanted to complicate it a bit further, sure you could also add some secondary path magic as well, no problem, but no other paths would be allowed on those rainbows. I did want to preserve the merc's water capability, as the Usurpers secondary path is also the main path of the merc. But if Zegc, doesn't object I see no problem. The merc is not a team strictly speaking and is not playing to win. So I have no problem with single or primary paths only on these rainbows.

So your choice guys. Green dragon or the addition of selected rainbow pretenders with magic path restrictions to all teams. If I go the second route, I'd remove the Carrion Dragon, Dracolich, and Vamp queen and any others that conflict. The Gorgon is out, not only because of the earth magic, but it is one hell of a good expander. Don't want to give DrP's team too much. :D

The pretender choices should be able to be verified fairly easily, so I am not really worried about that. As sombre noted, RPG first, balance is second. But I want people to feel comfortable.

Just to note:

There were 3 considerations I was looking for with regard to pretender choices:

1 - I wanted each team/faction to have different pretenders (no two teams should have the same pretender).

2 - I wanted these pretenders to fit in with the theme of the team.

3 - I wanted to preserve the main paths of each team as much as possible at the start hence the exclusion of the cheap (10 magic path cost) rainbows.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Green Dragon for Vanheim is fine from a balance perspective; if we're really worried about theme I think it'd be better to mod vanheim so they could take a B pretender who is actually good, but I can fully understand not wanting an extra mod.

If we had more time and will, I'd make a custom "prince" pretender for each nation, declare them all siblings and we'd mod those in:

Abysia gets the Dark Son of Rhuax, who is basically just a Moloch.
Jothunheim gets an Ice Devil (bigger and stronger than a Moloch, but not winged.)
Pangaea gets a Gorgon, but with B instead of E, and the demon tag (Daughter of the Black Hind? That's a cool name.)
Vanheim would get Loki - presumably BFA and he shapeshifts between a regular van and a winged devil.

---

Similarly, the usurpers would get four flavors of Virtue; the Supplicants of Set would get four flavors of the Prince of Death, and the Children of Chrom would get four flavors of the Lion-headed dude who causes fear, I guess (an acceptable supercombatant.)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

A lot can be done with pretenders via the map file as well. But yes, the 4th consideration was doing this without the need of any mods and from the in-game pretender set up screen.

So you and everyone else sure you don't want the rainbow pretender option (limited to one or two paths)? I sorta like that idea, but it depends on how everyone else feels, don't want to complicate anything more than necessary. But if people want those cheap rainbows that sounds like the easiest way to go.

On a side note: I do like the idea of a special commander available to each team's flagship nation or captain though. Ulm, Ermor, Abysia, and R'lyeh for instance. Each team gets one. An uber commander alligned with the main path of each team. Though unlike a pretender, a commander cannot be recalled. So it must be used wisely. But I guess the random in-game heroes pretty much answer this function to a small degree.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Love the idea of loki.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Maybe you should start a poll.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Some of those pretenders do sound cool.

Hmm, for simplicities sake, and working without a mod, in the meantime, to allow more pretenders, and to prevent high level path incursions and blesses that might occur with the Bog Mummy, Dracolich, and the like, it may be best to leave the Green Dragon on the Supplicants. And allow all the thematic rainbows where appropriate for each team. And all pretenders will simply be limited to magic in their team's primary and secondary paths.

So:

The Children of Crom would now have access to the Master Alchemist (losses Great Mother).

The Sangiunarium gains access to the Freak Lord, Great Warlock, b**ch Queen, Skratti, and Master Druid. (Loses Dracolich, Carrion Dragon, Moloch, Bog Mummy, and Vamp Queen).

The Supplicants gain access to the Crone and the Serpent King (Lose Bakemono Kunshu).

The Usurpers gain access to the Divine Emperor and Great Sage.

The AITEAM gains Arch Druid, Arch Seraph (Loses Phoenix).

Altantian Mercs gain the Aquatic (crabby) Arch Mage and Great Seer of the Deeps.

Keeps things simple, easy to verify. Most of your low level diversity will come from your regular mages, indies, and from the magic locations anyway. Higher levels in paths outside your Primary and Secondary will require either empowerment or boosters. Mercs get compensated for the water incursion of the Usurper pretender choices with an astral choice. The Monolith is the only exception to this straighforward rule on the AITEAM, as Gandalf needs an immobile pretender to choose from (but he can probably drop the astral from it).

Sound workable?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Issue is, no-one takes a rainbow and doesn't make them a rainbow. So unless you want to allow people to take a wide mix of paths, allowing them the "option" of taking a Great Warlock etc. is pretty pointless, and I'd rather just have the Green Dragon and be done with it. If Vanheims only options are vampire queen and freak lord with no non-blood magic, vanheim will take an imprisoned B4 freaklord and that's kinda boring. This is especially boring because the B-team ought to be encouraged to take a very high domstr, and use the blood sac for offensive dominion push.

If you really want to restrict us to BN on our pretenders, you need either to let us choose all the available BN non-rainbow pretenders (thus, the Green Dragon - this would be satisfactory as I said), or you need to mod the game to give us access to whatever pretender menu you think fits. Your other teams have similar issues, by the way (although I haven't looked as closely), but I'll let the team captains there make whatever case they wish to make.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI, Enlisting 11/17.
 

Thanks for the reply DrP.

That works for me. Your team already has access to all available non-rainbows with only native N and/or B. Having the green dragon doesn't really both me as much as the bog mummy, dracolich, and such with native death. So you can have it.

So Vanheim will now have access to the following pretender choices with the rainbows in:

Green Dragon, Freak Lord (b1), Bi*ch Queen (n1, shapeshift into a quasi SC), and Master Druid (n1).

Every nations pretender choices are going to be somewhat limited without a mod. Some more than others. This was done purposely, so it takes a bit of planning and strategy on each teams part. But that is the goal and point of the themes and scenario. However with the addition of these rainbows, the situation is improved in the most extreme cases. And rainbows do still offer the benefit of a cheaper choice, even if limited to two paths like all the other gods. i.e. Taking B4 + n4 on a green dragon leaves you with 120 points left over, while, the same magic on a Freak Lord gives you 180 points left over to play around with (plus a domstr of 3 instead of 1).

I'll make the changes to the .pdf on the main post.

I think this is probably the simplest way to handle it without a mod or map edits and is easiest to remember and verify. Now if an unbiased (preferably non playing party wants to help out with a mod that does the four things I mentioned that is fine as well). ;)