proposed death curse change
 

The Blood 9 bless, death curse, is oft considered amongst the weakest of the high bless effects. So i'd like to propose a change to improve it:
Remove the MR negates from its effect.

The effects of death curse seem to just be horror marking and curse, both of which are normally unresistable effects, so why let the death curse effect be resistable?

Another advantage of this change is that it doesn't obsolete anything in the manual (as far as i can find).

of course it's ultimately up to illwinter, but this seems like it might be a simpler change to code.
Zlefin :)

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Yay, this and Air have been sometimes discussed in the past. But that's probably something the devs just feel balanced this way :)

Re: proposed death curse change
 

I think it would still suck, even without the mr check.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Prolly.

Something which would be nice as a Blood strong bless imho, a penalized blood vengeance. Not ground breaking, just enough to add some survivability to the sacreds and have this interesting effect happen sometimes and increase the chaff-killing effect of the elite troops :cool:

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Agree with Tifone. But I seem to remember that Blood bless weakness was said to be so to counteract strength of high Blood magic in general...

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Yay, that's likely, things are pretty much well compensated in this field IMHO. :) Devs have done their calculation homeworks :D

(Still I don't get many reasons except an awakened Destroyer of Worlds to take high Air, nor for the bless or anything else)

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Why to take high Air: Fog Warriors and bootstrapping into Air Boosters (equals: lots of Fog Warriors). Cloud Trapeze is nice too for an SC although it only needs A3.

Blood Vengeance on B9 would be crazy strong. Even if it's resisted at MR +4, DRN have a high variance and arty mages would not-infrequently find themselves blasted by their own spells. B9 would instantly go from the weakest bless to one of the top two. Doesn't seem wise to me.

I could live with making curse and horror mark unresistable, but I'd rather make them trigger on a hit as well as on death. That is, a B9 unit can curse and/or horror-mark you if you fail an MR roll.

-Max

Re: proposed death curse change
 

used to like it when with a b9 died.. you became an undead.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

that was d9. and it was sucky :)

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Your argument of the Air-bless is not convincing.
Cloud Trapeze is an A2 spell(not A3), and the two major air-boosters require only A4, thus even A10 can never do it better than an A4 rainbow.

I think zlefin's suggestion is fair. If we make the effect be trigger by a hit, the problem is against some elite troops you can never hit them, and they are also very likely to have good MR resistance.
I believe the original idea of B9-Blessing is not to make tough guys even tougher but to counter other sacreds by sacrificing your cheaper ones. This enable another option for the strategy and is always more welcomed.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Fog Warriors requires A5, also. Done by the A4 who made the booster? ;) Spending the points up to A9 for an A5 spells doesn't seem too cost-effective to me :)

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Oops
I should have misunderstood him a little, but its too late to edit my post... anyway

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Sorry, I think we meant different things by "high Air". Apparently you meant A9. I was thinking more like A6, because everyone agrees that you don't take Air for the 9-bless. (It's useful to have more than the bare minimum for Fog Warriors to reduce fatigue and let you cast other spells.)

I was not arguing in favor of an air bless. I was pointing out some reasons you might go higher than A2 (which is all you really need for site-searching and Mistform).

-Max

Re: proposed death curse change
 

blood 9 bless doesn't need to be changed, it may not be very useful against the genral masses but against strong enemy sacreds, SCs and thugs it is THE best bless, Plus the extra strength ain't too shabby to help punchthrough high armour and blood magic is such a powerful school that throwing blood on a pretender is nice to get you into it.

air could do with a change though, the shock resistance works for caelum when your using sacreds to protect your uber artillery mages and you don't feel like wiping out half your own army by casting shimmering feilds. But apart from that there ain't much use to it, i would rather something like +4 precision which would be nice for nations with nice sacred bowmen (LA tien chi, Kailasa) or nations with nice artillery mages.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Only if you didn't know how to use it - ie., use it to BOOST morale as your units died.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

I thought undead morale was separate from normal units morale, as berserk and mindless.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

I was also sure undead and mindless morale did not affect the average squad morale.

But I though berserk did. I didn't test it though.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

How about a new status effect?

Demonblood: Makes units count as demons, but also adds +12 temporary hp.

I'm not sure if hp would be the best tradeoff, but I figured it might be a good fit since no other bless gives a max hp increase.

Got one for Air too!

Lightning Rod: Troops with this blessing will generate a "free" thunderstrike aimed with high precision at enemy forces. The more blessed troops are on the field at once, the stronger and more precise the bolt will be.

This way even otherwise worthless holy troops like flaggelants could be useful! :D

Re: proposed death curse change
 

There is already a lightning rod :D

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Meh, it's just a name :P

How about something cheesier then, like Cloud Chant?

Re: proposed death curse change
 

A9 Blessing - Charge Body?

N9 Blessing - Poison Weapons

B9 Blessing - Additional Attack : Bite - 12 NSA AP, +1Att, -1Def


Was toying with suggesting Poison Weapons for the B9, or maybe even Partial Lifedrain. :p Don't think that'll fly any higher than Blood Vengeance though. ;)

Re: proposed death curse change
 

An enhance-precision effect for high Air bless looks promising. Charge body isn't bad also, but such an effect is niche and the niche is quite different from missile-protection one which is present. Another alternative could be some damage enhancement for missile weapons only.
As for Nature I disagree with JimMorrison: there MUST be a bless which makes sacred units berserk!

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Personally I kind of like the air shield bless, I don't think it's nearly as niche as some people do. Also, I still think the idea of a precision bless is too good for sacred mages and not useful enough to sacred troops. With a precision bless you would see lots of E/A blessed mages raining down highly accurate destruction and you would pay for it. Depending on what the other bless effect was on air you could also have fairly solid melee sacreds with such a bless (especially if it kept the air shield around).

And I don't see how a charge body bless is that niche, at least if you changed the shock resistance to work like the air shield bless currently does. Because it would be pretty useful of your sacreds to die and do armor negating damage to an enemy thug/sc. Even without the shock resist though it would be good for low armor/prot/survivability sacreds to ruin someone's day. For example, something like a battle vestal or jaguar warrior with w9/a9. This would work best if they kept the air shield bless though.

What if berserk was moved to blood instead of nature, and nature got something like 25% resist all elements? Or mr- (or maybe str...) negatable tangle vines when attacked in melee? :) I don't know about the air bless, I'm reasonably happy with it personally. Though more for air shield than shock resist. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad if the 9 bless gave a minor mirror image?

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Ohhh, I like that one too.

And I kind of thought that Berserk might work well on the B9, but I had to go with the fun Bite attack. BLOOD! :p

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Wouldn't Mirror Image be too strong? (And a serious blow to game performance? :D) Air and Blood are pretty powerful schools, and air shield is probably pretty good to have in LA games. I mean, blessed armored troops immune to crossbow fire? That's pretty near :)

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Mirror Image would be slightly more effective than Twist Fate in melee, and ineffective against missiles or spells. I think that implies it would actually be an excellent companion to Air Shield, and would make A9/S9 an interesting choice for sheer staying power.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

If I'm not mistaken, vans, tir na n'og, eriu etc all have mirror image from glamour, so it wouldn't be any worse than fighting them.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

I think glamour is one thing and mirror image another, but maybe I'm wrong? :)

(If so, Mirror imaged twisted fated glamoured vans = :eek: )

Re: proposed death curse change
 

*Fights som Vanir*

*Loses badly*

Your point being? : D

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Charge body without shock resistance is FUNNY. Suicide-bless ftw! And yes, would restrict the equipment choices of enemy thugs.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Glamour I think both gives an in-battle mirror image and makes a unit extremely stealthy outside of battle.

And Dectilon, my point is that tir na n'og's tuatha warrior sacreds have glamour, a magic weapon and can have several blesses added on top of that and I don't think they're considered to be a particularly powerful sacred nation. Of course, the easiest way to get rid of the mirror image is to shoot them, which would be a lot harder with the air shield bless as jimmorrison pointed out earlier.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Ah... Yeah, that's true.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Mirror Image will be exactly as effective in melee combat as Twist Fate, on average. Twist Fate negates the first successful, damaging hit. Mirror Image has a 50% chance to stop each hit which would otherwise be successful and damaging hit, and if so it sticks around. There's a 50% chance of blocking zero hits, a 25% chance of blocking one, a 12.5% chance of blocking two, etc. Do the math and you'll see that adds up to exactly one hit blocked, the same as Twist Fate.

Two differences: Twist Fate works against spells, and Glamour scales with Air because it *is* Mirror Image. That's why high-level Vanir mages get multiple starting images.

-Max

Edit: Oh. One possible flaw in the above analysis is that I'm not 100% sure how Glamour interacts with the -2 penalty for each attack. That is, I've tested it by modding and concluded that Glamour/Mirror Image (unlike Ethereal) still reduces your defenses on a negated hit--but I haven't actually confirmed this by checking the debug log. (I did things like take an A9 pretender with high defense and measure how many attacks are necessary to get through after he's cast Mirror Image. With Ethereality the effects of high defense/Ethereality are multiplicative, with Mirror Image they're additive.)

Re: proposed death curse change
 

Unless it were granted as level 2, so that each unit gains 2 images instead of just 1 (I think that's how that works). This would yield a melee bonus comparable to the lack of missile/spell protection, in general terms.

Though overall I favor the Charge Body effect over a Mirror Image, I think they both could be viable and not overly powerful in a general sense.

Re: proposed death curse change
 

I'd still prefer some prec boost :) IMHO we're lacking something for sacred archers and mages. (well, D is not bad for those but still)

Re: proposed death curse change
 

I always thought Precision bless would be pretty awesome, but it does seem that it could be highly abusable. One the one hand you have nations with strong evocation mages that are hard to kill, like Agartha, whose weakness is low Precision. On the other hand, you have Air nations, whose mages already have excellent Precision, who can take an Air bless, and then use Storm with impunity to wreck your Precision, while theirs stays nice and high.

Not to mention the wacky synergy between E+A bless, for sacred mages. Tell you one thing, if you don't fear R'lyeh yet, you would with that kind of bless. ;)

Ultimately I think blesses aren't meant to change the mage balance very heavily, but I don't know for sure. :p