Warrior Pretender
 

Is there a mod with a Warrior pretender available? A size 2 warrior that has a 50% chance of killing a dragon would be a good ole DND style demigod warrior. I would give him lots of attacks but only give him 2-3 misc item slots (he has signature items). You could have one mounted and one not. He'd be expensive and having paths at the start of the game would need to be outrageously expensive. Like the companion to the Arch Mage.

Thoughts?

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

There are lots of "warrior" pretenders, but not size 2 ones. A size 2 chassis is quite susceptible to trampling.

The closest thing to what you are describing would (IMO) be the 4 armed "Eastern" themed pretenders, but they are titans.

There are lots of size 2 heroes and summonable thug chassis though.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

So the problem with size 2 is its susceptibility to trample. Well, he's not supposed to be unbeatable... just use awe.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

If you would like this as a mod, I can show you how to do it. It would be trivial (10 minutes of coding for a complete greenhorn).

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

I really would like to do it. Balancing the pretender would take the most time. I'm not completely green, so I could mess with him once he's coded.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

It is true that there are few/no good human SC pretenders. All the human chassis are fragile mages. It would be cool to have a Great General chassis or something--"The Great General rose to command his army by his fighting skill, and has developed a taste for power. Now he seeks to rise to ultimate power--Godhood--by means of his battle skill."

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

See http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Lord_of_War

and

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Celestial_General

Both are titans, but you could easily change their size via a mod (might for aesthetic reasons want to update the sprite and descriptions too, or at least resize it.)

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Bare bones of the mod are attached. Extract into the mods directory of your dom3 folder.

Consult the mod manual with plenty of ctrl+f goodness to add more stuff. If you need sprites from the vanilla game to work with, or anything like that, have a look around these forums and ask someone for a link if you can't find them.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Yeah, a size 2 version of those, or something like the LA Tien'Chi Khan chassis, would be what I was talking about.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

I don't see a way to balance a 'warrior' pretender at size 2 with size 2 hp. He's just too fragile to be an expander SC, even at 0 pts. And expensive magic paths would just make him suck even more.

The best i can imagine is as follows:

~30 protection
0 encumbrance
decent magical weapon
#onebattlespells (probably have to be chained): quickness, luck, mistform
Base att/def ~20
Fear
Regen (mostly to reduce affliction incidence)

As a 0pt chassis that might be competitive with existing options. (Consider Lord of the Gates is a 0pt chassis who produces tons of shades, has D4 (add 1 for Fear), titan stats, base dom 4, and a weapon that creates an AoE fear effect. That's what you're up against at *0* points)

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

There are loads of ways to make him balanced. For one thing, there's no such thing as 'size 2 hp' really. He said he wanted a D&D style warrior. High level fighters in D&D are obscenely hard to kill - even completely naked it would take a large number of regular soldiers with decent weapons to take them down and it would take a long time. It's a fantasy game after all.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Here's the mounted (size 3) version. And, yes, he will die if you send him alone into knights and heavy infantry. Thank you Sombre.

I was going to go with awe and regen and 75hp but he was too strong. I was thinking recuperation, but, even still he's pretty much too strong to have on turn 1.

He's wearing for black steel, has 18 attack, 20 defense, and 50 hp. He has javelins, a lance, and 2 swords of swiftness for 4 magic attacks at normal warrior pace (it does, however result in him having defense 36 rather than 32, if he had the same sword with 4 attacks rather than 2 with 2 attacks... it also has the effect of keeping his final attack score down to 19).

He can take (solo) knight provinces that aren't too large, so I made him cost 150.

If I took him down to 15 and 17 he would have to gain some levels to get to were he is now... he seems too tough, and I'm sure he could a dragon as long as he didn't get hit.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

dbl post sorry.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Rather than Awe, I would give him Fear. Units with Awe are generally really special; Fear is more common with units that are just extra-badass, like this guy seems.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

He creates fear by killing, and if you want fear you need to give him 5 death. If you want awe you need to give him 9 dominion.

I don't think I need to add that stuff unless I nerf him... because he can take most provinces on tgrn1 with a starting army... even set on 9... so I think he might be way too strong... because a dragon cannot do that... even if a dragon has a good chance of killing him 1 on 1.

Thanks for the input though. 30 protection would certainly have been overkill.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

A cyclops gets fear, earth 3, full slots, fire immunity more hitpoints, and a starting dominion of 2 for 25 points less. Dragons are just as good at expanding and are 100 points less. His good base stats aren't as important as if he had full slots available, since it's not really possible to take advantage of them.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Well, I was thinking it would follow that he could be cursed and recuperating... or even horror marked too.

I think a pretender that can take a province, solo, reliably, on turn 1, even on independents 9, should be expensive bases just on that fact alone. VQ can't do that until like turn 3.

But, maybe you are right in that his slot selection nerf would warrant a large reduction in cost, or I should just give him his slots back.

??

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Wyrms, cyclops, dragons, great bulls, virtues, etc. can all take provinces without any research or equipment. Not every one of them can take every kind of province. The vampire queen is hideously overpriced because of her immortality. A lich is actually cheaper and not much worse once you give them the same equipment that a VQ needs.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

You mean like a naked Wyrm with Dom 9? Who has 180hp, crazy regen, fear, PR100, 2 attacks, and with the awe from dom 9 can expand blind on turn 1 with virtually no chance of losing. 50pt chassis. (Note that bonus hp from dominion are a percentage of base hp, so the wyrm gets boatloads of hp from being in friendly dominion, and regen scales as a percentage of hp as well...) Oh yeah, and its new path cost is only 50, and it starts with Dom 3.

You have to give out something competitive with that to justify even 50pts.

VQs just suck as early expanders, and aren't worth comparing such a pretender to. In addition to being horribly overcosted in vanilla (and arguably still overcosted in CBM), they are a rainbow pretender who can SC by midgame, not an early SC.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Really? That overpriced? Did you try him?

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

You mean her? The VQ?

Ok, so there's the obvious comparison to the Lich, who has better stats, starting dominion, and arguably magic (since blood magic on a pretender is mostly useless unless you want the minor bless, and you don't take VQ as a bless chassis). Starting with Dom 2 saves you 56 points on Dom 9 relative to starting Dom 1. And i've only taken an awake Lich as LA Rlyeh, who can afford to burn points on its pretender because its taking bad scales anyway.

But the vanilla pricetag of 180 is truly ridiculous. Even CBM's 110 is too much. I'd say its a 75 pt. chassis, tops. The problem is that its one real advantage over, say, the lich, is its 30pt/path, so you want a pile of magic on her to make her worth choosing. But after paying her chassis cost and necessary dominion 9+, you've already spent a pile of points. After magic you basically have nothing left for scales, and probably sacked most of them to have her awake, and you got no bless out of it. And then she's a defensive pretender because you don't want to leave dominion to take advantage of that immortality. Of course, the need for high dom coupled with the need to take bad scales to afford doing anything worthwhile with her leaves you with territory that is mostly worthless.

The only nations who would contemplate scales as bad as would be needed to take her awake either can control their dom spread (Mictlan), or just want a huge bless regardless of the scale effect (Lanka), or don't care about the gold economy that much (LA Rlyeh, LA Ermor). Of those, only Ermor would even consider her (Rlyeh can't, Lanka and Mictlan are looking for blesses, not crazy pretenders).

So, in vanilla, Dom 9 + chassis is already 432pts, putting you down over 2 scales to be awake, and that's before you've even touched magic for her! That's a lot of points for an inherently defensive pretender. And even after dumping magic into her, you get a pretender who can maybe best 40% of indies by turn 4 or so, more likely 12 because she isn't waking up until then.

(And yes, Dom 9 is required in order to be able to use her anywhere, because otherwise why bother with an immortal pretender?)

No, I would never take her in MP. A defensive pretender isn't worth that much to me. As an amusing handicap she might see use in SP...

Edits:
-175, not 180 pts. Close enough.
-VQ isn't even a rainbow in vanilla? Suck. Ok, there is absolutely no reason to *ever* take a VQ in vanilla.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

I think he means the warrior, not the VQ. Hence 'him'.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

I don't need to try a chassis 3x as expensive as a Wyrm that might barely succeed at fulfilling the same roll, and has fewer options (more expensive magic paths, I'm assuming starting Dom 1, etc...) to know that its overpriced.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Well, OK, but I think I just gave him too high of stats, because he took several hvy calvarly/hvy infantry provinces at strength 9. On one he got fatigued and took some hits, gut some afflictions...

The wyrm is not as good, which is why I made the price so high. Being size 3 makes a huge difference. Of course, he could get trampled.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Size makes no difference to solo expanders except as it effects trampling.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Ah, because he still takes up the whole square, he still takes all the attacks.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

Well its not that he "takes up" the whole square, its that he's the only one in the square. Essentially you're right though, he still takes all the attacks.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

According to the manual, larger-sized units are more easily hit by missiles. So there is that, in addition to trample differences.

Thematically, HP usually corresponds to size in the dom universe. So you might want to make your god at least size 3 if you're going to give him 50HP.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

I like the idea of a bargain human pretender who's just a really badass fighter. I recall characters like the main character in Hero, or Achilles. I wouldn't give him weird slots or a couple extra swords of swiftness attacks. I'd give him full slots, decent basic magical equipment (like one sword of swiftness, an enchanted shield, and chain mail of displacement) as well as one bonus attack (skills of the gladiator, maybe). Perhaps a one-battle-spell of Air Shield to show how he can bat arrows out of the air, and huge base attack and defence skills. Like, high teens (or even 20) for each.

He'd definitely be limited because some things, like the midget masher and tramplers, would be extra useful against him, but it would definitely be a capable expander.

Re: Warrior Pretender
 

The sword of swiftness isn't really that high of a damage weapon, so talking about 2 or 3 attacks doesn't seem that different...

He's mounted so he's size 3.

I think his attack and defense might be to high at 18 and 20, because with trinkets he he can solo the hardest provinces. I nerfed his slots because he comes back with... granted minor magical equipment, but considerable power, especially early game. Plus, he'd be great to buff.

Well, I gave him 21 str. Maybe less? But he's a wimp compared to a titan except for the attacks, which, granted do more than make up for that... if he doesn't get hit.

I was worried that he'd be too good at rushing opponents, but, I see now that people probably feel the same way about the shedu (or whatever).

The attacks are for thematic reasons, but making them more diverse, possible one doing less damage, would make sense. I'd probably also give him a bow that does 0 damage but counts strength and attacks twice (I would go 4 but seeing how hes done with the melee...), for thematic reasons. His defense would go down some, so he might be less durable... maybe, but it seems like he only got hit when his fatigue was high, even when surrounded, and his protection is "only" 23 (full black steel).

And his items aren't a total nerf, because he gets 3 misc (rings).