[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Zen:
I never said who plays only SP can't have valid balance suggestions, quite the opposite. But when it comes to pretender design for balance more emphasis is on the MP aspect since it is there that it really shines. In SP you can set you opponents to Impossible and have a Wyrm with 9F9E9S show up at your doorstep and still beat them. But it takes alot of MP to see the ramifications of a Rainbow Pretender or the drawbacks (Some people only play Rainbows in SP because they don't need combat pretenders and the opponent doesn't use their own to full effect)

If you say so. I don't see it, personally, but then, I haven't played MP.

Another impact of my mod would have been that the computer would have better Pretenders, since it doesn't operate under the same design criteria as humans.

I'm just curious why not. Obviously Rich would be a limitation since initial combat pretenders with high gold would be more attractive. But in my mind having an immediate gem income from a Rainbow without having to worry about a Comp Pile I would be more like to play Rainbows.

Two things. Rich setting, to me, means that you can have more troops, which devalues SCs. Well, it increases their power while decreasing their utility. More money equals more troops and more forts and more mages. Mages are the SC's bane, and SCs can't take forts. Therefore, a Rich setting is not good for SCs, to me. The other reason is Acashic. It's much more reliable than ANY Rainbow can be, it's faster, and any nation in the game can cast it every 10-11 turns, and it snowballs from the first, for the same reason Clams do. Basically, having a Rainbow search for sites is just too damn slow.

There is no reason they should not be. But Level in what sense of the word? I'm Pro-Upgrade-Humans, have been from the start. I even wouldn't mind if Humans had a minor boost to Dominion (Max of 2), but I don't think Dominion matters to human pretenders as much as other pretenders. I'd be more inclined to level the playing field with abilities that increase their survivability and speciality rather than brute influence over Dominion. But that's my opinion, you are certainly entitled to your own.

Well, maybe it's my lack of experience, but I distinctly recall several people on this forum stating that taking anything less than Dominion 5 in MP is suicide. By increasing the human's base Dominion (especially vis-a-vis the giant's), you are in fact giving the human Pretenders more points to put in magic or scales or fort, since no one plays with just the base dominion of a Pretender.

The main reason I'm suggesting to fiddle with the dominion is because you can't mod in a lot of the 'special abilities' or 'survivability abilities' for them. E.g., how can you give Luck to a Pretender? Simple answer is that you can't. That requires Astral magic on the Pretender, because not even giving them 'hard-coded' equipment will give them the special benefits of that equipment.

I don't know what kind of impact you're giving gem income or summons. I would rather choose a Virtue over an Arch Seraph, but it's not because of their inital dominion strengths or even cost/path.

Why, then? My point was, though, that the Virtue seems to be intended to be a single-path Pretender, while the Arch Seraph is a multi-path Pretender. It doesn't really work out that way.

Because Vampires don't exactly exude influence as much as fear. They don't inspire worship, they demand it.

And yet you _want_ to worship a Prince of Death? This really isn't making sense to me.

Better? I don't know but I do know that high magical paths are thematically attuned to beasts that are extremely 'elemental'.

*sigh* Yes, I know. Just funny how they seem to get everything. They're not of this world, so they're awe-inspiring, so they get high Dominion. They're also very elemental, so they get high magical paths. What _don't_ they get? This doesn't sound like 'balance' to me.

I don't think it would be a bad thing to put 3 Path specifics on Human Pretenders with an increased Path cost of 40/path.

I don't think it would be a bad thing to give them 1 in _every_ Path. I still don't think they'd be played very much. As far as the 3 path thing goes, you have two of them in the game, one Human, one Giant (the Smoking Mirror and the Jade Emperor). I like the Jade Emperor, but that's because I find his 100 points more or less worth the package (he also has very nice paths). The Smoking Mirror, OTOH, should be maybe 30 points, and he costs 70.

I'm trying to work with what you're able to mod, but it's clear no one thinks it's a good idea. I'll just stop working on the mod. Easy enough.