Pretender Immunity

[Zapmeister]

I've just noticed that there is a spell (Enslave Mind) from which pretenders are singled out for immunity.

Since there's a precedent for this, why not make them immune to Magic Duel as well, getting rid of that undesirable (IMHO) astral king business.

[Johan K]

I don't like pretenders being more immune than anyone else. But the game would become really screwed up if they were charmed/enslaved. Not so if they were to be killed.

Then everyone would take 3 with their Pretender and make even more supercombatants.

[Taqwus]

For a number of races, it's not the Pretender that's the real problem; it's the expensive weak-astral mages combined with a lack of strong-astral mages e.g. T'ien Ch'i Celestial Masters, and the Marignon mages as well IIRC.

[Zapmeister]

The reason I'm not happy with Johan's response, and I'm not overly concerned about non-pretender vulnerability to Magic Duel, is that losing one's pretender is a real downer. For me, it's a trigger for losing enthusiasm in a game in which it happens.

On the one hand, we are being encouraged to spend points on our pretenders. However, loss of that pretender trashes those points since a pretender loses magic when it dies (I assume this still happens in Dom2). Add to that the hoops you have to jump through to get the pretender back at all.

If there's a game element that puts low and midrange astral magic pretenders at much greater risk, then I think you have a problem.

Just my 2c worth.

The solution to that is to take an Immovable pretender that will never face combat more than likely unless you are facing tremendous defeat, or you take an immortal pretender.

I don't think "Feeling Down" because your Pretender died, is a valid excuse to make your pretenders invulnerable to a game mechanic.

[Zapmeister]

While I mentioned "feeling down", I didn't mean to imply it was the main reason for my view. I'm trying to say that losing the pretender is a big deal, enough to create an unbalancing problem in the game IMHO if certain pretender designs are much more vulnerable than others.

Yes, you can stay at home, for-going what used to be the main reason for mid-range astral magic (teleported attacks). Perhaps the changes to Gateway signal that this is what the devs intend.

If a pretender design is much more vulnerable; then perhaps as a player you need to compensate for that in some fashion. I don't believe that Illwinter intended for *Every* possible type of pretender to be equal in terms of survivability. Otherwise they are trying to combat player stupidity.

"Players use their Frost Father to attack provinces solo, with no picks in any sphere or spells researched; there has to be a way we can implement a way for them to do this otherwise it might hurt the pretender design."

[Johan K]

All pretender design are not intended to be equally vulenrable, just like Zen pointed out. Taking 2 astral picks is great for slaughtering independents early or to find astral sites which are useful for all nations. So it's only fair that there are some drawbacks too.

The pretender gods will not get any special spell resistances (they already have 18+ MR) so you should see enslave/charm as the single necessary exception not as a precedent for more exceptions to the spell rules.

[ November 26, 2003, 14:36: Message edited by: Johan K ]