Why no Water 3 Pretenders?

[Minrhael]

I was just wondering why, at least as Man (and perhaps the other land types?), I can pick a pretender that starts at magic level 3 in every magic type other than Water. It's not exactly an overpowering magic type; other than the blessing I see no reason to ever have more than 2 points in it, or 4 for the low blessing, but to get to a Water9 blessing is extremely point-heavy without a Water3 starter, and forget about Water10. Why should every other magic school (most if not all of which have better spells for picking more levels) have a pretender that starts with level 3 magic but not Water?

I've thought about modding the Oracle to Water3 instead of Astral3 just so I can play with it, but I'd really prefer to stick to pretender types I can use in MP; my game certainly is going to need a bit of fine-tuning practice

[Norfleet]

Well, the Son of the Sea and Nereid are both W3 chassis, but it doesn't seem like the water bless is otherwise as available for landlubbers.

Why is that? Beats me. The Water-9 blessing *IS* a very powerful blessing, for an otherwise nearly useless level of water magic.

[Wauthan]

I've wrapped up my first somewhat balanced Version (0.7) of my "Avatar" mod. I noticed that some pretender variations were absent so I tried to patch things together. Including a water3 pretender. I'll pack it up and send it to Illwinter and Arryn.

[Chris Byler]

The Son of Niefel is only Water-2 but he also costs only 50 points, while most gods of his physical might cost over 100.

Buying the SoN and Water-9 (with no scales, dominion strength, etc.) leaves 226 points. Buying the Cyclops with Earth-9 leaves 209 - although the Cyclops starts with Earth-3, his higher base cost makes up for it. The male titan starts with Air-3 and costs the same as the Cyclops so the result would be the same. The SoN is also immune to cold, has a chill aura and gets free winter wolves, while Old One Eye has only his trademark "ability" to go blind on the first eye loss.

The blue dragon also starts with Water-2 for 50 points, and is cold immune, fearsome and flying as well as physically mighty.

It's not hard to make a water bless effect pretender - that can also fight - and still have some points left over for positive scales, dominion strength and a castle. Neither the SoN or the blue dragon is conducive to taking a second magic path though, so your God will have trouble against undead (unless he physically beats them up), and some Thaumaturgy is highly recommended against Jotunheim/Caelum.

[Teraswaerto]

The Dragon has weak dominion, which makes the high dom values needed to recruit more than a few sacred units very expensive. SoN is Jotun and Caelum only. It's much harder to get water 9 blessing with sufficient dominion than it is with any other path.

[rabelais]

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=001349#000001

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=000985#000000

As stated in the threads above, I think immobile 3 pretenders (ala FoB, Oracle) should be available standard for each path.

That way the bless effects are available, and can be adjusted independent of the particular pretender on which it appears.


Rabe the Archivist

[Wauthan]

Well we certainly don't lack the modding power. All that is needed after the latest patch is the graphics for fire, air, water, earth, nature and death "Fountains" (dom4 3picks 0cost).

Since they are not moving you can just grab a nice clipart picture or the likes, convert it to a targa and be finished faster than a snail in speedos.

[Teraswaerto]

Using mods in MP is always trickier than sticking to official game.

[Wauthan]

All too true that. We'll perhaps we could give the lads a hand and post names, descriptions plus the appearance of the "fountains". Can imagine that it would be frustrating to just sit down and do six pretenders without any inspiration to draw upon.

There's got to be some viable mythic sources to draw upon here. Nature is given to be a tree of somekind. I remember a fairytale of a tree that contained all the flowers, fruits and seeds of the world. "The Tree of Life"? Death could be a giant skull, a reliquary or the massive tombstone that contains the name of all those that have died. Fire could be a vulcanic chasm or a statue holding a tiny sun. Water could be a pillar of nevermelting ice, or a vague shape made out of water that rises out of a pool. Earth is likely to be a giant crystal, a huge metal statue or a clockwork mechanism of somekind. Air could be vague shape rising from smoke, a windcarved pillar or a metal statue crackling with lighting.

Coming up with a good name and description for each is more than my mind can deal with right now though.

[Jasper]

IMHO the easy solution is to just make "Poseidon" (ie the Son of the Sea) available to some land based factions.

This seems entirely thematic, and shouldn't hurt either game balance or variety. At the very least you think he'd be available to Arcoscephale and Pythium, who's real life analogs worshipped Poseidon/Neptune.