Pretender Balance Mod

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Reverend Zombie:
Well thank god THAT was nipped in the bud by the voices of reason.

Let the man mod, dammit!!!

Please don't say that. The reason I posted the mod rubric before I made the mod was for precisely the feedback I have received. People more experienced and more intelligent than I have made it plain that my mod was against the intentions of the designers, and made a cogent argument as to why the game is set up the way it is. I no longer see a reason to modify it.

I don't think anyone was saying not to Mod Scott. I tried to put it as just a side-note that is what the thematic intention of Dominion is. You can mod whatever and however you like. IT is no secret that the actual choices of Pretenders vs the Pretenders chosen based on stats is disproportionately low. I just don't think modding the Dominion is suddenly going to change it, since low Dominion is something that Human Pretenders can cope with since they are not combat oriented.

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Zen:
I don't think anyone was saying not to Mod Scott.

I know that was not the intention, Zen. However, what is the use of a mod that no one uses?

I tried to put it as just a side-note that is what the thematic intention of Dominion is. You can mod whatever and however you like. IT is no secret that the actual choices of Pretenders vs the Pretenders chosen based on stats is disproportionately low. I just don't think modding the Dominion is suddenly going to change it, since low Dominion is something that Human Pretenders can cope with since they are not combat oriented.

Correct, they are not. Where else do you get the points, though? You can reduce the costs of the human pretenders to 0, which implies they are all equal (and they are not). That gets you about the same number of points as my suggestion, but at the loss of intra-Rainbow balance.

And regarding the 'greater need for bigger Pretenders for Dominion', I think this is an effect of the game, rather than a driving force. You mention that, rather than increasing Dominion, ways of increasing the survivability of the Human Pretenders should be found. Well, I took the easiest way of doing that I could. I raised their starting Dominion. This increases their stats and their HPs without actually changing their base stats (which would be against the feel of the game).

However, this isn't anywhere near the boost that the Giants get from Dominion. When you look at it that way, why is Dominion cheaper for those who benefit from it more? From a game balance standpoint, this doesn't make sense.

I feel that modding the game is perhaps the best way to show the designers how a proposed change would improve game balance. I don't generally like the alternative.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Zen:
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.

---

To you, to me, to Zen, certainly not - but that's an ethnocentric judgment if I ever saw one. It certainly would make sense to, say, a Dusk Elder or a Sauromancer. Fantasy litterature, movies and RPG are full of alien cultures that worship exactly that kind of guy. Eg, Blizzard's Diablo series, to give just a prominent exemple.

*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?

Cheap magic paths - ie, versatility. Human mages are more adaptable just for the reason they're less strongly attuned to a particular magic path. Makes a lot of sense to me, therefore I like it this way.

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
To you, to me, to Zen, certainly not - but that's an ethnocentric judgment if I ever saw one. It certainly would make sense to, say, a Dusk Elder or a Sauromancer. Fantasy litterature, movies and RPG are full of alien cultures that worship exactly that kind of guy. Eg, Blizzard's Diablo series, to give just a prominent exemple.

But then, why doesn't the above argument work for the Vampire Queen? What makes the Prince of Death any better than the Vampire Queen to their subjects?

Cheap magic paths - ie, versatility. Human mages are more adaptable just for the reason they're less strongly attuned to a particular magic path. Makes a lot of sense to me, therefore I like it this way.

I'm sorry, but as I've tried to illustrate, I don't agree. You take a Rainbow, and you take a focussed mage, give them the same Dominion (even as low as 4), and it takes 3 Paths to make the Rainbow even come out even, and that's with vastly inferior stats. The reason I chose 4 is because that's the minimum I feel is necessary to grant reasonably quick and sure access to the powerful Rituals from the Path. Gift of Health, Forge of the Ancients, the Elemental Monarch Summons, and so on.

To me, if you're going to take a Pretender with a lot of 2s, the Pretender is going to be able to do a whole lot of nothing. You're going to have to rely on Empowerment or your National mages to cast any useful Rituals. About the only way to justify that kind of Pretender is to go the Coin/Skullcap/Ring of Sorcery/Ring of Wizardry route, and that's extremely expensive in terms of Pearls, Pearls I think would be more effective casting Acashic Record and taking a more focused Pretender.

This is my big beef with Human Pretenders. They look like they should work for the generalist route, but they don't. Whether this is because of a lack of good Rituals to use at low path levels, an imbalance in cost of the Pretender, or relative ease in finding Independent Mages with 2-paths, I don't know. I'm just proposing an idea to make them more palatable on a quantitative level. It certainly makes them more viable, while not overshadowing the other Pretenders.

The only problem is one of theme.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
...
However, this isn't anywhere near the boost that the Giants get from Dominion. When you look at it that way, why is Dominion cheaper for those who benefit from it more? From a game balance standpoint, this doesn't make sense.
...

There are more points of comparison, though. For example, dragons benefit heavily from high dominion, but they start with only level 1. Titans have high dominion and benefit from it, but may be weaker than other combat pretenders with lower dominion, in other ways (e.g. Dragon is 50 points, but will tend to defeat 50-point giants in single combat unequipped, because they aren't as deadly and lack built-in armor.) The usual strength of the humans is their low cost for additional paths. Additional paths are useful for filling in national gaps and for broadening the possible spells and items (and magic-power-boosting items), as well as for site searching.

Many players do seem to think though that humans are a weaker choice than combat pretenders. I'm not clear how much of that is just the initial impressions of players who see the surface but not the potential of other choices. Having a combat monster may be easier to take advantage of, but it may be that when one does the right things with a rainbow, it ends up stronger in the end. I'm undecided, and my play style tends to favor middle-range compromises, including using human pretenders sometimes. The only time I tried to play all-out SC pretender, I was wiped out by the AI - no doubt partly because I was new to the play style.

I think you may be on to something though with the idea that humans should be less expensive, and that the cost is against the floor already. Dominion is one way to adjust that a bit, except that as others pointed out, they are the ones that don't need so high a dominion anyway, and it has thematic side-effects.

The costs and/or path costs of combat pretenders could be increased, but then that would weaken the strength of possible designs, so some players might not like that.

If it were possible (is it?) to mod negative costs to the human pretenders, that might be another approach. Humans would thus have even more points to play with.

You could also try modding spells so that some of the more popular spells required multiple paths in various combinations... but that would be a major change to gameplay.

PvK

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
And regarding the 'greater need for bigger Pretenders for Dominion', I think this is an effect of the game, rather than a driving force. You mention that, rather than increasing Dominion, ways of increasing the survivability of the Human Pretenders should be found. Well, I took the easiest way of doing that I could. I raised their starting Dominion. This increases their stats and their HPs without actually changing their base stats (which would be against the feel of the game).

Personally, I'm not sure that the human pretenders should be so terribly frail and weak. I suppose it's partly a result of the quantity and variety of fantasy that I've read, but....

In fantasy, you have the wizards who are ultra powerful, but easy to kill. Think Fritz Leiber, think AD&D (most popular paper/dice fantasy role playing game in north america (vice Runequest in Europe, Last I knew)). Generally though - those mages don't get mistaken for deities.

Then you have authors whose powerful mages seem to be on the verge of deification - almost impossible to kill, who have imbued themselves with near superhuman powers. Think Glen Cook's Black Company series - heads chopped off, the mages live, they had to be imprisoned in cairns for hundreds or thousands of years because they couldn't be killed.

That seems a lot more like a would be god than someone who is easier to kill than a sickly militia conscript, and who can only cast Air Shield as they begin their quest for Godhood. Would you worship a sickly crone with parlor tricks?

I really think the humanistic pretenders need some beefing up. Ethereality, Luck, at least a couple of half-way impressive starting spells to impress the natives, something.