Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)

[Foom]

Looks great, thanks for all the work. I'll venture some suggestions, at the risk of being argued into a pulp.

The main problem I had with human pretenders so far was that their only advantage (lots of cheap magic paths) was at such high risk because they're so vulnerable. The higher hit points help that a lot, since now they're more likely to survive seeking arrows and stray shots on the battlefield.

I like the idea of giving the humans small unique bonuses so they don't all look the same, so here are some ideas:

• Forge bonus. I thought the Cyclops was pretty good without it, being the only chassis with good earth magic.
• Blood hunting bonus. The only one so far is the Fountain o' Blood, could be very nice on a mobile pretender. Perhaps this would be something for the Skratti? Give me your offspring, midgets!
• Starting equipment. Unlikely to make much of a difference though.
• The much-maligned autosummon imps would actually be useful on human pretenders since they offer some protection from assassinations. Perhaps a master of the dark arts who sold his soul for Lifelong Protection and now needs to achieve godhood before Sheogorath comes to take him away. Or a mad scientist type who gets corpse men (not moddable, I know).
• The Frost Father is a lot less sexy than, say, the Abysian Great Warlock or the Great Sage. He gets cold resist and the chill aura, but I don't think those are much good on a pretender who will hopefully never be in close combat. How about turning him into a "Great Conquistador" with the "can sail over oceans" ability? And maybe a pillage bonus for flavor.
• I don't know if this is a valid comparison, but Pythium's Divine Emperor is a lot less interesting than e.g. the Serpent King of C'tis or the Arch Seraph of Caelum. Perhaps give him awe? Or even higher starting dominion?

It's kind of hard to come up with suitable ideas since pretender modding is still somewhat limited..

[Endoperez]

Wow, looks good... I am probably not going to use it, at least not yet, as I play SP and haven't yet found the IW-balance to be too far off.


For Foom:
Have you tried the chinese mod? I think it was called Kami. In it, there were Shrines carried by four swordsmen. They had four attacks with the swords! It was a great touch, and giving Divine Emperor four Emerald Lords to carry his palanquine could help it nicely... He wouldn't have the full protection and would be unable to use body armor, but he would have some ambidextercity and maybe three misc slots as well?

Awe and/or starting dominion would probably be too good for a mere human... Remember how rare Awe is, and how all the humans have low dominion. Divine Emperor might be able to be a mage of mysterious powers, but so would be all other wizards... Why is this one special, besides the fact that he won't touch earth on his own feet?

[PvK]

This looks very nice!

My main reservation is with the increased hit points on low-hitpoint pretenders, for thematic reasons. I don't mind it that much, but pretenders already get HP bonuses for dominion, and I don't like the D&D feel of people being able to take superhuman amounts of injury. In this case it's ok I suppose since they _are_ superhuman, even if they started human.

However I do like the idea of toughening the humans by adding some equipment to them. Ethereal Robes and missile protection items and/or reinvigoration to increase the "great wizards" theme you had in mind.

PvK

[Cainehill]

I prefer to think of it as being like Glen Cook's Black Company mages - some of the Taken survived being hanged, beheaded, emtombed for a thousand years, smashing into a castle wall at about 100 miles per hour (with no seatbelt, air bags, or, mmm, car ), and worse.

That's what I think of, when I think of human mages attempting to become gods. Not someone's grandmother who could be killed by 3 good papercuts.

That said, I also have some reservations about the human mages hit points, mainly because it seems that if an arch-mage has 21 hit points, a giant mage-godling should have more than 50% more. It's a scaling problem; not that the Skratti really needs improvement, but that it seems it should be substantially harder to kill than a crone.

So - maybe a couple built in magic items might help, in place of the hit points. Ethereality, air shield, lightning immunity, regeneration (on the druids especially, who also might still get higher HPs). No uber items - as a game went on, you'd quite possibly want to upgrade the items, but enough to give them an initial bonus. (Albeit I don't think pretenders / units can be modded for things like misc items.)

Anyways - the HP increase for humans isn't bad; for instance, it makes it rather more difficult to nail a human pretender with a single Seeking Arrow, which has always been an issue with sending them out site searching.

[Zen]

PvK,

Yes, those are all good suggestions. However, when you give them additional equipment (like say a Robe of the Magi), it doesn't transfer over the actual applies bonuses of the magic item (+Paths, or Resistance, or whatever), only the physical statistics and such.

I could give someone a wraith sword as starting equipment and it wouldn't make a big deal, but giving someone say, a Rune Smasher, would not give them a penetration bonus, or Elemental Armor would not provide any resistances.

This is where you run into the limitations of the Modding tools at current.

[archaeolept]

see? everyone thinks the skratti should just be given a wraith sword...

[Zen]

The newest Version has been updated to 1.3

It has a few changes, from the original which are as follows:

Weapon: Plague Breath +1 Ammo

Dracolich +Recuperation, +Wing Buffet, +4 Prec, +5 Prot
Virtue +Astral, -Air
Skratti -> Elder Skratti +1 Att, +3 Def, +Blood, -1 Enc
Bog Mummy -> +25 FR

Please note, the Original Post Attatchment has been changed and updated to Version 1.3. If you have a hard time downloading it from techno, try the attatchment.

[Edi]

Zen, looks like you forgot to mark the Basecost for Naga and Golden Naga as changed in the readme, it's down to 90 from 100.

The Caelian Arch Seraph has also not been edited at all, so (other than flying + CR) it's currently far inferior to a lot of the other rainbow pretenders. Something sneezes too hard in its direction and it's toast.

If you (or anyone else) are interested in seeing it, I made some changes into the conceptReadme file (edited file attached). I edited out a couple of spelling mistakes and organized the changes on each pretender into a systematic order, the order of listing varied quite a bit.

I also organized the pretenders by type to the following categories: Monster, Giant, Immobile, Human (rainbow), and added an Unedited Category where the pretenders with no changes are listed. Makes it a bit easier to find what you want if you're looking for a specific pretender's changes.

There are a few pretenders that didn't really fit squarely into any one of the categories, and they are: Virtue, PoD, Medusa (listed under monsters), and Ghost King, the 3 Lich types and Bog Mummy (listed under humans despite being death specific).

Now, I might be ignorant of the finer points of balance issues, especially where multislayer games are concerned, but as of right now, your mod is getting permanent enabling on my Dom2, it makes so many previously useless pretenders attractive and even makes some of them more thematic. Great job!

Edi