Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)

[Chazar]

EDIT:This post has become obsolete. It was based on a misunderstanding of mine

Alneyan said:
The Blood Thorn [...] became a 0 damage no strength added weapon... in other words, it isn't a weapon any longer.

What is the reasoning behind 0 damage? I think it is quite clever to prevent strength from being added to the damage of a lifedrain weapon, but where is the problem with some base damage for the blood thorn? How could, e.g. a 1-damage no strength life draining weapon be abused? I can hardly imagine that a quickened Nataraja with 4 of those modified blood thorns would be any remote choice. So having some minor damage score might yield more choice for players...

Or is the drained fatigue independent from the damage score?

(How about turning the blood thorn into throwing knife (ammo:1, range str, damage 10,...) to explain the lack of strength? Is that possible mod-wise?)

[Alneyan]

Go ask Zen Chazar, I cannot speak for him. At most, I can provide with possible explanations, but my word should *not* be considered as being "official". In this case, I do not really have an idea about the damage of the Blood Thorn.

[Chazar]

Alneyan said:
Go ask Zen Chazar...

The question in my post was not specifically addressed to you, Alneyan, but rather to anybody who might offer an explanation why a 1-damage blood thorn would be a bad idea, despite quoting you...

Nerfing life-drain weapons is good and I understand that the blood thorn still yields a blood bonus, but where is the reason to disallow its use as a crappy weapon entirely?

Oops, i now see that i misunderstood the issue entirely: The current blood thorn still does 0+2d6(oe) draining damage, right? I thought that "0-damage/no strength" really meant 0 damage always, but this is wrong, right? So I reast my case, sorry for bothering!
(Nevertheless I would like the throwing-knife blood thorn...)

[Alneyan]

It wasn't clear indeed; I wouldn't want to usurp Zen's position.

Very good point about the damage; I had completely forgotten about the dice part myself. You will still need a lot of luck to actually do some damage however, as protection will get that 2d6oe as well, and virtually everyone has a protection value higher than 0. Still, it should be possible to deal *some* damage, with a bit of luck.

[Oversway]

I think the wraith sword and hellsword changes are interesting. They still are usable against mid to lightly armored troops (perhaps -10 is too much, maybe -5?), but they are no longer good weapons to fight other thugs/scs/etc. with. Well, unless you can cast astral weapon

So instead of life draining weapons being the best choice for the majority of situations, they have more of a niche. Some of the comments from others (rather use gate cleaver, etc.) seems to back this up.

Of course, this is just my guess. I'd like to hear from Zen what his aim was.

[Boron]

Chazar had a very good idea imho.

You could make the Hellsword a No-Strength Weapon but 20 Weapondamage.
So you can field it vs. troops but some elite troops (Black Knights e.g.) have a good enough protection to make life draining them difficult.
Vs. other SCs you can forget the lifedrainweapon then with only 20 + 2d6 oe damage.

[Arralen]

Basically, that would mean making the sword better for anyone with STR<11, and progressivly worse for anyone STR>11.

[Huzurdaddi]

I think Zen did entirely the correct thing. The only other solution with life draining weapons is to remove them entirely. In a test increasing cost did not have much of an effect on people usage of life draining weapons due to their effect wrt. fatigue.

Zen's changes keep them in the game but make them useful only in limited circumstances.

[Zen]

Hmm.

Lets start with the Lifedrain Weapons:

The reasoning for the change in costs was to create more scarcity. It's bad enough that the best weapons in the game give you hp and fatigue that allows general use of about 80% of the game (non-lifeless unit), but they also are priced so reasonably that even if you did want to choose another weapon, for another 5 gems or 5 slaves you could pick yourself up the all-in-one use weapon.

With that said. The Hellsword is supposed to be priced to 2B2F it went one too high in a late test game and didn't get changed back.

For the Damage portion. I wanted to create only situational use of the life drain weapons and for them to be statistically _worse_ than other weapons of the same construction and path requirement levels.

-10 Damage still allows use for anything over 25 Str to lifedrain about half as well as it does in an unmodded game (where you could simply equip a lifedraining weapon and a ring of regen and virtually no amount of recruitable troops surrounding a SC will be able to outdamage the lifedrain and regen)

This also still allows Astral Weapon and Weapons of Sharpness to play into the equation and not be overly powerful. I was debating between the -6 and the -10 damage variables and ended up going with the -10 in order to see the reaction. Even with -6 (Which is a -15 Total Damage removed from Lifedrain weapons) the lifedrains are more in consideration than with -10 (where you might *not* consider them on your ID's or BL's simply because an AOE weapon might let you live longer).

This is the first version and as such I'd rather have -10 Damage try to be exploited rather than the -6 that I know can be exploited to what extent.

Final Note about Lifedrain Weapons: I don't hate them at all. But I do consider them so good that there is no reason in an unmodded game to not pick one unless you are taking a herald lance (for the only thing that your lifedrain weapon doesn't work on). And with the limit of the modding tools the only answer is to mod the base stats in order to create a sense of equilibrium between magical weaponry. Just upping the cost wouldn't change the game to a great extent except making the person with the most Death/Blood Slaves able to play the game the exact same way as in an unmodded game (I.E. winning with the same tired tactics), which is not the direction I chose to go because I feel that lifedrain in an unmodded game is so good and renders too much so suboptimal that it isn't chosen when considering something for efficency.

Re: Bloodthorn: The weapon is no longer considered a threat and you can't get lifedraining and a shield by any reasonable combination (Astral Weapon, etc). That was my intent.