Mod: Mod thread- WH hordes of chaos

[Panpiper]

I want to add a 'musician' summonable unit similar to the banner bearer summonable unit. This is thematic with the way the miniatures game works and will make Chaos armies even more colorful. The banner bearer currently confers a 10 standard and a +5 fear. This is appropriate for the banner. However I really am not sure what effect to give the musicians to make them different and worth including in a unit. Does anyone have any ideas?

I am thinking of perhaps replicating somewhat the effect of the banner bearer, giving the musician a 5 standard and +0 fear and instead of the near useless 'kick' attack of the banner bearer, give them instead a reasonable area effect attack. For a melee unit however that could well be more of a handicap than a boon, given that they are likely to be hitting their own guys half the time they attack.

[llamabeast]

You should be very careful putting fear on any but the strongest units. It's extremely powerful.

Also with the standard bearer, even AOE1 is powerful. I assume you must be talking about larger areas, since AOE1 would never hit your own men. But anything larger than AOE1 is almost certainly overpowered.

[Panpiper]

Banners are an integral part of warhammer armies, something that is seen with virtually every showcased unit. The game mechanics have these banners as powerful magical devices that indeed, project power causing fear in the enemy and strengthening the morale of their own men. I really feel that including such a banner is vital to preserving the spirit of warhammer. However there is nothing to say that such banners come cheap. It may well be that I have them too cheap, perhaps far too cheap.

Currently in the Chaos Undivided mod, such a banner is carried by a 'relatively' crunchy troop, not much tougher than the standard, recruit anywhere chaos warrior (other than being blessable). He has a rather ineffectual attack. Currently it costs 5 blood to summon (create the banner effectively) and is a level two blood spell for research. Assuming it is kept in the game, what level and blood cost would you recommend llamabeast in order for it to be balanced?

[Burnsaber]

If you make the standard bearer a commander, you can make him more powerful without making him cost bajillion gold.

[Panpiper]

Burnsaber said:
If you make the standard bearer a commander, you can make him more powerful without making him cost bajillion gold.

Currently the banner bearer does not cost gold, it is a summonable troop. Plus the idea is not to make it even more powerful, but to find the right game cost that reflects it's current power.

I want to keep it a troop, not a commander, for a couple of reasons; I like the visual of the banner being among the troops when looking at the army setup screen. Also I envision that many players would want to have one such banner per unit and if it were a commander, that would turn into a 'lot' of commanders.

[llamabeast]

Um, I'm not really sure about summoning costs, that would take a bit more thought. Having a banner bearer is fine - there are already quite a few of these in Dominions, and they all have the morale boosting effect. Fear is a strong thing though - probably equivalent to Terror in Warhammer. It is similarly rare. If you really want fear then I would say make it fear+0.

What you could do is have two summons. One would be an ordinary banner bearer at the cost you describe or even cheaper, basically a slightly above-average warrior who gives a morale boost to his neighbours. Then you could have a higher-level summon to get a banner bearer with a powerful magical banner enchanted by the chaos gods to cause fear in their enemies. This guy could have the fear property, or it might even be possible to mod the weapon so that it causes AOE fear in those it strikes, which would be fun.

This is also slightly more warhammer-y to my mind. After all most standard bearers don't carry magic standards.

[Panpiper]

llamabeast said:
it might even be possible to mod the weapon so that it causes AOE fear in those it strikes, which would be fun.

You are right llamabeast, that could be seriously hilarious. It is also quite realistic. Panic is indeed contagious.

I would take your advice with the standard bearer and eliminate the fear from the basic version and create a 'better' more expensive version for the later game. However I don't really want to have a player wind up with 'redundant' standard bearers, as one never sees a unit with more than one banner. I would rather simply find the right cost for the banner bearer as is such that a player won't have them until they can afford their effect. Then they can gaze upon their army, rightfully proud of it's awesome power. :-)

[Panpiper]

Before this mod, I had never looked at spell modding before. My first stab at spell creation may have left something to be desired. Many thanks to Sombre for pointing me in the correct direction, any deviations are my own fault.

Does this look right to you all? Are there any glaring errors, inconsistencies or imbalances I should correct immediately?

-- Red Fire -

#newspell
#name "Red Fire"
#descr "An accurate (prec 10) midrange fire ball type spell that does aoe 1 18 damage, but can be resisted by mr."
#restricted 75
#school 2
#researchlevel 1
#path 0 0
#pathlevel 0 1
#fatiguecost 10
#effect 2
#damage 18
#aoe 1
#flightspr -1
#explspr 10113
#precision 10
#range 30
#spec 4096
#end

-- Yellow Fire -

#newspell
#copyspell "Tempering the Will"
#name "Yellow Fire"
#descr "It gives a "5+ ward save" in warhammer to mage and his unit."
#restricted 75
#school 4
#researchlevel 5
#path 0 4
#pathlevel 0 3
#fatiguecost 20
#aoe 8
#end

-- Green Fire -

#newspell
#copyspell "Confusion"
#name "Green Fire"
#descr "A unit in the area of effect has a 50% chance each turn of becoming confused, subject to magic resistance."
#restricted 75
#path 0 4
#end

-- Blue Fire -

#newspell
#name "Blue Fire"
#descr "An upgraded version of red fire. Prec 20, better range, more damage, more AOE. Again, can be resisted by mr."
#restricted 75
#school 2
#researchlevel 4
#path 0 0 -- The magic path for casting, IE: fire, water, etc.
#pathlevel 0 3
#fatiguecost 20
#effect 2
#damage 24
#aoe 3
#flightspr -1
#explspr 10141
#precision 20
#range 40
#spec 4096
#end

-- Violet Fire -

#newspell
#copyspell "Infernal Prison"
#name "Violet Fire"
#descr "Toast!"
#restricted 75
#school 5
#researchlevel 9
#path 0 4
#path 1 0
#pathlevel 0 4
#pathlevel 1 3
#fatiguecost 300
#end

-- Indigo fire -

#newspell
#name "Indigo Fire"
#descr "A combat summon of a handful of flying elementals."
#restricted 75
#school 2
#researchlevel 6
#path 0 4
#path 1 0
#pathlevel 0 3
#pathlevel 1 2
#fatiguecost 50
#effect 1
#nreff 5
#damage 2337
#end

#newmonster 2337
#spr1 "./chaos/indigo_fire_1.tga"
#spr2 "./chaos/indigo_fire_2.tga"
#name "Indigo Flame"
#descr "Indigo elemental, short lived but burns twice as hot."
#hp 1
#size 2
#prot 0
#mor 10
#mr 8
#enc 1
#str 10
#att 8
#def 10
#prec 8
#mapmove 0
#ap 30
#gcost 0
#rcost 1
#weapon 171 -- small area fire weapon effect
#flying
#end