Pretender Balance Mod

[Sheap]

Everybody's a critic, right? I'm not saying you shouldn't make your mod, just that humanoid pretenders are not necessarily as bad as you say.

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Instead, when something manages to get a hit in on your rainbow, he's dead, losing 1 from all those magic paths and possibly causing you to purchase a lot of relatively useless priests to recall him, at a minimum wasting the time of priest mages.

It is true that death is comparatively worse for a rainbow mage than for one with fewer paths. You lose more magic and your priests might not be as numerous or as well equipped for calling you back. It is best for rainbow mages to not die.

On the other hand, it's not the end of the world. You'll still be able to cast and forge almost as well as before, though you may need an extra item or two to do powerful tasks. Your blessing won't be affected. And by the time your opponent can do this to you, your pretender should no longer be performing a significant fraction of your total research. And if push comes to shove, you can still use empowerment. Plus, rainbow mages can always cast Twiceborn.

Really death is a big nuisance for any pretender. The higher cost of death for a rainbow mage is mitigated by the lower frequency of death.

And frankly - sending the rainbow out searching for sites is a -very- good way of having that happen. Random events that bring a monster swarm in, assassins, summonings, etc - all great ways to have a dead rainbow mage.

Other than assassination, I think these other things can all be retreated from. True, there are some remote summonings that can fly, but they frequently do not attack the pretender first. As for assassination, all humanoid pretenders must have bodyguards at all times

[HJ]

Originally posted by Scott Hebert:
I'm trying to work with what you're able to mod, but it's clear no one thinks it's a good idea. I'll just stop working on the mod. Easy enough.

I usually never play modded games, but what you're suggesting sounds fun. I find myself playing the same things over and over again, and while I don't dispute the intention and reasoning that the devs made it the way it is, I would be interested to try this mod to see where it would lead the game, both for me and the AI. After all, it's going to be a mod, therefore we can switch it on and off - it's not like suggesting that the core game should be changed. The good thing about mods is that you can in fact have it both ways - if the game is mod-friendly and allows for easy switching.

Cheers,

[ June 18, 2004, 00:35: Message edited by: HJ ]

[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:

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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.

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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.