New pretender gods

[Vicious Love]

How to Mod a Completely Premade, Nation-Specific, Probably Unbalanced Pantheon in Several Easy Steps Incorporating Presently Nonexistent Modding Commands
Some assembly required

A) Give the nation in question a starting spell costing 1 gem of the type of your choice, with a requisite caster level of 20 in the path of your choice.
B) Also mod in a pretender with said level of 20 in the path in question, no other abilities or stats, no item slots, 1 hit point, an insanely powerful horror mark, and the "diseased" battle affliction.
C) Start a game with the nation and pretender in question. Give the pretender an appropriate name, like "a bunch of gods", as in "Prophet of a bunch of gods", or "Marignon worships a bunch of gods".
D) Have the pretender cast the aforementioned national spell. Watch pretender die of either horror attack or disease.
E) Enjoy gods summoned by path-20 spell, all of which function as mobile temples, more like Juggernauts or prophets than full pretenders. If possible, gods' stats should should be affected by dominion.
F) Do not call god, he'll just be eaten by a horror again.

And that's that. As long as we're being ambitious and hypothetical.

Update: Did I say 20 in one path? I meant 20 in two. That oughta make sure you don't Call God and empower the bastard while having elite bodyguards protect against horror attack. Anyone got an idea for an even better killswitch?

[Alneyan]

I gather there is no way for us to script a new summoning spell, but the rest should be possible to do with a mod. Would it be possible to give the "pretender" zero hitpoints, or would the game complain? You might also want to give this pretender a few abilities; what about the Heat ability and the Fire Vulnerability one? Fire Vulnerability might be overkill though, but that should make sure the pretender won't survive the Horror attack. Too bad it wouldn't be good enough to kill this pretender outside battle.

I like your artifact pretender, but then, I have always had something for rainbow mages (especially if they happen to be more or less useless; don't ask). You may need to make him Lifeless/Undead (I don't recall which is the one to use) to prevent the use of spells such as Twiceborn though. Transformation cannot be prevented as far as I know, but this spell is probably dangerous enough to make anyone think twice before making her Pretender cast it. Unless you really hate your divine avatar in the game, or fancy the thought of being the very first Dragonfly to access godhood, or merely want to show off you are so superior you can afford to lose your Pretender.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Alneyan said:
Transformation cannot be prevented as far as I know

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work on lifeless bodies.

[Vicious Love]

Alneyan said:
I gather there is no way for us to script a new summoning spell, but the rest should be possible to do with a mod. Would it be possible to give the "pretender" zero hitpoints, or would the game complain? You might also want to give this pretender a few abilities; what about the Heat ability and the Fire Vulnerability one? Fire Vulnerability might be overkill though, but that should make sure the pretender won't survive the Horror attack. Too bad it wouldn't be good enough to kill this pretender outside battle.

I doubt it would work, actually. I know disease auras don't affect the individual units from which they emanate(1 apparition won't disease itself, but a group will disease each other). I imagine heat auras work the same way.

However, Lifelong Protection style imps or whatnot, on "guard commander" orders, with heat auras and an unwavering work ethic, should be more than enough to do the poor bastard in, if it ever sets foot on a battlefield.

I like your artifact pretender, but then, I have always had something for rainbow mages (especially if they happen to be more or less useless; don't ask).

The artifact pretender wasn't my idea, I just approve wholeheartedly of it. rylen suggested it on page one, and this thread was three pages long when I happened upon it.
The incorporeal god idea is mine, and is somewhat similar, though probably inferior; it's got less going for it, stylistically, and probably isn't half as strategically interesting.
I'm also a big fan of thoroughly useless rainbow mages, by the way.

[Alneyan]

A shame; it would have been so amusing to see your Pretender die because of his own heat aura. *Improved* Imps (notice the irony) with the Heat aura should certainly do the trick however, especially if you happen to cut down their wings and thus make them immobile. You do not want the Imps to go away before their summoner has been completely killed; these Pretenders can be so bothering and refuse to die, even when they are about as powerful as a limp and blind dragonfly.

I guess I didn't pay enough attention to the part of the thread when artifact Pretenders were mentioned. Credits go to the original poster then. How wonderful a Rainbow mage is indeed, especially when its paths mirror your national mages strengths (I did it in Try Something New, though I managed to pick one path not already covered by my own mages at least).

Going back to the topic of Pretenders, may I have a nice Succubus as Pretender? Please? A Vampire Queen might do the trick here, but she is definitively too powerful, and so will not qualify under my tastes for "nigh useless gods, whose only purpose is to give a good casus belli to invade neighbours". It would also be one of the few Pretenders able to meddle in assassinations, and assorted pastimes.

[Vicious Love]

A thought: R'lyeh should have a mindless, permafeebleminded, obscenely huge, higher than 18 MR, 20-30% regenerating, battlefield feebleminding(MR easily negates), 200 or so points-costing, nigh-unkillable pretender. And where dragon pretenders occasionally trigger bloodslave-devouring bad events, this thing should trigger army-devouring events.

[Curwen]

Vicious Love said:
A thought: R'lyeh should have a mindless, permafeebleminded, obscenely huge, higher than 18 MR, 20-30% regenerating, battlefield feebleminding(MR easily negates), 200 or so points-costing, nigh-unkillable pretender. And where dragon pretenders occasionally trigger bloodslave-devouring bad events, this thing should trigger army-devouring events.

Thinking of Azathoth? I was wondering about this very kind of pretender this morning.

[Vicious Love]

Curwen said:
Thinking of Azathoth? I was wondering about this very kind of pretender this morning.

Yup.


...


Of course, properly simulating capital G, singular form God, or possibly even gratuitously all-capped GOD, with his mindless but very much literal omnipotence, his raw biggosity, orders of magintude bigger than the limits of human imagination of bigdom, really so inconceivably biggious there's no point in trying to describe him, would take about a billion nation points. I suppose we could balance it out by taking away R'lyeh's water magic and Atlantean thralls.

Still, we could always go with a mini-Azathoth, one a bit smaller than the universe itself.