Treelords in Conceptual Balance

[Oversway]

Keep faery trod! I like jeffrs removing the misc slots idea.

[Vicious Love]

Lessee, then. Pro mobility:
* Faerie Trod is sorta thematic and pretty fun to have these guys cast.

* Trees on an airship are deeply cool. Snakes on a Plane, y'all.

Pro immobility:
* Easy enough to think up a rationale. They draw strength from the earth, don't they? Not only would uprooting them and stickin' em on an airship cause them to wither and die, it would also take them a geological era or two for them to adjust to a new province's soil. Furthermore, a forest/tree going through a Faerie Trod is a bit like a highway driving upstate.

* Travel via non-unique flying carpets is both unthematic and dizzyingly overpowered.

* Routing trees are lame and stooopid.

* Balanced treelords really are powerful enough already. And they could always be given a slight boost in other areas, anyway.

* Immobility complicates gameplay in all sortsa potentially fun ways.


Remarks with little weight one way or another:
* Taking away misc slots would make treelords incapable of reading the Tome of Gaia. This is neither a balance issue nor a thematic issue either way, really.



I voted for immobility.

[Cainehill]

Vicious Love said:
Remarks with little weight one way or another:
* Taking away misc slots would make treelords incapable of reading the Tome of Gaia. This is neither a balance issue nor a thematic issue either way, really.

But on the other paw, giving them an arm slot lets them use the Thistle Mace; two arms would let them wield the Treelord's Staff, which is either thematic, or disturbing - a Treelord holding a chunk of a dying treelord.

[archaeolept]

treelords are too good as is in the balance mod - knocking off their misc slots is fine; if you want to give them one arm slot that would be ok too.

[Endoperez]

One arm slot would do, but 2 would allow Treelord's Staff and I think that's just inappopriate. And then Treelords would have very minimal slots. I think making them immoibile is better than removing all the misc slots.

[Vicious Love]

Cainehill said:
But on the other paw, giving them an arm slot lets them use the Thistle Mace; two arms would let them wield the Treelord's Staff, which is either thematic, or disturbing - a Treelord holding a chunk of a dying treelord.

Hey, if Belial can sell his soul...

[Endoperez]

Vicious Love said:

Hey, if Belial can sell his soul...

Never realized that!

[Wish]

It would be thematic for a dying treelord to be holding a piece of himself.

[Endoperez]

That would be a piece of some long-dead specimen of his, surely.

It could fit, at least for some. There are many similar examples spread throughout Dominions: Skull Staff is like this for most humans; Pangaean hero, the Black Bull, has his father's skull on his staff; Hangadrotts seemingly killed themselves; I'm not sure if any Ermorian mages do this, but they surely would...

However, the Dying Treelord is an exception. Just like normal Vanadrotts wouldn't go around sacrificing any of the precious few Vanir, or most Pandemoniacs having anything else than a human's skull on their staffs, etc. I would allow the Dying Treelord hands, if it was otherwise balanced. Or maybe mobility. He is dying, so he mightn't care how dangerous flying around effectively rootless is...

[quantum_mechani]

I should also point out one other detail I forgot to mention in the first post, making them immobile again would also return their bonus to summoning vine men. Also, an intersting bit of trivia, the dying treelord gets one more vine man/orge per summoning than even the other treelords.

While I'm not necessarily adverse to removing the misc slots, I don't think I would add any arm slots, it just seems too bizarre.