Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)

[Yossar]

Ya, I noticed the Void Lord but forgot to mention it. The Sacred Statue got an odd change that I'm not sure is a nerf or a bonus. I guess it's to differentiate the Oracle, Sphinx, and Statue a little more? Now Statue is the most versatile of the three and Oracle is the cheapest Astral 3.

[Cohen]

I'd agree with Moloch without Imps.

Virtue should have base cost of 75, and have +6 HP, +2 Att, Def and MR.

All Humans should have 1 more starting path except Great Enchantress that have etherealness.

Abysyan G.Warlock +8 Hp, because it should be with more life than humans.

Lich shouldn't have fire res ... they're immortal, and they're difficult to kill.

Overall good job, especially giving Asynya chances to be chosen instead of Odin.
And nice having GK nerfed.

EDIT: I'd agree with Cainehill, Skratti is similar to Aby G.Warlock

[Cainehill]

Hmmm. Intuitively it seems like the Skratti should maybe get its HPs bumped just a little - there's just not enough difference between it and some of the human pretenders, HP-wise.

[Zen]

Cohen said:
I'd agree with Moloch without Imps.

Virtue should have base cost of 75, and have +6 HP, +2 Att, Def and MR.

All Humans should have 1 more starting path except Great Enchantress that have etherealness.

Abysyan G.Warlock +8 Hp, because it should be with more life than humans.

Lich shouldn't have fire res ... they're immortal, and they're difficult to kill.

Overall good job, especially giving Asynya chances to be chosen instead of Odin.
And nice having GK nerfed.

I'll refer yout to the part about not even regarding your feedback unless you actually looked at the mod. Because if you haven't downloaded the mod you would know that the Lich was given +50 Fire Resistance, when you have -200 FR and you are given +50, the total is?

I want your feedback, even if it's suggestions, but you could do me the favor of actually looking a the mod instead of reading the Readme.

[Zen]

Cainehill said:

Hmmm. Intuitively it seems like the Skratti should maybe get its HPs bumped just a little - there's just not enough difference between it and some of the human pretenders, HP-wise.

I haven't really decided what role the Skratti is to play, if I could redistrict the pretenders, Giants would only have a very limited selection of Human Pretenders (Giants have a hard time calling any "Human" god).

In his current state, the Skratti has tougher stats, costs 50 and has 10/path, it's hard to not choose him if you are going for a Rainbow Pretender as Jotun, I feel.

[Zen]

Re: Human Pretenders -

Human Pretenders are a hard cookie to balance while remaining true to flavor. They should, in effect, be powerful casters of magic but bottom of the barrel fighters (with barely enough hp to survive direct applied force, as it is with the mod)

But the changes I would like to make (Enchantment Bonus, Global Research Bonus, Auto-searching, etc) are unavailiable at current. The only way I could simulate being consummate spellcasters without drawing away from the "Demi-Gods have more FOCUS, but less variablity" that giving them lots of paths would do (You can't change the scaling of paths or that would be another great factor to make it more realistic) was to make their Encumberance so low that fatigue was less of an issue (Especially if you look at getting 4Stars of experience, which makes their Enc 0, and a very real shift between Demi-Gods and Humans for casting encumberance).

If you have ideas with the current modding tools availiable for suggestions to make Humans fit into their Dominions 2 concept, please don't hesitate to mention it.

[Foom]

Looks great, thanks for all the work. I'll venture some suggestions, at the risk of being argued into a pulp.

The main problem I had with human pretenders so far was that their only advantage (lots of cheap magic paths) was at such high risk because they're so vulnerable. The higher hit points help that a lot, since now they're more likely to survive seeking arrows and stray shots on the battlefield.

I like the idea of giving the humans small unique bonuses so they don't all look the same, so here are some ideas:

• Forge bonus. I thought the Cyclops was pretty good without it, being the only chassis with good earth magic.
• Blood hunting bonus. The only one so far is the Fountain o' Blood, could be very nice on a mobile pretender. Perhaps this would be something for the Skratti? Give me your offspring, midgets!
• Starting equipment. Unlikely to make much of a difference though.
• The much-maligned autosummon imps would actually be useful on human pretenders since they offer some protection from assassinations. Perhaps a master of the dark arts who sold his soul for Lifelong Protection and now needs to achieve godhood before Sheogorath comes to take him away. Or a mad scientist type who gets corpse men (not moddable, I know).
• The Frost Father is a lot less sexy than, say, the Abysian Great Warlock or the Great Sage. He gets cold resist and the chill aura, but I don't think those are much good on a pretender who will hopefully never be in close combat. How about turning him into a "Great Conquistador" with the "can sail over oceans" ability? And maybe a pillage bonus for flavor.
• I don't know if this is a valid comparison, but Pythium's Divine Emperor is a lot less interesting than e.g. the Serpent King of C'tis or the Arch Seraph of Caelum. Perhaps give him awe? Or even higher starting dominion?

It's kind of hard to come up with suitable ideas since pretender modding is still somewhat limited..

[Endoperez]

Wow, looks good... I am probably not going to use it, at least not yet, as I play SP and haven't yet found the IW-balance to be too far off.


For Foom:
Have you tried the chinese mod? I think it was called Kami. In it, there were Shrines carried by four swordsmen. They had four attacks with the swords! It was a great touch, and giving Divine Emperor four Emerald Lords to carry his palanquine could help it nicely... He wouldn't have the full protection and would be unable to use body armor, but he would have some ambidextercity and maybe three misc slots as well?

Awe and/or starting dominion would probably be too good for a mere human... Remember how rare Awe is, and how all the humans have low dominion. Divine Emperor might be able to be a mage of mysterious powers, but so would be all other wizards... Why is this one special, besides the fact that he won't touch earth on his own feet?

[PvK]

This looks very nice!

My main reservation is with the increased hit points on low-hitpoint pretenders, for thematic reasons. I don't mind it that much, but pretenders already get HP bonuses for dominion, and I don't like the D&D feel of people being able to take superhuman amounts of injury. In this case it's ok I suppose since they _are_ superhuman, even if they started human.

However I do like the idea of toughening the humans by adding some equipment to them. Ethereal Robes and missile protection items and/or reinvigoration to increase the "great wizards" theme you had in mind.

PvK

[Cainehill]

I prefer to think of it as being like Glen Cook's Black Company mages - some of the Taken survived being hanged, beheaded, emtombed for a thousand years, smashing into a castle wall at about 100 miles per hour (with no seatbelt, air bags, or, mmm, car ), and worse.

That's what I think of, when I think of human mages attempting to become gods. Not someone's grandmother who could be killed by 3 good papercuts.

That said, I also have some reservations about the human mages hit points, mainly because it seems that if an arch-mage has 21 hit points, a giant mage-godling should have more than 50% more. It's a scaling problem; not that the Skratti really needs improvement, but that it seems it should be substantially harder to kill than a crone.

So - maybe a couple built in magic items might help, in place of the hit points. Ethereality, air shield, lightning immunity, regeneration (on the druids especially, who also might still get higher HPs). No uber items - as a game went on, you'd quite possibly want to upgrade the items, but enough to give them an initial bonus. (Albeit I don't think pretenders / units can be modded for things like misc items.)

Anyways - the HP increase for humans isn't bad; for instance, it makes it rather more difficult to nail a human pretender with a single Seeking Arrow, which has always been an issue with sending them out site searching.