SC and Thug Diversity Project

[llamabeast]

I agree that it needs careful balancing. But it has always bothered me that if I'm really into fire, then (assuming the royalty's gone) I simply _can't_ summon any useful thug. There's nothing. If that was a funny quirk of fire, fair enough, but it seems to be a funny quirk of fire, air, earth, water and nature (apart from the Sleeper), which I think is a shame.

Yeah, I haven't mentioned my project for a long time Jim, because it's been on hold. I got a little burst of enthusiasm yesterday though, so I may be able to finish it soonish. I think it's pretty unlikely we'd overlap, but here are my creatures:

Air:
Roc
Shishi
Asynja (the same as the pretender)

Fire:
Great Zmey
Ember Lord (a balrog, basically)
True Firebird (Bogarus annoyingly overlapped with the zmey and firebird, but my versions are very different)

Earth:
Wild Ettin
Mechanical Giant
Cyclops (smaller than the pretender)

Water:
Colossal Kraken (smaller than the pretender)
Grendelkin (with Earth) (based on Beowulf)
Wendigo (with death)

Nature:
Treant

Most of the graphics will be either original (zmey, ember lord, mechanical giant, grendelkin, wendigo, treant) or adapted and significantly changed from vanilla (roc, shishi, firebird, ettin, cyclops, kraken). Only the Asynja will use vanilla graphics. The graphics, of course, has been by far the bulk of the work, since big sprites are hard.

The balancing will need to be done carefully. Certainly air should never be even close to being as good at summons as death. But I just wanted there to be the option. If battlefield magic's no use, and you've got 200 air gems sitting around, I wanted you to be able to splurge on some cool stuff.

[Aezeal]

Hmm for astral you have that ether gate person.. maybe an upgraded version of him with a nice ability on top would be an option.

[vfb]

Astral has Golems and Wish already, and a few national angel summons.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, it's never hard to find a good use for astral pearls, I don't reckon any more astral summons are needed.

[Agema]

Hardly SC territory, but you could try for a fire thug:

Ifrit (about 10 fire gems)

There were several types of Djinn as far as I know, of which the Ifrit were "smokeless fire". They seem to be mostly malevolent sort of demons. They tempted people into sin, and had the ability to change shape.

For approximate values, say:
30HP, Prot 0, 18 Mor, 16 MR, 1 Enc, Age (500/1000)
15 Str, 13Att, 13Def, 10 Prec, 3/20 Move, Ldr 10.

Fly, Fire resistance 100, Ethereal?, Seduce?.
Alternative forms (Human, snake)?
Standard humanoid weapon/item slots.

[Agema]

Also, what should be a simple thing to do, but you could make a summonable nordic Fire Giant SC using the Niefel Jarl chassis, just convert where appropriate all the cold and water magic to fire/heat, and give it a reddish tone rather than blueish.

[Agema]

Air:

Lilith (cost: high, summon A5D1)

Lilith is often portrayed as a succubus, but the original was a Babylonian goddess of wind and storms also associated with bringing disease. Could base the picture on the lady of love chassis.

For approximate values, say:
80HP, Prot 0, 30 Mor, 18 MR, 0 Enc, Age (500/1000)
18 Str, 12Att, 12Def, 12 Prec, 3/20 Move, Ldr 10.

Magic: A3D3

Fly, Shock resistance 100, Seduce, Disease cloud, Storm power, Fly even in storm, Some way to avoid being diseased?
Standard humanoid weapon/item slots.

[Redeyes]

Try recuperation on Lilith, disease would at least not be a problem for long then.

[vfb]

I think the idea was for non-unique summons, but your Lilith looks interesting. The easy way to make her disease-immune is to make her a Demon. It's thematic too.

[Redeyes]

The three Gaths has a "summon Lilot" spell, which summons a "daugther of Lilith"

If you are going for a demon version of Lilith, consider opening that one up to all nations as well.