Mod: MA Skavenblight 1.15 hotfix

[llamabeast]

Why, do you go on it often?

[Sombre]

Yeah, good place to talk about CBM a bit, get some suggestions. It would be good to see more people on there with mod knowledge.

Tonight I'll try to get the code done for the wizards and priests.

Plague Chantor
Plague Priest
Warlock
Warlock Engineer
Grey Seer

The Grey Seer is significantly more powerful magically than the others.

[llamabeast]

Ah now, I've just been having a little think about the kind of magic skaven should have.

I can't remember the details from warhammer (and I think I've probably a few editions out of date anyway), but as I remember skaven are big on things like poison and disease, weakening enemy troops and evocations. Probably they like risky/unreliable things as well. I'm not quite sure about any of this, it's just the feel I imagine them having.

I wonder if they should not have too much earth magic. I say that because almost all the important earth battle spells (apart from blade wind) are buffs. I imagine the skaven as being too callous about their own kind to go to much effort with buffs. Things like Legions of Steel, Marble Warriors and things don't feel right to me. I'm not quite sure I can imagine them making mechanical men and stuff either (although I know they are big on crazy inventions, so maybe I'm not right there). E1 along with fire would be good though (for magma spells, charcoal shield etc). Just a thought anyway.

I think it would be cool if they had a few national battle spells. For example, I imagine they really should have some poison spells, but all the normal poison spells are nature magic. How about giving them some poison evocations in death? Maybe one or two small AOE ones, and a battlefield-wide foul vapours equivalent. Feels kind of skaveny to me. Because they don't have nature they couldn't make their own troops immune to the poison, so they'd kill themselves in droves as well - also feels skaveny!

They could also have an MR disease spell. And perhaps a Weaken spell as well. Generally things to be nasty and unpleasant to enemy troops.

What do you think? I'd be up for having a play with these perhaps. Maybe I can have a little mess around and give you what I come up with, which you can then change/discard.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with for the mages and priests.

[Sombre]

In terms of national spells, to start with they are going to have at least one warp lightning spell which uses lightning but isn't air magic in any way shape or form, at least one plague/disease/poison spell which doesn't use water or nature and possibly a copy of the crossbreeding spell with slightly different path costs so it can be used by lucky moulder leaders (they will have some kind of rare NB random I think). The plague priests may well also get NB randoms of some kind - I might even allow the nation to blood sacrifice, should they somehow get enough bloodslaves to do so.

Basically though, the main skaven paths are EFDS. The Grey seers get minor EF with good DS. The warlocks get EF with possible but unlikely D. The pestilens leaders get D.

There will be summons in the construction school which are EF, ED, DF etc - the warlock schools. There will also be the high level construction summon The Screaming Bell, which will require Grey Seer magic. The Doomwheel, also in construction, will require a lucky warlock magic selection or the magic of the pretender, or empowerment/boosters of some kind to use.

I might put Moulder summons in death/nature/blood, I haven't given those spells much thought - mostly they are just called in by Moulder leaders using summon allies or auto spawning.

[llamabeast]

Ah, sounds like you've got it well under control, that sounds fantastic.

[Kristoffer O]

I think earth, fire and death sounds nice. Skaven are pretty much into warpstone, warp-fire and stuff that have similarities with banefire and baneblades of dominions. I would probably go for warp-fire national DF spells with decay effects.

Construction of mechanical stuff feels pretty skaven to me. They have warlock-engineers, so acess to mechanical and clockwork horrors seems fitting. Warpstone powered mechanics are quite skavenesque I'd say. Doomwheel is warpstone powered, right?

Clan moulder (is that the name of the mutator clan?) should have B1N1, so they can perform crossbreeding National 'rat ogre crossbreeding' spell on blood magic seems fitting as well, if you don't want rat ogres as recruitables.

Perhaps Blood to get Vermin Lord as well, unless you make them conjuration or pretenders.

I'm not sure about astral. On the one hand skaven are into Morrsleib (or whatever the warpstone moon is called), and predictions of it's course (That might not have been skaven, but other chaos cults. Can't remember. More than ten years since I played WHFRP). On the other hand they seems more concerned with destroying nature here and now, than looking into the stars.

I think I would go DFEBN. Blood and nature mostly to get crossbreds. Poison is fitting, but can possibly be replaced by more fitting warp poison DF spells that causes decay instead of poison. Similar effect, but not possible to resist with ordinary poison resistance.

BTW nice work, I'm eagerly waiting your final product. I have always liked the WH world. Especially the darker parts of it. Come to think about it, it is a bit dominionesque in being quite close to history. I guess that has unwittingly inspired me in my development of the dominion world.

[llamabeast]

Nice post. I guess actually I'm probably wrong about the earth magic, at least in so far as clockwork horrors and stuff might actually be quite in keeping with skaven crazy engineers.

I think I agree with pretty much everything in the last two posts actually. I hadn't realised how much warhammer i'd forgotten. Warpstone and warp lightning had completely slipped my mind! The only thing I'm unsure about is nature magic. Maybe they could have the odd N1 random for cross breeding as you suggested Sombre, but I think more than that would be a bit unthematic, as they're hardly in tune with nature.

This project definitely gets the current prize for "thing llamabeast is most excited about".

[Sombre]

I'll post a bit more tomorrow when I should have more to report - for now I will simply say that the astral is restricted to the Grey Seers and has to do with their famed prognostication and general interest in metamagic.

So far I've taken the nature away from Pestilens - they are majoring in death, minoring in blood. Moulder on the other hand might still get random access to low level nature.

Oh and the master Warlock hero (based on Ikkit) will have completely random other magic to go with his standard FED, because Ikkit could choose any school of magic in the entire game. The Chosen Grey Seer (aka Thanquol) will be more traditional, but will be rocking the astral something fierce.

[Szumo]

Thanquol should have built in luck, if it's possible to mod

What about other special heroes? Deathmaster would fit well i think.

I'm a little worried about blood though - making Skaven a blood nation feels somehow unthematic. I'd rather expect them to have air magic instead - to use lightning spells.

What kind of pretenderer chassis do you want to set as available for them?

[Shovah32]

Skaven wont be a blood nation, they will have minor blood capabilities(is MA vanheim called a blood nation?). Air magic just dosnt feel right for a skaven nation(they live underground, crawling in pollution) so, iirc, sombre is modding in some warp lightning spells they will be able to use.