Wish-List for Dominions 4

[John_Madlock]

Originally Posted by nordlys

(how good a god are you if you can't remove a curse from your follower?).

And prophet or priest may cast Smite, bless etc. but God can't. This is unrealistic too.

[Belac]

I'd like to see an Alchemical Rendering action. Take a magic item and destroy it, recovering some fraction of the gems it took to create it (50%? With an item that improves the percentage to 75%? And an Artifact that does this when it kills a magic-item-using enemy?)

[nordlys]

Originally Posted by John_Madlock

And prophet or priest may cast Smite, bless etc. but God can't. This is unrealistic too.

A priest uses his own faith to channel a god's power to perform miracles. A god himself lacks that kind of faith, being aware of a bigger picture.

Even a wish cannot be used to remove curses, I think. And a wish is something that should be able to undo absolutely anything, from afflictions to horror marks.

[Gandalf Parker]

Also keep in mind that altho we often refer to it incorrectly, it is NOT a god. Its a "pretender". A powerful individual but a wannabe god who will ascend IF he can get enough people to follow him. So priests gain faith by belief but the pretender has to wait for that kindof power.

[Bananadine]

Yeah, I always figure that there'd be a period of consolidation after a god defeats the other would-be gods, and maybe then horror marks and such would be dealt with--or maybe not. Possibilities are open, because that period isn't represented by the game.

[Gregstrom]

Also, why should curses/horror marks be reversible? IIRC, in Greek mythology once the Furies had marked you for a fall even Zeus had no say in the matter.

In flavour terms, it has always seemed to me that Horrors are from somewhere outside the Pantokrator's sphere of influence. If that is his case, why should any mere mages or pretenders be able to have any say over what they do (beyond bribing them to put their attentions in a certain direction, that is)?

[nordlys]

Correct, but if we can "wish" even for doom horrors themselves and they can't do anything but pop up (whether for good or for ill, that's another story), a plain beacon for horrors should be trivial to deal with by means of "wishing". I am not asking for any lesser means, but a "wish" is thematically ought to be an ultimate healing resource, able to deal with curses, afflictions, marks, insanity, old age, whatever.

Point about Furies taken, but we're speaking of curses given away left and right by lousy S1 shamans, not by The Kindly Ones Somebody's got to eventually have found a way to deal with something as common a nuisance, and unlike horrors, it doesn't even come from the great lovecraftian beyond where basic rules of the Creation cease to function.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by nordlys

I am not asking for any lesser means, but a "wish" is thematically ought to be an ultimate healing resource, able to deal with curses, afflictions, marks, insanity, old age, whatever.

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

I think you should be able to wish for traits, such as trample, immortal, fire resistance, etc...

Or you know, you could just wish for a Chayot, Seraph or one of those big Lanka demons (Rudra, Rudara?) and get a new fresh SC, that's likely better than the old one.

Wish is so expensive that you will go for the strongest option, adding a buch of commands that are sub-optimal would be kind of moot.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

Wish is so expensive that you will go for the strongest option, adding a buch of commands that are sub-optimal would be kind of moot.

No.

There are already many suboptimal wishes possible, some suboptimal in most situtations but not all, some just really poor things to wish for. You might have a point regarding the latter (though they could be fun to use in SP even if they got no MP use) but most certainly not the former.

Examples of wishes that may occasionally be worth it but aren't in the game:

• Immortality - adding the recuperation effect and being able to die in own dominion is the big one and utterly thematic to boot. The wish caster that is created solely as a wish machine might not want to cast this, ever, preferring to summon in an SC instead - the wish caster/battlefield mage/SC might, depending on circumstances.
• Getting rid of horror marks - not worth the hefty price in the majority of cases but there are situations where it might be worth it.
• Elemental immunity - gain 100 resistance to fire, water, cold, poison. Yes, this would probably be used almost solely in SP; so what?
• Ritual Spell - attempts to duplicate the designated ritual spell as if the caster had his astral path strength in the relevant path but with no extra gems. (Yes, this is not worth it if you actually have the research and a mage with the proper path to cast the spell you wish to duplicate, if it goes through it creates a fairly weak global with minimal overcasting from paths only, and it also creates balancing issues with globals more costly than wish - but it is very thematic)

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen

There are already many suboptimal wishes possible, some suboptimal in most situtations but not all, some just really poor things to wish for. You might have a point regarding the latter (though they could be fun to use in SP even if they got no MP use) but most certainly not the former.

The thing is that these "new wishes" do not come as a gift from Santa or something. A coder will have to dive in to the ancient code that "wish" uses (it has been around since Dom:PPP, mind you) and add that new option. And coding time from Illwinter on Dom3 is a rare occurance nowdays, a very rare resource if you allow the simplification.

I just think that if JK really finds the time or intrest to do some coding on dom3*, it would *really* be wasted on adding some excessive wish option that almost no one would use. There are much much more crucial things that could be fixed. Just check the bug list for some of them.

Sure, if some "coding fairy" comes along and just happens to fart all the code needed to make a bug free "immortality" wish, yeah, we could add that. But I wouldn't waste precious dom3 "code time" on the matter.

It's sort of moot to discuss this though, we both know that there will likely be no big update pathces ahead, just tweaks and fixes.