DEATH Realm

[Seravy]

bug: under Zombie Mastery, when a unit with Heroism on it gets zombified, the Zombie will continue to keep the enchantment and also get +2atk and +2def. This happened on a unit with adamantium weapons, and so the resulting zombie was 8/7! (and other zombies in that battle for that wizard were 4/3)

Undead and zombies keep all the enchantments they had when they were alive. I like this so I'm keeping it as a feature. Heroism feels weird on it but I don't think I want to specifically exclude one spell. It's not as powerful as Lionheart would be.

[GermanJoey]

Ah, cool. Would anything bad happen if it were dispelled?

[Seravy]

Ah, cool. Would anything bad happen if it were dispelled?

Nothing, the unit would lose the extra levels just like any other, the only "bad" thing is, you won't be able to recast it - this is the drawback of such units.

[Seravy]

I'm considering three small changes - not sure about them though :
-Werewolves with 3 DEF instead of 1 DEF : even though they have a lot of health, the low defense seems to make them even more fragile then intended. Also now that Berserk no longer has anything to do with defense, a low defense score is not relevant for this interaction.
-Death Knights with Death Touch (-4) : The unit is way too identical to Wraiths, although first strike+armor pierce is of course a lot of advantage, it's not very unique. The realm has no units with "Death Touch" at all which is weird. (exception are combat summoned demons at a 50% chance)
-More expensive Wave of Despair, probably 66 MP : The spell is a bit too cost effective as is, making most uncommon damage spells obsolete. On three targets, it's about as effective as a Reaper Slash on each but for only 1.7 times the cost instead of 3x. On a single target it's about 1.7 times as good for 1.7 times the cost, but significantly harder to defend against and causes more damage per turn. It's also more cost effective than Annihilate against most targets which should be the other way.

[Nelphine]

I fully approve of the wave of despair change.
I don't like the werewolf change. I'd rather give them 7 HP if that's needed.
Death knights: death touch in addition to life drain? Or instead of? In not sure its needed. Yes they're similar to wraiths, but death knights are very strong. On the other hand, I love death knights. I'd be OK with giving them death touch as long as it still raises dead units (I don't remember if it does). I firmly think they should continue to raise units regularly. If anything I'd rather increase their life drain ability.

[Seravy]

Oh, one more thing that was suggested to me about werewolves, changing their spell type to "summon". It would still work as a unit enchantment, but would count as a summoning spell for purposes of cost modifiers, and appear in that page in the book.

This means :
-Cheaper with Conjurer
-More expensive during Divine Order instead of cheaper
-No benefit from Good Moon (cheaper enchantments)

I don't like this idea much but I might as well mention it.
Moving it to "Special spells" and have no cost modifiers at all from any of the above is also an option.

[zitro1987]

Werewolves regenerate, have +2 to hit (assume we use magic weapons) and probably weapon bonuses. Giving it +2 armor is overpowered.

Other two ideas are fine, wave of dispair is probably ok at just 60mp

[Nelphine]

How are werewolves supposed to interact with the Heroism spell? Currently (with warlord) it gives them +3 attack/defense, as well as +2 resist and +1 hp. While that's kind of awesome, I'm not sure it's intended.

[Seravy]

If you somehow get a Heroism on a fantastic unit, they get the same buff as any other unit. Werewolves can get "normal unit" buffs if you use those before converting the unit with Lycanthropy. That can make them very powerful, the only downside is, once the spells are dispelled, there is no way to get them back.
Unless it's so powerful that it breaks game balance, I prefer to keep this feature.

[Nelphine]

Agreed, and it's why I'm specifically asking about heroism. Holy weapon and holy armor and flame blade etc etc - these all make sense. Get the buff until dispelled.

But heroism doesn't actually buff the unit. It grants it levels. The levels themselves increase the stats. But I expected levels of all kinds (whether earned through regular experience or heroism) to go away when they became fantastic since fantastic units have no experience. Instead, the buffs from increased levels were kept. And, then you can cancel heroism because heroism isn't actually doing anything for a fantastic unit.

So. Cast heroism on unit - unit becomes ultra elite with bonus stats. Cast lycanthropy - the werewolves now have the bonus stats for ultra-elite. Dispel/Dismiss Heroism - no change to the werewolf stats (they still have the buffs as if they were ultra-elite.)

I don't really mind if it's supposed to work this way, I just want to be sure that's what is intended. (Humans can plan around this, and not pay the upkeep. AI can't. With all the other buff spells, the AI and the human both get the same advantage, but with heroism, the human has the advantage.)