Heroes and abilities

[Seravy]

I was thinking that maybe instead of capping Armsmaster at +3 EXP on heroes, it would be better if it was half the normal amount for heroes?
So a level 4 hero would provide 8 EXP to normal units and 4 EXP to heroes, a level 9 hero would be 18/9 EXP?

Or would that be too powerful? I can't help thinking Armsmaster is kinda underwhelming as an ability.
Do note the armsmaster does provide the EXP bonus even for itself.

[Nelphine]

Um. Note that the biggest thing armsmaster does is quadruple how fast heroes in a capital level.

So, let's say you sit there for 5 years (60 turns); with current armsmaster + normal you get, what, enough to match the heroism spell? Yeah that's a bit low.

Maybe make heroes get 2 exp base per turn (and if you must, apply that to normal units too, it'll help AI mass units become relevant), then make armsmaster increase as well.

I think armsmaster should stay as a flat cap for Heroes - a demigod armsmaste shouldn't be able to make other heroes reach level 7+ without fighting.

So I'd say increase the cap to 4 or 5. I'd base it on how fast you want the armsmaster to match heroism. 1.5 to 3 years is probably good.


Edit: actually given the fast pace of the game I really like the idea of increasing base exp per turn for both heroes and units.

[Seravy]

New idea for a Chaos realm item ability :

Pandora's Box
At the end of each turn, the hero casts a random combat spell.

Spell would be targeted by the AI and the chance would be weighted based on rarity (60/25/12/3% chance for each rarity maybe?). If too powerful, limit to casting every second turn, or at a random chance? Alternately, cast spells when performing an attack.

Might not be all that powerful because there are quite a lot of possible spell choices that aren't all that useful if they come up, so maybe once a turn is reasonable anyway? Multiple heroes with this item could get crazy though.

The influence would be huge though - pretty much any battle involving a hero could have the risk of having to face a really powerful random spell - items are not limited to chaos wizards. Would encourage reloading too...
I guess the "random" could be based on turn count and location to prevent the reloading problem.

Maybe limit the effect to summoning? Then it would be interesting if all creatures could be summoned, not just combat summons. It likely should have a limited "cost pool" proportional to the hero's level, like for each hero level, summon up to 60 worth of random creatures per battle. Pool also needs to be stored and retained between combat turns. Combat summoning is a weak point in Chaos - an item power that can enable that but generates random creatures sounds useful for the realm.

[teelaurila]

Suppose it would be easier to balance if the hero would have to use a turn to activate the item as opposed to on top of everything else. Perhaps also make it limited like a spell charge (1 to 4 uses for different costs?). Dunno what can actually be done though.

[Nelphine]

60 per level? So level 0 can summon any creature, and a life hero with herism and warlord can summon 15 zombies per battle? That seems ridiculously overpowered.

I like the idea, but I would use the charge system in place for spells. So, 1 to 4 times per battle (number of charges changes cost of the item), the hero can spend it's action to summon a random creature.

That being said, the summons are:
 fire elemental, phantom warrior, call centaurs, summon zombies
Phantom beast, summon catapult, *
*, Air elemental, earth elemental
Summon demon, call to arms, *

*If possible, I'd like to include raise dead, magic vortex, and animate dead on this list

Given this, I think the item won't see much use. 

We can't make it happen outside the players control, or it could result in more than 9 units (which can't be done), or be wasted (which Feels Bad), thus why I want it to be used like a charged spell.

However, it has to be expensive because it has the potential to be too powerful to allow summon demon at the common or uncommon level of the game cheaply.

On the other hand, when you get to the rare or very rare level of the game, it will have too high a chance of summoning something irrelevant to the battle, and so won't get used.

So it will be expensive to see use early game, and too unreliable to see use late game.

So it's a neat idea, but aside from the ai finding it in treasure and having no good spell options that turn, i don't think it will ever be used.

[Seravy]

70 points/hero level. Using the "cost" field used to determine exp value and overland doomstack priority.
Summoning happens at the end of both player's turns. So far seems to work fine.

Suppose it would be easier to balance if the hero would have to use a turn to activate the item as opposed to on top of everything else.

That would be horrible. You have a pretty high chance of getting a weak creature, and the item power might end up on a strong hero.
Also, assuming this would be activated by the Spell button, the hero becomes unable to use other spells at all.

Having control over it doesn't feel very "chaotic" either.

[Nelphine]

We posted at the same time. 'cost' based on experience seems silly - for a human with spells, earth elemental or summon zombie or phantom beast is FAR more dangerous than a neutral such creature.

And how do you get around the 9 units per side problem?

[Seravy]

The effect doesn't active if you can't cast the summoning spell. It's automatic.

For some examples on costs.

Level 4 hero would get 280 points.
So they could get :
9 Phantom warriors, or Magic spirits (30 each)
7 Hell Hounds, Skeletons, Guardian Spirits (40 each)
4 Fire Elementals or Zombies or War Bears (70 each)
1 Chimera (210) and a Fire Elemental
etc

Okay, 7 hell hounds sounds a bit too good for a Heroism. However you do need the item as well, you won't roll all hell hounds (other creatures are not that cost effective) and this would be a cost 400 power that won't be all that common on predefined items. And your hero would need to survive at least 4 turns. (Summoning happens at the end of each player's turns so 7 summons end on turn 4)

Maybe budget should be less? Perhaps nonlinear? (Higher levels giving more)? Or based on hero experience? (so heroism has no effect - Famous still would though!)

Ideally I would want it to reach 610-650 for a level 9 hero.

[Nelphine]

Oh I see. So, my main concern is heroism hero gets 4 times as much as non. You have to assume a baseline of heroism or life will be overpowered with it. Which means you can get it very early (1402 probably - the change to treasure makes line items more common in my experience). So 4 times as much as any other hero simply isn't really acceptable for balancing.

So you can't base it on level. In general, early game, up to 1405 or so, this item is problematic.

Assuming you don't use up points when you don't cast the summon, that means your hero can attack a fortress. The reason for lightning is to specifically stop things like heroes from soloing a fortress. With this item, you attack with 8 spearmen, and every time you lose a spearmen it gets replaced - even phantom warriors wab survive a lightning bolt in early game sometimes, and anything else can usually survive multiple. 

This becomes the ultimate 'hero solos fortresses' again.

This is another reason I think it would have to use the heroes action, and should be limited to four uses, regardless of how good they are. But that wouldn't be worth using.

It would be a cool item for non heroes. For Heroes, it's just another defense ability, and stacking defenses is already way overpowered on heroes.

[Seravy]

Assuming you don't use up points when you don't cast the summon, that means your hero can attack a fortress.

Currently it uses them up but that's not intended, I just forgot about it.

This becomes the ultimate 'hero solos fortresses' again.

Not really. Yes, in theory it does, but only because the hero has so high defense the units cannot hurt it. However the units can and will kill the spearmen, assuming a very basic garrison of 9 Longbowmen or Sprites, you'll still lose 4-5 units each turn.
So yes, you ultimately have the advantage of coming with 4-5 extra spearmen worth of stuff, if you found this item, but that's about it. Unless the hero can actually kill everything in the first 4-5 turns, the lightning will still kill it. (early heroes specced for defense usually don't kill anywhere near that fast)

Even if we accept the ability to be defensive (it's not really, the AI will prioritize targeting the hero in most cases), we have full control over the availability.
The cost of 5 Chaos books ensures people won't randomly throw it into their Life/Sorcery/Nature hero strategies - it would cost more than other, better alternatives. In treasure, we can make sure we don't put it on low cost, easy to find predefined items that offer strong other defensive benefits. The chance of the "random item" option to generate a good such item, is marginal, I wouldn't worry about that.

Using up hero turns is not an option - I can't make an interface to activate it manually, and as you say, it wouldn't be worth it that way.

While there is no limit to the number of creatures, the chance of getting more than 4 won't be particularly high - if you have a high budget you'll eventually roll an expensive creature and use it up. If necessary we can even manipulate the roll to force using up at least half the points each time, but I feel that would make the ability too good for high levels.

I guess our best bet is to use a nonlinear table for level budgets (paying careful attention to the actual exact value of various tiers of creatures) 

100, 130, 170, 210, 280, 360, 440, 550, 660

This gets up to medium uncommons with heroism, all uncommons at level 5, most rares at level 6-7, weaker very rares at level 8, and anything at level 9.