Death: Balancing

[Zephirus]

Shadow demons are already too overpowered with plane shift, flight, incorporeal, regeneration and ranged attacks... Give them poison and they become a game breaker...

Zombies are a better defensive unit than offensive one... I think poison fit more the ghouls than the zombies... Because ghouls create undead... zombies don´t...

You could put the lower resistance effect in the life drain spell... When you cast on the unit, besides taking life and adding to mana, you also reduce it´s resistance by one or two crosses, depending on the mana spent? What about it?

[Zephirus]

Instead of throw... I would give the ghouls gaze attack... fit´s more the death thematic.

[Asfex]

You could put the lower resistance effect in the life drain spell... When you cast on the unit, besides taking life and adding to mana, you also reduce it´s resistance by one or two crosses, depending on the mana spent? What about it?

What Formula?and why that?i afraid its bad to mix permanent resistance loss with temporary.

Zombies are meat,and must make something good to protect somebody,before die.also,zombies is a part of rare spell,unlike others .i think good add death gaze instead of throwing to zomby.
How about:add to terror ability:unit,which resist terror this round,get -2 to cross this round.

[Zephirus]

What Formula?and why that?i afraid its bad to mix permanent resistance loss with temporary.

Zombies are meat,and must make something good to protect somebody,before die.also,zombies is a part of rare spell,unlike others .i think good add death gaze instead of throwing to zomby.
Also,i edit previous post.
How about:add to terror ability:unit,which resist terror this round,get -2 to cross this round.

I think this is nice. But I also think that zombies should be a normal summon as well. A commom summon, like ghouls and skeletons. Perhaps we could improve mana leak power and send to uncommon, to open space for zombies. But still, they should be defensive more than offensive...

give death gaze to ghouls if you like... death gaze, poison and at least 4 swords... As long as they fall in less than 3 turns against halberdeers, no problems

Zombies should have lots of shields and hearts... perhaps arrow immunity, since only head injure can incapacite them... They should not fall with less than 5 melee attacks, and be able to outlive most normal units in a attrition battle.

They must be tough and endure lots of mistreatment before biting the dust. They should be able to take low level units on their own, but because they outlive them, not because they outdamage them

Ghouls should be more offensive, and kill in one or two rounds, but also they must be fragile, barely survivng the fight, so you basicaly will sacrifice your ghoul to take a particular enemy when they raise after the battle. Say, you found a temple with guardian spirits... send your ghouls, and use your undead guardian spirits to take those nodes that pesky life wizard have taken from you. Two ghouls for one guardian spirit sounds like a deal. Hehehehehehe

Skeletons should take the aeral units with their arrows. I think about giving magic imunity to them as well, so the only way to take them down is melee combat. A battle between magicians and skeletons would be a very boring one, however... but against hell hounds they dont stand a chance.

Another idea... What about the Necromancer hero cause a local zombie mastery? Say, if he was in battle, the fallen units will rise as if the zombie mastery spell where active?

[Asfex]

Skeletons so cheap,that destroy it by firebolt cost more than it cost themself.They do not need mag.immunity. Also,anybody can make skeleton combat-summon,like Aureus.Its right,even.
Hero necromancer have life-stealing attack,and much more powerful spells.i dont see improve balance point there.
I do not share the Kyrub optimizm of changing spell rarity,becouse it need a lot of work with chance to miss something.In Aureus mod such changing
concern starting spell only,the 'in game' rarity stays intact.include moment the spell appear on the research page.this is significant.

Resume: So,for in-combat spells we have:
Terror and evil omen with ability lose crosses; eternal night,and darkness with ability slain own units raise as undead(rebirn),
death channel with 'create undead';and ability 'gain life steal attack ' for undead-do not know to attach to.free spells:mana leak,berserk.
What effect attach to what spell better,for game balance?
(I think all spells may be almost equal usefull in common according its cost.-It is term 'game balance for spells')

[Sphynx]

One of the things I realy enjoy doing is creating undead versions of existing creatures (say with Ghouls, drain life, wraiths, death knights).

So sugestion for a new combat spell, that targets any creature:
Everlasting Curse.
If the creature dies, and the caster wins the combat, at the end of the combat it is raised as an undead under the casters control.

Note: Possibly stop it being cast on ones own regenerating creatures. I think illusions and undead already have death immunity so would not be valid targets.

This is potentially quite a powerful effect - maybe 30-50 mana? Possibly much less if it can be resisted, though.

[Asfex]

This spell is very similar to animate dead, except, you must cast it before the unit die. The only good effect i realized in the death.zip. You cast darkness- and all your dead (not undead) units raise as undead after battle.
You cast life drain- and the target enemy unit become undead after battle (as usualy). Is it really big difference?
Just compare: if you cast animate dead your spell always not in vain.Aslo 50 mana for this curse is the animate dead cost.
whereas this darkness targets all your units as default,for a lesser cost.And we cannot target an enemy unit with a low cost,for the game balance reasons.if we wish target only low resistance enemy unit at low cost, then we can use life drain instead.

[b0rsuk]

Hey, what's wrong with Lycanthropy ? Werewolves are fun creatures, one of few numerous summons and have nice abilities. Lycanthropy spell itself is unique, a summon that doesn't require a Summoning Circle. But requires a friendly normal unit. Werewolves are great as a fast response summon, they can even be summoned in the field.

At the worst Lycanthropy should be red (Chaos), but not removed.

I wonder if Lycanthropy could be hacked(copied) to create a spell that sacrifices a ship to create a new naval unit - Kraken.

The 'everlasting curse' has already been posted by me in this thread, under the name of 'Death's Call':
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...php?t=4198
You are reinventing the wheel.

[kyrub]

Same here, I always liked Lycantrophy. Different from summons, original, cool. Should stay as it is, unlike other generic spells.

Skeletons could be summoned in combat, but it would be nice if you'd need a target = your own dead troops (which become "disintegrated"). Very good spell, but only when you lose a unit. (50/50 to achieve, I'd say).

[b0rsuk]

Lycantrophy is one of few ways to reinforce units in the field. It also has an unique niche - good in Sorcery nodes. Illusion immunity AND regeneration ? Yes please !