DEATH Realm

[Seravy]

Well, I've made sure I increased the sources for undead and I don't think it's inadequate but I wonder what others think about that.

As is, the following spells can raise undead directly or indirectly : Drain Life, Syphon Life, Summon Zombie, Ghouls, Wraiths, Death Knights, Demon Lord (unlikely though), Zombie Mastery. Five of these are extremely efficient and will always give you an undead unit if you use them to kill something, the other 3 are somewhat situational as they mix undead creating damage with normal damage.

As for resistance based spells, well, that's the original design and I tried to actually reduce it somewhat but here is a question : "Death" the name, implies we are killing things. We can't do it with direct damage too much because that's for Chaos. So how should Death kill enemy units if not with damage nor with a resistance roll?
btw Repear Slash and Wave of Despair do not have a resistance roll. The former is a plain direct damage spell like fire bolt except that it's blocked by Poison Immunity, not fire. The latter is also a direct damage spell, but resistance lowers the damage instead of defense. So resistance helps against it a little, but not significantly. Very different from the usual "no effect on high resistance units" behavior.

Strong debuffs sound great in theory but..."target unit can't attack or defend so it's effectively dead" is a common debuff, and "target unit fights for me" is an uncommon one. It doesn't really get stronger than that. So I have no idea what kind of stronger debuffs you want.

[Kaiku]

btw Repear Slash and Wave of Despair do not have a resistance roll.

I know, but they are nukes, so they belong in the list.

Strong debuffs sound great in theory but..."target unit can't attack or defend so it's effectively dead" is a common debuff

I'd consider that more a nuke, and it's probably too strong for what I have in mind, with too small a chance of landing on late game units.

Anyway, if we're going to think about solutions or improvements to Death, I must admit I don't have a list with suggestions ready at this time, as I didn't really think it'd come to that. But one interesting thing I've been pondering about is a summon with a fairly weak attack and survivability, but a large chance to hit. When successfully hitting an enemy, it applies a large debuff to their resistance, making it a viable target for Death's many resistance based spells. I think it'd be interesting to keep a few of these units in a stack, as it has potential for interesting combo's, act as an alternative for Black Prayer (or combined for an even larger debuff) and other realms would want it too. Maybe Night Stalkers could suit a role like this. I don't think they see a lot of use as it is.

As for more debuffs, I was thinking along the lines of stronger variations of Weakness of a higher cost and rarity, with a high chance of landing on even rares/very rares, targeting different or multiple stats.

I'd like to see Wrack buffed, with a higher cost (and rarity, if necessary), so it would have a VERY high chance of slowly whittling down enemies. As it is, rares don't care about losing 1 hearth every 7 turns (with Black Prayer), and very rares are of course immune.

But I think it's important to acknowledge the problem (is Death even considered one?) before thinking in-depth about solutions. So this isn't really where my suggestions end.

[Seravy]

Units don't have a "chance to hit" in that sense, "To Hit" is just a percentage change for each sword icon to deal or not deal 1 damage. But you want it at a high chance to hit so this is ideal, units always hit with an attack, they just do a random amount of damage between 0 and the number of swords.
So if I understand this right, you'd want a melee unit that instead of damage, reduces resistance when attacking. The AI enemy will not attempt to position their units away from this particular unit. On the other hand the human can and the AI won't be able to attempt to attack the high resistance big value target.
So ultimately this would be an AI unplayable game mechanic, both as the AI using it, or playing against it. This would be a nice spell for a multiplayer game, but not for this one.

Wrack actually is on my list of "maybe this is too weak" but haven't had a chance to test it recently and last time this was discussed I think we couldn't come up with a reasonable way to improve it without making it overpowered.
I'll try to find the discussion about it while updating the "suggestions" thread.

As for more debuffs, I was thinking along the lines of stronger variations of Weakness of a higher cost and rarity, with a high chance of landing, targeting different or multiple stats.

So basically debuffs without a resistance roll, like Mind Storm? I guess we don't have many of those. Problem with debuffs is that it's pretty hard to come up with one that isn't a carbon copy of weakness or warp creature or shatter or vertigo or mind storm. I guess not having a resistance roll is a difference...

More importantly, as is, Death is designed around the weak point that it has a hard time dealing with high resistance units. You are supposed to use high resistance units against them. This gives a role to high resistance units which are generally not needed against the other realms. Take this away and what will high resistance be useful for? You don't need it against Life and Chaos, it's not working against Sorcery (because it has Mind Storm), and you also don't need it against Nature unless they have Petrify.

Other realms have other weak points - Life is weak to dispelling or stealing enchantments and to a lesser extent, ignoring armor and kiting. Chaos is weak to regeneration and healing. Nature is weak to resistance based spells and invisibility. Sorcery is weak to heroes as they can't dispel the equipment and just generally weak against early brute force attacks.

[Kaiku]

I don't think an AI unplayable mechanic should be instant grounds for dismissal. There are many things the AI sucks at but that are still in the game, because they're fun and powerful. MoM is great because it has endless potential for crazy powerful stuff, less so for its balance. A unit like that could be a boon for Death and the player, shaking up the realm nicely, and synergize it more with other realms. It also doesn't necessarily have to be melee or invisible - I don't really know what would work best (just seems a bit strong as range), and I have no clue what a worthwhile resist debuff from it would be. I also don't really understand why the AI not moving away from would be an issue. It's just a melee unit. It might have a scary effect, but... they don't run away from Death Knights either, and they kill them probably quite a bit faster.

Wrack is terrible right now. It's a rare, and at that point you can have stacks of Focus Magic'd Cockatrices flying around one-shotting all the weak stuff without effort. I think it can easily be buffed without worry about it becoming OP. If not, lessen or reverse it.

And the potential strong debuffs don't necessarily have to be like Mind Storm, they can be resist based. But they could have a huge resist penalty, like -10 or somewhere around that. It'd be too expensive to cast it on a Great Lizard, but might be worth it on a Colossus or The Chosen One. The debuff effect can be tweaked to keep it balanced, but it obviously wouldn't be as strong as a Stasis or anything.

Realms being weak at things is fine. But Death's weakness makes half their spells ineffective in late game against all realms, while the other weakness are very situational. And again, I believe thinking in-depth about solutions and discussing individual spell changes is a bit premature. I spent a lot of time playing Death and thinking of and identifying what my issues are with it, but not that much about possible solutions.

[Seravy]

But cockatrices and wrack are for the exact opposite purpose, comparing them is meaningless. One is for killing a few, stronger targets for a high price, the other is for killing a lot of less powerful things cheaply.

And yes, a mechanic being AI unplayable is grounds for dismissal if it's avoidable. Implementing a new feature is avoidable usually. But there are different levels. The AI is bad at using First Strike for example, but they can still use the first strike units at some effectiveness and have millions of other units to use along with them. This however, if it did what you suggest, would be THE core element of playing the entire Death realm and would be irreplaceable.

I would like to point out that Death is designed to be effective against normal units first and foremost while Life and Sorcery against summons. And it does a great job at it, sure there are very resistant normal units but most aren't. Also I'd like to point out very rare creatures are expensive. It should take many spells to take down one, even Chaos has to use 4 Doom Bolts for a Colossus. I think Annihilate with the -5 modifier does a fair job at that it actually exceeds Sorcery which is supposedly stronger against summoned units. Being able to mass-kill rares with Massacre is outright overpowered and ridiculous.

Either way unless you can come up with a balanced high rarity debuff (which I couldn't in the past 2 years and I tried, this also was something previously suggested I believe), we have nothing to discuss. Even then, as far as I know there is no spell in the realm currently that we want to remove at rare or very rares.

[Kaiku]

This however, if it did what you suggest, would be THE core element of playing the entire Death realm and would be irreplaceable.

Like Black Prayer is? Only this comes from a unit taking up a precious slot in your stack, which does nothing but debuff single other units, at the cost of having an actual fighting unit. It's probably better to have another Death Knight there, regardless of what the debuff will do.

Normal units with low resistance aren't ever an issue for any realm. If that's to be Death's specialty...

Massacre and Annihilate being effective or not (I don't think they are. Well, except for killing low resistance normal units) is only half the issue anyway. They're also incredibly boring, and they'd be the first I'd like to see changed.

[Seravy]

They're also incredibly boring, and they'd be the first I'd like to see changed.

If that's what you think about spells that KILL things in DEATH, and the best two at that, then I think the realm is simply not for you and you have the wrong expectations.
Play Sorcery instead, it has pretty good unit curses but can barely kill a spearmen with spells directly.

The main problem with having unit curses in Death is that killing is plain better and it has plenty of that. So curses don't work well in it.

I really don't see why Death of all things should be bad at killing things. At this point it's a bit too late to even think about it but if anything Chaos doing curses and Death doing damage would make more sense. The only reason why it's not like that is history. Red magic has always been damage (fire).

[Kaiku]

Oh, come on. Every realm is about killing things in the end. Chaos' thing is direct damage, no one disputes that. Death/Black has mostly been through crippling and debilitating, attacking resources and starvation, and there are some spells that acknowledge that perfectly. Yes, I find Death doing direct damage to be quite unsuitable. A few spells is fine, of course. Every realm has them. But the abundance of them makes Death look like Chaos' little child, and they're far less effective at it.

Of course killing is plain better, but my issues isn't about what's better, or even balance, but to make Death as fun and varied as realms like Sorcery are, by giving it more options than it currently has. When I play Sorcery, I'm browsing my spellbook during battles because I wanted to cast everything. When I play Death, I'm browsing through my spellbook in search of a spell that does something.

[Seravy]

Okay, I await your suggestion for new unit curses.
Honestly, I don't think I can design one that's worth adding to the game. I tried. There are too many limitations - the way figure mechanics, armor mechanics, resistance mechanics etc don't really help designing debuffs.

I seriously doubt there will be a spell in rare or very rare Death I'm willing to remove even if we design an amazing curse, but we'll worry about that then.

[Nelphine]

My thoughts on death:

They have 3 summons: ghouls, death knights, and demon lords. All the other summons are inferior to ghouls, because of create undead. There are occasions where the other summons can win battles that ghouls can't, but, its always better to sacrifice death books to get buffs for your ghouls, rather than take more death books to get a non very rare summon.

They have 2 methods of creating undead: summon zombies (but not zombie mastery) and ghouls.

Death knights and demon lords will never create an undead on anything that is remotely relevant. They do damage based around being a very rare, so their life drain will never do comparable damage if the target remotely matters when you've got very rare summons.

Syphon life and life drain are the same. The amount of effort required to kill anything with either life drain or syphon life is so high, its always better to use those resources buffing your ghouls instead (up to and including not taking extra death books to even get life drain or syphon life).

Zombie mastery falls into the sane problem. Its always better to buff your ghouls, rather than take enough books to get zombie mastery.

Summon zombie is good, as long as you can catch and hurt your opponent. Compared to ghouls, especially buffed ghouls, this is rare, but at least it happens, unlike the other 4 options.

So the most iconic and unique ability of death, create undead, is best served by taking 2 death books, and then as many other realms as you can to buff those ghouls. (2 sorcery, 6 nature, 5 life)

What about other spells?

Wave of despair is amazing. Darkness and black prayer buff ghouls, so they're good (not as good as prayer though). Several of the very rares are good.

I don't think I can name a rare death spell I ever bother using (but wave of despair! No, the AI usually has 9 unit stacks, so its very niche, even if its great. I won't go deep enough in death to reliably get wave, not just for wave, so I don't end up using it.)

City curses are amazing AI tools, but they feel worthless to me as a human if I play above advanced. While I understand they aren't actually useless, they feel useless, which I think is at least as important.


So to me the biggest problem with death is that the best way to create undead is to only take 2 death books. Which obviously is not really playing death.

I think death needs more self synergy. More buffs would be great (but probably with penalties to avoid stepping on other realm toes) and more create undead units (or making the first ranged create undead unit uncommon) so that ghouls aren't 85% of the reason to play the realm.