Poll : Fate Mastery

[Seravy]

An idea for improving Chaos/Death synergy : A global effect that has "50% chance to reroll an unfavorable result when your unit attempts to resist a spell or an enemy unit attempts to resist your spells."
This would suit Chaos theme (rely on random chance), would be semi useful on its own (you can't gain immunity to spells this way but your odds of resisting does get better anyway), and would be a drastic buff to interaction with Death (your spells have a much higher chance of working, again, only if the target isn't already immune and your odds are decent, so it's functionally different from simply stacking a resistance penalty which would be far too good.)

The problem is I don't really see a way to add it, we used all the spell slots and this is way too good to simply add it on an existing spell as a secondary effect. Maybe on Sky Fires? Manipulating fate can explain why meteors fall from the sky at random. Sky Fires is a bit underwhelming anyway but adding this might make it far too good? (basically, it's a global resistance buff to your armies, plus extra fire bolts, plus higher chance for your Shatter and Warp Creature working.)

Possibilities :

Fate Mastery
3 Random Fire Bolts fall on the opponent during battle.
There is a 33% chance to roll again once on an unfavorable result when your unit rolls for Spell Save or an enemy unit rolls a Spell Save against your spells.

Force of Will
All of your units in battle gain +3 Attack.
There is a 33% chance to roll again once on an unfavorable result when your unit rolls for Spell Save or an enemy unit rolls a Spell Save against your spells.

Manipulate Fate
There is a 33% chance to roll again once on an unfavorable result when a unit on the same side of the battlefield rolls for Spell Save or the controlled of this unit casts a spell that requires an enemy unit to Save.

I'm leaning towards Sky Fires (Uncommon is more realistic to have in a dual combo than rare and this spell is meant to be very powerful yet it currently isn't - 3 fire bolts are good but ultimately it's still worse than +30 casting skill so it's much worse than even AEther Binding's SP generation effect) or Chaos Spawn (this unit literally is useless for a Death wizard as they have their own save or die effects), or even both. Please note the 33% is just an example, and we will calculate the actual effect on the results and pick a percentage accordingly later.

Actually not true, Chaos Spawn is pretty good for Death. It has better save modifiers than their own unit(s) and spells, and Stoning ignores Death Immunity, plus they can stack Black Prayer and Misfortune. The only issue is Death lacks the ability to keep the Chaos Spawn alive. Fear can work against melee units but no way to deal with ranged. (then again, vs ranged you don't need Chaos Spawn in the first place. Shadow Demons, Night Stalkers, etc do that job better.)

PS : Alternately, we can drop the "when your unit makes a save" part, as we're adding it as a secondary effect. Since the primary use of the spell already exist, even if we can't use the secondary effect well in pure Chaos, it's not a problem.

"Reroll enemy saves" means you can reroll when you are casting a spell on the enemy.
"Reroll all saves" means you can also reroll when your unit saves against an enemy spell.

[Trattpingvin]

Sounds strong enough to be a new retort

[Seravy]

Sounds strong enough to be a new retort

Yes, a retort for a similar effect was considered but we didn't want to include it because the effect at that time was simply an additional save modifier which is much more powerful.
However, adding a retort would not increase synergy between Chaos and Death as realms.

[Suppanut]

Could I vote more than one choice? All of them seem like valid option. But I think current idea of fate mastery is not fateful enough. I think it should change 3 firebolt into "33% chance for each attempt of damage change to doom damage" along with "33% chance for roll again after unfavorable result".

And if you want to use lucky number theme, why not use 77% chance on caster side for each attempt of damage turn into doom damage and 49% chance to roll again after unfavorable result, and 13% on opponent side for both type of attempt?

[Seravy]

I'll update the poll, give me a minute.

Edit : done.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

If people consider Chaos Spawn to be underwhelming (compared with efreet?), then the spawn should be buffed a bit on its own. Sky Fires does seem rather underwhelming, so this buff would make it worth casting in some, but not all, situations.

Should Chaos get better saves? I see it as a "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" realm. Blast them quickly, and don't mourn your dead. It would be more thematic to boost Sky Fires with more bolts.

Is it really important that all realms be equally good as dual realms? I see that some people do want to role-play LOTR, but I don't recall armies of undead; just a few ringwraiths. I'd rather see the realms as good choices on their own, with some maybe being good as split realms of different levels. If realms x and y only work well as 3/4+ or 6+/2, so be it. The retorts aren't guaranteed to work equally well in all combinations with all realms either. Part of the fun of MOM/COM is finding new tricky combos.

[massone]

I voted not to add the effect, but after thinking about it some more, I would change my vote to Sky Fires rerolling enemy saves, but excluding poison, life steal, drain life, and siphon life.

I think that the spell shouldn't allow rerolling the player's own saves. That doesn't match with Chaos' theme, imo, in which resistance actually drops when empowered by Chaos, and it's too powerful against non-Death spells, which have low save penalties to begin with. In terms of single-realm balance, I think it's also too powerful on Chaos' main summons.

I also think that in a dual-realm play, Death shouldn't benefit from rerolling their own saves through a Chaos spell either. Anything that improves resistance should be in Life or Sorcery, not Chaos.

However, if the effect was not only to reroll the save, but had other additional effects, then it could be in Chaos. For example, 33% chance to reroll, but reduces its resistance by 2 permanently if it successfully changes the outcome of the roll.

EDIT: It seems that Chaos Surge actually increases resistance, but Mystic Surge reduces it. So I suppose it's not entirely against the theme.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

Instead of affecting saves, what if the bolts from Sky Fires had additional effects, along the lines of Mystic Surge and Apocalypse? That would be more thematic. Some random effects suitable for an Uncommon spell. I'd prefer to see a variety of interesting but not too powerful effects pretty much guaranteed, rather than a couple of powerful effects that rarely happen.