Death Design Goals
1) Maintain Death's wasting feel: good debuffs, undead all over the place
2) Rename some spells so it's not all Death, Death, Death! We get it, already!
3) Make global enchants available earlier
4) Dump, reduce cost or buff underused spells
5) Basic balance concerns - damage vs health, resist vs debuff power
Common Mod | Uncommon Mod | Rare Mod | Very Rare Mod
Black Sleep | Berserk + | Black Wind + | Animate Dead <
Clk of Fear | Black Chan | Cloud of Sh <,$- | Death Knghts
Darkness del | Black Pray | Cursed Land +,> | Death Spell +,ren
Dark Rit | Drain Power | Evil Pres | Death Wish $-,ren
Ghouls | Lycanthropy del | Famine | Demon Lords
Life Drain | Night Stalk | Warp Node ren | Cruel Unmnd
Mana Leak +,- | Possession + | Wrack | Etrnl Night <,$-
Skeletons | Shadow Dmns | Wraithform | Evil Omens
Terror | Subversion del | Wraiths | Pestilence
Weakness | Wall of Drk $- | Zombie Mst < | Word of Dth del
Zombies new | | new | new
new
Key
Del delete spell
New new spell
Ren rename
> promote to higher rarity
< demote to lower rarity
+ Buff performance
- Nerf performance
$- Decrease cost/maintenance
$+ Increase cost/maintenance
Spell Changes
Darkness: Still available through Cloud of Shadow and Eternal Night
Mana Leak: Mana leak instantly drains 20 mana from enemy wizard and units, and -1 magic attack ammo/turn for the rest of the fight. Reason for change is Mana Leak is a gamey spell. Get in a fight, cast spell, run around for 50 turns until enemy is broke.
Zombies: cost 15.
Berserk: Increase movement by 1.
Lycanthropy: not really Death themed, evil regenerating wolf-men probably better in Nature.
Possession: -1 resist penalty
Subversion: Don't see the value of this spell, dumping it to make room for Cloud and Zombie Mastery.
Wall of Darkness: 2 upkeep. 5 upkeep is absurd.
Black Wind: -1 resist penalty
Cloud of Shadow: upkeep 1
Cursed Land: 20% unrest, -75% production, 3 upkeep. There are 3 enemy city enchants at rare, breaking them up.
Warp Node: Warp is a commonly used chaos word, so rename to Drain Node.
Zombie mastery: Evocative Death spell, want it coming up sooner. And units don't provide garrison morale, so balance concerns reduced.
(new spell slot)
Animate Dead: Life Drain already does this after a fight, and it's common, so popping this down a rarity level.
Death Spell: Cannot raise/regenerate if killed with this spell. Also, rename to Final Breath
Death Wish: 400 cost, name Great Plague
Eternal Night: Making global more common, upkeep 10
Word of Death: Black Wind, Death Spell and Death Wish all do resist or die, don't need another spell doing the same thing.
(new spell slot)
(new spell slot)
Quote:Disintegrate: Got rid of it, Chaos has enough damage spells.
Disintegrate: I vote for putting the part of (anti-ressurection, anti_regeneration, anti-raisedead) effect into the current v-rare "Death spell" from Death realm (I would like to conserve the "all enemies" in DS + resistance_based + disintegrated).
Also, let's remove the horrible lack of fantasy demonstrated in "Death spell" positioned in Death realm. Do we have a Life spell, or a Sorcery spell?
There is a whole language stratos not used with Death realm: Beyond, Shadow or Hades, Gehenna and many others... Can somebody with good knowledge of English propose a good name for a spell touching all enemy units and bringing them irreversibly to the other side?
- Make the Darkness effect be +3 to all Death creatures (no penalty to Life creatures)
- Remove Darkness as a spell, meaning you only get access to this spell through Cloud of Shadow and Eternal Night
- Replace Darkness with Zombies, a combat summon spell
OK, I went at Death like a madman with a hatchet. I've got 1 rare and 2 very rare spells available for ideas, or I could undelete some spells, though I deleted them for a reason and if I return them I'd at least like some ideas to make them more interesting.
Also, death has 4 enemy city debuffs. While I like them all, it's a little much. I'm tempted to dump one but I like them all and couldn't decide. Suggestions welcome.
We can (and I think we should) change the target area.
Examples:
Pestilence - effect (may be minor than current) on every city of a player (the pest spreads quickly).
Cursed land - effect on the whole continent (every city on continent)
Famine - normal famine effect + AI city will be cut out from any AI bonuses
This will make spells different from each other and more desirable.
My suggestions:
Black Sleep: +, -, $+ . This spell needs some rebalancing. Here are my old notes: âUnit goes to sleep unless resists at -2 until end of combat, gets maximum damage; even if this spell is dispelled the unit can't move immediately. Sleeping flying units can't be attacked with melee. Sleeping units have unchanged resistance, but ranged magic always hits them.â I think that if the spell is dispelled then effect should be removed immediately, so it can move in that turn if it has not moved yet. It should not receive automatic damage from ranged magic while sleeping, since magic resistance should be the same regardless of sleeping status. Sleeping flying units should not continue to fly. They fall to ground or water and count as ground units while asleep. Also I recommend increasing casting cost to 20, since with ghouls this is a very strong spell.
I think Black Wind already has -1 penalty according to game description. I think your intention is to make it -2, with which I agree. You may want to rephrase to -2.
Wraiths: I will tweak these monsters since they are too strong. For here they are OK, but we must deny it as a starting spell.
Animate Death: As per my v1.31 experience this spell had some bug. My old notes were:
"Raises one slain enemy (not protected by magic immunity) or ally unit. Creature becomes undead. Usually it appears in the same spot as it died and can act immediately. It can use spells if it had any left. It fights the battle for the caster, but after battle it aligns itself again with the original wizard. It appears on the map square where it was standing last time before the battle started. Animated unit does not have any spells on it. It is possible that 2 wizardsâ units stay on same map square. If a unit moves there they alone attack and the friendly units there lose turn. Usually do not use it on enemy units." I donât think it should align itself with the original wizard after battle. Moreover it cannot be allowed that 2 different wizards have units on the same map square in the same time and not having a battle. Also, I think that if the battle square is occupied by any units than animate dead should not be allowed on the dead unit there. The unit must rise on the exact same spot, IMO. Unless all of this is fixed by now, we may have to test and fix.
Word of Death: Although I respect your decision, I used this spell effectively in v1.31 vs. great drakes. This spell was a game changer. Without it I probably would have lost. Great drakes were nearly untouchable by other spells or units. Nevertheless, letâs try to stick with your decision for now and letâs tweak monsters and other spells to make it possible to fight vs. great drakes. I will try to tweak summoned monsters anyway. Spell casting should become less deterministic in battle. Try to avoid 0% and 100% effects purely based on resistance, so other spells will have at least a modest chance of effecting ultimate creatures, like great drakes.
WhiteMage Wrote:Wraiths: I will tweak these monsters since they are too strong. For here they are OK, but we must deny it as a starting spell.
Yeah, I've been kinda ignoring summoned monsters since they're being balanced elsewhere. All I've done is change rarity of Chimeras in Chaos since there were alot of melee fliers all bunched together.
I'm not ignoring your other points, just have a few moments for quick stuff now.
How about this new death spell (my post in homeless mod thread):
robinh3123 Wrote:Death magic: Dark Tribute +mana, combat only.
Randomly select a friendly victim unit (without death immunity or magic immunity) other than the selected benefical target, transfer some hearts to a selected beneficial death unit (fantastic and undead only).
The transfer rate is 2:1 rounding down (i.e. 2 hearts decrease of the victim converts to 1 heart of the beneficial). Exactly how many hearts are transfered is like casting a life drain on the victim unit. The +mana part is the same as life drain.
This is the only "healing" spell for death magic (regeneration is another story), and the beneficial can only be a death unit, not normal unit.
The victim unit may be killed by Dark Tribute, if all its remaining hearts are drained. However, it will not become an undead after battle. Yet zombie may be created via zombie mastery for units killed by Dark Tribute.
In this way, Death wizard can heal death units, but CANNOT heal living units (unless he has nature's cure).
Perhaps a better name for this spell is Dark Sacrifice.
