New Trait: Wise (or something along those lines)

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Frostfire
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New Trait: Wise (or something along those lines)

Post by Frostfire »

Intro:
Well I was chatting with my friend and though up an idea for a caster trait since it seems as though most traits are either detrimental or just useless (coughstrongadeptscough) for casters.
This idea MAINLY came from the fact that I recently had a game where I had 4 strong/quick adepts, which made me very sad that they were useless. I thought about what traits that would actually be super beneficial for them, and the only things I could think of would be resilient strong, but adepts can't even use the +1 attack so it seems weird that the best thing for them is just +1 HP over all of the other things they could get.
Intelligent might be good for getting them up faster, but still it doesn't really seem that great when I think about how fragile mages are already.

Wise: - 1 HP, +1 Magic attack

explanation:
basically it would work like strong, but for magic. It's probably not very balanced although I was thinking a 10% drop would be a little much (especially if it was quick as well).

possible pitfalls:
-it could make adepts ridiculously strong (and red mages too, a 9-4 fireball is scary no matter what time of day it is)
-another trait to balance things around, and also another one to juggle in there
-I tried to keep it simple from the programming aspect, but obviously I don't know everything about how they coded the game and it would still require effort
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Noyga
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Post by Noyga »

Traits are usually given by race.
"Ooh, man, my mage had a 30% chance to miss, but he still managed to hit! Awesome!" ;) -- xtifr
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irrevenant
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Post by irrevenant »

Noyga wrote:Traits are usually given by race.
Is there any reason that need be so, though? There certainly are potential traits that it would make sense to allocate to certain unit groupings rather than races per se.

A caster-specific trait is a good example. It would have to be carefully balanced against existing traits, of course...
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zookeeper
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Post by zookeeper »

irrevenant wrote:
Noyga wrote:Traits are usually given by race.
Is there any reason that need be so, though?
Nope.
deoxy
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Post by deoxy »

What version are you running? Because I thought adepts already didn't get "strong" anymore... ?
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UngeheuerLich
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Post by UngeheuerLich »

its a bit better, but 2 out of three adepts are quick now, which means they are very fragile now... a different trait for them would really be helpful (fearless was nice, but poor drakes...)
Velensk
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Post by Velensk »

Personaly I think that if you are going to give mages/adepts a bonus to magical damage the penelty should be much more severe than -1 hp.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
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Post by taro »

irrevenant wrote:
Noyga wrote:Traits are usually given by race.
Is there any reason that need be so, though?
Simplicity - KISS ;)

(I know there are already exceptions and I hate that. One exception leads to another which justifies the next ... )
UngeheuerLich wrote:but 2 out of three adepts are quick now, which means they are very fragile now... a different trait for them would really be helpful
Remove the exception that adepts don't get the strong trait :P.
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Noyga
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Post by Noyga »

Yeah, KISS is definitely one valid reason.

About Adepts, not having strong is ok, since they don't have melee attack and it works well with their background.
"Ooh, man, my mage had a 30% chance to miss, but he still managed to hit! Awesome!" ;) -- xtifr
Darth Fool
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Post by Darth Fool »

All traits should be completely positive. having a malus to 'balance' a bonus is generally a bad idea. A little searching will find my explanations of why.
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Baufo
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Post by Baufo »

Doesn't the quick trait also have a malus?
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Darth Fool
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Post by Darth Fool »

Baufo wrote:Doesn't the quick trait also have a malus?
Yes, and that is a poor design issue left over from its first inception. The rebalancing necessary to make it a pure positive is more work than people want to do.

ok, a quick search on 'trait' posted by yours truly yields amongst others the following posts on the subject of negative traits:
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 093#187093
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 647#102647
Frostfire
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Post by Frostfire »

I've been using the stable version since thats where most of the people are, I didn't notice that they had strong removed from adepts in the development release.

as for the whole weakness with traits, guess we heard it straight from the fool's mouth... er wait. I still like the idea that theres a -1 HP, since it somewhat fits in with the tag that a wise person is generally older and weaker (of course I may just be having Gandalf syndrome or something), and it's not exactly that big of a loss. Still there is that thing called effort getting in the way.

Something else I've noticed, shamans can get dexterous, which raises their magic damage, so something would probably have to happen there.
Velensk
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Post by Velensk »

The problem with the way you worded your problem is that "magic" is not a range, your wize trait would pretty much be identical to the dexterouse trait except with a minus one and given to magic users.

The problem is that magic users with +1 damage is scary.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
im the one you think of
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Post by im the one you think of »

Since when were traits given by race? Aren't strong, quick, resilient, fearless and intelligent universal? (with exceptions) Aren't the only other traits healthy and dextrous? Also why wouldn't giving the traits to all units be more KISS?

EDIT: Forgot undead, but my point still stands, also I've never liked that being a trait and a race.
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