alternatives for problematic advancement pathes

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spir
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alternatives for problematic advancement pathes

Post by spir »

Hello,

There are some talks around about advancements that can be rather problematic. The typical case beeing the mage of light and its illumination ability: obviously, if one fights against loyalists and/or allies are chaotic, illuminating is not a wise thing to do -- but it cannot be turned off! ;-)
(see posts on this topic in the thread at http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7205)

This led me to thinking that such problematic advancements should always come with an alternative branch. Comments welcome.



As an example, for the specific case of the mage of light, I had the idea of a kind of healing mage who would live travelling & offering his (mainly healing) services around; a kind of "wandering mage" or "mage of pathes".
Actually, a major issue with mages is their bad movement. Such a wandering mage could receive a sensible boost in movement instead of illumination (in addition to HP and attack improvement the mage of light also gets).

There are several possibilities:
  • +2 MPs
  • +1 MP and a few more hitpoints which would prove useful when walking ahead or aside the main troops (justified by the fact that travelling also makes him fitter).
  • A better movement type, similar to flying the elven shydes and sylves have -- but no additional MP (justified be the fact that travelling makes him used to different terrains). This could be a cost of 1 MP for hills, forests, and caves, 2 MPs for mountains and water.
Teleport is not an option for me -- too much different, should remain specific to silver mages.

Note: if people like the idea of this new mage type and there is any chance for it to be actually implemented, we should start a separate thread on the topic (I'm not sure in which forum category this fits).
Denis
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various stuff about BfW (rules, stats, alternatives) and WML (parser, semantic schema, evolution)
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SirTheta
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Re: alternatives for problematic advancement pathes

Post by SirTheta »

Risk/reward
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Aethaeryn
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Re: alternatives for problematic advancement pathes

Post by Aethaeryn »

A branch of mages with improved movement already exists: Silver Mage. He gets +1 MP and teleport.
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SirTheta
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Re: alternatives for problematic advancement pathes

Post by SirTheta »

He wants one that heals +8 but doesn't illuminate though Aethaeryn :wink:
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Gambit
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Re: alternatives for problematic advancement pathes

Post by Gambit »

I don't see this as problematic. Just one more thing to be factored in to your strategy. Another hurdle that must be overcome. It's like village sharing. Requires coordination.

Adding new units to default is bad.
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Aethaeryn
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Re: alternatives for problematic advancement pathes

Post by Aethaeryn »

SirTheta wrote:He wants one that heals +8 but doesn't illuminate though Aethaeryn :wink:
I realize that. I was just reminding that a highly mobile mage branch (even looking more like a traveler in the sprite) already exists so he may want to think up another theme for his proposal.
Gambit wrote:Adding new units to default is bad.
It's not bad, just extremely hard.

You must both justify its presence to the balancing devs and justify its looks to the art devs, making it mainline quality complete with animations and any other thing that is standard at the time. Even if it looks better than some mainline units, that may not be good enough: it must look on par with the newest (best quality) mainline units (the bar is raised every time a unit is revamped).
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Vendanna
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Re: alternatives for problematic advancement pathes

Post by Vendanna »

Ask for the mage to be a saurian instead of a white mage, they don't reach lvl 3 but at least doesn't illuminates, harming you.

Having a ton of casters to choose from, but in most campaings you will see the majority will use an human mage. :p
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Re: alternatives for problematic advancement pathes

Post by taemyr »

This has been noted elsewhere as one of the cases where RiPLIB is violated. It is felt that in mainline the fact that mage of light exists in a lawfull or neutral with lawfull supplement faction is sufficent that the drawback of illuminate is negilible. In a campaign, if you add a mage to a mainly chaotic unit list then you might wish to remove the illumination ability from the mage of light. This can of course be done without changing the default era.

In general I would worry little about what sort of opposition that the player faces since you should usually not put a mage of light in the front line anyway.
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