That Draug again...

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SmokemJags
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That Draug again...

Post by SmokemJags »

EP's idea to make it:
Royal Guard: 70 HP (+ res.), 12-4 melee
Elvish Champion: 64 HP, 12-4 melee, 8-4 ranged
Draug: 62 HP (+ res.), 13-4 melee
Got me thinking.

Units should be mortally afraid of the draug, to use his words.
With him at 13-4, I think it makes him significantly stronger than the royal guard, considering things like resistances and the like.

Then I went to mention that a mage has nothing to fear from the draug, especially since they take advantage of his weak resistances and are ranged, to which he cannot retaliate.

So anyways, I had an idea to add to this 'mortally afraid' factor but I don't like how he does more raw damage than the royal guard.

So:
Make him 10-4 with an ability called 'bleed'
Think of it like poison. If a unit is hit, they lose 8 hp at the start of their turn.
Differences from poison:
You can bleed to death. If you do, I guess no one gets the exp.
It only lasts for one turn. After you suffer the 8 damage, it goes away. It's not ongoing like poison, continuing to drain you until you are at 1 hp, get healed, or go to a town.
Like poison, undead would have to be immune to bleed.

This would probably make him more terrifying to engage in melee combat(if you attack him with 3 or 4 units and they are are hit in retaliation... that's a ton of extra bleed damage), but keep his straight, normal damage under that of royal guard.
So, what of it?

Things to consider:
Make bleed damage lower, like 4 or 6.
Make it stack with poison... yummy that's a ton of damage.
Order of affect:
Heal - poison - bleed.
A unit who is poisoned and bleeding and has 1 hp... is gonna die.
Heal removes the poison, bleed kills the unit.
Last edited by SmokemJags on March 7th, 2006, 12:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by turin »

The only reason poison can't kill you is so there's no confusion about XP. I don't think bleed should be made an exception to the rule "every death must result in XP being given". So, take out the part about being able to kill units, and I like it. ;)
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Post by SmokemJags »

Hmm... instead of killing a unit then.
So take out 'it can kill' and leave the rest alone, or replace 'it can kill' with some other detrimental effect?

Or since the draug is the only unit who has bleed... give him the xp. I dunno that seems kinda weird. First he doesn't need it except for AMLA... and second he'd be getting exp from all kinds of weird sources at weird times.
Just thinking.
Last edited by SmokemJags on March 6th, 2006, 11:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

Why not just give the Draug poison, plus a 10-4 or 11-4 attack? It would certainly make him nasty and interesting - no need for a new ability.
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Post by SmokemJags »

I sort of thought him having poisoned would be too overpowering. Like the orc assassin's poison darts do little damage on their own, the whole point of them is to deliver poison.
Similar to the human ninja unit.

With the draug adding poison to his attacks a la necrophage... seems too much for me. I suggested bleed so it would be similar to poison, but less devastating because it only deals the extra damage for one turn and then goes away.
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

Poison's pretty weak when it's already on a 10-4 or 11-4 attack. For one thing, the attack is not too unlikely to kill the unit in the first place, or at least put it so low that the poison doesn't have much effect.

Secondly, it's a level three unit, supposed to be nice and scary, and poison is only a nice 8 to 16 extra damage (approximately) to have a nice effect. It has to be poisoned for two whole turns for it to even make the attack more powerful than a typical level 3 unit's, and that's even without the ability to put it under 1 HP.
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Post by SmokemJags »

I'll settle for poison and lower raw damage but...

It's an undead unit with 60+ hp.
It has huge resistances from most melee combatants.

If you're stuck... not enough mages, they were stupid and missed, they've already been used to kill other units, but you want to take down that draug anyways, you have to rely on your melee units.

If he has poison and you throw 2 or more melee units at him... he's throwing out a ton of poison because each melee unit has to hit him so many times(giving him more opportunities to poison more units) to bring down his hp (giant resistances). Unless you happen to have lots of dwarvish lords or some other melee with good impact damage.

Him attacking and poisoning one unit... not that big a deal. When you're trying to take him down and are forced to do it with multiple melee units and he throws a ridiculous amount of poison around to each of them... He crosses the line from being 'mortally terrifing' and enters the realm of 'invincible' AKA 'if you EVER melee against him you're a *expleted* [censored]'

because even though you've killed him, you've got a good portion your army poisoned and in need of sitting on a town for x amount of turns to recover from both the poison and his base damage.

I think bleed, a weaker version of poison that is not persistant, solves that issue nicely.
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Post by JW »

I like the idea of Bleed being a weaker version of Poison. 4 hp per round, curable by Heal, Cure, or town (or Oasis). Stack that on the Draug as is and I don't see the need to tweak any numbers at all.
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Post by SmokemJags »

I took an exercise break and while I was in the shower I was thinking about this some more...

Draug = scary.
Draug bearing down on you = really scary.
New ability to reflect that: Dread.

When this unit attacks, any damage it receives is halved, rounded up.
Think of it like steadfast, but it works when you're on the offensive instead of the defensive.
He can pretty much attack any unit he chooses without worrying, even units that retaliate with impact damage.

It further widens the gap that this guy is a serious offensive unit. With ultra high and ultra low resistances and a lack of any ranged weaponry... if he sits there, he's a free target for casters (relatively low) hp and the ultra low end of his resistances further amplify this defensive weakness.
On offense? Nigh unstoppable.
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Post by scott »

SmokemJags wrote:When this unit attacks, any damage it receives is halved, rounded up.
Think of it like steadfast, but it works when you're on the offensive instead of the defensive.
Sounds similar to this: http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10180
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Post by SmokemJags »

In my new rebalancing era, I could really use an ability like charge that only gives a bonus to the attacking unit.
I need this in order to design units that are best on the attack and not as good while defending. Unfortunately, since charge gives double damage to the defender, I can't do that.
This post is similar, sort of. Deals with double the attacker's damage but don't change the defender's damage.
Dread would be the opposite end of the spectrum. Don't change the attacker's damage but halve the damage of the defender.

Past that though...
Zhukov wrote:What...The...Hell...?

(I feel confusion setting in.)
Sums up my feelings about that thread pretty well. :o
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Post by Ken_Oh »

Hohoho, I wonder if it's possible to make an attack steal EXP. That would be freaking nasty, mwahahahahaa.
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Post by SmokemJags »

You'd have to give it to some kind of mage who:
1. Would have a reason to steal xp because they need so much.
2. Would have the ability to do it through some sort of spell like mind sap.

As it is, I don't see the draug fitting into either category though. :P
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Post by Tippsey »

I can't see the proposed dread ability helping much at all. Steadfast caps at 50% and doesn't effect negative reses last I checked. As most the Draug's postive resses are almost or abover 50% it would be alot of extra coding for nothing. I could somhow see a nonexistent lv 3 beseker having it but then he would maul fighters. I say stick with poison attack or give him a ranged attack that is 1-1 poison. This attack would either repesent the draug being so strong an evil it can corrupt the flesh. So it would deal cold damage, or could be the draug is so coated in the stench of death and decay from wading through battles he can make even those who are afar, sick from it. Note if this gas or corruption attack is given his mellee cabailities should be notched down a bit maybe 11-4 so he stays balanced.
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Post by SmokemJags »

That's why I choose the language of the dread ability with great care.
It doesn't double his resistances, (I'm pretty sure I read that 'doubling' negative resistances makes them even more in the negative) it halves the damage he takes.

Draug resistance
Holy -100%
Impact -20%

Paladin melee
Sword (Holy, 8-5)
That 5 hits for 16 damage each during the neutral times. More in the day less at night. 5x16 > Draug base HP.
This makes attacking a paladin with a draug pretty much suicide.

Dwarven lord melee
Hammer (Impact, 17-2)
That's 2 hits for about 20 damage. About 2/3 of the draug's HP if both connect.

What's the point of dread?
The draug would not worry attacking any unit. Even units tailored to take advantage of his weak resistances would be offset by the dread ability.

Why it's not overpowered? It only works when he attacks and he only gets to attack one unit per turn. If it activated while he was on the defensive... that would be overpowering as heck.

I tried to make an ability that reflects EP's 'mortally afraid' factor as best I could. (I just really like how he said of it. It just sounds appropriate.)
The poison/bleed makes him mortally feared in a 'he's a powerful unit' way.
Dread makes him mortally feared in a feared by mortal units in the game way.
Last edited by SmokemJags on March 7th, 2006, 7:47 am, edited 3 times in total.
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