Currently boon of the undead does the following: Immunity: Disease, 40% poison Resistance, Fearless, and +20% nora on globe capture. That is a big bag of tricks but does it really fit all our undead? First, my suggestions, then my reasoning. I suggest we break the undead into racials and change boon of the undead into our current faction bonus + fearless (so undead get a 60% shorter cooldown and fearless, only makes sense if we change our faction bonus) Zombie: This unit has disease eater, gains an additional rank of Tough, and has Vulnerability: Fire. Skeleton: This unit can not be blinded, eviscerated, gored, or poisoned. It has 50% resistance to disease damage. Spirit: This unit has Phase Shift, Phase Cleansing, and Vulnerability: Psychic. Zombie) Zombies are the undead that have the widest range of lore. Pox seems to draw from two in specific though, the risen undead that witches use as bodyguards and the rabid undead that spread through disease. Both are known for their durability (well, unrealistic head trauma aside) as well as their ability to burst into flame for little to no reason. They are drastically different from skeletons in that they still can bleed, be blinded, and have holes poked in them that make them weaker. They are also stronger in numbers (disease auras + disease eater = tough zombies) Skeleton) Skeletons are the least diverse in lore. They are brought into existence by a single power and commanded solely by it, unlike the rabid zombies and the free willed spirits. They also are tough as bone, you know, the stuff people used as armor. They do not bleed, worry about broken legs or arms (aka are not slowed down by the now worthless lump of flesh like zombies. Just re-attach it and move on), nor do they contract diseases easily (though there are a number of them that still eat away at the bone.) This makes them great, cheap fodder if nothing else. Spirit) The restless undead. Multiple different lore shows spirits as mostly acting as normal. Showing scars or symptoms of illness when walking around, reliving their old lives, only to disappear and return to the routine again the next night. They can show signs of abuse and conflict up till they disappear and, even when invisible, they react poorly to psychics. Still, being able to phase in and out of existence and to seemingly repair at the blink of an eye makes them powerful. Lich) Yeah, didn't give them a racial because liches are a bit hard to pin down. They tend to be skeletons but with free will and powerful magic. They are also nearly impossible to kill as they are not so much undead as they are living spirits in construct hosts. None of this lends itself to a single set of low cost abilities. However, liches also tend to be a diverse group, so each should be easy to tailor to their respective dominions.
One thing I'm confused on; You want to move Boon into place as the Faction bonus? Or you want to make boon simpler, and develop a different faction bonus? I'm all for a much simpler Boon. Personally, I'd keep the disease immunity in tact, but I see merit in applying that differently to different undead. An on that point, I would think, given the severe rarity of bacteria eating bone in our own world, skeletons would just have a flat immunity in a fantasy setting. I can agree on the being free of effects that affect living tissues (bleed, blind, etc.). I'm not completely sure I like the idea of every spirit being given Phase Shift and Phase Cleansing. Well, I like it, I'm just not sure how potent that would end up being. Look at the current set of kneejerk responses to ghost now that AA has once again managed to spit in people's Cheerios because he's practically immune to most damage. Looking at popular lore (which regretfully we have to since Pox is a little limited in how it says spirits inside this world act), not all spirits necessarily repeat their last experiences. So differing levels of 'phase-ability' makes sense, hence Phase Shift (they can control when they leave the physical realm), Ethereal (They can't), and Ghost (They can't manifest physically without being forced). If anything, I would think some inherit interactions with DMZ might not be a bad way to go. Hidden: DMZ as a unifier sounds good to me, and honestly, I'd be fine with just that. As that leads to the next point; Not all of the racial bonuses would have to be stacked up in a way to have a negative attached. Spirits wouldn't necessarily become unplayable with Vuln: Psychic, but most units with psychic damage hit like trucks without being amp'd, and I could only imagine the nightmare of running into a bg dedicated to psychic damage. For Lichs, I'd personally like to see two 'tiers' for them, as the only real qualifier for being a Lich, at least in more popular lore sources, is an overwhelming hunger for magic and power that drives the body to warp and exist long after it should. And as such, we could make a unifying set of abilities that mark those that have achieved in some way an acceptable level of power (Serkan, Magistrate, LK), and those still aspiring (Anthropomancer, Cleric of Unrest, etc.) Now, I kind of falter here, because I really like the idea of Restless Souls becoming the 'Big Bad Lich' racial, for those that have mastered their necromantic ability. But then, what do the lesser liches get? Do they just get to keep Evil Aura? Not even all of the lower power liches we have in the faction maintained that ability. Now, since we're daydreaming (to a degree), I wouldn't mind seeing them get Death Charged in some rank, and a new ability, something along the lines of 'Ambitious' (When this champion reaches X number of charges, this ability is removed, and this unit becomes Intensified and gains a rank of teleport). Or some way of making it to where by directly infuencing the match, they could become more powerful as they survive the battle. Overall, I like the train of thought. I just advise getting overly complex (It's what usually kills a lot of my own ideas, and a lot of good ideas I see others post).
Liches feel like they should mostly be commander types for other themes, and not all shoved together in one battlegroup. Liches are the main Willed Dead in FW, and their egos probably mean they want their own servants instead of working with their peers. Ghost should be removed/changed, and Incorporeal should just make you immune to everything (that is, after all, what the point of going incorporeal was in the first place). That shouldn't be too strong as long as nothing gets to be ethereal for more than a turn at a time. Nobody complains about Phase Shift, after all. Ethereal is potentially a slightly bigger issue, but those units have no control over it and cannot attack every other turn, so it feels like it at least somewhat balances out. This would also remove the whole "you need one specific damage type, or go home" problem from Pox. Of course, Ghost would HAVE to be removed for this to happen (and I don't have any good ideas on what to do with the more balanced Ghost champs -- that is, both of the FW ones -- if they lose it). Boon of the Undead should be removed if different Undead races were to get widespread racial bonuses, since they should definitely not get two racials just for being in FW.
If incorporeal was just 80% damage reduction from all sources, Ghost probably wouldn't be such a problem.
Develop a different faction bonus and make boon a less frequent racial on lower level undead (so serkan and the like probably wouldn't end up with it but festering corpses would totally get it) The largest reason I want to leave out immunity: Disease is for the full faction head to head. Yeah, zombies vs zombies would be a sad affair for disease damage and that makes sense as that is their theme, however, if it can effect something I believe it should effect it, even if only marginally. Phase shift is a 2 turn cooldown and phase cleansing, while good, wouldn't be overly powerful. While I agree that physic units are overly powerful and making spirits vulnerable to the damage type can be devastating, spirits would still be able to "hide" from the damage by going incorporeal. It makes the decision more tactical, hence why I wrote it that way. Though hidden DMZ could be a fun little racial for spirits. However, you are correct that the lore makes spirits sound a little more chaotic in regards to their ability to become incorporeal. Maybe just phase cleansing as their racial (since the "physical" form is still essentially what they were when they were alive) though I fear without a counter balance negative their price would be too high to run. That is why I try to add sensible negatives to the racial, tactical reasons and to prevent the ability(s) from costing 3-5 like boon currently does. I would much rather Liches not have a unified racial as they tend to not be a unified force to begin with. It makes sense for them to have a grab bag of abilities that revolve around their own survivability (the entire reason they became a lich in the first place) and then power the undead in front of them. On the plus side, them not having boon of the undead or any other racial would reduce their price by a minor amount. It just means more thought would have to be put into each one (not a bad thing either IMO) I agree that liches are commanders and should be unique (see above.) I also agree we should get rid of the 6-8 different incorporeal abilities and just make one or two versions (the spirit ability I suggested and maybe vaporize.) While I like the idea of incorporeal preventing all damage types, we would have to up the cooldown or raise the price drastically, because whiners. I agree it would tone down the "one damage type or go home" but I also know the player base to an extent and...well...lets just say they would not like or agree with the change. I left boon of the undead as a separate ability because I do not believe all runes should have the ability. Liches, for example, should not have a reduced cooldown because they would rather just not die, whereas mindless zombies and skeletons are simply replaceable fodder and the more basic types could easily have both skeleton/zombie and boon of the undead. The key is, while boon would still be a racial of sorts, it would not have to be a universal one and could even just be an upgrade on several upgrade trees.
To add to the ability idea I was cooking up for Liches. It's not intended to be 'unifying' necessarily, just that it's not every creature that can aspire to Lich-hood. It takes a certain degree of something, and I imagine that manifesting as a similar ability as far as mechanics are concerned.
I support the OP. It all logically makes sense for the different themes. My only suggestion is that these are a ton of changes being presented. I would suggest sticking to one or two of those themes and pushing those hard.
Or perhaps wait-it-out and see what we do with Liches first. Further discussion is required on exactly what the racials will become, how it will work out. Change is welcome, since as it stands, a wealth of our champs are overcosted. But the way I'm seeing it is it will possibly go something like this (over the course of the next patches): - Witch changes, worm tweaks possibly - Probably some other small changes regarding some theme or another - Lich reconstruction, massive changes to most liches - Probably like ten other small patches over time - Possibly faction bonus and racial changes if not tweaks
From what I've heard Undead and Boon as abilities/races are pretty much staying as they are so engrained at this point that making such sweeping changes would have to have an extremely significant advantage to doing so. Like so much so that you could justify it beyond just making most spirits interact with incorporeal anyway or through normal ability allowances. Now Modifying those said abilities is definitely more doable and has actually been done before and I definitely advocate it. I definitely see the 60% cool down as being tied directly to boon of the undead with Possibly immunity/eater disease tacked on as the two defining abilities. Keeping it just the 60% does streamline the ability and allow for a good amount of nora trimming throughout the faction (I'd imagine it would be 1 nora if immunity was not on it). There have been a number of times in the past where rabble rousers have called for it to be removed for the 4 nora it adds to the champs. This leaves the bonus in limbo though and currently it's up in the air as to how this will go down. The three main feasible ideas are: 1) rune reveals 2) bonus canceling 3) death benefit with #1 I'm guessing being the easiest to implement.
I'm going to sound rash, but FFS, we need to get off this rubbish of rune reveals. It's leftover bull**** from when a bulk of our most vocal people were browbeaten into just accepting what the rest of the factions big talkers were willing to give us. Until such a time as there are shuffle mechanics entered into Pox, I'd rather just have the 'no-bonus' of champ CD reduction. As in, if that's it, just don't bother ****ing with it.
If the CD reduction is moved to be a part of Boon of the undead, then you're right, it isn't good on its own. The old talk was to combine additional rune reveals and the CD reduction together as the faction bonus.
Ok, so what I'm hearing is don't change the bonus and everyone is happy with the weakest one. Gotcha. I will now cease advocating for bonus changes. That makes my life a lot easier.
Well my sarcasm detector now needs a new needle. Since we've now activated 'snippy mode.' Yes, I'd be fine with it staying the weakest one, because it's leagues better than making it worse than what we have now. Although, if you all want to just keep it par for the course, by all means, gut what's already on the bottom of the hierarchy of faction bonuses. Go for it. In a months time, you all will be saying 'Man, I wish we'd just kept it like it was. Boon is worse, and this bonus runs out of perk after turn 2......****.'
Bad day at work… sorry for being snippy… I'll take a fresh look at this after food is in my belly and I've relaxed a bit.
Feel better? As for the theme, I think we need to compare ours to the other factions and balance accordingly.
I think the general consensus is that it would be good to talk it over and decide what exactly the faction bonus should be, but without making any firm decisions or conclusions. And that even if we decide upon something, we should wait and see how things play out, what other faction bonuses change and in what way, and also most importantly see what will be happening to our champs themselves- as those are the changes that are to come first.
