gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted June 10, 2004 08:10 AM |
bonus applied. |
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towns based on creature exp
this was not really started as a creature lineup thread, so the lineups are somewhat incomplete. but maybe some lineups could develop from it some day. i was rather trying to figure out some possible playing style differences of some towns if creatures could be upgraded based on the damage they have done in battle, the way described in: Thread: Creature Experience (Just another wish, eh...), page 4.
i feel that the more unique the towns feel, the better (except that it creates more balancing problems). i absolutely liked the difference between skeleton hording with necro and demon hording with inferno in homm3, although the difference might seem minor at first glance.
this may be somewhat too extreme, but imho a theoretical possibility is to view a large part of many creature lineups as upgrades of an imp or peasant type of creature (well, i guess creature exp might be utilized with a less extreme upgrade tree, but imho the extreme way has a certain beauty). so, the recruitable creature is the lev 1 creature and it's upgrades can only be gained by doing damage in battle. some other creatures can also be recruited, but they are not part of the upgrade line.
and i appologize in advance for my relative incompetence in the attitude and the way certain religious groups see spiritual development of a personality, but this is what i want base my town themes on. so, much of the town theme is speculation.
also, i like the idea of highest level creature being an immortal spirit. in this version of the immortal spirit idea i would like to introduce a limit of how many of those creatures you can recruit. so, from every portal of glory you can recruit one angel. when the angel "dies", you can recruit it from the same portal of glory again.
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forest town
faery (lev 1) --> elf (lev 2) --> druid (lev 3)
walking tree (lev 4)
unicorn (lev 4)
level 1: faery (basic creature)
imho it would first start out with not understood secrets behind some intriguing paradoxes, this could be symbolized by faery. imho it's better if they create some confusing illusions instead of fighting as imho not very militaristic looking faeries.
special ability: behaving and looking like a random creature stack every round of the battle in the range of health points of the faery stack, probably multiplied by some level coefficient if the faery stack turns into higher level creatures.
level 2: elf (upgrade from faery)
intuitively, by trial and error, a person might learn to make use of some of the secrets although there may still be incomplete understanding of the mechanism. imho this could be symbolized by elf.
as far as i understand, there is a considerable amount of mythology about archery, and a lot of it has imho the suitable level of mysteriousness to make it fitting for upgrade from faery. maybe it's just a "favor" done by modern fantasy, but it would imho be unlikely that elves could be related to anything else but archery.
imho there's some suitable level mysticism about riding horses, so maybe elves might have something to do with recruiting unicorns (elves being related to horses might be another "favor" of modern fantasy, though). unicorn is symbol of virtues, pureness and virginity, and i would think it's likely that a person would think of those ideals at this level of mysticism.
special ability: can mysteriously shoot full damage at any range, no sight range penalty in forest
btw this sort of assumes that forest is somewhat passable to armies. there's a thread about sight range penalties/bonuses and passability/inpassability of terrains somewhere, which in conjunction with random encounters or moving agressive creature stacks could imho create nice effects.
level 3: druid (upgrade from elf)
imho this should be the end of this upgrade branch.
whatever the understandig level of the mysterious secrets, druid should imho be a master of pagan occultism and should be able to communicate freely with all sorts of spirits. this might be viewed as some sort of awakening into the spiritual world and imho it could be symbolized by the druid's ability to awaken trees.
maybe the druids should not be good in battle at all. maybe you would like to send them home to chant and to awaken some trees in the holy grove.
special ability: druids garrisoned in nature town produce walking tree growth
level 4: walking tree (recruited with some help of druids)
i think trees that walk on roots would be better than the tolkien-style ents. needs garrisoned druids to become recruitable and is then recruited for gems. has high durability and low damage, but entangling roots of the walking tree should make the ranged elves a lot more useful, so imho getting a lot of elves and a reasonable amount of walking trees should be the main objective a player might want to push for.
special ability: entangling roots.
level 4: unicorn (recruited with some help of elves)
recruited for gems if you have elves in the army.
special ability: should be able to cure, be immune to curses, increase allied luck, maybe blind the enemy, maybe have a charge bonus.
level 5: ???? (immortal)
if unicorns were immortal, i would like to put them at level 5 as the ultimate spirits of the forest. but although they seem to be so powerful that, according to mythology, no creature is known to have killed a unicorn, they clearly are not immortal. maybe they could be mortal, but still no more than one unicorn per holy grove would serve you (in this case, dragons could also be top level).
the immortal could be phoenix, but i'm somewhat doubtful about all this fire right beside the forest creatures. not enough familiar with druidic supreme gods, but i am somewhat doubtful about phoenix being druidic.
i don't have much idea about what the faery dragon should be like. i think it would attract too much attention if it were the immortal top level. i'm skeptical about faery dragon casting all those offensive spells. but as long as the spells are random, this ability might somewhat suit the attitude of faeries here, though. maybe it could turn 1 enemy creature stack into a random creature every round.
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example 2: demon town
imho agressive attitude often increases one's potential for sucess. i am not saying that it is better or worse than the other ways of being sucessful at achieving one's goals. btw, lao tse has said something like that: 'desireing a goal -- greatest nuisance.'
in corresponding religious visions it seems somewhat unclear which is the actor and which is the one the action is directed towards. i have read that the activities of demons in those visions could sometimes be interpreted as reflections of the person who sees the vision. it is possible that the demon acting on the person who sees the vision could sometimes be interpreted as the person seeing how he treats himself. whatever, i'm way too incompetent in demonology to try to explain it more than that.
imp (lev 1) --> ?? (lev 2) --> ?? (lev 3) --> ?? (lev 4)
devil (immortal)
evil eye (lev 1)
grasshopper (lev 2)
nightmare (lev 3)
devil (lev 5)
main branch:
special ability common to all demon branch creatures (except imps) could be resurrection ability similar to homm3 pit lord. the level of the resulting creature should depend on the level of resurrecting demon. this might be overpowered if nightmares can be resurrected from any cannon fodder, though. maybe there should be some coefficient that would take the level increase into account.
whatever, the idea is that you can start playing the inferno pit lord way already at low levels and you are not so vulnerable to someone accidentally attacking your pit lords.
level 1: imp (basic creature)
as far as i understand, imp somewhat symbolizes temptation.
special abiliy: they should have something to do with spellcasting. as an alternative to the traditional ability, maybe they could convert corpses to mana or damage they do would convert into mana, or something else. whatever, i think it would need some more thought.
should be able to fly over a smaller obstacle (short distance) once per round as part of it's normal movement.
maybe they could also have have a third ability, something related to tempting. it could be a small chance that a creature attacked by imps could be under your control for one move (should depend on stack size difference, so that it would not be beneficial to split the imp stack). maybe this should be an additional move in the round, so that both you and enemy can move this creature during the same round. if that's the case, this could look like the morale effect before homm4.
level 2: 'some demon with a whip' (upgrade from imp)
i don't know of this creature in mythology, but as there are numerous types of demons, a corresponding mythological demon probably exists.
the upgrade symbolizes temptation developing into a goal.
special ability: increasing morale of allied troops.
level 3: 'some demon with shackles' (upgrade from 'some demon with a whip')
again, i don't know if it exists in mythology, but i hope it does.
symbolizes becoming dependent on achieving a goal. familiar situation from rl, isn't it?
special ability: bind
level 4: 'some crowned demon' (upgrade from 'some demon with shackles')
the interpretation of gog and magog in different sources has seemed somewhat confusing to me. one of those interpretations is that they were despotic kings who were known for their cruelty. so maybe one of those names could be suitable for that demon.
maybe i am unsuitably mixing up different things now if i am mixing gog and the biblical seven-headed demon, but i would depict it as one head of the seven-headed demon, i.e. with one horn ans a crown (and a face resembling a lion maybe).
when there is no turning back from going for the goal, it looks somewhat like the situation of a despote to me (relaxing the cruelty would probably cause rebellion). and also, a goal like this probably rules over the person like a despote.
special ability: none except the main branch demon ability
additional creatures (gained by resurrecting allied troops):
level 1: evil eye (resurrected by level 2 demons)
i don't know anything mythological about beholder, but as far as i have understood, evil eye is present in folklore and curse of evil eye was associated with envy and caused deaths, various kinds of diseases and other bad things.
i may be somewhat not serious now, but i would associate them with the whip demon (level 2), because i suspect that in the phase when a person in motivating himself to work for some goal, it is most likely that he may slip to some envy. i doubt it would be likely when already harnessed (level 3).
special ability: beholder ability in homm4 was ok imho, otherways they should do no ranged damage.
level 2: grasshopper (resurrected by level 3 demons)
btw insects were considered creatures of the devil, so imho some insects are a must here. in biblical apocalyptic story there were grasshoppers with a breastplate, head of a noble and tail of a scorpion that crawled out of a well, causing great pain to people with their poisonous sting.
they sould be somewhat weak but fast, so they should be good for re-resurrecting.
special ability: poison
level 3: nightmare (resurrected by level 4 demons)
fear of failing to achieve a goal is the greatest fear for many people. very suitable creature to be resurrected by crowned demon imho.
special ability: special ability of nightmare in homm4 was extremely useful, maybe even too useful. maybe should just reduce enemy morale instead and make enemy flee when attacked like homm4 bone dragon.
level 5: devil (immortal)
i guess it should be a symbol of something that the demons look up to, so i think it should look magnificent (a classical devil with a trident). i would rather reserve the teleportation ability for the grim reaper, though. why should the devil teleport?
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example 3: necro town
well, this will be real blasphemy, because ghoul wasn't undead in folklore (more like grave robber sort of thing), but imho this lineup is good for illustrating a way of playing that feels a bit different again.
vampires and zombies did seem to be more or less the same thing, though. as far as i understand, the modern fantasy has turned the zombies into mindless servants while vampires go with the nobility theme. ghouls seem to be somewhere between zobies and vamps in modern fantasy. well, if mythological perfectionism is needed, maybe the ghouls could be thrown out of the town. but then litch is also modern fantasy. whatever, they are both replacable with revenants and undead warlock sort of things if needed.
also, i like the idea that half of damage done kills creatures in a stack and the other half reduces average health of remaining creatures (creates wounds) and some special abilities are from this point of view.
zombie (lev 1) --> ghoul (lev 2) --> vampire (lev 3)
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v
skeleton (lev 1) --> bone dragon (lev 4)
grim reaper (immortal)
mummy (lev 4)
'some servant of mummy' (lev 2)
litch (lev 4)
ghost (lev 1)
main branch:
main branch creatures all have a special ability that is exp decay. those creatures loose a little exp every day. and when their exp drops to zero, they are automatically downgraded to lower level creatures. as zombies are lev 1 themselves, they are just transformed into skeletons. so, getting exp is needed first to prevent decay and then to upgrade.
i guess you could think that the main branch creatures are somewhat half-dead (somewhere between alive and dead), at least that they function somewhat like living creatures.
level 1: zombie
imho it's natutal that, from a fresh dead body you get a zombie, not a skeleton. zombie is somewhat slow because of corpse stiffness.
special abilities: maybe chance to poison, maybe none.
level 2: ghoul (upgrade from zombie)
according to the idea that those undead should feast in order to avoid decay and get upgraded, maybe ghould should also get exp for eating corpses, but a am doubtful about giving this ability to the ghoul.
special ability: heals by eating a pile of corpses on the battlefield (according to the wounds idea).
maybe it should have a chance to bloodlust or even to berserk, maybe it should have a chance to automatically decide to eat a corpse on the battlefield.
level 3: vampire (upgrade from ghoul)
imho this should not be the front line meatshield. i don't know if putting it at the top of this upgrade tree keeps it's numbers low enough (i guess this can be balanced with exp decay). on the other hand, i don't have much against having many vampires, but i would like to keep them off the front line.
special ability: heals and resurrects by doing damage. no retaliation.
maybe also doesn't retaliate (i.e. when someone attacks vampire), in this case maybe it should have this strike-and-return attack (like that it would look somewhat like a shooter or spellcaster).
other creatures
level 1: skeleton (downgrade from zombie)
a dead body that has it's flesh decayed (so, if you want skeletons, all you have to do is to let the zombies decay for some time). undortunately, brains are also decayed, so this creature isn't just half-dead and cannot get exp anymore. it is more fragile than zombie, but has greater speed.
special ability: none
level 4: bone dragon (produced from skeletons (no exp needed))
crafted in laboratory (or whatever the building should be called) from a sufficiently large number of skeletons for some money. maybe it would cost about 500 skeletons to make one bone dragon. but, considering that you have to build a laboratory, if the cost in money is large enough, maybe a smaller number like 200 or 300 could also be reasonable. also depends on effectiveness of necromancy skill, but imho it's nice if you can get a lot of skeletons.
special bility: maybe it shouldn't be able to fly like normal dragons
level 5: grim reaper (immortal)
special abiliy: combat speed 0 (moves last), teleport (moves anywhere on battlefield), all damage done kills (half damage goes to wounds rule doesn't apply to grim reaper attacks).
some additional creatures (somewhat doubtful about how you get them):
level 4: mummy
i guess you should need some special old tombs (where the corpse was mummyfied) to get those creatures.
imho this creature should be at least as high, but probably higher than vampire. peasants weren't mummyfied, as far as i understand. maybe there should be ordinary mummy that is level 3 like the noble vampire and a royal mummy that is level 4 and can summon more servants or higher level servants. or maybe the number of servants that the mummy stack can summon depends on the exp of the mummy stack.
the main idea is that, like vampire, the mummy (at least the royal mummy) should not be mostly used at front line in battle. servants of the mummy should fight for the mummy and protect it.
there should be the mummy's curse somewhere, but atm i have no idea where to put it.
special ability: can summon servants
level 2: 'some servant of mummy'
a bodyguard of mummy. maybe the servant should also be somewhat mummyfied (dried) or maybe it should just be a skeleton with antique style armor.
level 4: litch
i would rather prefer homm3 wright style creature with a golden death mask and some other decorations. death cloud should imho be a spell rather than a missile.
i liked the homm3 description that a lich tryes to preserve a life-like appearance. with this attitude i think it's suitable that the litch has something to do with getting ghosts.
level 1: ghost
imho this could be interpreted as a somewhat haunting memory of the person who died. so it should be a somewhat weak creature. maybe it could upgrade to banshee (who would cast some death ripple sort of thing, i guess), but maybe not.
special ability: raise killed creatures as ghosts.
some % of ghosts disappear (are forgotten) every day (thsi should keep their numbers in check without problems unless there's some way to cheat like the mirror image thing).
Moderator's note:This topic has been closed, as it refers to an older version of the game. To discuss Heroes 3, please go to Library Of Enlightenment, to discuss Heroes 4, please go to War Room Of Axeoth, to discuss Heroes 5, go to Temple Of Ashan.
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