Fantasy creatures/historic units not in Wesnoth

[Edward V Riley]

This discussion is on the various fantasy creatures already in Wesnoth and the one's that aren't. Another aspect of this thread is if we like a particular branch, we can then figure out where it belongs. This thread will also be a help to developers who want ideas or just wants to fire away for consideration ideas they already have.

Some ideas are standard fantasy fare, while others might be truly unique. If an idea is copyrighted, we simply change it's name to something that won't get us sued. Agreed?

1-gnolls- A hyena type creature based on the African myths of part man/part hyena. They're commonly used in fantasy settings as foot soldiers that are a step above the standard goblins, more akin to the orcs. If this idea is acceptable, I think these would fit in with the orcs to give that faction some more variety.

2- More elven races- These are already in production, except I don't see anything on half-elves. If Half-elves are included, they should be rare and probably in both loyalists and elves...but that may be a pain. Probably shouldn't even be put into Wesnoth.

3- Halflings/hobbits/Kender- Everyone knows what these are, with the possible exception of Kender(Dragonlance isn't as popular as other D& D based games, except with people like me). If added, perhaps they could be their own faction, but I doubt that seriously. Instead I'd put them with the elves and with bandits/rogues type settings. Both need some more variety as it is. They'd probably be hard to hit by large creatures and have a few quirks that the Rogues have.

4- Draconians-After originally posting this, I've played more of the Drakes and realize that these are almost the same. The only addition I'd make is a healer type, perhaps not as good as the Light Mages or Sylphs, but at least something to take the edge off. I find the more I play these, the more likely I have to watch a bunch die.

5-Large Creatures such as Hydras should be used sparingly and should never have their own faction/groups. Dragons are used sparingly in Wesnoth and I like it that way.

6-Giants- In most fantasy, these are not VERY numerous, but not rare either. Usually, they have their own communities. Fire, Ice/Frost, Hill, Moss, Cloud..etal. These could become their own factions as I'm not sure where they'd fit.

7-Ice creatures- Wesnoth, as well as most fantasy settings, tend not to have much variety in this area. This could be the type of area for the most original ideas to separate us from the standard mold. Frost Giants, Walrus Men(Thanoi in Dragonlance), and usually barbarians are placed here, so we could use them as well. Most ideas would have to be furclad though. Vikings would be an acceptable grouping. The Marauders from the Imperial Era could be easily adapted to Vikings.

8-Gibberlings-SOmetimes, it seems that campaign designers want a creature for early levels that the units can level up on. Gibberlings fit that bill. Numerous, easy to kill, and sometimes wielding weapons, these would make perfect Level 0 'fodder'.

9-Mummies-These would be, of course, an addition to the Undead faction. They'd be melee only, but be hard to kill and would probably poison. They could be limited in movement. I'm often reminded by this quote, "Oh no, here comes THE MUMMY, let's walk faster" as a reference to his slowness.

10-Werecreatures-THere's already discussions on this

Other undead ideas: Banshees, Wights, Vampires(discussed already in another thread),

Other loyalist ideas: HouseKarls-Elite axe wielding units(see Battle of Hastings for more),

As you can see, more creatures could be added. Feel free to make suggestions.

[Velensk]

Most of these are included in some user-made era.

[turin]

Your post has three different types of suggestions - faction suggestions, unit suggestions, and monster suggestions.

FACTIONS:

1- Gnolls. This is a hyena like creature, taller than humans. They would/could have a meleer, ranged, and maybe even a limited shaman class. These would be good on open terrain, but terrible in mountains and forests. They may also be ok in a swamp environment...maybe

So essentially, dog-men?

Sounds rather boring to me... might work in some contexts though.

5- Draconians/Lizardmen- Granted the saurons are sort of like this, but the lizard men would be a type with meleers, ranged, and even shaman and mystics. Great units for swamps and even forests, but terrible elsewhere.

I think Saurians covers this, there are enough units to have an entire faction, but they shouldn't be in mainline obviously. Has anybody actually made the Saurian faction out of those units, or are they still just floating around in the GraphicLibrary?

9- Sea Elves, High elves, Wild elves..etc. there are a lot of different classes of elves in fantasy, but truthfully that would be too much of a pain in the posterior to use here. Sea Elves sound different, I know, but I could only see them used if there were underwater campaigns...hmmm...idea forming here.

The Imperial Era has four flavors of elves - Issaelfr (=Frost Elves), Sidhe (=Wild Elves), Silvian Elves (=High Elves - "Silvian" is perhaps not the final name), and Droch Fae (=Dark Elves). We don't have the elves from the Rebel faction, though if we did they would be called Wood Elves.

All four of them are, I think, different enough to justify new factions... The Sidhe and Droch Fae are the most similar, but they're in different eras so I think it's acceptable.


UNITS:

3- Chariots- This type of unit could be added to those factions that would apply. Loyalists for one. They would have superb movement over roads and maybe grass, but in forests, mountains, swamps would be slow as molasses in wintertime. Could have both melee and ranged abilities.

I actually don't think chariots would make much sense for the Loyalists. The Loyalists are more middle-to-late Medieval era European; chariots were replaced by horsemen long before that. I could see chariots in some faction that was meant to predate mounted horsemen - i.e., ancient Egypt, a Celtic faction (c.f. IE Keltoi), a Greek faction too maybe (though I have no plans for chariots in the Dardanoi).

4-Elephants- These units would be a double edged sword. Elephant units pack a whallop, but can be prone to turn around and trample their own units if hurt enough. A good strategy against this would be to actually try not to kill the unit, but to weaken it enough that it turns and attacks the nearest friendly unit to it.

There's actually a Hippopotamus unit in the Imperial Era Lavinian faction; it was going to be an elephant, but, well, those are really hard to fit into the hex looking at all decent.


MONSTERS:

2-Dragons- Truly, I like how the game has limited the number of these appearing. They should be kept rare and not used every quest...there's enough games out there that do.

Agreed.

8- Giant Squids/Octopi- These could be added as a special enemy in some scenarios as long as they're used sparingly

Like the Cuttlefish?

***I've been noticing a lack of ice creatures in the scenarios. Let's see... Polar bear type creatures? Penguins? Walrus men?

Polar Bear type creatures I think are used somewhere.

Penguins simply aren't dangerous enough to justify their own unit. It would be like having a 'pig' unit. We could do it, but... why bother?

Walrus Men?

[Weeksy]

In Era of Myths there is a vampire faction and a Warg (wolf-man) faction, as well as a faction of humans who turn more and more into animals as they level. I'd suggest checking the era out, it has lots of potential but needs more people who are willing to help work on it.

[Edward V Riley]

That's the type of feedback I was looking for. Thank you for that. As to gnolls, here's so more info:

Gnolls appear as anthropomorphic hyenas. They are usually around seven feet tall and use armor made of horn, metal plates, and leather, and large weapons. Gnolls are generally depicted as savage, barbaric creatures that often practice cannibalism, and enjoy eating the flesh of other sentient species. Gnolls are not especially strong or intelligent, but they are cunning and, when pressed, will fight to death.


one notable subrace of gnoll is the flind (alternately spelled flynd), which is shorter, broader, and stronger than other gnolls; flinds are often found leading a tribe or settlement of gnolls. Flinds use a nunchaku-like weapon called a flindbar, which consists of a pair of metal rods linked together by a chain.

Gnolls are similar to the were-hyenas of African bushman folklore, and the tall dog men (Cynocephales) of early European travellers logs and bestiaries. Hyenas were associated with death because they dug up and ate human corpses.

I agree with the chariots. Only way I can see these used is in an early Egyptian setting.

For a model on small elephant units, look at Centurion: Defender of Rome obtainable on Romnation.net for the old Sega Genesis system. Perhaps that might help you design them.

Often when I post suggestions with a question mark, I'm attempting a bit a humor. But Walrus men do have a reference. In the Dragonlance D & D setting there are the Thanoi, a race of walrus men. Perhaps they can level up clubbing baby seals...I don't know.

[turin]

The Issaelfr actually do have a tame seal unit.

[Edward V Riley]

Thanoi, also known as Walrus-Folk, are a race of walrus-like bipeds in the Dragonlance role-playing game. Thanoi appear as 8-foot tall walrus-like beings with thick, blubbery skin and long claws, which are used for moving about on the ice. Both genders possess two-foot long tusks. Thanoi wear no clothing. They are inhabitats of the Icewall Glacier. Thanoi are generally brutish and savage, and the majority of their time is spent finding and eating food. They are a nomadic race, traveling along the glaciers of their homeland in search of food, mainly consisting of fish. They have been at war with the Ice Folk nomads for centuries. Thanoi are immune to cold and can stay underwater for great lengths of time.

THat's the entire Wikipedia thing on them. Since it was so small I just put it all here rather than linking it.

[Edward V Riley]

Draconians are actually the products of corruptions of dragon eggs by dark clerics. There's so much on them though that I will instead include a link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draconian_(Dragonlance)

[ael193]

elephants would probably be used for orcs or saurians. chariots are cool but hard to fit in, dragons cool, shouldn't use to many but do need more just in case( the ones we have have pathetic art too.) mabey chuck the gnols in with orcs? also while many of these are already in custom factions it would be nice to sove them into the mainlineeven if they aren't actualy used. more ideas are ithilids( the creepy octopus headed phsyciks that enslave "lesser" races(anybody without an octopus for a head). bird men, generic i know but are used in other stuff; also creature like hydras, tarsques, chimeras, manticores, cyclops, giants, and more mythylogical, less d&d-ish critters of doom.

[Edward V Riley]

Good suggestions except for the Ithilids. Why not those? Because in every game I've played where I come up against them, I've a ton of trouble. Lol. Also known as Mindflayers. So it's just a personal bias. They'd probably fit in though and at least for me would be a challenge to combat.

Giants in particular could be their own factions. There's Hill, Cloud, Moss, Fire and Frost giants. They'd be similar to the trolls and could run the gamut of good, neutral and evil.

The Gnolls would fit in with the orcs, that's for sure. Good suggestion.

[Weeksy]

There's no way we're doing dragonlance-type draconians, as a) they're copyright, and b) they are a lot like the drakes we already have.
I heartily encourage you to make some sprites or stats for these units you're proposing, as I can think of a few user eras that could use some units like this.

[Stilgar]

b)units that you wouldn't want in Wesnoth.

Well, I think Wesnoth has more than enough cliche D&D-ish/mythological stuff in it already. Not that I'm suggesting anything more "original" (read: bizarre) than that either, though. As far as UMC stuff goes, doesn't really matter to me, that's the place for anyone to go wild on. *shrugs*

[playtom]

edward wrote:

Giants in particular could be their own factions. There's Hill, Cloud, Moss, Fire and Frost giants. They'd be similar to the trolls and could run the gamut of good, neutral and evil

well, i think that the giants aren't really necessary in wesnoth, full grown trolls, ogre, and the big trump card, yeti will cover basically on this faction. most faction in the dafault era has scouts, fighters, archers, healers and mixed fighters. similar giant creatures from runescape can't cover thm all, you have to come up with special abilitie or different attacks for each giants, it's pretty much elemental, start with a fire attack for the fire giant, or cold attack for the frost giants, thus must create a new air and earth type damage in wesnoth.

if there would be more mystical creatures added to wesnoth, they must be at some connection to the wesnoth historic timeline, they can't just pop out of nowhere, to even add more weight to the shoulder, there would be at least a few scenarios in a mainline campaign involving these creatures. all monsters such as yeti, giant squid, giant ants/spider have made at least a couple of appearance in wesnoth.

we must focus on selecting decent existing ideas and refining them, for example, further improve and balance creatures that's already being made in some user made add-ons. i'm sure we'll come up with a few good units if not dozens that will be implemented into the default era (like a new monster/wild creature faction, thats already been done somewhere).

[TL]

Walrus Men?

Hey, actually I think the walrus-men concept has some merit. Sometimes when I'm bored and randomly brainstorming things I'll try to think of unique faction ideas for UMC and I think a semi-aquatic polar race would be able to fill some interesting niches which you don't see covered by default era.

Personally I tend to think more in the direction of polar bears than walruses for this role, although in general I tend to dislike races that are just anthropomorphified animals. A race of "lesser yeti" or something along those lines might be a better option if you wanted a polar faction for UMC which would be less out of place in Wesnoth, although you'd lose the aquatic angle.

7-Vampires- These would be melee only and would probably have to use their ability to 'blood suck' every 3 or 4 turns to remain alive. They'd also have to be in covered terrain during the day. Truthfully, I don't see how these can be done.

There are a million different versions of the vampire myth nowadays. Only in some of them is daylight immediately fatal, and in very few do vampires have to feed every 12 to 16 hours just to survive.

[MDG]

There's no way we're doing dragonlance-type draconians, as a) they're copyright, and b) they are a lot like the drakes we already have.

Although I wasn't part of the community at the time I think Neo based the Drakes very much on the Dragonlance Draconians. I've stumbled across a few old threads, when doing searches for various things, which involve pages long discussion of what to call the Drakes and what needed to be different from the Dragonlance Draconians in order to avoid any copyright issues. If I am wrong, then apologies to Neo.