Abilities that should be weapon specials instead

[peet]

I've been thinking about the Feeding ability, and it's occurred to me that it should be a weapon special, not an ability.

After all, you might want to make a unit that had a Bite attack with feeding, and a Lightning Bolt attack that did not have feeding.

Makes sense, right? Attacks that result in the unit eating the opponent should have it, but there should be the option to have attacks that don't produce this result.

What do you folks think?

Peet

[Zarel]

I agree. This makes sense, and since it wouldn't change existing game balance at all, it might have some chance of being implemented!

[krotop]

Or the ability to eat corpses is inherent to the unit, and not to the way the "food" got killed.

[Frank]

Or the ability to eat corpses is inherent to the unit, and not to the way the "food" got killed.

I don't think it is. Something killed with a lightning bolt is going to taste quite differently than something killed with a club, and may even be vaporised anyway.

[krotop]

Hehe, right. I didn't take into account the delicate palate of the ghoul, or scientific facts such as lightning vaporizing stuffs away.

[Gambit]

Ghouls' own stenches have fried their olfactory sensors.

[Zarel]

Or the ability to eat corpses is inherent to the unit, and not to the way the "food" got killed.

Well, just because the ability is inherent doesn't mean it has to be an ability. The ability to drain is also inherent, and that's a weapon special. Weapon specials can be inherent abilities, too.

[Sangel]

This is a fair point - being able to apply "feeding" to a weapon, rather than the unit, would make sense. But isn't this already doable in WML?

[krotop]

Well, just because the ability is inherent doesn't mean it has to be an ability. The ability to drain is also inherent, and that's a weapon special. Weapon specials can be inherent abilities, too.

That's where we disagree, the specials are linked to the attack : the fact that the ghost has the possibility to drain doesn't allow him to do it in every possible way.

For the ghoul, the actions of biting and eating are dissociated in the current case. Feeding could be associated to the bite attack, but I don't see it as a better (or worse) interpretation than the current one. The same way, we could argue endlessly whether drain should be an ability of the ghost (restrained to melee) instead of a special (edit: if one side thinks that any melee attack from the ghost would drain and the other thinks that the ghost has only one mean to drain).

[peet]

That's where we disagree, the specials are linked to the attack : the fact that the ghost has the possibility to drain doesn't allow him to do it in every possible way.

We're not necessarily talking about ghouls. We're talking about user-made units.

Let's say we are talking about a "Zombie Lord" unit. One attack has plague, the other has feeding. The logic is that the Zombie Lord can either reanimate the corpse of it's opponent, or he can eat it. But he can't have his walking corpse and eat it too.

Likewise, with the example of using lightning bolt, the issue is that the attack is at range. Even if there is a corpse left over it's still a mile away in the next hex. Remember that hexes may be miles across.

It makes sense for the sake of flexibility to allow units to have some attacks which result in the feeding bonus and others which do not. Since feeding is a result of an attack it makes sense to tie it to the attack rather than to the unit as a whole.

Peet

[Zachron]

For the sake of argument. We could create a "feeding" weapon special, yet keep the ability inherent to the ghoul too.

[thespaceinvader]

For the sake of argument. We could create a "feeding" weapon special, yet keep the ability inherent to the ghoul too.

Et voila. This is easy to do, and should avert further argument.

If you wish to use feeding as a special, you are free to. If you wish to use the current unit ability, you are similarly welcome to.

As such, locked.