Expanded Undead faction mod (Not For Mainline!!)

[peet]

When I play through a campaign I like to add more variety in the units. So when I started playing Descent into Darkness I decided I would add a variety of custom undead units.

I came up with a variety of new specials and abilities for some of these units, so I thought I'd start by posting those here.

Weapon Specials

Chill: A version of Slow that only affects living units, and not undead or mechanical ones.

Fury: On attack, grants a minimum of 60% to hit to BOTH attacker and defender. Similar mentality as Charge.

Darksight: This attack always has at least a 60% chance to hit in darkness

Latestrike: First stike is granted to the opponent, even while attacking.

Wild: This attack never has more than a 50% chance to hit, regardless of terrain

Rage: (I didn't invent this one) Combat lasts twice the usual length. Ends up working like an inferior version of charge.

Blocking: The unit that makes this attack only suffers 60% damage in retaliation. Note that this attack has to be smaller than the unit's normal attacks for balance.

Wind: For a wind-like spell effect used at range. This unit only suffers 60% damage in retaliation from all attack types except arcane (which has no physical substance and therefore cannot be slowed by an oncoming wind).

Flay: A version of Plague which produces a level 0 skeleton

Soulbind: A version of Plague that produces a level 0 ghost

Wolfbind: When this attack kills a wolf or wolf rider, a wolf spirit is produced.

Abilities

Mindless: Dummy ability. Unit requires no upkeep regardless of level. For WC line.

Simple: Dummy ability. Unit never requires more than 1 gold in upkeep, regardless of level.

Night Heal: Unit gains regeneration in darkness and 50% regeneration in twilight.

Darkmove: Unit gains skirmisher ability in darkness only.

Darkpower: Unit heals adjacent units only if they are undead.

Forestwalk: Unit gains skirmisher ability while in forest.

Natural Defense: Unit has increased resistance against natural attack types, such as claws, fangs, fists, etc.

Wolf Pack: Wolf unit gives fellow wolves (including wolf spirits) 25% damage bonus regardless of level.

Wolf Pack Alpha: Alpha Wolf unit gives fellow non-alpha wolves (including wolf spirits) 50% damage bonus regardless of level.

I'll post more details about this mod later.

Peet

[Thanatos]

Just another abilities/weapon specials list?
Actually most of the varitations sound quite generic - so where's the special undead flavour here?
Let's see what comes out of this...

[tsr]

Hehe, well I am planning since long to create a weapon-special chill (to be given to cold damaging attacks) that makes skeletal units more fragile to the physical damage types.

This would add a status: chilled - to the victim that would last for one round (as slow does now) and that would lower the resistances to blade, pierce and impact by 20% (100%->80%, 50%->30%, etc, etc)

Other than that I am all for more specials and abilities for UMC-creators to chose from

/tsr

[peet]

Just another abilities/weapon specials list?
Actually most of the varitations sound quite generic - so where's the special undead flavour here?
Let's see what comes out of this...

Wait for it...

Basically It will take a while for me to put things together, but these are things I have already implemented. You'll note that there are a bunch of abilities/specials that only work at night. I ended up throwing in the list some other specials I had used for the campaign as well, even if they weren't for undead units.

The next issue is that I broke the typical "Undead" race into three races, both for clarity and to keep the help menu from getting all cluttered up. They will still all have the "undead" trait, but that is only a trait, not a race for this mod. Many of the new units will just be versions of the old ones, but others are made from whole cloth. I also used existing sprite art for these units, as I've never drawn sprites before.

The races are:
Corpses - 8 units
Skeletons - 24 units
Spirits - 17 units

I also added an special "Undead AMLA" feature to undead units which couldn't level any more. Basically they get no healing upon hitting the AMLA but get +1 to damage to all their attacks instead. Also, the experience target is much lower. For the campaign I pegged it at 50 pts and then +25 pts (not 25%) each time it leveled, and that seemed to work pretty good.

I'm putting together some graphical charts that will show all these units, so please be patient.

Peet

[Thanatos]

..., so please be patient.

Oh, I will...

[Lord_Argo_Gryphon]

This will be interesting to say the least.
Are your units just going to be 'revamps' of the originals?
And are your corpses (aka Zombies right?) going to retain the plague special?

[peet]

This will be interesting to say the least.
Are your units just going to be 'revamps' of the originals?
And are your corpses (aka Zombies right?) going to retain the plague special?

I'm keeping the original units but adding a bunch more leveling options. When I play a campaign I like lots of variety in my guys. I don't do sprite art, though, so right now I'm using pilfered art from other UMC. Sometimes I came across a sprite I liked and I decided I just had to add it in.

And yes, the WC retains the plague option, though since it is a new version of the WC it needs a separate version of plague to create more of the new version (rather than the original).

Peet

[peet]

OK, here's the corpse unit tree.

As you can see the basic units are the same, but the WC's go to level 2 and the Ghouls go to level 3. All level 2 corpses have feeding.

Also, I added a separate "mindless" like for the WC's. The main difference is that while less powerful they also require no upkeep. That way, you can level your WC's into something a little better but keep the 0 upkeep of the WC.

Corpses also get a bunch of traits. I know that some people don't think undead should have traits, but these traits are basically zero-sum traits in that they have both an advantage and disadvantage. I make undead and fearless musthave traits then add 1 more, but 2 times out of 3 the third trait will be a "null" trait that does nothing.

The others are:
Mummified: +1 damage and -20% resistance to fire
Bloated: +4 HP, +1HP per level, and -20% resistance to pierce
Unshriven: -20% damage, +1 attack, -10% resistance to arcane and fire
Fresh: +1 Move, -10% HP, -20% resistance to cold
Semiaware: -20% Exp, -1 damage

Also, the WC will have the trait "Rotting" as soon as I can figure out how to do it.

Rotting will give -2 to damage and adds poison to the attack, but changes the advancement from Soulless/Brain Eater to Ghoul. It also reduces resistance to blade by -20%. Upon advancement, though, it would have to get rid of the trait somehow (otherwise you'd get a ghoul with a 2-3 attack). Haven't figured out how to do that yet.

Anyway, more to come!

Peet

[Astoria]

I think the Brain Eater line is way too weak!
10-2=20 max dmg.
7-3=21 mag dmg.
Only the upper one is Lv. 2 and the other a Lv. 1.

[peet]

I think the Brain Eater line is way too weak!
10-2=20 max dmg.
7-3=21 mag dmg.
Only the upper one is Lv. 2 and the other a Lv. 1.

The Brain Eater line is supposed to be weak. That's the price you pay for having what are basically always loyal units. If you want fighting power you get soullesses, but they cost 1 gold per turn in upkeep. Brain Eaters cost nothing.

Peet

[peet]

OK, here's the skeleton race tree. It's the biggest one.

Note that the Skeleton Rider can be leveled from the Skeleton, but it can also be purchsed separately. I'm thinking that I'll have the ones that leveled from a Skeleton be slightly more powerful, but I haven't implemented that yet.

Also, the Flayed Skeleton is only available as the result of a successful "flay" attack (only the Draug Knight has this special). I suppose you could set things up so that you could recruit them, but why bother?

The Draug Knight is basically the Death Knight, but I made the unit have the same resistances as other skeletons instead of the generic undeadfoot. As a result I had to lower some of his other stats to reflect his superior resistances.

The Feral Skeleton line is essentially a human skeleton animated with the spirit of an animal. They are insane, but are quick and can do a lot of damage. However, they're also fairly fragile.

Spirit race tree will be next.

Peet

[peet]

OK, here's the spirit unit tree.

It includes a new leveling option from the Ghost, which is the "Void Spirit." I saw the sprites in someone else's incomplete faction and decided that I had to have units that looked like that.

Here's the description of the Void Spirit:

After feeding off the life force of living beings, sometimes a sprit loses it's self-awareness and becomes a thoughtless creature of pure negative power. These Void Spirits are defined by their never-ending hunger for life force which is passed through the spirit and into a plane of negative energy. This drain saps a living being's life force and will to live, and they tend to be sluggish and disoriented after such an attack.

Unlike most spirits, fire does little to hurt them because fire simply represents another source of energy for them, though sometimes fire can 'overload' the spirit's draining abilities. Cold attacks, however, do great damage to void spirits since such an attack draws heat energy out of the void spirit and into the mundane plane of existence. This also means that when two void spirits are made to fight they generally annihilate each other.

Also, there's some units with the weapon special "psionic." It's not curently implemented because I could never get it to work. Basically the idea was the the chance to hit would be dependent on the willpower & arcane knowledge of the enemy - it represented the howl of the wolf spirit which would strike terror into the hearts of living enemies. A stupid opponent would be easy to hit while a smart or magically powerful one would be difficult to hit. Furthermore I wanted to have high level units more resistant to this attack than low level ones. The only way to do it was to have a big list of filter_opponent by race and sometimes by unit, which never worked and slowed things down because I had so many separate parameters. So right now it just works like magical does.

Peet

[Drakefriend]

The Ghast has a totally other style then Necrophage and Ghoul.(but it would match the portrait better)

What is the Soulstealer special(Ghostblade,Banshee)?

[peet]

The Ghast has a totally other style then Necrophage and Ghoul.(but it would match the portrait better)

The Ghast image is taken from the campaign Descent into Darkness (and I think it appears in other campaigns as well). It seems to be based on the old image for the necrophage and was not updated when the sprites for the ghoul and necrophage were.

What is the Soulstealer special(Ghostblade,Banshee)?

Ah, I listed it above as "Soulbind." Sorry. It puts a Minor Spirit into play where the dead unit was.

Also, with the Flay and Soulbind powers there is about a 50% chance the created unit will have a trait that gives some disadvantages but also makes it loyal.

[Molean]

If a unit has "semi-aware" then it should not have mindlessness. Having level 2 with no upkeep is a bit much as it is anyway, so all your level 2 WC should be pretty weak for their level and/or require ALOT of experience to level (since without a mind, its hard to learn) Maybe just the latter, requiring alot of experience especially with a trait like semi-aware that removes the mindless trait but reduces experience required.