Wose Faction

[Phyreprooph]

Yeh no harm done wasn't trying to sound condescending either, sorry about that. What i was trying to say was that people aren't going to know that that's the idea behind it if it's name is so different to what it actually is. The only real way you could do that is the write in it's description or something, i dunno.

Thanks for some of those ideas too. Might use some of them. I don't particularly like the idea of swords either it was just, needed something to work off. Might go and work on some of that.

[shadowblack]

A few descriptions for Wose units. None are final, mind you:

Burning Wose

Woses don’t like fire. Some hate it, some fear it, but all dislike it – at least initially. The reason is that fire is very dangerous for most woses. But not for all. Occasionally a wose will get set on fire, and discover that nothing bad happens to it. For reasons unknown some woses are completely immune to fire. Even after years of being engulfed in flames they remain unhurt. Such woses are known as Burning Woses. They can no longer hide among regular trees and so cannot ambush enemies, but they get to use fire as a new and dangerous weapon.

Wose Fire Shaman (first version)

Over time some Burning Woses learn to control the fire that envelopes them. As result their fire attacks become even more powerful. More importantly, they learn to form and throw fireballs at enemies, providing them with a deadly ranged attack.

Wose Fire Shaman (second version)

Over time some Burning Woses learn to control the fire that envelopes them. As result their fire attacks become even more powerful. More importantly, they learn to form and throw fireballs at enemies, providing them with a deadly ranged attack. And last, but not least, they learn to extinguish and ignite the fire that normally engulfs. As a result they regain the ability to ambush enemies by hiding among normal trees.

The second would justify giving this unit the Ambush ability normal woses have.

Sickly Wose

Occasionally, a wose will catch some sort of tree decease. Initially the illness has no effect other than slowing down the rate at which the wose regenerates, making it little more than a nuisance.

Sick Wose

As time passes the decease that afflicts the wose gets more serious. The result of this is that the tree sap of the wose becomes poisonous. If such tree sap comes in contact with another living creature the victim will get poisoned. This makes Sick Woses a lot more dangerous than one would guess by looking at their unhealthy appearance.

Plague Wose

Over time some sick woses manage to gain control of the decease that afflicts them. They learn to direct the poison inside their body as they desire. Most of the time the poison is kept in specially grown fruits near the top of their branches. These fruits seem rotting to other creatures and so have become known as Rotting Fruits – not the most original of names but the woses don’t care. Also, these woses can produce poisonous sap at will, allowing them to cover their branches with it whenever they deem it necessary. Finally, because they now have control of it the decease does not slow down the woses’ regeneration and it is back to normal level.

Few people manage to get away healthy after coming in contact with a poisonous wose. Because of that such woses have become known by their enemies as Plague Woses.


Descriptions for Wose Sentry and Guardian Wose – later.

I don’t see why “guardian” should be associated with shields and armor. As long as a creature guards a place it can be called a guardian no matter what sort of creature it is, and this applies to woses too.

A possible name for an attack that slows enemies: Stun Spore.

[boru]

I love the tumble weed idea. Dude that's like legendary. I have no idea how sprites for it would work but if you could give it a try that'd be win.

Glad you like the idea. Sorry, the frankensteins you're doing are far better than anything I could draw for you. Once you get a bit deeper into this, you ought to be able to get a real artist interested.

[Phyreprooph]

Yeh those descriptions are great hey. What do you suggest each on looks like, I'm not particularly incline to set a wose on fire say "This is a 'Burning Wose'." Know what I mean?

For the sickly woses, who likes the idea of a sort of shrivelled up purpley greeny "sick" wose that doesn't look too happy. Then as he levels up he could get more and more disgusting have stuff oozing out of his body. Just a thought.

As far as a Wose with armour goes. it was more just me messing around. I'm not inclined to have metal on the woses, it doesn't match. For a guardian i was thinking more of a hard skinned wose who's big and beefy and has a sort of shell on his back, like an armadillo sort of. Or for them to have like natural armour that grows out of them, like their arm grows out into a round sheild. Sort of like a mushroom.

...and now I'm thinking why I didn't think of a mushroom before...
Well I know what I'm trying next.

[boru]

Any chance you could make the burning wose a giant chili pepper? It might be nutty but I think it would be awesome.

[Phyreprooph]

I'll give it a try. Just for you.

[Phyreprooph]

Hahaha wow this looks so silly. I gave an attempt at a mushroom/sick wose but it's all just one colour palette. Kinda funny though. Check him out! You'll have to zoom in to see his buldging bits.

Sickly Wose.png (1.31 KiB) Viewed 4221 times

I think I'll stick with the purpley greeny oozing man for this one. The sick wose can take the archer position. I like the idea of spitting ook on someone cause them to burn to death. It's "sick health could be the reason why it can't melee very well, so it just goes around throwing up on people. Only comment on the mushie if you feel like you definitely have to. It was short lived. We can still implement mushrooms into the better sick wose though. Might work out better that way. =]

[Phyreprooph]

Alrighty. Here's my second attempt. Looking very sick. Wondering though, should he be looking less sick or more sick for the level one. I was also pondering on a name, instead of Plague wose for the last one. How about abomination wose? It could be like totally gross with heaps of bulging bits and maybe some ick coming out of it's mouth like it's about to explode.
Critique please. Still feel like it's missing a few things. =\

Plus in reference your descriptions. The Fire shaman wose or whatever it's called shouldn't be able to ambush, it can make up for that by being stupidly powerful.

[iBaLkiD]

No reason you cant have non wose in the faction such as animals that depend on wose. Like Birds of prey who may nest in the branches of a wose. Maybe predatory animals like large cats of prey. Or a Wose unit can have an animals as an attack.

Just thinking out loud. I think this faction has a lot of interesting potential.

[Phyreprooph]

Yeh definately. You could even throw in some elves if you had too. Both races are closely related considering the woses are more fairy than they are tree. =\ I was also thinking of making a "half-elf half-wose" unit. Might be interesting to try out.

[Phyreprooph]

Here's the level two sick wose. I just worked from the sickly for this one so he might look a bit similar but he is the next level so it should be alright.

Sick Wose.png (1.91 KiB) Viewed 4166 times

Critique please. =]

[Phyreprooph]

Here's a re-do of the Sick Wose. He's a bit bigger. More different to the sickly wose to differentiate.

Sick Wose.png (1.94 KiB) Viewed 4092 times

[Dixie]

Ok, I'll be honest, I haven't read all the posts, I read the first few one, looked at the sprites and the big titles/names...

Honnestly, imho, a faction needs to have a theme and flavor to be interesting. That's as much strategy-wise as art-wise. I don't think you can just go about making a generic faction with a unit for every specialty. I mean, sure, they need some sort of damage dealer, and range specialist, and etc. But huh...

Ok, I'm expressing myself badly. First, what do you want to be the ind of gameplay of the faction? All-out aggressive? Defensive? Right now, the main characteristics of woses are: slow, strong, lots of HPs (resistant), regenerate, low defense, resistant to most melee (but blades, somewhat), but weak to fire. I think you should mainly keep this, and making some knight wose with metal equipment is clearly out of character (imho). They might have a more resistant unit fire and blade-wise, (or at least blade-wise), that could act as some sort of obvious weakness counter (much like the drakes' clasher and saurians), and a more elusive one, perhaps (the shrub-thing was a good idea), but I they they should generaly stick to the main wose's characteristics. They kinda are like vegetal trolls, I think. I'd also stick with them being a mostly melee-oriented faction, not too many range units.

There's also the theme thing. Seasonal woses are not that bad, but I'm not convinced it's really the way to go. Ain't sure about that "sick wose" either, and I definitely don't like the burning one. But then it's your call.

Ok, some ideas for units:

- A cactus-type line of unit could be funny. Least physical resistances but no more fire-weakness, plus pierce damage instead of impact. A good drake counter.

- The shrub one would be more evasive but with least HPs or somewhat weaker in some way. It could possibly have skirmisher, or slow, or something like this. It could possibly be somewhat of a scout with 6 or 7 MPs. Do note, though, that having the slow + poison duo in the same faction (even worse with the generalized regen) might be somehow huh... too epic? I dunno.

- An appletree wose with impact range, or something like that. Could be the second range specialist appart from their shaman line.

Plus the shaman and the generic wose lines. So you'd already have five main unit lines, with obvious counters to most all mainline factions. You might want to add one or two more lines, though. Possibly a wose counter, wielding either blade or fire damage. Problem is, metal wouldn't fit (imho), and fire is of doubtful use. I'd still go with fire, but they should be weak to impact to compensate (and maybe somewhat weak to pierce too, so the cactus gets plus value?) It could be some kind of variant of the shaman, perhaps. And thunderbolts might be more fitting than fireballs? I dunno.

Other ideas could include:
- Alga-like or water lily wose, a water specialist;
- If you absolutely want a poisoning one, maybe a mushroom wose, with a preference for caves and ambush in mushroom groves, would be preferable? Maybe it could even be chaotic or something! Or it could have some other effect, to your preference;
- Maybe a conifer (pinetree or something), possibly with cold damage, or something, I dunno (mostly for art-variety, actually). Variant with palm trees could be possible too. Maybe instead of being different units, they could all be normal woses, but with a randomizer of sprite sets upon recruiting? It could reflect the varieties of trees. You could also have other variants then the oak on, like weeping willows or other european-type trees;
- If you want more pierce or don't like the cactus, you could come up with thorny ones, like roses bushes or stuff.

Well anyway, I don't have any more ideas and comment. Take what you like, leave what you don't. It's your project after all

[Phyreprooph]

I understand what you mean by making them a "variety" of trees, but that's nor particularly what I'm after. I completely understand that weapons and armour are out of the question. Those were more just tests and are not going to be used. I am definitely keeping the main theme of slow and powerful with maybe the exception of the scout. They stay weak to fire with the exception of maybe a mage-like wose. I don't really like the idea of using the bush wose although it looks pretty cool, it's not much different to the original wose except for it's lack of body and arms.

The woses are definitely a power focused race with obvious weaknesses and resistances which is much like any other race. If they are to fight the drakes who will most likely rape them due to their weakness to fire, then I am obviously going to make a unit that gives them the chance of beating them, just depends on how you go about it strategically.

As far as units goes:

-I'm planning on keeping the mainline woses as the main fighting units as the only attack they have is a melee attack.

-The sick woses who are a bit abstract can be changed quite easily, the sprites I have done are mere tests because right now I have no proper sprite artist on board with this project. I tried a mushroom which is on here somewhere but it was a completely failure so i tried doing a sick wose instead which looks much better in my opinion.

-I like the idea of the cactus wose and i was thinking probably a second fighting unit that's maybe a bit more mixed. You know like one of those characters that have more than one melee attack. He would be like a guardian or a defensive wose.

-The scout I'm going to keep as the scout for now because the like i said the bush is too similar to the original wose. I was thinking maybe a level 0 unit as the bush wose instead of the sapling because it's stupid to be able to buy the sapling and the wose. Who would do that? Just buy the wose. The bush would be like a different level 0 like the walking corpse or the goblin spearman who only has one more level up.

-A mage wose I guess would have to be like a fire wose because that's simply what everyone would expect. I don't like the idea of lighting a wose on fire but I do like the idea of an autumnal wose, maybe you could have a normal mage wose which could evolve into a fire-user and an ice-user. Though obviously the sprites would be different then re-coloured woses.

-A water-based wose is definitely going in there some where but I'm still wondering how to do that with out making it looks like a pokemon.

Last thing to keep in mind, woses aren't trees. They resemble trees and look like trees but they are not trees. They are fantasy creatures that are very much fairies.
For the last idea as far as the relationship in game goes between the woses and the fairies, possibly a half-wose half-human/elf/fairy. I really like that idea. Just putting it out there.

[wesfreak]

Just popping in to say you could use the walking corpse version of a wose for the sickly wose.