Orcish Shaman in UMC-MP

[Bitron]

I'm not that sure if it's the right corner, but i'll just try. Right now im working on a faction, who are kinda allied to the orcish tribes for a couple of years. This is why some of the Orcish Shamans chose to fight side by side with the faction im working on.
The question now is, how flexible the orcish Shamans are. The novice orcish shaman is quite weak for its 21G costs and i'd like to make them a bit stronger but without hurting lore.
First of all, the three shamans (novice orcish shaman, orcish shaman and old orcish shaman) are lvl 1 units and i'd like to change it so I can use orcish as lvl2 advantancement and the old one as lvl3 unit.
Second thing is its attacks. I don't really care about the melee one but its ranged attack is 7-2 + drain, wich seems weak to me compared to e.g. a Mage in a Multiplayer match up.
Are they able to do another, maybe magical attack?
I had the Idea of keeping them (almost) the way they are, but simply adding another magical attack to make them more suitable for a mp-faction. But like I said I still want them to fit the lore.
Any Ideas?

[zookeeper]

I don't think there's much specific lore regarding the shamans in that regard. Different shamans could have somewhat different magical abilities [*], some could be physically much stronger, and so on. The SotBE shamans are probably as weak as they are mainly for gameplay purposes, and I see no reason why orcish shamans in general would need to be quite that frail.

[*] I'd expect orcish magic to be more about curses, enchantment, scrying, spirits of ancestors and that sort of thing, and less about directly manipulating physical reality. So possibly some wouldn't have actual spells as attacks at all, but only abilities, and/or some might be able to inflict new kinds of status effects. There's probably quite a bit of different concepts one could come up with.

[skeptical_troll]

The idea I have formed in my mind after playing SotBE is that shamans are very important in the orcish society, but they are not employed in war as, for example, mages by human or druids and similar by elves. I'm actually using one for a UMC campaign I'm working on, and I depict him more as a shaman of native-american tribes rather than medieval-like wizards.
From the gameplay point of view I tend to agree with Zookeeper in that I'd imagine them as frail units with useful abilities like healing, leadership and so on. I suppose that if an orc sees a shaman in danger he would fight with more vigour to protect him.

[Delicius169]

I was already thinking about it and I thought about making orcish shaman healers through sacrifices. Some kind of blood magic. In LOTI there is an ability Aura of Hunger- which gives every adjancent unit drain ability (thought it heals just 25% of enemy health), so how about giving this shaman same ability but with lesser number? 10/15 % ?

[Eagle_11]

It's attack could be considered powerful under the right conditions, as damage type is arcane(most units have vulnerability to), unit is chaotic so +25% at night, and has drain spec at ranged attack to boot(fe. Ghosts need to get into melee for draining in comparison.). Drawback is that it has -only- 2 strikes at range and being fragiler than most northerner units is mostly in danger of getting one-shotted.
As being an shaman it should have atleast ability unpoison if not the weakest heal ability.
How i did them for use on my end, is only 2 level instead 3:
Orcish Shaman to Orcish witchdoctor. There is an Hex spec(you can find in ageless era or era of four moons) that lowers target's defenses until gets cured by village. Have given that on lvl2's melee attack, added unpoison for lvl1 and heals +4 for lvl2.
Northerners are spammy faction, if you give them strong healer then the faction contradicts itself(in a sense).

[Bitron]

Some lovely tipps in here, thanks to all of you.

As it says in the original unit description, orcish shamans are supposed to be (physically) weaker than other orcs.

I'd expect orcish magic to be more about curses, enchantment, scrying, spirits of ancestors and that sort of thing, and less about directly manipulating physical reality. So possibly some wouldn't have actual spells as attacks at all, but only abilities, and/or some might be able to inflict new kinds of status effects. There's probably quite a bit of different concepts one could come up with.

Totally agree with that. Personally I love the drain - curse aspect of the orcish shamans and i think ill dig a bit deeper in that.

The idea I have formed in my mind after playing SotBE is that shamans are very important in the orcish society, but they are not employed in war as, for example, mages by human or druids and similar by elves. I'm actually using one for a UMC campaign I'm working on, and I depict him more as a shaman of native-american tribes rather than medieval-like wizards.
From the gameplay point of view I tend to agree with Zookeeper in that I'd imagine them as frail units with useful abilities like healing, leadership and so on. I suppose that if an orc sees a shaman in danger he would fight with more vigour to protect him.

Well, they are physically weak and important to the orcish society, but (also readable in the race description) due to her magical power not to underestimate in a fight. I really think i'm going to make them having two lvl 2 advantancements to choose. One as an enchancer and one as some kind of badass witchcraft damage dealer.

I was already thinking about it and I thought about making orcish shaman healers through sacrifices. Some kind of blood magic. In LOTI there is an ability Aura of Hunger- which gives every adjancent unit drain ability (thought it heals just 25% of enemy health), so how about giving this shaman same ability but with lesser number? 10/15 % ?

This is quite a nice ability. I'll check that out, though i think it is a bit overpowered. but ill try it anyways, maybe I can find a way to implement it without it beeing to powerful.

It's attack could be considered powerful under the right conditions, as damage type is arcane(most units have vulnerability to), unit is chaotic so +25% at night, and has drain spec at ranged attack to boot(fe. Ghosts need to get into melee for draining in comparison.).

This is pretty much like I want the shaman to be. Strong at times, but also frail under wrong circumstances.

As being an shaman it should have atleast ability unpoison if not the weakest heal ability.

Like I said, Im playing around with giving them two advantancements, one for healing/cure and/or some other enchancements, and a darker one.
Maybe like this:
Shaman > Witcher > Warlock (Drain, Damage)
--------- > Oracle (Heal/Cure)

Once again, thanks for helping me out. I'll concider it.
Any further suggestions are still welcome. (:

[Bitron]

What about this for example:

l e v e l 1

Orcisch Shaman
G:20 | HP: 25 | MP: 5 | XP: 44
Abilities: Cure
[M] 5-2 Staff
[R][A] 7-2 curse (drain)

l e v e l 2

Orcish Augur
G:40 | HP: 40 | MP: 5 | XP: 100
Abilities: Heal +4, Cure
[M] 6-2 Staff
[R][F] 7-3 ancestral fire (magical)
----
Orcish Witcher
G:40 | HP: 43 | MP: 5 | XP: 100
[M] 4-2 staff
[R] 6-3 cripple (slow)
[R][A] 9-3 curse (drain)

l e v e l 3

[b]Orcish Warlock[/b]
G:55 | HP: 55 | MP: 5 | XP: 150
[M][I] 3-2 staff
[R][C] 7-4 cripple (slow)
[R][A] 12-3 curse (drain)

[ForestDragon]

pretty interesting

[Bitron]

I really like the idea an ability like Aura of Hunger, but i'd like to stick as close as possible to mainline, this is why i am try to use mainline-stuff only.
Just now I've uploadet a new version, in wich the orcish shaman is implemented like in my last post. If someone is interested in testing them, the era is "Default + Vilkai" on Wesnoth the 1.12 Addon-Server.
Any feedback is welcome. (: