Aligned attacks

[Simons Mith]

A throwaway idea I had while mulling the paladin problem in another thread.

In Wesnoth, units are aligned, but the only effect of alignment is to alter their attack damage.

So, why not apply alignments to attacks instead? Consider a Lawful paladin with a Chaotic 'Smite evil' attack which he can use at night when his undead foes are most active. Or a mostly neutral dwarf with a lawful attack that is more effective during daytime.

I'm not seriously advocating this for any particular purpose, but AFAIK it is a novel idea so I thought I'd spread it around.

[Edit] Oops, thinking on it some more, a paladin with a chaotic 'Smite Evil at night' attack is a very poor example, because such an attack would work equally well for nocturnal smiting of good - after all, it's just a standard chaotic attack. That doesn't affect the idea itself, though.

[Ken_Oh]

TL's Heroes' Arena has a "smite" ability that makes your unit do more damage against chaotic units. I guess making it active only during certain times of day would get the effect you're talking about.

[Thrawn]

This sounds cool...one clarification though:

lets say a paladin with this attacks at night. Although the attack gets +25%, wouldn't the units alignment mean the attack gets -25%. although it would still be useful (like illuminate), just wondering if that is how it would work, or what?

Just thinking of this and the word "smite", I thought of something kinda similar--attacks that do more against certain races.

[Simons Mith]

[Thrawn] Programmatically, I would suggest 'weapon alignment overrides unit alignment' rather than applying both.

[Edit] And a name for your idea; it could be termed elfbane, dwarfbane, trollbane, etc. Perhaps 'XXX slayer' as an alternative simile when smiting orcs, drakes and the like.

[Boucman]

the term alignment is wrongly named in wesnoth... it only says if the unit is diurnal or nocturnal.

there is no reason for a weapon to be diurnal...

[Gauteamus]

there is no reason for a weapon to be diurnal...

except in the case of Archimedean parabolic mirror city-defences
But I guess such extremes can be handled graciously in other ways than suggested by the OP

[Viliam]

there is no reason for a weapon to be diurnal...

Yes there is... if the weapon is very difficult to operate in darkness. For example crossbow.

[Viliam]

But I guess such extremes can be handled graciously in other ways than suggested by the OP

In custom scenario, there could be a WML event in the beginning of each turn, which would adjust the weapons, or maybe completely disable them, as required.

[Dave]

the term alignment is wrongly named in wesnoth... it only says if the unit is diurnal or nocturnal.

Well, scientifically from a modern real world standpoint, this might technically be correct, but it's not so in Wesnoth.

In Wesnoth, day and night are not seen simply as scientific events where the world is rotated such that the play area is directly lit by the sun or not. Rather, day time is a time when powerful lawful forces are at work. Where ordinary people fear safer, in the security of the light of day. Night time is seen as a dark scary time of chaos; a time where the powers of chaos come to life, and chaotic creatures not seen during the day go about their deeds.

David

[CarpeGuitarrem]

That's a very interesting idea. And you know what...

Wow, this just seems crazy. What if...we did away with the lawful-chaotic distinction for units, or made it a non-hardcoded distinction, and instead made attacks lawful/chaotic/neutral? Units like the Spearman could remain the same, but just have a lawful melee and lawful ranged attack, but other units could have both classifications of attack...

[Jetrel]

the term alignment is wrongly named in wesnoth... it only says if the unit is diurnal or nocturnal.

Well, scientifically from a modern real world standpoint, this might technically be correct, but it's not so in Wesnoth.

In Wesnoth, day and night are not seen simply as scientific events where the world is rotated such that the play area is directly lit by the sun or not. Rather, day time is a time when powerful lawful forces are at work. Where ordinary people fear safer, in the security of the light of day. Night time is seen as a dark scary time of chaos; a time where the powers of chaos come to life, and chaotic creatures not seen during the day go about their deeds.

Dave, can you please wake up and admit that this has always been a mistake?

You pulled this out of the general lexicon of D&D games, but used it for a different purpose - which is bad, because it has a very different meaning in wesnoth, and a meaning that no longer makes sense without a complicated explanation to justify it. It also has a lot of connotations that also no longer necessarily apply, like good/evil, or "orderly/lawless" in behaviour. Your explanation is very contrived, I don't really care if you buy into it; I don't. My view on wesnoth is that there are plenty of equally scary things that wander around in broad daylight, like drakes and bad people, and that there are plenty of areas in wesnoth where -nothing- scary is wandering around at night, because it's civilized and safe. There's just not enough story evidence to support what you're trying to drum up; there aren't any anecdotes in any of our content about people living in fear of the night, or anything related. The only time this whole idea ever comes up is when you try to defend the naming of this thing. It would totally make sense if this was some RPG, and certain monsters would only spawn during the "dark, chaotic night", but it's not. So let it go already.



I suggest we call our alignments: "Night", "Neutral", and "Day". This needs no explanation, and makes sense to anyone on the first read.




It made sense in D&D, because the terms meant what their dictionary meaning was - for example, a lawful evil character, like darth vader, did great evil, but had a strict attachment to rules and order, and often did evil in the interests of said rules and order; he was also very predictable. Meanwhile, a chaotic good character like han solo, did good things, but did so by generally breaking established rules, and acting unpredictably.

[Sovereign]

why not get rid of the keywords and make it individual, eg with the palidin if it has a 'night' attack so what but if due to his training he can use an extrodanary attack at night to protect the villigers while they are most vulnurable it makes the unit a lot more unique and special

[Simons Mith]

A very off-base idea: Doesn't one of the translations actually term lawful and chaotic as 'day-fearing' and 'night-fearing' (or 'night-loving' and 'day-loving', I'm not sure which way round it is)? Maybe the associated foreign-language terms could be back-ported into the English-language version of the game? Leaving them as untranslated foreign terms might restore a bit of the mystique lost by abandoning 'lawful' and 'chaotic'. Either that or we just keep 'lawful' and 'chaotic' forever more and tolerate these terms as one of Wesnoth's endearing little quirks

[TruePurple]

A paladins sword could act like its under the influence of illumination. Working like its day during the evening-morning and like its evening-morning during the night. Further illumination wouldn't stack.

This illumination effect could apply to that which it attacks too(but only for that attack and not for any other units) So that it would do extra damage to chaotic units during any time except the day unless a mage of lights or some other illumination is already effecting it.

There could be a dark version of this too.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

why not get rid of the keywords and make it individual, eg with the palidin if it has a 'night' attack so what but if due to his training he can use an extrodanary attack at night to protect the villigers while they are most vulnurable it makes the unit a lot more unique and special

That's what I said in my post.