Legend of the Invincibles

[nachkar]

#AoE

What would you say about getting some 10 lethargy stacks at the end of attack (rather than with every hit?).

That works, much better both because the attack itself doesn't suffer, and because it's a fixed amount not in relation to the amount of attacks. So definitely a good idea. Also easely AMLA/Item-customisable I believe (An item could make it so that you get less lethargy on you for spellcasting? And an AMLA pretty easely).

#Spells vs weapons
1. Definitely a good idea, morespell damage on items and/or more spell penetration.
2. Yup more versatility, and I could easely see something like Doom be a spellthing rather (or in addition to) a weaponthing

#Tactical aspect

In LotI, I might prevent conviction from affecting physical damage (not psychical )

Definitely a good idea, as it seems (or so I've alwaysfelt) there's more penetration needed for elemental then for phys, or rather ennemies seem to generally have less phys res then elem (often ONE elem weakness and two elem strengths... but very few units can adapt or even develop multiple elemental attacks, so they end up sometimes strong and often screwed)

[Xellos]

EDITED
Dugi:
about #AoE:
good idea

#Spells vs weapons
i think that 2 is better, because in some parts magic is incredibly powerful (like when we fight against queen of darkness and we use arcane attacks ) (against demons it's ok)
the main problems with magic is, when we fight against last opponents (in both parts) we don't have enough sustain
I think that more interesting staves should be enough (some people will try more mages and they may find some interesting builds)

#Tactical aspect:
"The new thing uses no LotI code, so LotI's balance problems aren't getting there." - i tried to give you general advice's not lotl specific.
"(not psychical )" sorry
"Reducing the power of items would at this point lead to serious balance problems. " this should be counted as advice for next campaign
" I don't understand what you meant with increase hp and damage per hit two times so it will be easier to see difference from items and advancements."
Well. Spearman now: HP36 attack 7 3 - change it to HP72 and 41 3 attack
with that change it should be easier to balance amlas and give more fun with advancements and other small bonuses like few % for penetration - only idea for next campaign, think what you like and do what you want

Elvish Assassin:
Open save bug with legacy 2
go to 26,59 and pick Thraradril Elvish Assassin
attack with him undead wraith (24,59)
you will gain advancement
check if you can pick awareness
if not pick anything
open unit information and look at soul eating abilities (bottom part) and there should be information - legacy of something
repeat few times (it should give you different legacies each time you try)
i think that for some reason this unit didn't gain any legacy at the beginning ? Is this possible?
or maybe that is only visual?
I don't use any debug mode or something like that
it's my test run so i used save and load a lot of times if that can change anything
i had this problem (couldn't pick awareness as first advancement, didn't had it) only with elvish assassins - and that was few times

Pyromancer set:
Kills from firecast don't give exp
load bug with pyroset
pick elvish gryphon 29,49
look at exp bar
attack with him enemy unit on 24,48
hit enemy unit 2 times (1 attack plus firecast and second attack (enough damage to kills but firecast still work) melee attack
look at exp bar
my firecast worked with bow attack also
EDITED

[dabber]

In LotI, I might prevent conviction from affecting physical damage (not psychical ) or reduce the effect of warlord's rule.

I don't agree with those. Demons these days get huge physical resistance plenty often. Warlord's Rule is nice, but is not a major factor.

Interesting idea to make some enemies attackable only from one range, that should help make some enemies much nastier.

If you do it by enemy type (example: all Demon Despots), I might be okay with this. Making it a trait is awful though, because it forces checking all nearby enemies for the one super dangerous trait. (which, by the way, is why I really don't like Conviction 25 as a Demon trait. That trait is so much more dangerous than anything else that it makes sense to manually check every nearby enemy for it).

[Xellos]

Dugi wrote:
In LotI, I might prevent conviction from affecting physical damage (not psychical ) or reduce the effect of warlord's rule.

About this - I am with dabber
I think that you should divide this ability in new campaign (or even in lotl but then divide not remove half of it) (in lotl it requires a lot of work, because both parts should be available but i simply think that conviction 40% is better than leadership +40%) well i think that it is the best support ability - because at least +40% to damage is quite good, even better than warlord rule. Divide or limit is good but as i said it's a lot of work right now (for example - celestial messenger conviction to magic, prophet conviction to physical and shield to other unit like destroyer as bodyguard)

[Dugi]

#AoE
Okay. So it's agreed upon.

#Spells vs weapons
Okay, I will look for additional possibilities how to affect spells with items. Do the spell suck help with staff diversity?

#Conviction
The reason why I suggested removing the physical part from conviction without adding no physical conviction is that it has just been discussed that there are too many items affecting weapons and too little affecting spells. It would also add a reason to change damage type to a non-physical one even at the cost disabling of suck. Also, with demons who may get huge physical resistances, this would mean forcing your units to specialise on various enemy types rather than just making universal units. I am not removing items granting resistance penetration for these resistances.
As always, I am not totally adamant with this, but I think that working around the absence of physical conviction would help with balance.

#Enemies attackable only in one range
Regular demons with problematic traits might get some visual effects so that they would be easy to spot.
I wasn't planning to make a demon trait from this, but I think that it's a good suggestion.

@Xellos

Well. Spearman now: HP36 attack 7 3 - change it to HP72 and 41 3 attack
with that change it should be easier to balance amlas and give more fun with advancements and other small bonuses like few % for penetration - only idea for next campaign, think what you like and do what you want

I have designed a functionality that allows adjusting the difficulty of enemies depending on the estimated player's strength. So that if your team is well-geared and levelled, Bowmen will be much stronger, but still easier than Bowmen for a low level team. The functions defining the increase of damage are centrally defined to allow easy adjusting of difficulty accordingly to the evolution of usual players' strength.
I am adjusting the effectiveness of items every time I see something unbalanced. Making them weaker, as usual.

Elvish Assassin:...

The problem with Elvish Assassin is that he advances differently than all units. It's because of the rather strange implementation of the assassination attack. It's horribly buggy and I had trouble even getting it to work as much as it does now.
Is that attack even used? Maybe removing it would be easier than fix that.

Kills from firecast don't give exp

I forgot to implement it. I didn't want to make it work with bows, but later I forgot about it and made it work with bows. Which one do you think is better?

[Xellos]

Dugi:
assassination attack - execution? if yes then i don't care about it. i use it sometimes, but mostly during farming when i don't wanna kill enemy unit - more units attacking more exp
pyro set - good question, but i think the better answer is no, it should work only for melee because if it will work for ranged then fireball attack granted by this set would be useless.
this set is probably best for:
elvish gryphon rider - only if you're lucky and find sword before he advances for lvl 4
elvish assassin - (only if it will work for bows ) but assassin plus pyrosword would be incredibly strong (many attacks with focused and additional fireballs per hit? strong
Other possibility would be overall damage reduction for all weapons and then it can work for ranged attacks. what do you prefer
i think that it doesn't work with spells, but didn't check

"I have designed a functionality that allows adjusting the difficulty of enemies depending on the estimated player's strength."
interesting

few things more about dark dragon legacy
i think that even without slows it will be strong for some units
but now with slow its incredible, too incredible
my elvish seer with dark dragon legacy prefer dark dragon legacy breath - not faerie fire
i started with following advancements:
awareness, 2* (+2melee damage, +2% to magic resistances), +1 melee attack, arcane melee attack, 10% arcane resistance penetration
after this 6 advancements i could go with:
more arcane penetration 5% per AMLA
+1 attack for faerie fire
dark dragon legacy with breath and arcane penetration
after 4 more advancements i have breath attack with drain, slow, focused but 1 attack less and penetration (something like 17%) and 5% magic resistances
yes i could take +1 attack for faerie fire and 15% arcane penetration but i don't think that would be better.
X 7 magical and 15% penetration or X 5 focused drain slow +5% magical resistances 17% penetration?
I think that power of this advancements can be weakened a little more than slow only, some point or three of damage would also be good
i didn't face demons with my new seer yet but soloing during act when i fight against corrupted elves is easy.

[matsjoyce]

In 01_Diplomacy, Efraim says:

"The port is west from here, so we must hurry to get there before they destroy the ships in a desperate attempt to save us. I doubt I can fly a distance so long. Flying without wings is hard."

Shouldn't it be stop us or something similar, since those destroying the ships are enemies?

[Whiskeyjack]

I never used the execution attack on the assassin.

yes i could take +1 attack for faerie fire and 15% arcane penetration but i don't think that would be better.
X 7 magical and 15% penetration or X 5 focused drain slow +5% magical resistances 17% penetration?
I think that power of this advancements can be weakened a little more than slow only, some point or three of damage would also be good
i didn't face demons with my new seer yet but soloing during act when i fight against corrupted elves is easy.

I am not sure about this. The legacy is overpowered in c6/7 because the corrupted elves are weak against arcane, but demons are usually resistant against it and those are the main enemy in the following chapters (and seriously: those chapters are far longer (and have far longer scenarios)).

I rushed my DDL AMLAs on a couple of units in those early chapters but even before the slow nerf it didn´t feel particularly overpowered vs. demons. I fear that a further nerf might make it useless for the (more important?) parts of the campaign again.

[Ashes]

If we are able to choose the legacy when choosing the "awareness" advancement, then we don't need to have every legacy with the same effectiveness in part I and part II.
The balance of the game would only need that there is no choice that is better than every other.

Then, DDL should be nerfed because it is too powerful in part I. It will become useless in part II (unless on a unit with big arcane penetration) but that's not a big issue.

Another possibility, to have DDL interesting in both parts, is to include AMLA that reduce damage and increase penetration.

[nachkar]

Another possibility, to have DDL interesting in both parts, is to include AMLA that reduce damage and increase penetration.

Now that's pretty interesting, and would combine very interestingly on units with arcane melee attacks such as prophet, or units wielding the holy sword/that ring wich has tons of penalties but sets dmg to arcane
And I don't think it needs more nerfing, this change might reduce a bit of its (still high) power in some parts (where ennemies have arcane weakness), but probably not just straight nerfing more

[Dugi]

Okay, so for Elvish Assassin's execution attack, there is minimum use so it may be just an optional AMLA. Firecast will be disabled for ranged attacks. I am writing this on top because I want everyone to read it and disagree if he chooses so.

#Dark Dragon Legacy
From what you write, it appears like a quite reasonable solution to replace some damage advancements with arcane penetrate advancements or something of that kind. Does anybody have a problem with this?

@matsjoyce
You're right. Fixed.

[Xellos]

DDL
8 advancements = +4 meleee damage; +9% arcane, fire, cold resistances, breath attack 11 - 6 drain, focused, arcane penetration 21%
i think that is quite good - penetration is worth 4 advancements, damage 4 advancements
for free you gain good bonus to resistances and incredibly powerful attack (in some acts)
i think that even with 1 attack less this is quite good deal
and even with 1 attack less it it's very good attack against undeads and corrupted units
and ok against demons

[Whiskeyjack]

Exterminator has an AMLA to get marksman for knives despite having it from the start.

Edit: As my understanding of WML is not that good yet and I´m not especially interested in testing every single case: Can someone tell me, which aura boni for offense and defense are stackable and wich aren´t? (I´m especially referring to: Legacy of Kings, Warlords Rule, Tome of Bards I/II, other items (Frienly General, Colossal Anihilation, etc.), Leadership, %damage aura (like Krux´´s) - did I forget something important?)

Charge, backstab are always stackable with the above, aren´t they?

Also: In which order do boni like steadfast/adamant and the boni above apply?

Does a positive effect always overwrite negative ones (antisocial etc.)?

I know that conviction takes the first conviction in effect, even if a unit with a stronger one moves next to the enemy, it still leaves the weaker effect active. Is this the same for despair? (or does despair stack?)

[Xellos]

Whiskeyjack:
about WML
all aura damage buffs (with the exception of warlord rule) are count as Leadership bonus.
Your unit can be affected by Leadership from 1 source(1 unit)
Your unit should be always affected by warlord rule and charge and backstab
Your unit should be affected by best Leadership available - that;s answer about negative effects
Leadership on unit often stacks (in my tests almost always)
it's possible to have quite big bonuses like Leadership 6, warheart (bonus +10%) - +60% to damage for lvl4 units and warlord(+50% after first bonus) on top of this - and this is easy
bonuses to defense stacks from - i have unit with shield and legacy of kings and it stacks for +40% to resistances, they stacks from different sources also

"Also: In which order do boni like steadfast/adamant and the boni above apply?"
they are last, after all others
but after my first Void Armour i think that is not important

i don't understand why but:
antisocial +legacy of kings on 1 unit stacks (-20 + 25 = +5)
antisocial +royal diadem (royalty special rule - similar to legacy of kings) was counted as royalty only
if i remember corretly

[dabber]

If you want to make Conviction apply only to arcane,cold,fire, make another ability that applies to physical. And I would give Celestial Messenger and Faerie Incarnation the physical ability, just at a lower level than Conviction. To me, their main value is in assisting other units, and removing the physical debuff entirely greatly reduces their value.