Traits: Toughness, Sharpeye, Dodge & Frenetic

[schedal]

Hello, these traits should be simple, I've checked around and couldn't find these proposed/rejected; but there are so many places to look, I may have missed it [if there is a good place to look, please let me know]

Toughness:

provides a +10% resistance increase to unit to all damage types.

possible units/races who could receive it:
dwarves, trolls, woos, nagas, human hv. inf., drake clasher

Sharp-eye:

provides a +10% chance to hit an opponent when using a ranged weapon.

possible units/races that could receive trait:
all elves, dwarvish thunderer, drake burner, poacher, human bowman, orcish archer, orcish assassin

Dodge:

unit is 10% harder to hit in all terrain types [up to a maximum of 70% defense]

possible units/races that could receive trait:
saurian skirmisher/augur, dwarvish ulfserker, theif, footpad, fencer, orcish assassin, goblins [might be too powerful for a goblin though... would need testing], bats

Frenetic [or Frenzy]:

unit receives one additional melee attack but heals at -2HP/turn

in other words, after all calculations concerning healing, subtract 2 from total to know actual healing received by fanatic-trait unit.

If this "-2HP healing" rule is too complex, substitute this flaw with 10% less HP [as per negative of quick].

possible units/races that could receive trait:
drake fighter, saurian skirmisher, dwarvish ulfserker, thief, merman fighter, hum hvy inf., fencer, orcish grunt, goblins [might be too pwoerful on a goblin, would need to playtest], wolf rider, bats


--

There you go,

Perhaps one or more of these traits will appeal to the community.

With kind,

Sebastian

[Chris NS]

The main problem with most of these traits is that the current randomly-generated traits (strong, dexterous, intelligent, quick, resilient and healthy) are only intended to add "flavour" to the units rather than significantly beef them up. Loyal and fearless were both dropped from regular units because they both turned out to be overpowered. Most of the traits you suggest are probably more powerful than you think.

However, there's no reason why these kinds of traits couldn't be used for individual units in campaigns. No recruited unit get the loyal trait, but most of the characters in a campaign are loyal. If you look at the WML to describe traits, it shouldn't be too hard to program in any of these.

[Stilgar]

Most of these have been proposed before in some form or another, I think.

[Clonkinator]

Yup, definitively not going to happen in mainline, and I believe I can recall to have seen at least some of them proposed before. Imo they're way overpowered. Nothing prevents you from giving them to units in custom scenarios/campaigns though...

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Sharp-eye is essentially a weaker version of giving a unit a marksman attack.

[schedal]

cool, thanks for the insight that these traits might be too powerful.


btw, as 'sharpeye' is a weak version of marksman... wouldn't that make it ok as a trait?


seb.

[Chris NS]

Actually, I'd disagree with CarpeGuitarrem here. A +10% chance to hit would, I think, be about as equally powerful as "Marksman", and, in some cases, more powerful. Apart from the "Elusive" units (e.g. Fencers, Footpads, Thieves, Orcish Assasins), marksman would only be more powerful against units in villages or mountains. Against units in forests or hills, the two are equal, and on open ground, there would be a huge 70% chance to hit.

If you reduced the bonus from 10%, you could weaken the power until, eventually, it's the same power as the other traits. (5%? 3%?) But there's also the question of what these traits offer that the existing traits don't. Both "sharp-eye" and dexterous improve a unit's ranged attack. True, one will be slightly more advantageous than the other in certain situations, but I can't see how anyone would vary use between the two. Toughness and dodge are also tactically similar to resilient. And all three of these characteristics, as traits, have a further disadvantage that to avoid overpowering units, you'd have to reduce the bonuses below 10%. As Wesnoth's defences currently work in multiples of 10%, this would be messy.

To be honest, you'll have a hell of a job persuading the devs to included any new traits at the moment, because they have already looked at additional traits in the 1.3 branch and only 1½ traits made it in the end. But, as I said, any of these traits would have potential in a custom campaign, where individual units can be as weak or powerful as you like, and the rest of the campaign can be balanced around it,

[Aethaeryn]

A dodge/resilient bat would be immortal. I don't like the idea of giving elusivefoot/fliers an extra 10% dodge, they're hard enough to kill non-magical as-is.

An extra strike on many of the units you recommended would be very powerful, but especially the inaccurate grunt who has high damage but two strikes.

I'd give all my elvish archers with sharp-eye the elvish marksman upgrade and they'd become instant magical units. (Of course, since it goes to all elves, I'd be more concerned about sharp-eyed druids becoming sorceresses and having 80% chance-to-hit).

I doubt dwarves, especially stalwarts, need extra resistances.

Summary: Not only are these all overpowered, they're magnified by some of the units you suggested to give them to. Units like bats get unhittable while a strong/frenetic grunt would hit more often and magnify his brute strength in strikes. Marksman units could become magical units in all but name of their ability, and dwarves could become impossible to damage (or drakes on their non-weakness attack types).

I suggest you play the game more often, and make sure it's the development branch, and ask yourself if you want to be pushed into the situation where you have to fight bat spam where half of them wind up with 70% dodge.

Also note that most if not all traits (not abilities) are racial and not determined on a unit-by-unit basis.

[schedal]

right, good comments, noted.

[irrevenant]

Has anyone considered the possibility of making traits like the above suggestions (which are unique, but too powerful to count as a single trait) count as two traits?

[JW]

Has anyone considered the possibility of double traits? Either just as doublings of current traits "Strong, Strong" = "Very Strong", or as traits like the above suggestions which are unique, but too powerful to count as a single trait?

Well, it would be interesting indeed....but double-strong would be too good.

7-4 elvish fighter for 14g? 6-4 naga for the same? I think it is possible if you list the trait twice in the race description (double-traits), but I don't think "super traits" like "very strong" are possible (that is to say 1 elite trait over 2 good traits). If I'm wrong please let me know though: I'd like to know how to code that if possible.

[irrevenant]

Well, it would be interesting indeed....but double-strong would be too good.

Yeh, I came to that conclusion too. I had edited my post but unfortunately the forum was flaking out and didn't let me post the edit before you read and replied.

My comment now just applies to new, powerful trait ideas.

[krotop]

Sharp-eye might be even more powerful than marksman, as it seems to be effective also for defense, while marksman is limited to attack.

[Viliam]

I like irrevenant's idea of having special traits with "trait cost" 2. It is not possible with the current engine, but maybe developers would like to support it.


If we want to talk about usefulness of traits, it would be good to consider how they will influence different unit types. Some traits are universally good -- I think nobody will complain about increasing movement speed for any unit. Some traits can be useless for the wrong unit -- for example increasing chance to hit with range attack for unit which does not have range attack. However we can specify which units can receive which traits, filtering out units where the trait would be either useless or too strong.

So maybe the new traits should be discussed if they would be balanced on some specific group of unit types. If yes, they could be added to this group - and nowhere else.

And we could possibly make even unit-type-specific traits. How about "skilled" Elvish Shaman who cures 5HP/turn instead of 4?

[schedal]

Actually movement is not a good example because a +1move is far more useful to a move 4 unit than a unit which already moves 8.

I know a few dwarvish players who jump for joy every time one of their dwarves get's the +1move trait... as do I if a create a goblin at 5 move...


This is not to say though that +1move isn't good for all units; but its definetely more significant to the short-legged-ones...


If we are going to customize those lists of avail-traits to units, and I saw another posting somewhere about adding in the description: "avail traits: ____, ____, ____, ____" - then I think it would also be worth our time to remove the "strong" trait from a few units which can currently receive it. Though its not useless, it's certainly not very useful when a mage or orcish assassin gets the strong skill, and as far as I remember [could be wrong] this is still possible...

btw sharp-eye trait could also have had the same 'attack only' limitation [and a max % hit of 60%] as marksman, frenzy could also be limited to attack only. Dodge and toughness could increase your defense/resistance only if you are defending. The list of potential units could also be curtailed more sharply. But really, I understand that these traits cover same areas as other traits, only in different ways, and are potentially too powerful, so I've already abandoned them.