Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

Making these Cursed would seem to be thematic, and would make people think twice before sticking them on their SC Pretender, I am guessing. We'd still be giving them to every Wraith and Bane Lord, but I am wondering what those who think the Life Drain weapons need to be nerfed think about this?

Enough of a nerf or no?

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

Too much of a nerf, I'd say. Curse is nothing to laugh about. A horror mark, on the other hand is less severe in its everyday effects, but when the unit draws the short straw, it might very well be toast.

Then there is the problem of the Blood Thorn being a lifedrain weapon AND a path booster, which would make getting a horror mark from it decidedly unappealing when you want to boost ritual casting skills.

Edi

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

I like the idea. Right now lifedrain weapons are pretty much a nobrainer, with curse you would still stick them on most units, but you would think twice before doing it.

I´d still stick lifedraining weapons on my undead, waterqueens and airqueens, but for most of the other scs I´d have to evaluate if it´s worth it.

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

Sounds like a pretty good idea. A curse would effectively limit the lifetime of the SC since it would be getting battle afflictions on a pretty regular basis. But perhaps it would just lead to players summoning up another Bane Lord to replace the current one when he wears out and just swap equipment.

Really lifedrain either needs to drain hp, or fatigue, but *not both*. But I dont think that is possible without a patch.

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

I think that the only change that might be needed would be to make them a bit more expensive. Make wraith swords require D3 and 20 death gems to build. That would be too expensive for use on fragile chassis like bane lords, but still viable on your valuable units. It would also make both skull banners and skullfaces better investments, since you'd have to decide between getting the drain life spell, raise skeletons, or a lifedrain weapon.

Hell swords might be better if they required B2F1, or something similar but not B3, as they should be effectively less expensive than wraith swords.

Blood thorns are only useful weapons because they get put on high strength units, and without them, shields will be very rare on most combatants. Decrease their damage to 1 or 0, and move their attack and defense to around 0 to -1 and you'd have a much more specialized weapon.

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

Curse also prevents the unit from getting rid of the equipment, too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

The curse is a bit too harsh, and anti-intuitive. A weapon that heals you should not make you more vulnerable. Horror mark is better - usually horror marks are aquired by using very evil or highly magical equipment...

What I would like best is to have weapons that heal you, but do nothing about fatigue - yours, or the enemy's.

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

The problem with this is that the fatigue model is far too granular. A titan with a strength of 30+ gets tired just as quickly, if not more so, than a human with a strength of 10. As there are no suitable reinvigoration items to offset the amount of fatigue that combat produces, the role of all but undead SCs is completely removed without the presence of fatigue restoration via lifedrain.

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

There're 2 kind of curses: cursed item, which can not be removed and cursed unit, which is unlucky. I don't think they're related.

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

I consider that cursed is a normal state of SC. It's so easy to curse SC and so hard to avoid it that any opponent will start from cursing your SCs, so in this sense items that gives the curse wouldn't have much effect (unless curse is cumulative)

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

I suppose one or 2 relief casters should handle fatigue problem. And considering that it's somewhat risky to go into serious battle without relief support anyway, it doesn't seem to be a big restriction. Non-undead SC may become less useful in the earlier part of the game, before GR, but if at that stage the intention is to raid enemy lands, they'd still do fine vs PD.

So the only significant effect of non-fatigue draining would be on combat pretenders who will lose ability to take 80+ indy provinces with ease. Whether it is good or not I don't know.

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

Heh. Relief casters can be vicious. Got thumped by an army of clockwork horrors and vine ogres mostly when playing carrion woods. I figured - clockwork horrors, they'll stop moving real fast, even the vine ogres will run down. Even with the soulstone of the wolves bringing in extra troops each turn, my clock was cleaned (pun intended).

Relief kept restoring the clockwork horrors, and restoring the fatigue my carrion inflicted. Of course - if my SCish Banelord hadn't kept running from top to bottom of the battlefield without attacking anything, it might have turned the tide, but....

Re: Tweaking the Life Draining Weapons
 

I was thinking about cursing the items more for the effect of not being able to get rid of them, than the actual curse-affliction dynamic. I agree with Alexti that many SCs will get cursed sooner or later.