Possible way out of the V.Q. Problem

[AhhhFresh]

Originally posted by rabelais:

First of all, taking ethereal away won't do *anything*. The canonical VQ has astral (4-6)

Hmmm... yeah I guess you don't really have to fear Mind Duel as much when you're immortal. Anything that had an Astral high enough to kill it reliably would be a huge loss if you got a unlucky roll. And of course the VQ just comes back next turn.

Didn't really occur to me that immortality is a perfect work around to the vulnerability that's supposed to be inherent in Astral magic.

Though a high Astal VQ, only seems to be "uber" for Ermor... since they have a gajillion(roughly) points to spend on their pretender.

[mivayan]

A ghost king who gets a crossbow bolt in each eye on turn 4 will be much less of a danger compared to a vq in that situation.

Raising new path cost to 80 like the great mother, medusa, phoenix, dragons would not be out of line. It is a loss of 2-3 scales for many builds, and might be enough of a balance.

[ May 03, 2004, 21:53: Message edited by: mivayan ]

[Cainehill]

Someone else mentioned how other SC pretenders wind up having to retire to the laboratory after a while, while the VQ doesn't.

Why does immortality heal all wounds? I thought that was what recuperation was for. I mean - you come back from the dead instantly, AND you heal wounds?

Mythology, folk tales, all those have lots of instances of beings obtaining immortality. And finding out that immortality is a curse - living forever after a hand is crushed, an eye is lost, reduced to a suffering heap of flesh that only wishes it could die.

If the VQ and other immortals had to obtain the Chalice, the high level Nature spell, or whatnot, they might not be so unbalanced. A blind crippled armless VQ isn't so scary, now is it?

(And this highlights another thing that is basically ... dubious, that way that most pretenders wind up cripples. C'mon! They're on the verge of godhood!)

Either immortality shouldn't heal wounds, or all pretenders should have a slow form of recuperation.

Edit : And of all the immortals, I'd say the VQ was still the most broken - all others have some fairly heavy weaknesses. The bog mummy and the lichs have vulnerability to fire, the Phoenix is so fragile and so limitted in item slots / melee. By contrast, the VQ has no vulnerabilities (even though vampires were commonly vulnerable to sunlight, silver, running water, and yes, fire.

Side note : Are there really supposed to be two bog mummies for Jotunheim, one immortal and the other not?

[ May 03, 2004, 22:04: Message edited by: Cainehill ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Blitz:
Precicely my point. The GK is almost like a nerfed VQ. It loses the blood magic, Flying, Lifedrain, Immortality, Regeneration and is a whopping 20 points cheaper.

It also has far cheaper paths: If you're not willing to screw over your scales to get the high and diverse magics needed to create a really heavyweight SC, you can go the GK route instead, and either get the same scales with higher paths, or more paths with the same scales. If the VQ were significantly altered, such as losing a Misc slot, I'd be dumping it in favor of the GK. The lifedrain is a minor matter, as the VQ loses its lifedrain when given a weapon, which you will do shortly anyway, just to prevent empty slots from picking up cursed items. The blood magic is mostly meaningless on the VQ, as blood is by far the cheapest path to empower in, and provides absolutely no benefit in combat, the main reason why you'd take a VQ: To have the best possible base chassis for building a monster SC out of it. In exchange, you basically get squat all as far as dominion strength(an unexceptional 2), and blessing bases(death/blood, neither of which are strong blessing material). You're going to have to pay for any extras yourself. While a potent defensive weapon, as an attacker, the VQ is somewhat less impressive, as immortality is gone in enemy dominion, and the chassis itself is physically frail, having a mere 23 base HP.

edit: The GK also has a much higher defense value. Please do not try to argue that this equates to immortality or any such nonsense.

This is indeed not "equivalent" to immortality, but it's definitely a feather in the cap of somebody taking the GK route instead. Sure, it's not a substitute for immortality, but the lower chassis cost, combined with the lower path cost, will let you afford better defensive paths on top of that.

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
I recall Zen mentioned a switcheroo-style game.

The end result being that usually, the objective was to create the most perversely useless god combination possible, in hopes that you end up running the creation of someone less creative than you. I heard the blood-9 manticore was rather popular.

How about this for a switcheroo-style game:
Everyone designs a pretender for a race, submits it, and Posts the details of their design. If there are any stinker pretender designs, people can vote that that designer has to play his own cruddy pretender. All the other (resaonable) pretenders get randomly assigned to the other players.

Also, there should be a chance that you could randomly get your own design, so if you go for a very mediocre pretender (not quite bad enough for people to stick it to you), you still have to worry about getting stuck with it.

As far as creatively bad pretender designs, my pick would be for something like an immobile "rainbow" oracle or blood fountain.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
[...] If the VQ were significantly altered, such as losing a Misc slot, I'd be dumping it in favor of the GK. [...]

I don't think you would, Norfleet. Not after the first time you got feeble minded, or got some other seriously debilitating wounds (mute, blind) and realized that hey! Those inflictions aren't going away like they used to!

I almost think you'd start playing Carrion Woods with a Carrion Dragon instead.

Side note : Are there really supposed to be two bog mummies for Jotunheim, one immortal and the other not? [/quote]

One is a Dracolich.