Hello everyone, and I could use some advice.

[Maraxus]

Ah, okay, I think I mixed up the preaching with the blood-sacrifice rules a bit.

I would say, he needs body etheral (and thus personal luck) to expand into indies but he still is an option as awake early-game pretender (btw I usually play with indi strength 7).

The question is, whether he is fixable overpowered (read: slightly to strong) or unfixable. I think, it's clearly the first, you just need to tune it down a little bit, or increase the price somewhat and it should work.

Decreasing the initial dominion to 2 would clearly be an option. Even base dominion 3 would make it "still powerful but probably okay", my guess.

[Luckmann]

Maraxus said:
Ah, okay, I think I mixed up the preaching with the blood-sacrifice rules a bit.

I would say, he needs body etheral (and thus personal luck) to expand into indies but he still is an option as awake early-game pretender (btw I usually play with indi strength 7).

The question is, whether he is fixable overpowered (read: slightly to strong) or unfixable. I think, it's clearly the first, you just need to tune it down a little bit, or increase the price somewhat and it should work.

Decreasing the initial dominion to 2 would clearly be an option. Even base dominion 3 would make it "still powerful but probably okay", my guess.

Ah, some solid advice. Yeah, I was thinking of simply lowering it to 2, since I do now realize that the potential spread of faith on a mobile unit can be quite powerful (I've primarily played with immobile pretenders, with high Dominion (6-8 minimum).

While it's entirely possible to do a potent pretender still, lowering it to 2 will be more or less the same as increasing the point cost. I'd even be willing to consider lowering it to 1, to put it on-par with other base human pretenders.

What would be the base cost of increasing Dominion from 2 to 4 and 1 to 4 respectively? I know it increases by 7 every time, but is that counting from 1 or from whatever base a pretender have?

[Aezeal]

basic fixes: (balance and flavor)

- lower holy level to 4
- remove awe
- CERTAINLY remove fear (seeing the pope eye to eye doesn't bring fear in my heart)
- remove pillage (the pope pillaging ??)
- remove AoE weapon for something powerfull but not AoE

then a lil upgrade
- give MR 18
(else he'll be soul slay food)

[Luckmann]

Aezeal said:
basic fixes: (balance and flavor)

- lower holy level to 4
- remove awe
- CERTAINLY remove fear (seeing the pope eye to eye doesn't bring fear in my heart)
- remove pillage (the pope pillaging ??)
- remove AoE weapon for something powerfull but not AoE

then a lil upgrade
- give MR 18
(else he'll be soul slay food)

- Lowering holy level to 4 have already been covered and is a definite no-no for previously mentioned reasons.
- Removing BOTH fear and awe would leave the Ecclesiarch with only Immortality and a number of schtick flavour abilities. Second, you're confusing Pope John Paul II with.. let's say.. Innocent VIII - the pope that appointed Tomás de Torquemada, with a personal retinue of "interrogators" to boot. Facing that, you'd either be very, very stupid, struck with awe, or scared to your wit's end, depending on your orientation; I assure you.
- Pope pillaging? It's far more likely than you might think. Again, this isn't a pope, or I'd actually name him Pope. His text explains his position more fully. And of course, it's not he himself that goes into the village and takes everything not nailed to a wall - he's got a retinue, which is the idea behind both the pillaging and the patrols. I was actually going to add Gluttony for this reason. But there's not a command for that.
- I had completely missed that it had an area of effect. Consider it changed (I guess I just glanced at it and figured that AoE:1 simply meant that it wasn't.. you know.. AoE.

[Maraxus]

To add gluttony, use
#supplybonus -X
A negative value creates gluttony.

As for the mobile dominion-thing: Sometimes, you are just stuck before an enemy castle with lots of summons inside that repair the walls, or it's early game and the defenders have good tower weapons are heavy armor and you have not yet researched the counter-tactics.

In this cases you might want to dominion kill your enemy instead of taking his last fortress(es), once you have all provinces. A god in front of that castle is quite good for that allready, a level 6 inquisitor likewise, I'd guess.

[Luckmann]

Oh, that's great. Awesome.
Update time. I lowered base Dominion to 2, gave him Fire Sling instead of Fire Flare (in light of the AoE-issue). It's got a much longer range, but much lower damage, accuracy, and no AoE. I also added Gluttony 14 (to account for the supposed retinue) and upped magic resistance to 16 - this would allow him to buff himself to 18-19 Magic Resistance if one goes for an Astral Bless strategy.

Edit: Also lowered HP to 16.
Edit2: I also added Encumbrance 2.

[llamabeast]

I believe all the pretenders have MR 18 without exception, so you could just give him that.