Specialties and Quirks

I have been going through the various H3 heroes, and as inspiration, using the AW wish about heroes having quirks as well as bonuses, I have been coming up with quite interesting possible new abilities and quirks for H3 heroes. So they can get more powerful specialities if they also get corresponding quirks to compensate for having such great abilities.

However, last night I got the brainwave of defining inherent abilities of each race of hero in H3, which come even before the individual specialties unique to each hero. What I came up with was the following:

Human: +1 to Morale.

Elf: +10% Ranged Attack damage.

Dwarf: Base 10% Hostile Magic Resistance (before all other bonuses have been calculated).

Genie: 20% Chance each round that one Random Beneficial Spell known by Genie hero is cast on one troop stack. Possibility can be switched off (for example to avoid Frenzy spell being cast for example).

Efreet: Troops immune to all positive and negative fire spells.

Demon: Demon Possession - Each round, 10% chance of positive demon possession (+5 Attack and +5 Defense Skill) and 10% chance of one troop stack doing something randomly (loss of control) for one round. Positive demon possession is checked first, if it triggers the bad stuff doesn’t happen. For loss of control, each troop that has a turn has a 10% chance of going random, however when (and if) a stack loses control, no more stacks can lose their turn this round.

Dead Human (Death Knights/Necromancers): -1 Morale for opposing armies. All troops have neutral morale, including minotaurs, and are immune to all positive and negative mind spells, and Bless and Curse.

Lich: Always has Death Ripple spell, does 25% more damage than normal. All troops have neutral morale, including minotaurs, and are immune to all positive and negative mind spells, and Bless and Curse.

Vampire: 2.5% chance of hypnotizing enemy living creatures if enemy stack has no more than 75% of the health points of the attacking stack. All troops have neutral morale, including minotaurs, and are immune to all positive and negative mind spells, and Bless and Curse.

Troglodyte: All troops are immune to Blind.

Minotaur: All troops with morale have at least positive 1 morale. Troops that are no more than 2 hexes away when a melee troop stack is attacking have a 2.5% chance of losing 10% of the damage done to devouring (lower level troops take precedence).

Dragon (Mutare Drake): All troops are immune to all spells (possible but not definite, considering she isn’t a standard hero and she wouldn’t be in most games).

Goblin: All troops gain +2 speed and +2 Attack in battle but have -20% health points.

Ogre: +10% Melee Damage. Ogres that are more Magi (Battle Mages Gundala and Saurug) - instead have always Bloodlust spell and get 3 free individual Bloodlust spells for no cost per combat.

Gnoll: Morning Star Stun. All troops have 2.5% chance of stunning enemy troops in melee combat (troop attacked loses its next action).

Lizardman/Lizardwoman: All troops have 2.5% chance of causing poison in targets they attack (that doesn’t take effect until next combat round, unlike the poison attack of the Wyvern Monarch).

Psychic Elemental (Pasis): All troops always have neutral morale and luck (even minotaurs and halflings) and are immune to all positive and negative mind spells.

Earth Elemental (Thunar): Immune to all spells Earth Elementals are immune to and take double damage from damage they are vulnerable to (although spells that both Earth and Magma Elementals normally get double damage to only get one doubling, not two - for Earth and Magma Elementals).

Fire Elemental (Ignissa): Immune to all positive and negative Fire spells. Take double damage from Water spells.

Water Elemental (Lacus): Immune to Ice Bolt and Frost Ring. Take double damage from Fire Spells.

Magic Elemental (Monere): Can’t cast spells, all troops immune to all spells, cannot learn or receive morale or luck anywhere, cannot use any luck or morale artifacts, doesn’t learn spell power or knowledge.

Magma Elemental (Erdamon): Immune to all spells Magma Elementals are immune to and take double damage from damage they are vulnerable to (although spells that both Magma and Earth Elementals normally get double damage to only get one doubling, not two - for Magma and Earth Elementals). Magma and Earth Elementals gain +2 speed in battle.

Energy Elemental (Fiur): +10% damage for all troops with energy weapons except Air/Storm and Water/Ice (Monks, Zealots, Magi, Archmagi, Wights, Wraiths, Vampires, Vampire Lords, Liches, Power Liches, Beholders, Evil Eyes, Fire Elementals, Energy Elementals, Psychic Elementals, Magic Elementals, Firebirds, Phoenix, Enchanters, War Zealots, Sorceresses, Ghosts), Immune to all positive and negative Fire spells, +50% damage from Water spells cast by enemies, cannot cast Water spells.

Ice Elemental (Kalt): All troops are immune to Ice Bolt and Frost Ring, take double damage from fire spells, 5% chance of melee troops (who don’t breath fire or have a fire weapon) freezing succeptible enemy troops for one round on attack.

[size=134]What do you think? :slight_smile:[/size]

Best regards,
Steven.

This would make a good script/option and some of the abilities are quite interesting but I’m not too sure about the balance between several of them.

I think that allowing Necro heroes to freely mix in living troops with no chance of negative morale (albeit, no chance of positive either), may tend to go against the spirit of the faction, which traditionally uses only undead troops or finds the non-undead troops often freeze in panic unless employing several morale-boosting artifacts.

Also, I think elemental vulnerabilities should be exempt on creatures that are normally unaffected by that element.

I didn’t quite understand what you meant in the Minotaur devourer ability.

Aside from that, a good selection but may need a fair bit of thought and testing to properly balance them all.

And even more than racial abilities, I think class abilities would be nice to have, especially if many of them were active rather than passive abilities.

And hopefully VCMI’s main scripting language (be it ERM, LUA or something else) will make it easier to code some of the optional scripts than ERM in WoG. :slight_smile:

Well, they were early ideas, so not definite by any means. :slight_smile: The devour ability was related to the minotaur troop description that says “devour all who enter”. If all living troops were at least +1 morale no matter how much mixing then there needed to be some counter-balancing for minotaur heroes. And I also agree that all troops of undead heroes having neutral morale is probably too powerful.

I certainly agree that class abilities would probably be a better way of implementing unique abilities before the hero-specific specialties. For example, as in some of the AW wishes, Necromancy could be re-defined as a class ability for Necromancers and Death Knights (and revamped to add some active elements, and also so that non-living or undead creatures do not count, and a limited amount of bone dragons could be raised if living dragons are killed), although it may also be good to have some differences between class abilities for the more might-oriented and the more magic-oriented hero types of a particular town. Also some “weaker” hero types (such as Witches) could be given more powerful class abilities to compensate for not being quite as useful in general play.

What are some suggestions from VCMI forumites and H3 fans for class abilities of each hero type?

Best regards,
Steven.

I agree with Fnord - some are very interesting suggestions for a future mod. The first proposals in the list are very good. Some of the others could be tweaked a bit. I also didn’t manage to read them all in detail, but I promise I’ll take once time and give my feedback for each of them. :wink: It won’t be soon though. Not only am I in a busy period now, but before I see VCMI working satisfactory (being able to complete a scenario at least, I’m not even talking MP) I’m gonna try to stay away from the temptation of letting my imagination run free about possible mods. :slight_smile: