Improved Rainbow Pretenders Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Improved rainbow pretenders v0.1

I've finished my first pass at improving rainbow pretenders. I made the most of the humanoid pretenders cost 0 points, increased their HP by 4, and gave them 3 magic paths at level 1. A few got new abilities or other changes:

- Crone gets 1 temporary gem of each type. It's probably not especially useful since she'll want to avoid battles, but I expect it to be about as useful as the ritual range bonuses other guys have. She gets the biggest buff since the other pretenders with powers now also cost zero.
- Freak Lord and lobster-riding Arch Mage got 17 HP to account for the generic buff plus being on fantastic mounts.
- Great Warlock only has F1B1 but gets 3 blood slaves at the start of battle. This is a bit buggy because they charge towards the enemy, but he can still cast spells with them even when they're quite far away from him. I'm not sure how much I like this change, but at least this is probably the most thematic choice for this bonus.
- Eldest dwarf got a forge bonus of 2.
- Arch Druid battle summons 4d6 vine men. They weren't enough to thug even a fairly weak indie province without research in my testing.
- Shape changing humans got their cost reduced to 25 and 3 level 1 paths.
- Skratti has his cost reduced to 25 and now gets W1B1.
- The human form of the dragon pretenders all got bumped to 14 HP too, but no other changes.
- Sauromancer and Arch Seraph originally had level 2 in a path and now also have 1 level of something else.

I intend to update the mod with new pretenders based on national elite mages, but want to get impressions from anyone who cares to test this version in the meantime.

I like the forge bonus on the dwarf. Although the battle summons and temp gems are neat ideas, I still don't think I would feel comfortable taking most of the humanoid rainbows onto a battlefield. Maybe more off-the-battlefield tweaks, like what you did to the dwarf, would have a higher efficacy?

Just a question and not a criticism, but do you think that increasing the diversity of base paths is better than increasing the level of existing base paths? Getting a new path costs only 10 design points for most rainbow chassis as it is.

The triangular costs being what they are, a starting pick won't be worth much for a 1 or 2, but will be worth progressively more the higher you want that path to be. Having a starting value of 1 in Fire is worth only 18 points if you want to have Fire 2, but it's worth 34 points if you want to have Fire 4, and it's worth 74 points if you want to have Fire 9.

If the goal for Rainbows is to convince them to have a bunch of 4s (which it probably is), then giving them level 1 in a bunch of paths makes sense.

-Frank

I think having all mages have at least two paths at 1 would be good. As for this - the changes don't look bad, but on the Warlock, why not a douse bonus of 3 instead? Or even passive bloodslave generation?

Edit: on the crone getting the biggest buff, don't forget she by default has 4 misc slots which IS an advantage. Giving her temp battle gems sounds very odd to me - I think it would fit a battle mage more.

Edited by: TheZonk

Fortune teller sounds like it would be thematic for the Crone.

FrankTrollman wrote: The triangular costs being what they are, a starting pick won't be worth much for a 1 or 2, but will be worth progressively more the higher you want that path to be. Having a starting value of 1 in Fire is worth only 18 points if you want to have Fire 2, but it's worth 34 points if you want to have Fire 4, and it's worth 74 points if you want to have Fire 9.

If the goal for Rainbows is to convince them to have a bunch of 4s (which it probably is), then giving them level 1 in a bunch of paths makes sense.

-Frank

Here's a spreadsheet to act as a point of reference:
Docs.google.com

For a path cost 10 pretender to reach y4 in a new path, it costs 82 design points.
For a x1 pretender to reach x4, it costs 48 design points.
So, the savings in design points is 34 points, as you say.

However...
For a x1 pretender to reach x9 , it costs 288 design points.
For a x2 pretender to reach x9, it costs 224 design points.
So, the savings in design points is 64 points.

So, by adding an extra base path, one does not even gain one scale worth of points to get to y4.
But, by adding an extra level to an existing base path, one gains a little over 1.5 scales worth of points to get to x9.

If the design goal of this mod is to make rainbow chassis better at rainbowing, then it certainly helps. If the goal is to make them more competitive in other ways, then there may be more effective ways to do this. Like I said though, I wasn't really criticizing the mod - I am just trying to better understand what it is trying to accomplish and the mechanisms with which it is doing so.

My goal was to make it affordable to take a few paths at 4 and many of the others at 1 or 2, which is how I have seen rainbows done. I was not aiming to make them competitive for getting a 9 bless. Ideally, there would be a viable immobile pretender for most paths such that there would be cheap options for getting 9 of any one thing fairly cheaply, but that's a mod for another time.

How do people feel about the Crone producing 1 death gem per turn instead and the warlock producing 2 blood slaves? I think in either case it could make them a viable choice. While it's true that the Crone gets 4 misc slots, she also loses the body slot. It's a small advantage, IMO.

I think the temp gem bonuses should go to the Arch Mage and the Master Enchanter, since they were originally cheaper than the other options. I think 2 gems of each for elemental and 2S2D2N seems about right. The ME is better because he has stealth and forest survival, so a couple more AM gems makes sense. I agree in principle that people won't want to risk their feeble pretenders in a battle, but I like the idea of encouraging it enough to stick with it for now.

I'd rather have Crone have normal slots but +1 1D or 1N or even both gems per month. Warlock could just be 1F1S1B and maybe a dousing rod or creates blood slaves.

I like this mod. I myself would have made rainbows have 4 picks in magic and cost 25-50 but this feels good too. 0 cost pretenders just feel kinda weird unless they are immobiles.