Mod: High Holy Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

On a whim, I created a mod which adds Holy 7 Holy 5 to 8 to all pretender chassis. This allows pretenders to cast Divine Channeling on their followers in battle, thereby making them feel a bit more like the aspiring deities that they are. I did not give the pretenders sacred status and so they cannot self-bless, since that would be weird, in my opinion. (I didn't even check to see if they could be given sacred status, because I really didn't care.)

In the longer term, I may vary the holy levels among pretenders somewhat and experiment with new high-level holy spells that only the pretenders can cast. One idea is to make some miraculous H9 spells that would first require the pretenders to collect at least one holy booster on their road to ascension. Some ideas include an assortment of battlefield-wide evocations, such as scourging all enemy undead and demons, causing earthquakes or doing something like Maws of the Earth on all enemies, raining fire from the sky, flash-freezing all enemies (battlefield-wide Frozen Heart), etc.... I could also see some miraculous battlefield-wide alterations or enchantments, as well. Maybe this is too overpowered though. Even without new spells, I think Banishment should do quite well when utilized by a H7 pretender.

Download Here: High Holy Mod

Update (2014/01/01): Version 0.02 released.

• Pretender holy levels are now their base dominion + 4. So, this means that immobiles generally have H8, titans generally have H7, monsters and some undead have H6, and humanoids and the other undead have H5. (Dragons are currently at H6, but given their dragon-form magic penalty, I might shift that to H7 (H5) in dragon form and H5 in caster shape, if I can do that.)
• All pretenders start with #onebattlespell 159 (Divine Channeling).

Edited by: _noblesse_oblige_

Oh Gods yes!
I've been wondering why Pretenders couldnt cast holy spells for weeks now! I cant wait to try this out!
My vote would be to vary the holy levels per pretender, maybe gauge their levels based on flavor text and their beginning dominion level.
Would be amazing to see some more holy spells! I'd love to see some cross-path spells! Something like H7E4 causing a battlefield wide earth bind!

Edited by: DariusFF

I don't understand the "vary holy levels among pretenders for balance" option. As long as they'll all get at least 4 or 5, that's enough to cast pretty much everything they currently want to cast. I guess it makes a difference to the penetration on smite and banishment, but not all that much.

Why holy 7? I've personally never even seen a holy 5, I don't think, nor have I seen any spells that require a higher level than that.

You might want to think about whether holy avenger is a good spell to give all pretenders already on turn 0.

You might also want to think about whether you really want to give wussy rainbow mages super-high-powered smites and banishes even before they do any research. Though now that I think about it, any pretender that's incapable of throwing smites around probably isn't much of a pretender anyway...

I'm...surprised this wouldn't cause bugs, by the way. Do agree it's thematically appropriate, as for getting blesses, I'm tempted to argue that gods SHOULD auto-get their blessing. They can give their sacred troops stuff like blood vengeance or twist fate, but can't do the same to themselves?!?(Unless they use specific bless)
However, sacred pretender would be even more likely.

On the numbers, perhaps holy 5 would be more reasonable.
Edit: Or if you want to vary it, you could make the starting holy level be the same as starting dominion, or even dominion + 1. That sounds good to me, actually, the various 'human'pretenders would be less adept than an 'elite' priest of some nations, but thematically it might sense that this is a power they can't really use too much themselves but others can draw on.

Edited by: TheZonk

I was pretty sure that holy magic without being sacred crashes the game. Does this work? Actually I DL'd this and it works. Huh, they must have fixed that at some point.

I would suggest giving more holiness to pretenders described as having powerful dominions (like the Dagon), and less to those that aren't.

DariusFF wrote: Oh Gods yes!
I've been wondering why Pretenders couldnt cast holy spells for weeks now! I cant wait to try this out!

Thanks! I saw other people wondering the same thing elsewhere and it finally dawned on me to actually try adding the priest levels. Call it divine inspiration, if you will.

DariusFF wrote:
My vote would be to vary the holy levels per pretender, maybe gauge their levels based on flavor text and their beginning dominion level.
Would be amazing to see some more holy spells! I'd love to see some cross-path spells! Something like H7E4 causing a battlefield wide earth bind!

Good idea. I was wondering about cross-path holy spells as well. Will try today. And, it will be interesting to play with #fatiguecost in relation to Holy spells, since there are no holy gems.

TelosTelos wrote: I don't understand the "vary holy levels among pretenders for balance" option. As long as they'll all get at least 4 or 5, that's enough to cast pretty much everything they currently want to cast. I guess it makes a difference to the penetration on smite and banishment, but not all that much.

On Banishment, #range, #aoe, and #damage all scale according to caster level. If I was a fearless undead horde, I would be scared to life of something like that on a H7 caster.

But, to address your comment more directly, the idea is that I am going to make higher-level holy spells that only pretenders will be able to reasonably use. H4 or H5 puts pretenders down in the prophet or boosted-prophet range.

TelosTelos wrote:
Why holy 7? I've personally never even seen a holy 5, I don't think, nor have I seen any spells that require a higher level than that.

Future pretender-only spells is one reason.
From a thematic perspective, the idea is that a pretender can acquire holy items in his/her/its quest to become the new pantokrator, thereby achieving H9 or H10, the height of holiness along the way. Also, from a numerological perspective, 7 was a number that occurred frequently in Hebrew religious texts and 9 (the goal) occurred fairly frequently in the Norse religion (e.g., the nine worlds of Yggdrasil, the nine wave mothers of Heimdallr).

TelosTelos wrote:
You might want to think about whether holy avenger is a good spell to give all pretenders already on turn 0.

That's an interesting idea. Was thinking about a #onebattlespell with Divine Channeling actually, but will consider other options.

TelosTelos wrote:
You might also want to think about whether you really want to give wussy rainbow mages super-high-powered smites and banishes even before they do any research. Though now that I think about it, any pretender that's incapable of throwing smites around probably isn't much of a pretender anyway...

Exactly.

David88 wrote: I'm...surprised this wouldn't cause bugs, by the way. Do agree it's thematically appropriate, as for getting blesses, I'm tempted to argue that gods SHOULD auto-get their blessing. They can give their sacred troops stuff like blood vengeance or twist fate, but can't do the same to themselves?!?(Unless they use specific bless)
However, sacred pretender would be even more likely.

Yeah, I was expecting a crash too - but, it does work and I'm glad that it does.

I can see things from your perspective (and a #onebattlespell of Divine Blessing is an interesting idea), but I feel that pretenders should be the source of blesses and not the recipients of blesses. Giving sacred status to a pretender, assuming that it can be done, means what? A pretender considers himself to be holy?

David88 wrote:
On the numbers, perhaps holy 5 would be more reasonable.
Edit: Or if you want to vary it, you could make the starting holy level be the same as starting dominion, or even dominion + 1. That sounds good to me, actually, the various 'human'pretenders would be less adept than an 'elite' priest of some nations, but thematically it might sense that this is a power they can't really use too much themselves but others can draw on.

I like the idea about varying it according to base dominion of the chassis.
Actually, I think it would be neat if Illwinter implemented a game option that allowed the holy level of a pretender to scale with the strength of the friendly dominion he was in. But, that would probably change the game in a major way.

I think the game really should have a few non-unique holy boosters. (E.g., Ark of the Rising God, costs F10S10, provides Holy +1, penetration +1, attack -2, defense -2, isn't retrievable in combat).

It might be worth including such boosters in your mod.

My justification for auto-blessing was: if the pretender can, with its mere *presence* give very devout(sacred)followers bonuses such as blood vengeance, flaming weapons, regeneration(remember, pretender on battlefield=autobless)...it would make sense that they get these SAME bonuses themselves.
They can give their followers autoflaming weapons, but can't make their *own* weapons like that unless they cast a specific spell? It's odd.

They're not auto-blessing, just doing 'more' with their magic than what a regular mortal mage would.

Of course, sacred pretender with holy level is like, 99% likely to break the game. But I do think a pretender would consider themselves (super)'sacred' It might also make them vulnerable to sacred-only effects such as the Black Halberds, which you might consider good or bad.

One interesting 'trick' if you agree with my argument on blessed pretenders: do NOT make them sacred, but have a #onebattlespell that is modded to self-bless even if not sacred(yes, that is possible). Then pretenders should then get their own blessings in battle.

Also, again, think you should go with holy level=dominion or dominion +1, though that does hit the human rainbows pretty hard, comparatively. If you do want to check specific flavour text for pretenders that could be more or less holy despite having the same dominion as others.. since the Dagon was mentioned, the Virtue might also count, being an angel.
(Also, this would of course alter the balance of pretenders greatly but that's pretty obvious, duh)

Edited by: TheZonk

David88 wrote: Of course, sacred pretender with holy level is like, 99% likely to break the game.

Yep, that's the real problem. I haven't played a disciples game yet, but disciples basically are sacred pretenders, so it looks to me like this should be "99% likely to break the game" too. E.g., wouldn't a dormant pretender with N9E9 turn all of its awake disciples into near-unstoppable killing machines already at turn 0? (Or at least with minimal forging, depending on the chassis?) There's a reason the game makes you do a ton of research before you can summon anything approaching a pretender-level chassis, and many of those don't even have body slots so you still can't make them sacred.

TelosTelos wrote: I think the game really should have a few non-unique holy boosters. (E.g., Ark of the Rising God, costs F10S10, provides Holy +1, penetration +1, attack -2, defense -2, isn't retrievable in combat).

It might be worth including such boosters in your mod.

I hadn't thought about non-artifact holy boosters. Part of me wants the boosters to be rare, so that, if the mod has some H8 or H9 spells, then it would create a strategic consideration about whether to research the necessary construction to enable a pretender to work miracles on the battlefield. But, I suppose that, given the Dom 4 research pacing, some Construction 6 boosters might still create this strategic consideration. Interesting idea - I'll chew on it some. (The new spells and any new magic items are probably going to put into a separate mod, so that people can use the base High Holy mod without extras.)

TelosTelos wrote:

David88 wrote: Of course, sacred pretender with holy level is like, 99% likely to break the game.

Yep, that's the real problem. I haven't played a disciples game yet, but disciples basically are sacred pretenders, so it looks to me like this should be "99% likely to break the game" too. E.g., wouldn't a dormant pretender with N9E9 turn all of its awake disciples into near-unstoppable killing machines already at turn 0? (Or at least with minimal forging, depending on the chassis?) There's a reason the game makes you do a ton of research before you can summon anything approaching a pretender-level chassis, and many of those don't even have body slots so you still can't make them sacred.

I just tested and the game actually does let us mod #holy onto a pretender chassis. However, I tried to get my test pretender and her priests to cast Divine Blessing or Blessing in battle and they refused. (She always cast Holy Avenger instead and her priests cast other spells.) So, the verdict is still out on whether a blessed pretender would actually break the game or not. But, at least we know that they can be made sacred.

David88 wrote: My justification for auto-blessing was: if the pretender can, with its mere *presence* give very devout(sacred)followers bonuses such as blood vengeance, flaming weapons, regeneration(remember, pretender on battlefield=autobless)...it would make sense that they get these SAME bonuses themselves.
They can give their followers autoflaming weapons, but can't make their *own* weapons like that unless they cast a specific spell? It's odd.

They're not auto-blessing, just doing 'more' with their magic than what a regular mortal mage would.

Fair enough. I think that, in the long-term, I'll create a "Sacred Edition" of the mod. I want to hold off for now, because the High Holy mod (and variants) can be automatically generated once I finish with the current phase of the data dumper project. (The Debug mod, No Spells mod, and No Independents mod are all ones that could also be automatically generated.) I have no problem if you want to go ahead and created the sacred variant of the mod yourself, if you're interested and don't want to wait.

Edited by: _noblesse_oblige_

Note that pretenders effectively autocast Divine Blessing, hence all viable targets were likely already blessed so that might be why she didn't cast it.
Not sure how it works if you battle-summon sacreds, however.

Not really on a hurry on the sacred thing, and you don't HAVE to do that, was just pointing out that it seemed thematic to me

David88 wrote:
Also, again, think you should go with holy level=dominion or dominion +1, though that does hit the human rainbows pretty hard, comparatively. If you do want to check specific flavour text for pretenders that could be more or less holy despite having the same dominion as others.. since the Dagon was mentioned, the Virtue might also count, being an angel.
(Also, this would of course alter the balance of pretenders greatly but that's pretty obvious, duh)

Right now, I'm thinking of dominion level + 4. I want to preserve the High in High Holy, since I do intend to make higher level spells available as an add-on and want some battlefield-wide miracles to be in reach, if one is willing to quickly research up to the appropriate boosters and grab them first. Yeah, rainbows will pretty much get shafted, but even they will be able to cast Divine Channeling. (I still need to look at the mods from Ighalli and DariusFF to see what they have in mind for helping the rainbows.)

Doesn't this kind of screw over undead nations if every nation just got a free Holy 7 banish-spammer?

Red_Rob wrote: Doesn't this kind of screw over undead nations if every nation just got a free Holy 7 banish-spammer?

Possibly, but there is no reason why they can't have their own powerful high unholy spells, beyond things like Power of the Sepulchre and whatnot. Also, I think that there is a concern that some undead nations are ganged up on in MP because of the threat from their long-term existence. Having a strong Banishment spammer available to the non-undead nations could help mitigate this and reduce the chance that an undead nation would be perceived as a threat that needed to be eliminated in the short term. Of course, if the undead nation putting up Burden of Time is the worry, then this doesn't really do anything to address that. Just theory-crafting, of course - I don't have any concrete idea of how balance might be affected.

It's true undead/demon might suffer BUT if you give demon/undead MR booster-spells to nations that don't have them, it's not too bad.

Remember that there are +MR holy spells that are 'MR negates' or 'MR negates easily', and having a high holy means you would(likely, untested) get a penetration bonus on that roll too.

Edited by: TheZonk

Fairly simple solution as David88 posted, just give unholy nations a Pretender-level MR boost spell to counter banish and smite.

On a similar note as we're discussing unholy nations:
Give unholy pretenders a death-crosspath spell that allows them to summon a large horde of undead! perhaps constantly spawning at the edges.
Another idea is to make a blood-crosspath that makes all enemy units bleed!

David88 wrote: Note that pretenders effectively autocast Divine Blessing, hence all viable targets were likely already blessed so that might be why she didn't cast it.
Not sure how it works if you battle-summon sacreds, however.

Not really on a hurry on the sacred thing, and you don't HAVE to do that, was just pointing out that it seemed thematic to me

You're right that pretenders automatically provide Divine Blessing by their mere presence. Sacreds on the battlefield with the pretender start off blessed. Well, all sacreds but one start off blessed, and I think you can guess which one isn't blessed: the pretender. (The sacred icon isn't lit in the stats and the stats don't show any boosts from a bless.) So, based on my testing, it looks like pretenders are unable to get their own blessing whether we think it is thematic for them to do so or not. That's a letdown, because it would've been fun to try the blessed pretenders that you suggested.

At least there is no need to waste #onebattlespell on a casting of Divine Blessing. Of all the options, I think that using Divine Channeling for #onebattlespell makes the most sense. Just have to make sure that none of them are already casting a #onebattlespell, since I don't want to overwrite anything that comes from vanilla.

Update: Version 0.02 is now released. See OP for details.

_noblesse_oblige_ wrote: But, to address your comment more directly, the idea is that I am going to make higher-level holy spells that only pretenders will be able to reasonably use. H4 or H5 puts pretenders down in the prophet or boosted-prophet range.

[...]

if the mod has some H8 or H9 spells, then it would create a strategic consideration about whether to research the necessary construction to enable a pretender to work miracles on the battlefield.

There's one fairly massive problem you've forgotten if you go this route and make H7 or even H9 spells that are over-the-top miracles: communions. Set it to H7 and you'll have Arch Theurgs and their closest 16 communicant friends aping divinity. Set it to H9 and you'll have low-divinity Astral/Blood pretenders running around imitating their betters - or other pretenders running around with crystal matrices instead of your high-construction-level Holy boosters. This isn't a huge deal if your goal is just to make high-level Holy spells, but if you want to make spells that are effectively the domain of pretenders and pretenders alone, it's probably hopeless.

Edited by: Ealb

David88 wrote:
One interesting 'trick' if you agree with my argument on blessed pretenders: do NOT make them sacred, but have a #onebattlespell that is modded to self-bless even if not sacred(yes, that is possible). Then pretenders should then get their own blessings in battle.

How can you do that!? i tried but it wont work:
#newspell#copyspell "Air Shield"#name "SELFBLESS"#school -1#researchlevel 0#fatiguecost 0#damage 1#spec 12599296#sound 30#explspr 10217#end

I haven't played with spellmodding yet but I've seen another mod with spells that bless non-sacreds. As for using onebattlespell with new modded spells, I read that's a bit complicated as you have to replace-then-recreate existing ones.

where did you see that mod? Anyway i tried to equip a pretender with the Shroud of the battle saint but he doesn't get bless anyway

What if the dominion you chose at pretender creation WAS the pretenders holy level?

JEBEMLITI wrote: where did you see that mod? Anyway i tried to equip a pretender with the Shroud of the battle saint but he doesn't get bless anyway

Yeah I tried that before and it doesn't work either. As for the mod, it may have been the Tzteencth nation one.

Arthurius2269 wrote: What if the dominion you chose at pretender creation WAS the pretenders holy level?

While a very nice idea, this cannot be done through modding, unless noblesse can think of some REALLY weird trick.

Ealb wrote:

_noblesse_oblige_ wrote:
if the mod has some H8 or H9 spells, then it would create a strategic consideration about whether to research the necessary construction to enable a pretender to work miracles on the battlefield.

There's one fairly massive problem you've forgotten if you go this route and make H7 or even H9 spells that are over-the-top miracles: communions. Set it to H7 and you'll have Arch Theurgs and their closest 16 communicant friends aping divinity. Set it to H9 and you'll have low-divinity Astral/Blood pretenders running around imitating their betters - or other pretenders running around with crystal matrices instead of your high-construction-level Holy boosters. This isn't a huge deal if your goal is just to make high-level Holy spells, but if you want to make spells that are effectively the domain of pretenders and pretenders alone, it's probably hopeless.

I am putting the spells into a separate mod, so that people can use the pretenders with high holy levels but without extras thrown in. If the problem proves to be intractable for MP, people still might enjoy using the spells in SP.

That said, I suppose you're right that communions devalue the importance of holy boosters for reaching the highest holy levels. However, making the miraculous spells all require H9 or H10 and a high level of one other path could reduce the chance that anyone other than a pretender will be able to cast them, even in communion. (I still need to experiment with this to make sure that holy can be mixed with other paths.) Also, if the spells can be placed in schools other than Divine, then they could be made available via research. This would prevent early game "Theurg rushes". (Again, I need to experiment with this. Haven't touched the mods since New Year's Day, as I've been busy working.)