FfH Paring Questions

[Tasunke]

I think its potentially a problem, and would like to see Cure Disease become a 2 turn cast.

[Selrahc]

Eh. Granted, Diseased et al. don't really cripple attack stacks except for the AI, since most players by the time you have stuff like Wither will be including Cure Disease units in their stacks. But those spells do substantially soften up units for your attack, if you move right after casting them. Is that not enough?

At the moment, I'd say wither is a fairly poor level 3 spell. It's not useless. I'd not go that far... but I would say the evidence that not one of the players to get to level 3 spells has put any emphasis on it at all despite entropy being a common spell amongst mages and adepts kind of shows how it is below par.

It also means that the only type of disease spreading that matters after priests is mass spread. Things like disease spread from Diseased Corpses, vile touch from Angels of Death... don't really matter at all.

[Thoth]

Eh. Granted, Diseased et al. don't really cripple attack stacks except for the AI, since most players by the time you have stuff like Wither will be including Cure Disease units in their stacks. But those spells do substantially soften up units for your attack, if you move right after casting them. Is that not enough?

+1

Disease, Wither ect are highly useful on the attacking player's turn.

I see no need for changes on this front.

[Selrahc]

Disease, Wither ect are highly useful on the attacking player's turn.

Eh. Let's examine how highly useful they are then.

Wither-
•Only affects Living Units
•-20% to Heal Rate
•-10%
• Unit Gains 50% Less XP per
Combat (Round Down)

So for the attacker, the wither promotion gives... -10% in combat. Now I don't think -10% is highly useful. Everything else is an effect that only matters if the promotion sticks around for more than a turn.

Disease-
•Can be Removed by Cure Disease
•Passes Diseased to Units in
Combat
•-30%
•Unit Heals 10% less per turn
•Units on the same Tile heal 10%
less per turn

Diseased is slightly more useful, causing a -30%. But it can't be passed on en masse, so it becomes little more than a curiosity. Possibly a diseased corpse can injure a top defender to give them the promo giving them a short debuff.


Almost every effect that these promos give out is completely negated by having cure disease on hand.

Wither is a Level 3 spell. It causes damage roughly equivalent to Maelstrom or Ring of Flames, but can't hurt Non-Living units. It also gives a -10% combat penalty to units that don't resist. Is the -10% even relevant? It's the best non-snowfall damage spell that arcane units have. But it isn't great. And the bestowment of wither is basically irrelevant to the spells role.

As far as I can see, these effects are intended to be around. They seem primarily to be for smashing healing rates. Something that doesn't matter if they are immediately cured.

Plagued is another matter. The -60% and the ability of Yersinia and Mary to apply it entire stacks mean that it can turn the tide of a combat with ease, even if it is removed next turn. The limited distribution of plaguers, and the fact that Yersinia kind of needs a buff, mean I'm not too concerned about that.

[Tasunke]

Perhaps "Cure Disease" should not affect Wither?

[Bobchillingworth]

Then "Wither" would stick any unit which got hit with it with a permanent malus plus no healing. That would be waaay to powerful.



I have argued before that Wither sucks though, so I can't really argue against Selrahc stating the same. I guess maybe Wither alone could require a longer Cure Disease time? But Cure Disease units would at the least need to be able to keep casting the spell while moving, unlike lair explorers and tree bloomers.

[DaveV]

How about making it a progression: Cure Disease on Withered unit -> Diseased unit. Cure Disease on Diseased unit -> Poisoned unit.

[Tasunke]

nah. I think a separate spell to remove wither.

Maybe Life III or Spirit III requirement.

[Tasunke]

To Clarify, I don't think its possible to have a single spell act differently.

Therefore, I think it would be best to make Wither harder to remove (and then whether to make wither stronger or not is simply optional, as the primary of objective of wither will be maintained)

We can't make Cure Disease impossible to get, and I think Medic 2 with a 2 turn delay is strong enough to keep "Diseased" Diseased Corpses relevant.

Therefore, I feel that a new spell to remove wither should be added.

1. We already have a precedent of one Spell Sphere giving two spells (Summon Wraith and Lichdom).

2. I WOULD argue for Creation III to remove wither , but the Creation spheres are not in.

3. Therefore Life or Spirit would make more sense. Life ... would probably make more sense imho, but on the other hand Spirit needs a bit of a boost.

what do you think?

[kjn]

Therefore, I feel that a new spell to remove wither should be added.

I think that adding a specialised spell would be bad and go against what EitB is supposed to be about. The far simpler change would be to simply remove Wither.

FfH already has several quite specialised spells that are only useful under very specific circumstances. An anti-wither spell would be an extreme example of such a spell.