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Author Topic: Horde creatures  (Read 2899 times)

klaymen

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Horde creatures
« on: January 08, 2014, 06:33:39 PM »
Looking at the artwork of a wizard fighting a priestess, I've noticed a group of soldiers running from behind the priestess. That made me thinking about having some kind of creatures with a "horde" (or swarm, pack, whatever will be more suitable) trait. Those creatures should be most probably a group of weak ones, like a group of conscripts, a flock of birds, a swarm of lesser imps or anything in similar vein. That way it will keep their power in line with other creatures, because summoning a squad of elite knights of Westmarch would look stupid with a mere six attack dice (unlike a group of conscripts, who can possibly pull off six attack dice worth of damage) and also I don't intend to turn the game into Commander Wars.

I know that this alone wouldn't warrant a creation of a new trait, so I thought that they should have some kind of extra effect. Like either having enchantments (or possibly all spells targeting them increased cost to represent the difficulty of casting something on a group of creatures, instead on just one. Maybe with the exception of spells within the same schools as the creatures (as some kind of close affinity or something), maybe even requiring the mage to be trained in that school as well.

Extra options include enchantments from mind school being immune to the increased cost (representing the fact that a mob can be  manipulated easier than a single person), or having the group's attack gradually weaken as its hitpoints decrease (for example 4 attack dice and 12 health, every 3 health lost will weaken the attack by one die and increasing their health will just add extra health before the attack starts to weaken).

I know that this may not be worth much (if anything), but someone may be able to salvage something out of this mess.

Sailor Vulcan

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Horde creatures
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2014, 01:46:41 PM »
I'm not entirely sure what you're suggesting. Is it a creature card with more than one action phase? I personally think if you have a mob of creatures all share the same card but with multiple action markers, it would be game breaking, no matter how weak the members of the mob are individually. You would get a LOT of extra actions each round for only one of your mage's full actions. Considering that a single creature usually costs a full action to summon, being able to summon multiple creatures with the same full action just seems broken.

However, I do think having a multi headed creature that makes multiple weaker attacks as a full action, similar to wall of thorns, would be good. And it's health could be divided into the number of heads, so when it takes a certain amount of damage, the number of attacks it gets with its full action decreases accordingly. However, it would only have one action marker, and it would probably either have slow or rooted.

Maybe a nine-tailed fox with 1 armor, and with a two-dice attack per tail, and each tail holds 1 of its health?
« Last Edit: January 09, 2014, 01:50:00 PM by Imaginator »
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Aylin

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Re: Horde creatures
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2014, 01:50:57 PM »
However, I do think having a multi headed creature that makes multiple weaker attacks as a full action, similar to wall of thorns, would be good. [...]. However, it would only have one action marker, and it would probably either have slow or rooted.

We already have this; the Hydra.

(Except for the health divided by the number of heads thing)

klaymen

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Re: Horde creatures
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2014, 02:19:00 PM »
I'm not entirely sure what you're suggesting. Is it a creature card with more than one action phase?

A creature card representing a group. It will have just one activation phase, but it comes with an innate ability that makes it harder to cast enchantments, or maybe even incantations on it (both good and bad), due to the fact that it is not a single target - by making it more expensive.

Edit: now that I'm thinking about it, maybe adding it even some kind of damage reduction ability to prevent almost elimimating it with a single attack leaving it with a few health left and a weak attack. Let's say something like Incorporeal (only the 1s rolled on attacks against them count as damage), but without the vulnerability to Ethereal. Or some Defense, like 9+ or something.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2014, 02:31:16 PM by klaymen »