Haven’t seen many ideas here that I really like so I’ll offer a few of my own.
In general I think it would be cool if every basic zombie had some type of low level ability. As far as the bosses go I do agree with the idea of having one of them make a ranged attack; one like the Storm Friar or Marsh Warden, but have it only affect mortal units.
Also consider giving some bosses the ability to take damage without begin killed out right; so instead of having a 1x1000 boss, have the boss be 20x50. Then you can start playing around with abilities based on ‘rage’; i.e. the weaker he gets power wise the more devastating his effect becomes special wise.
The ability like the “Wolf Chariots” would be another good one.
I also know that a boss that can only be killed with melee or ranged has been suggested before.
Here’s my question: why are there no Monster Bosses? The first time I had a SP game with a mana pool I couldn’t defend, I was massively apprehensive watching a couple Blighted Gryphons approaching it… only to find out that monsters don’t spawn bosses. This was a huge disappointment! Monster Bosses could not only be very cool, but they’d also make immortal monsters (cough Hydras cough) much more of a threat.
Right now, most monstrous zombies are minor nuisances at best, and the ones that are more threatening (e.g. Dragons, Gryphons) can often be helpful because they’ll blight mana pools before basic zombies can reach them, thus preventing a boss from rising. In my mind, a monster blighting a mana pool should be the worst possible outcome, not the best!
Monster Boss Ideas
(thrown together with more regard for scariness than for balance)
Dragon
Fire Elemental:
STR 1x1500
Inferno: Every 6h, all units within 1 League suffer a STR 500 Ranged Attack.
Devourer of Legends:
STR 1x1000
No Good Deed: Whenever a player gains Valour, permanently gain X*100 Strength, where X is the amount of Valour gained.
Hydra
Leyline Tunneler:
STR 1x2500
Fey Portal: Every 18h, teleports to a random unblighted Mana Pool (unlimited range).
Mirror Lord:
STR 1x1000
Mirror, Mirror: Every 12h, spawn a new Mirror Lord at this creature’s location (this one obviously has the potential to get way out of hand).
Speed 3h/League - Swimming; 8h/League by Road (a non-swimming movement is necessary to avoid stalemates with players unable to kill a huge stack that’s stuck in the swamps).
Winged Serpents:
STR 3x2000
Speed 3h/League - Flying
Hydragenesis: When a Winged Serpent dies, spawn three Immortal Hydras at that location.
Spider
Verminous Harbinger:
STR 1x1000
Speed 3h/League by Road
Omen of Pestilence: Cards may not be deployed in, and living troops may not enter, Settlements within 2 Leagues. Restores in 3h. (You’d still be able to recruit from within the town, but any movement orders would stop at 95%).
Weblord:
STR 1x500
Speed 3h/League by Road
Storm of Silk: Every 18h, all Mortals within 2 Leagues are rooted for 24h.
Spider Swarm:
STR 2000x1
Speed 3h/League by Road
Arachnid Wave: All units in the Spider Swarm’s stack move at the Spider Swarm’s speed.
Giant
Immortal Titan:
STR 1x10,000
Speed 4h/League by Road
Tunnel Vision: Immune to all compulsion effects.
Butcher Behemoth:
STR 1x5000
Trail of Flesh: Every 12h the Behemoth raises 100 Immortals native to the Behemoth’s current terrain (Immortal Dwarves in Mountains, etc).
Blood Scent: Every 12h the Behemoth gains X*25 Strength for 12h, where X is the number of living + dead creatures within 1 League.
Gryphon
The Guivre:
STR 500
Delusions of Dragonhood: Whenever a player gains Gold, permanently gain X*2 Strength, where X is the amount of Gold gained.
Queen of Slaughter:
STR 1000
Razor Plumage: Mortals surviving Combat with the Queen of Slaughter have an additional 50% chance of dying after making any other saving throws.
Ent
Mind Ravager:
STR 1x6000
Thoughtleech: Every 12h, remove a random card from each player’s hand and reduce the minimum player hand size by 1. Permanently gain 500 STR for each card discarded this way.
Force of Nature:
STR 1x5000
Brutal Mysticism: Whenever a player gains Mana, permanently gain X*80 Strength, where X is the amount of Mana gained.
Walking Plague:
STR 1x4000
Plague Winds: Every 6h, the Walking Plague blights all settlements within 1 League.
These are really cool ideas and would be great inspiration for improving the existing zombie bosses even if separate monster ones don’t get implemented.
I like a lot of these ideas! Most of them would need some rebalancing/reworking (there are some really OP ones in here), but it would give people some real motivation to defend the mana pools.
Minor issue: In some maps it might be kinda unavoidable to have some pools corrupted, which in this case might spawn a super-monster very early on. Since many of these guys could be a serious threat even to late-game players, that might have some issues.
On an extra fridge horror/infinite pain cycle note: What if a boss corrupts a mana pool? and what if it’s a superboss?
Second note: we could always just spawn a normal boss from the corresponding race. Kinda boring, but keeps the balance and easy to implement.
That’s the idea! In my mind, monsters corrupting mana pools should be big, really problematic events, to be avoided at all costs (and really, if you let a zombie Ent get to a mana pool, you deserve whatever punishment you get ;-)).
For sure, and “easy to implement” is definitely a huge plus. This whole thing was mostly an exercise to put off real work while answering “what would I really not want to see rise out of a blighted Mana Pool?”
Wow, great list of ideas @DrBwaa ! We definitely want to add Monster Bosses that will be created when Monsters blight a Mana Pool. We are thinking of this as an Expansion at the moment, which will be some time post-June (which is our date for “Version 1”).
I’ve thought a bit more about your idea’s, and here are some rebalancing proposals to make them a bit more balanced/dangerous where needed:
A boss targeting mana pools specifically seems like a good idea, but this one seems nigh impossible to stop. you’d have to cover almost every mana pool with a 2500+ force in 1-2 days, and every time you fail it spawns another boss (with all the problems THAT entails). Perhaps make it move to a random pool within 10-15 leagues, or the nearest one failing that? That would allow players to predict it’s movements a bit more, and not just have it blight every pool on the map.
Also, would it do anything if all the pools are blighted?
The duplication would obviously get out of hand waaayyy too quickly if the players can’t reach the boss in time. It quadruples in power every day after all.
Maybe it instead creates a Minor Mirror Lord, which in turn creates new zombies of the current land-type they’re in (like the behemoth below). This would keep the element of increasing power/pressure, but make it more linear. Also, the Mirror Lords move as a stack of seperate units (so no kiting the whole lot), and would send out hordes of increasing power as their numbers grow. They would also not seek out towns, but rather try to avoid armies wherever possible (sorta like a reverse compulsion effect). So they don’t suicide on the walls of the player fortressess.
A 6K unit which spawns another 6K at death seems a tad weak (comparatively of course). It could case serious damage thanks to it’s flying, but it might also be intercepted easily. Perhaps make it immune to compulsion as well?
In an area with a lot of settlements this would end up trapping or blocking a lot of the pathways. Besides that, it seems fairly easy to counter if you know where it’s going to and have time to prepare. Perhaps instead make it start killing off population in those settlements, which also causes bodies?
This could either be a massive pain to deal with, or a case of just letting it run into your defenses. Maybe up it’s strength so it cant be easily dealt with?
These bosses rarely pick up any other units, and most would be spiders anyway. Unless this one had a way of gathering other hordes, it seems kinda pointless.
Just wanted to say that this one would give me freaking nightmares.
100 immortals seems like a lot. In one day it could raise 1600 at the lowest (unbuffed goblins), and 6000 at most (buffed trolls). Add in it’s own 5K strength, and it could easily build faster than the players can match.
On the other hand it would be the one boss that’s weak to debuffs, so it might be fine.
X25 seems a bit weak, considering that it’s basically 2.5 normal giants. maybe have it add 10x strength but make it permanent?
A gold grower seems like it could get out of hand really quick, and there isn’t much the players can do about it. It’s not like they can just stop making money. It also depends heavily on their races: 6 trolls players will have a way easier time than 6 dwarf and goblin players.
Since they’d only survive if they won, this is essentialy a one-shot boss. I could just chuck a 1K suicide stack at it and that would take care of it.
Seems like it would be quite frustrating to play against. also, does this mean that after 2 1/2 days you wouldn’t have a hand anymore?
This would steamroll fast too. 20*80 = 1600 power per pool per day. On a large map, that could easily be 10-15k power per day.
Deadly. I like it, though it might be easily stopped by attacking it outside a settlement and just keeping a small garrison at each nearby one.
On a global note: many of these bosses could be countered by making them run in circles or freezing them with compulsion. perhaps build in a general compulsion immunity/resistance for this level of bosses?
Thanks for the feedback! Glad people are enjoying these.
Turns out they’re already giving this power to the Trailblazer, so this guy’s kind of moot now. Unless the randomness of the jumps would make it interesting enough to be worthwhile again.
This is definitely a more reasonable idea.
This one’s intended to spawn a total of 18K as it dies (each of the three Serpents spawns three Hydras). So do you let it wreak havoc as a huge flier until you can build up a 20K army, or sacrifice a smaller army to kill it at 6K and hope the Hydras’ limited movement makes it containable?
Yeah, I was on the fence with all of these. Spiders being so relatively weak and fast, I wanted to basically just build on that, by making it extra hard to defend your settlements against a mobile force.
I think this is my favorite one. Sometimes simple is best.
I messed around with this one a lot; I never really got happy with it. I basically wanted it to be a stack of zombie Giants that spawns units to buff itself.
True, though I’d be surprised to see Blighted Gryphons making it to a Mana pool on an all-Troll map. I think a Gold grower (if done right; not that this is necessarily that) could be great, but I agree it’s obviously dangerous.
Well it’s going to have at least one other Gryphon in its stack, but I see your point. I still like the idea of a boss that’s always dangerous to kill, but I’m not sure how best to implement that.
Yes, after 2.5d everyone’s minimum hand size is zero, so you have to spend Valour to draw any more cards.
To be honest I only picked a multiplier of 80 as a tribute to the MTG Force of Nature. I don’t mind it growing fast: I maintain that if you somehow allow freaking Zombie Ents to blight a Mana Pool, you deserve whatever punishment you get.
Yeah, I’d be on board for just saying “all monster bosses are immune to compulsion” or even “all compulsion effects are limited to 6h on monster bosses”. I do worry that some of the abilities would have to be toned down significantly to compensate, which reduces boss diversity.
Ah, I didn’t catch that. That sounds like a good boss then![quote=“DrBwaa, post:14, topic:5309”]
Turns out they’re already giving this power to the Trailblazer, so this guy’s kind of moot now. Unless the randomness of the jumps would make it interesting enough to be worthwhile again.
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Yeah, I’m interested to see how that turns out.[quote=“DrBwaa, post:14, topic:5309”]
I messed around with this one a lot; I never really got happy with it. I basically wanted it to be a stack of zombie Giants that spawns units to buff itself.
[/quote]
hmmm. Maybe have it spawn dummy units? Like 1 power “Fleshlings” or something?
Or maybe have it spawn a sort of mini-behemoths, and making the Behemoth only gain strength from its offspring? And the offspring would get a damage boost from the behemoth/fellow offspring? Or would that be too much like the mirror lord?
Or another fun one: A boss who slowly decomposes into a mass of smaller units, and the smaller units would gain a large “hivemind” bonus! So you start with one 5K boss, and you end with 250x100 Strength units.
True enough. And it’s not like it’s the only boss which continuously grows in power. Especially with all the reworked “normal” bosses.[quote=“DrBwaa, post:14, topic:5309”]
Well it’s going to have at least one other Gryphon in its stack, but I see your point. I still like the idea of a boss that’s always dangerous to kill, but I’m not sure how best to implement that.
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Maybe a variation on the dragon one? As in, you can kill it but you need to do it very carefully, or you may seriously screw yourself over. And the boss would be designed to make that quite difficult.
At first I thought this was too strong, but then it is an ultra-boss, and it’s a pretty neat idea.
Point taken on the Zombie Ents… though if a Zombie Ent can blight a mana pool, you’re probably already in trouble, and this boss could easily be the death blow. Still, a bigger map means more resources and more spells, so it might work out.
On a side note, what is MTG? A boss?
well, these bosses are quite rare anyway, and they’re kinda meant to be a major threat even by themselves. I think you can keep most of these bosses without reducing their abilities. It may actually improve diversity, since players would be forced into different strategies besides “kite, kill the rest, then focus it down”.
Yeah I think there’s a lot of potential in this vein; like my first draft was STR 100x10 with each one getting +1 STR per nearby creature, and then I thought why not go all the way and do STR 5000x1 and every time one dies you get ten native units, etc… lots of possibility for horrible stuff here
One thing I’d like to see eventually is lesser bosses that don’t require hitting a mana pool to spawn. Maybe there’s just a very small chance they’ll spawn from a village, and that chance goes up later in the game. They’d be lesser versions of existing bosses.
For example:
Purse snatcher (based on master of coin)
150 str
gains +1 str for each 10 gold spent.
Lichling (Lich Lord… do I really need these?)
Str 300
Gains +1 str per mana spent activating abilities within 3 leagues of Lichling
Deceiver
str 400
Gains +50 Str for every mortal settlement within 3 leagues.
I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for making boss monsters that deal with when players Trade resources? (see “The Swindler”)
I had a couple of boss ideas I thought I might throw out there.
“Dark Carnival” Goblin
Speed: 4 hours/league by road
Str 500
once every 12 hours, compels all mortal units within 3 leagues to follow the Dark Carnival for 12 hours
Gains x *10 strength where x is the number of mortals following it at any given time
“Corrupted Caravan” (human or orc)
Str 2500
Speed: 4 hours/ league by road
Turns all road tiles on the map into their normal tile variant
“The Swindler” Dwarf
Str 1000
Speed: 8 hours/ league by road
All trading is done at a 2 to 1 cost
Gains 1 str for each 1 gold traded
Gains 10 str for each mana traded
Gains 100 str for each valor traded
Additionally, these trading buffs could also be applied to the master of coin, lich king, queen of lies.
I feel like trading is almost essential in any harder difficulties, as well as for those combos to go off. Might be interesting to make the player think hard about trading as a resource in and of itself.
My values are more arbitrary, but the concepts could be interesting.
I am not sure if this has been discussed in previous topics (or even on this thread).
But In playing games with the dread knight, I am anything but dreading it appearing. It is almost a blessing every time he shows up because he can be crowd controlled into oblivion (which in turn crowd controls every other undead unit within 3 leagues.
Has the discussion been put forth to make the dread knight alone immune to compulsion? I think given the name itself, I really want to fear him and the horde he brings to the table, instead of waiting for it with eager arms every time it shows up.
Thoughts anyone? Apologies if this was discussed earlier. I am new to the threads, and have not been responsible enough to read through all of the topic yet.
Yeah, I’ve had the same issue in that regard. Since you usually have enough compulsion units (humans being the CC-champs) they really become a convienient way of sweeping up all the undead in the area and locking them in the cupboard for the time being. Not exactly the dreaded march of a million mooks. If he was made immune to compulsion (or just resistant, like stuns only slow, or all only work for ~3 hours), he would easily become the threat he was meant to be.
It makes sense too: the Dread Knight is supposed to be a leader, someone who rounds up the hordes in a coherent army. But when some dude with a few dogs or a knight with a silly helmet spouting insults about their moms show up off they run! Surely someone with half a strategical mind would simply ignore these pests for the real target: that pile of juicy brains (aka “settlement”) right in front of them.
Hey @shde2e - that is very close to what we have for the Dread Knight so far! We are still tweaking him, so I didn’t post to the other thread yet, but here is what he is looking like so far.
The description doesn’t say it but he also “throws off” move conclusions on himself.
Having this guy simply recast his spell every 3 hours was a lot easier than writing a whole new system to make him and his followers completely immune to crowd control spells.
