Bless changes

[BoboYagga]

I feel like there has been a lot of discussion about changing or reordering some of the bless effects. Making beserk cheaper, making larger cheaper or less of nature. I think there have been a number of other suggestions for things to add or take away as well.

My question is, is this actually a thing that the developers are considering implementing? Is this something that we can look forward to or is this not something that they are thinking about?

Also, is this even possible? wouldn't this sort of update mess up all current mp games?

I currently enjoy dom 5, a crazy ton. But would be very interested to see some bless changes. Mostly to see what strategies suddenly become viable for my favorite nations.

Also is this currently moddable? I thought someone said it wasn't, but I am not sure.

EDIT: I am MORE than happy to have this be a discussion about bless affects and which might need a buff or a nerf!

[zmo]

I can't speak to what the developers are or aren't planning, but I think the kinds of changes you describe are certainly possible. I wouldn't expect such changes to "mess up" multiplayer games, and I don't see any reason why changing the costs of certain bless effects would even affect in-progress games at all. Even if this resulted in some players gaining an extra bless point or two, there's no mechanism for them to be able to apply those points after the game has already started, so everybody would just continue to play with the blesses that existed at game creation.

[meglobob1]

Never say never!

Dom 5 brought some changes that players had been wish listing 10 yrs ago...

I think all the new mechanics should be open to change, IF the change makes gameplay better.

On blesses, there certainly could be some tinkering, especially on costs. Dom 5 has been out 9 months, so there must be some idea among players what blesses need buffing / perhaps nerfing.

I would like to see imprisoned pretender blesses being made more viable ie in regard with the incarnate mechanic. Currently you after go Awake or Dormant to have a incarnate bless and your scales end up on the trashy side.

[ÆtherNomad]

Yea, I agree, incarnate is too penalizing by a huge margin. I think this could be solved by adding more non-incarnate blesses or buffing existing ones. New bless effects would be great, especially in nature and death, two paths that reallly lack meaningful choice.

In any case, it is completely true that currently blesses aren't moddable at all.

[kristoffer]

There will likely be some balance fixes on blesses and other stuff in an upcoming patch.
Some consensus on what are good and what are bad blesses, scales etc, are starting to form I think.
Suggestions on new blesses are welcome. I think there are suggestions in the wish list. I agree that nature, and perhaps death, a bit lacking in bless options.

[Zonk]

Originally posted by BoboYaggatheTiny:

making larger cheaper or less of nature

Enlarge spells are pure Nature, so making it less/no Earth seems more obvious.

My question is, is this actually a thing that the developers are considering implementing? Is this something that we can look forward to or is this not something that they are thinking about?

We have no reason to think they are opposed to rebalancing/changing/adding blesses, though it might not be their highest priority.

Also is this currently moddable? I thought someone said it wasn't, but I am not sure.

It's not moddable at all, unless you can still do the Dom4 thing where you mod the weapon blesses by modding some 'weapons' that are actually the bless effects.

Some of my thougts on the current blesses, assuming this thread was also started to discuss balance:

Blood Surge
Is likely too good. I'd make it B5/incarnate, or remove the +defence and lower att/strength to +2.

Reinvigoration
I think 2 for 3 points would be better than what we have now and match the attack/def/strength blesses

Water breathing
Should be much cheaper (maybe W3/W4, non incarnate) and make poor amphibians into full amphibians.

Unaging
It's currently quite good, possibly one of the best blesses for some nations, but I still think making the 'start younger' mechanic into a simple +maxage mechanic would be better. Also lets you put shrouds on non-sacred old commanders.

Arcane Finesse
I think it should work on spectral weapons (all MR-negates weapons, really), and MAYBE be stackable so you can take it twice (or thrice for S10 Marignon).

Hard Skin & Fortitude
Maybe make Hard Skin be a special prot bonus that always applies (so on top of Bark/Stone/Ironskin) and/or make Fortitude not provide blunt resistance (fits how stone statues don't usually have that, also buffs blunt weapons).

Waste Survival
I don't think this deserves costing two points.
Compare to Forest Survival (2N) and Swamp Survival (1N1W): Forests are very common, swamps aren't but having the survival also provides combat benefits (and resistance to Miasma).
Wastes are not common on most maps and there is no secondary benefit to the survival.
I suggest making this D1, as I think wastes should thhmatically be closer to Death than Fire (you can have barren frozen wastes, after all).

Also, about gaining bless points when you have all elemental/sorcery paths at 3
I'm ambivalent about this. It's a nice bonus and really helps rainbows, but it does encourage rainbows to all have 3+ paths instead of skipping one or two.

I don't think the incarnate-non incarnate system really needs 'fixing', though I'm certainly not opposed to having cheap incarnate blesses or expensive non-incarnates (although you can already have a powerful non-incarnate bless by stacking stat bonuses).
Or just buffing the weakest incarnate blesses.

For new blesses Death options, I'd like a +affliction bless (Blood would also fit, but it already has good options).

Passive +XP each turn might also fit - consider the Champion's Skull theme (ancient warrior spirits whispering battle wisdom in people's ears) and EA Ulm's background where ancestor spirits teach sacred warriors how to fight - although I would prefer a Fire +% XP bless that only works in combat to encourage aggressivity.

Maybe give Air a non-stackable bless that gives -1 encumbrance, *or* make it stackable as long as reaching enc 0 through this doesn't give the special benefits of enc 0 (no fatigue from regular melee, half -MM from armor), just like reaching enc 0 through XP.

[Althaea]

I always thought the reasoning behind putting Arcane Finesse on MR-negated abilities as opposed to putting it on MR-negated weapons (e.g. a Naga's gaze versus a specter's spear) was fairly obvious. But we've had that discussion before.

I agree with Zonk in regards to the Reinvigoration, Water Breathing, Unaging, and Hard Skin blessings. On Blood Surge, Fortitude and Waste Survival I'm ambivalent. I like the existence of a elemental/sorcery mastery effect on a purely thematic level, though an alternative to the current mechanic might be to instead give some special bonus for having all elemental/sorcery paths at 4th level.

[sunbeam]

Maybe this ought to be the bless discussion thread, or one of them. Anyway specifically devoted to blesses, as opposed to the more varied wish list thread.

Seems like it has kind of become a meme or something that most of the high cost incarnate blesses are avoided, except for quickness. That seems like the only one anyone is willing to pay the price for.

One exception to that is if you are using the pretender as an awake expander, then maybe one of the incarnate blessings really enhances them or you had to take something anyway.

One thing that seems to be the meme now is an imprisoned or dormant pretender, with a bunch of non-incarnate blesses. Unless your nation is one that has crap troops and/or crap sacreds and you need an awake expander, or the bless payoff on your sacreds is worth having him incarnate.

Lessee, blesses people actually seem to take:

Air:

Shock Resist. LIterally that's almost it. And they pretty much want it only if they are a TS nation, or will be fighting one. And if your nation doesn't have sacreds it can mass or that are actually effective, well that's not even worth it (looking at you LA Man).

No one really seems interested in Wind Walking, one problem with that is you pretty much move at the speed of your slowest units anyway, so unless your nation can field all sacreds, in a group or solo thugging, it's kind of moot.

Thunder Weapons. None of the weapon blesses except Magic Weapons seems to be used much. Very disappointing results given they mostly take 7 in a path and are incarnate. Looking at youtube let's plays this one isn't used that much, and when it is doesn't seem worth taking A7. Your points would be far better spent for Magic Weapons, Attack Skill, and Strength.

Accuracy, Swiftness just don't seem very popular. Mainly taken when you have A bless points and you have to take something. Before that whole attack rear thing was adjusted you'd see nations with sacred cav take swiftness. Now if you want to "get there firstest with the mostest" you take the W quickness bless.

Fire: This is the Attack Skill and Fire Resist tree.

Water: This is where you make a heavy investment in the Quickness bless.

If all your troops have snow move or CR, ie your nation can take a bunch of cold scales you might use some kind of gimmick build. You'd have to be a Jotun nation, or EA Ulm/Rus or something to do it.

If you are actually capable of fielding large armies with sacreds somehow, like I dunno some massive Marverni Pig Horde you could take Cold scales, CR and Snow Move or something. But most people won't find it useful unless their non-sacreds operate well in cold.

Earth: Reinvigoration, Strength, Mountain Move if you have one point free. Some people use Hard Skin. I've tinkered with wound fend, but short of plugging numbers into a spreadsheet (which I'm not going to do) it's hard for me to see much return from this - on units with human hp as opposed to giants anyway. The incarnate Air/Shock resist thing is pretty good I guess, but once again unless you have lots of sacred in all your armies...

Astral: Magic Weapons, Magic Resist, niche use for Arcane Command (if you are using things like VIne Ogres or your nation has good magic being summons).

The big blesses here are excellent, Luck, Fateweaving, Twist Fate. Etherealness is way overpriced though.

Nature:

This is where you take the regen bless, which has evolved to mostly be of interest to Giant nations. I think Recuperation is underused, especially if you have sacred mages (that aren't geezers), but I can see why it isn't as popular as it should be.

Forest Survival takes two points, meh.

If you have some kind of gimmick you can easily pull off with Foul Vapors PR is pretty good. But that requires you to have mostly sacred casters, and the N/W crosspath. Along with PR immune blockers, whether sacreds or Vine things.

Hp's are pretty popular to take here. Larger is of interest to Marverni and those trampling pigs. I've seen some arguments that Larger makes most other sacreds worse, not better, unless they are already size 4 or above. And if you have size 4 sacreds, Regen or Quickness or something makes more sense.

There is another nich here, where if your nation has really old sacred mages like MA Marignon, MA Pythium, or Shinuyama the unaging bless makes them great.

Death: Undying (since the Luck nerf less interesting for most nations). Stygian Flesh (excellent especially for not being incarnate), niche use for Withering Weapons.

If your nation is fortunate enough to have recruitable priests who can animate, or get a lot of freespawn dead, Undead Leadership is awesome.

Blood: This is where you take hp's, Strength, Blood Surge.

If you are going to fight Michtlan or something Unholy Weapons is interesting, but it is a steep investment.

Blood Vengence is interesting but so expensive.


I haven't mentioned a lost of blesses. Cold Weapons are a joke. The charged body bless requires you to also take very significant amounts of SR or you can kill or stun yourself. Yeah, I'm taking that one, especially since it goes off only once for like taking A9 (You need Major and Minor SR). And lots more.

If anyone reads this wall of text, feel free to correct me, strongly or whatever. And if someone else has a different take on things, and what's actually used I'd love to see it.

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by Zonk:

Unaging
It's currently quite good, possibly one of the best blesses for some nations, but I still think making the 'start younger' mechanic into a simple +maxage mechanic would be better. Also lets you put shrouds on non-sacred old commanders.

Does that work? I once did a game with LA Man, and experimented with taking Magic 3 (instead of Drain, it actually worked great kinda).

Anyway I made a Magister Arcane the prophet and he was the same age as before he became the prophet. Been a while though.

Unaging is really wonky. Awesome for MA Pythium; MA Man most of the Crones are old even if you take it.

[Althaea]

Sunbeam's analysis isn't bad in of itself, but it has a rather fundamental flaw in overlooking the popularity of awake expanding monsters. It is quite popular to take big incarnate blessings on a Pretender that can benefit from them early on, with the benefits gained by the nation's sacreds being a secondary consideration. Monster Pretenders with an N7E7 combination of Regeneration and Fortitude are particularly popular, commonly used chassis for this being the Great White Bull, the Thrice Horned Boar, the Drakon and there's probably a few I'm forgetting about. Many YouTubers are relatively conservative or inexperienced players, or else prefer unorthodox builds (because they are more interesting), so it might not come across that clearly in most Let's Plays.

Another quite common Incarnate bless is the E5 Fire/Shock resistance, which offers better value for your points than having separate Fire and Air blessings. This is probably the most common Incarnate bless effect seen on Dormant or Imprisoned Pretenders.

-

Entirely separately from that, I think it's worth bringing up that in the beta, when Fear was considered so overpowered, it was in the light of its ability to stack infinitely. Since Fear auras were tweaked so that they can't reduce morale by a total of more than -5 no matter how many of them you stack, the equation has changed a lot and the current Fear bless is actually quite bad.

Basically, the balance concerns were based around what you could do with 500 Flagellants or Ancestor Spirits or Jaguar Warriors or some similar massed sacred where the stacking effects could generate ludicrous results. Since that is no longer a concern it could easily be a D7 bless now, if not D6.

[Zonk]

No, that won't work sunbeam. That's the point of my suggestion - currently if you have an old commander and the Unaging bless putting a shroud on them won't make them younger, just make them age slower.
There is also the fact that +max age is far more visible and easier to understand than starting younger at recruitment.

As for your criticism of incarnate blesses, why not mention Fortitude? it's very good.
I don't think Thunder Weapons is bad, though we'd need to know the stun chance for the fatigue shock damage to properly evaluate it.

[terve886]

I think that the blesses should not have hard cap of being incarnate or non-incarnate at bless point requirement of 5. Some of the blesses would be easier to balance, if they could cost more than 5 points while being non-incarnate or vice versa.

[Zonk]

Also, I forgot that

Death Explosion
Really should scale (both damage & AoE) with unit size.
I suggest AoE 3+size and damage 6+size*2.
EDIT: Actually, I would make AoE scale for all aura blesses; larger units have larger auras to compensate having fewer of them.

Charged Body
Could perhaps include 5 shock resist, to make it less lethal to the sacreds themselves.

Cold Weapons
Could use a secondary cold fatigue effect; for reference, Caelum's Frost Bows have a 10 AN cold fatigue extra effect.

For Nature, I think a poison cloud bless could be interesting.
I'd make it provide poison resistance 10 instead of 5 (since this being real, non-stun damage, resistance is not doubled).
Would have to be very expensive as it's real damage and the +10 PR will be useful against other things too.

[terve886]

Poison weapons is also almost never used due to the death scale requirement.

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by Zonk:

As for your criticism of incarnate blesses, why not mention Fortitude? it's very good.
I don't think Thunder Weapons is bad, though we'd need to know the stun chance for the fatigue shock damage to properly evaluate it.

Honestly I forgot all about it, wasn't referring to a list of blesses. Actually I like Fortitude for some kinds of sacreds. If they are high hp's like giants or things with a second form (Zhayedans, Rus Bear Shifters, Jaguar Warriors) it's great.

Not so much on Hands of Justice.

One thing that does bug me with the bless system is things work great with supremely capable things like Anakites where a couple go a long way. A nation like LA Man or something will inevitably wind up with Tower Guards or summons on the front lines, because they can only recruit them in the capitol (and can't summon them like some nations).

Then too, I'm ... maybe not giving things like Thunder Weaposn their due. Not from a damage standpoint (I'm positive two shots of Str and an attack skill is better damage), but if your sacreds have multiple attacks like Anakites, or Ponymen, well that is double the stun chance.

Thing is I seldom play guys like Ashdod/Gath, and with Ponymen SR seems more important.

But there were a ton of blesses I didn't mention, some I didn't think of.

As an example I read an account of someone mentioning they took Reanimators on Eriu or TNN, and it was incredibly effective, both with melee kills and TS spam. I'd also think it would be hilarious with Wrathful Skies or FIrestorm or the like.

[Kid Icarus]

I thought Arcane Finesse did affect MR for weapon checks? Perhaps I am mistaken but I was just in a game and noticed the MR check on my Withering Weapons was at base 12. I thought normally MR started with base 11. Granted, my recall of rules isn't the best