My Necromancer

[Lord Wevilspore]

Necromancer

Unit Model for Stats: Cleric

Power: -------------- 12
Range: --------------- 3
Area of Effect: ------- 1
Concentration AoE: - All Units

Hit Points: ----------- 20
Armor: --------------- 0
Blocking: ------------- 0

Movement: ----------- 3
Recovery: ------------ 4 or 5

Action:
Focuses on a single unit to put a Reanimate status on them. This has no immediate effect but when the affected unit's hit points reach 0, the hit points refill to 80% of total and all stats are reduced by 20%. If damage would reduce hit points below 0, the remaining damage is done to the new life total as compared to the adjusted armor.

The new Zombie unit would be hurt by any clerics heal, yours or opponents. Also, the reanimation would end any continuous spell effects on the unit (such as the Stone Golem's armor bonus or a Frost Golem's Paralyze).

Breaking the Necromancer's Focus before the affected unit perishes does nothing to the living unit. A zombie unit will perish immediately if the Necromancer's Focus is broken.

The following units should NOT be allowed to reanimate: all Wards and all Golems.

Example:
Knight has been affected and is at 5 hit points. A Dark Magic Witch hits the Knight to finish it off. Normally, the DMW would do 18 damage to the Knight. The attack would finish off the remaining 5 Hit Points. The extra 13 damage would be recalculated (internally) based on the normal Knight's armor (25) back out to 17.333. This total (17.333) would then be applied to the refilled hit points (40) at the new reduced armor (20). The damage done would be 13.866 which rounds up to 14. That extra point of damage may not seem like much, but I have seen too many times where I hit a unit and I brought the unit down to just 1 hit point. Every point counts.

Formula: (E Power * (1 - L Armor(%)) - L Hit Points) / (1 - L Armor(%)) * (1 - (L Armor(%) * 80%) = Damage to new Zombie's Hit Points.

Concentration:
Hits all units, both friend and foe, including the Necromancer himself, with an Unblockable 12 Power attack.

Apearance:
Any ideas?

Sound Effects: When the focused unit perishes and reanimates, the Necromancer should utter, "Rise from your grave." (Suggest pulling the sound bit from the old Sega game Altered Beast.)

[Lord Wevilspore]

Does anyone like this unit? (Oh, yeah. Bump:p)

[Bottle]

I'm sorry, but I don't like the idea of "reanimating the dead" in general.

[HavenDoom]

Sweet idea, I like the idea of giving the game a little bit of sinister, although I think that you would have alot of trouble getting into the window of death necessary for you to reanimate a zombie. Also with only twenty hit point there are a multitude of units and yes wards that would kill it in one hit, unless it can reanimate itself this unit probaly won't be a big hit.

[Lord Wevilspore]

I designed it based on the Cleric. I thought because it can essentially keep a unit around longer that it should be weaker than a Cleric. The one ability is supposed to be used with forethought in mind. The second ability is supposed to be a way you can eliminate the weakened troops from the board.

Would the unit be better if it's Power was reduced to 6 and instead of damaging every unit on the board, it healed all your units and damaged all opponents pieces?

[HavenDoom]

Thanks for following up my Q's and statments, I think that this unit could have some serious potential, not that what I say counts for much, but I still think that the power is to low. One well placed scout could foul up all of that premeditation you mentioned. Anyways have you considered the look of some of the Necros from Diablo 2, or maybe just a black robed guy with like a green glowing sickle or somthing twisted like that, a little bit of a Reaper quality.

[Lord Wevilspore]

Well, I'm not very artsy. Almost any appearance will do. I just thought that for the animations and sounds that accompany the abilities, the Necromancer should utter when the affected unit 'dies' and 'reanimates', "Rise from your grave," just like Sega's Altered Beast.

[Lord Wevilspore]

Also, when I said 20% of all stats, I meant ALL stats.

All stats except Recovery should be multiplied by .8 for their new value. Recovery should be the original value plus 20% of that value. All values should round to the nearest whole number. The minimum value a stat should be reduced to is either 1 or 0 depending on the stat.

Examples

Knight (Zombie)

Power: 17.6 or 18
Range: 1
AoE: 1

Hit Points: 40
Armor: 20
Block: 64

Move: 2.4 or 2
Recovery: 1.2 or 1

Cleric (Zombie)

Power: 9.6 or 10
Range: Same
AoE: Same

Hit Points: 19.2 or 19
Armor: 0
Block: 0

Move: 2.4 or 2
Recovery: 6 (Move = 2.4 or 2, Act = 3.6 or 4)

Note: Yes. The reanimated Cleric would heal everyone except himself. He would do damage to himself.

Scout (Zombie)

Power: 14.4 or 14
Range: 4.8 or 5
AoE: 1

Hit Points: 32
Armor: 6.4 or 6
Block: 48

Move: 3.2 or 3
Recovery: 2.4 or 2

DMW (Zombie)

Power: 19.2 or 19
Range: 1
AoE: 3.2 or 3

Hit Points: 22.4 or 22
Armor: 0
Block: 16

Move: 2.4 or 2
Recovery: 3.6 or 4 (Move = 1.2 or 1, Act = 2.4 or 2)

Dragon Tyrant (Zombie)

Power: 22.4 or 22
Range: 2.4 or 2
AoE: 1

Hit Points: 54.4 or 54
Armor: 12.8 or 13
Block: 32

Move: 3.2 or 3
Recovery: 3.6 or 4 (Move = 1.2 or 1, Act = 2.4 or 2)

I noticed some oddities with the units with a Recovery of 3. Move and Act would result in a Recovery of 4. But because of rounding, Moving only or Acting only would result in recoveries that remained the same. Suggest tacking on the extra Recovery to the Act part so that they Recover at 1 for Move and 3 for Act.

Another thought I had is just to tack on 1 extra Recovery to anything the Zombie does instead of making it proportional to the original Recovery. This way, a Cleric would have a Recovery of 3 for Moving, 4 for Acting, or 6 for doing both. A Knight would have a Recovery of 1 for Moving, 2 for Acting, or 2 for doing both.

As for the Power, I think it should be kept low because, like the Cleric, it can unblockably (I don't think that word can be made into an adjective but I am going to anyway :p) attack every unit on the board no matter where it stands. Since the Pyromancer's Power is 15 and it can only attack 5 squares (which I always refer to as 2 square radius), the Necromnacer's Power should be lower. I even added the penalty of hurting your own troops to keep its Power at 12.

Thoughts anyone?

[fragdemon]

What happens if the zombie unit is killed by an attack?

Does it die completely? Or does it keep on getting reanimated over and over again until the necromancer is killed/loses focus.

Both ways could cause problems. If the zombie unit gets continuously reanimated, then the necromancer will be extremely potent late in the game, where every unit counts.

But if the zombie only gets reanimated once, then the necromancer really shouldn't bother reanimating any unit except for a knight, because a 19HP DMW won't be very useful anyways.

[Lord Wevilspore]

The original idea was a one time reanimation. Once the zombie was toasted, the Necromancer would stop focussing. Reanimating the zombie over and over again would be too overpowerring in my opinion.

The primary use I see for this ability is to use it on one of your troops, especially one with a Stone Golem blessing, and send it on a Suicide mission into enemy territory.

A secondary use is to try to preserve a unit that is about to die. Say that DMW is going to bite it after 1 Knight blow. Your all healed out. The enemy has a Knight ready to lay down the final blow. This Knight itself has low hit points. Your DMW will be usable next turn but not before the Knight went in and brought her down. Have the Necromancer focus on the DMW. Now the Player can either swing at the Necromancer to break focus or swing at the DMW. Either way, the DMW will last long enough to blast the Knight into ash. (I was going to say 'survive long enough' but realized that would be an oxymoron. :D:p)

[enderandrew]

I think it's a good idea. I disagree that certain units wouldn't be worth reanimating. Sometimes getting in one extra attack makes all the difference, even if it is a small attack.

This may be slightly complex to code but I dig it.

[Lord Wevilspore]

I designed it this way because of the way they programmed unit deaths. The unit just evaporates off the field. If they has left the corpse on the field, I would have had this unit just go up to the corpse in question and reanimate it instead of having to maintain focus on the unit you want to last.

Personally, I would prefer if they reprogrammed the game to leave the corpses on the field and have them become hinderances to movement.

[enderandrew]

I agree.