the Dreamer

[Scott Alexander]

The problem with this is that it's too exploitable. Get Hemah, send him to your biggest rival (assuming you have open borders) and watch him commit carnage while the AI continues to love you.

If the mod were to get something like this, a good addition would be a promotion ("Abomination" has a good ring to it, namewise) that makes it an act of war (or at least of severe diplomatic penalty) to move this unit even into an open borders civ's territory. That would mean you either have to suffer the consequences yourself in exchange for the benefits of having Hemah, be constantly at war with someone just to give Hemah a place to park himself, or send him out into the wilderness to live as a hermit until he's needed (which wouldn't be a bad idea from a story point of view.) It might be necessary to make him a little more powerful to compensate for the trouble, or the ability to inflict the dreams on your enemies might be compensation enough.

In fact, I'd love to see more units with this sort of mechanic. Maybe Beasts of Agares cause unrest in the nearest city just by existing.

 

[zxcvbnm]

The problem with this is that it's too exploitable. Get Hemah, send him to your biggest rival (assuming you have open borders) and watch him commit carnage while the AI continues to love you.

If the mod were to get something like this, a good addition would be a promotion ("Abomination" has a good ring to it, namewise) that makes it an act of war (or at least of severe diplomatic penalty) to move this unit even into an open borders civ's territory. That would mean you either have to suffer the consequences yourself in exchange for the benefits of having Hemah, be constantly at war with someone just to give Hemah a place to park himself, or send him out into the wilderness to live as a hermit until he's needed (which wouldn't be a bad idea from a story point of view.) It might be necessary to make him a little more powerful to compensate for the trouble, or the ability to inflict the dreams on your enemies might be compensation enough.

In fact, I'd love to see more units with this sort of mechanic. Maybe Beasts of Agares cause unrest in the nearest city just by existing.

Hemah as a dreamer would need definitely some diplomacy penalty, perhaps -0.5/turn he spends in foreign lands, stopping them from loving you. Actually the idea was that he would be able to cross enemy lands freely like great merchants and caravels in vanilla.
And also was proposed that his dreams might have some beneficial but rare effects, like creating a hero, which would add the risk of sending him abroad.
In wartime he can't be defended by an army because the dreams would affect it too so dreaming is quite a double-(if not triple-)edged sword

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

if this happens Hemah will be my new favourite hero

 

[Calavente]

just a question : why isn't Hemah a summoner istead of a mage-type guy...?
his dreams seems mostly acting as summons. (mind work also, but allowing him to cast fireballs or tsunami seems odd. sumonning chaos marauders seems more in-lore.)

 

[zxcvbnm]

The idea was that his dreams shouldn't be controllable. At least I can't decide what I dream about, and Hemah seems to be able to do little more, except hiding his face to avoid being in his own dreams.

 

[Calavente]

true, but then, being a powerful archmage doesn't answer that... it is just that he can launch spells...

why not have him

#have a 'dreamer promo' instead of sorcery (or in additiion to sorcery) that :
-allows launching of sorcery spells
-50% risk that the spell launched is corrupted : 70% the corresponding summon;, 30% the corresponding divine (100%summon or 100% divine if one of those does not exist)
-each summons he makes have 50% chance being barb.... (and being expulsed of the tile) (even fireballs)
-if divine or sorcery spell is launched : 50% chance it will be applied to nearest fow (if one is in range : spell exentsion) (think valor....) 50% to nearest friend (think rust applied to one of your units or diseased)
-if hemah doesn't casts during a turn, a random barbarian summon (taken from his manaII or manaIII) is summoned on closest tile without units on it.

overall :
==> 50% chance the spell is not what you wanted.
==> 50% chance the final action spell will turn against your intention.
==> every turns Hemah will bring harmful things into action...or at least act as an element of chaos..

then add: AI does never play Hemah last, does never moves him without a unit.

EDIT: maybe a bit difficult to play mod as hemah will need a check/event every turn... either to do a summon if no casted promo. or to corrupte the launched spell when hemah is playing...

 

[zxcvbnm]

If you like these ideas you can submit or support them in the design contest
Wow! it works!

 

[Darksaber1]

Maybe Hemah could have the ability to summon a random summon rather then use another spell?

 

[zup]

AFAIK there's the Beltane Cycle stories in pedia. It is in the pedia entry for the monument IIRC. In it he's described as being a reasonably powerful mage. Or wouldn't you say fooling everybody at the mages' guild to thinking he is not there isn't enough? The point is, he has a good control on his magic. Yet when he falls asleep (without incense) all kinds of nasty things happen. Such as blight in the ljosalfar lands.

His dreaming should be separate and independent of his magic.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm thinking that it could be nice to use the new abilities of Fall Further to give Hemah an Effective Dreamer promotion that causes diplomatic problems with nearby rivals and unhappiness in cities, but which also randomly casts a Wonder-like spell. It might be nice to make it a randomly gained promotion that you can block with another promotion that requires gold and Incense. (From the Beltane cycle we know he can use incense to suppress his dreams, so if you can afford to keep him supplied with this you can prevent the disasters he would cause. During a war it might be best to let his dreams go wild while in enemy territory.)

 

[avalonnn]

I would love to see a spell with 100 or more different possible outcomes, randomly cast at the start of the player's turn, wherever Hemah is.

You could do it at the end of the turn, but I think that it's nicer to the player to do it at the start of the turn.

Otherwise it could get kind of boring:

The zombie horde rose again outside the walls of Kazad, dripping not blood so much as a grey mixture of disease and flesh. This time the Dwarves did not scream. There was no sound. They just turned to Arthendain, waiting for him to cast Destroy Undead, again. Then the assassins went to work, jumping over the walls and slipping quietly behind enemy lines.

 

[zup]

Though game mechanically the diplomatic penalty might work, how many people actually know that Hemah's dreams (nightmares) become reality. Further, if Hemah cannot rest well when using incense, he should perhaps lose strength slowly when using it, and when he ceases using it, slowly recover. The problem here is that his main weapon is magic, which is not affected by combat strength. He will become more vulnerable to assassins though.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Well, they might not know exactly what is causing it, but people would begin to notice that bad things happen when Hemah is around. Many probably think he is causing them on purpose, which would be worse for diplomacy.


I'm thinking a much better cost for suppressing his dreams would be for him not to not gain any free xp when his dreams are suppressed. Sleep and dreams are an integral part of the learning process in the real world.