The Godslayer

[WarKirby]

Just a small something to note.

Being that it's a big scary endgame thing, I believe the Godslayer sword should be able to kill immortal units, permanantly. Ie, when an immortal unit is killed by the wielder of Godslayer, it simply doesn't respawn. regardless if it's the temporary or one-shot kind.

I'm planning on tweaking Auric Ascended with my newfound module-fu, and one thing I'd really like to do, is have him be immortal unless killed with the Godslayer. But I can't put python in a module, nor would I really know how, so it'd be great if the godslayer could be made to do that.

Can't imagine it would be overpowerring otherwise, considering the relative rarity of immortal units. And I think it would be quite fitting. But mainly, I need support in FF to be able to do what I want to auric in a module.

Does this seem like a good idea?

 

[cIV_khanh93]

yeah on the godslayer killing immortals. Immortal auric... i guess it technically fits lorewise, since a mortal w/o the godslayer shouldnt kill Auric anyway, and wihtout being slain with the godslayer, he should just reappear in his vault. I also think an immortal item would be cool. Maybe a national wonder at divine essence? we coudl even put it elsewhere, like at strength of will or omniscience to keep it away from blood of the pheonix.

 

[WarKirby]

I also think an immortal item would be cool. Maybe a national wonder at divine essence? we coudl even put it elsewhere, like at strength of will or omniscience to keep it away from blood of the pheonix.

This would be cool, but also off topic.
Why not make another thread for it? it is a good idea.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

Well i said the on-topic thing first... all the threads in the Fall From Heaven forum go like this.

 

[Ksi]

The Godslayer represents the Gods agreeing to be vulnerable if they violate the compact. Immortals do nothing of the kind. How would you reconcile this while doing justice to the lore? Otherwise I'd rather the lore not change in order to make way for a tiny mechanic.

 

[WarKirby]

So, what are immortals?

Where does their power come from?
Why shouldn't a god-slaying sword be able to finish them for good?

Everything should have a weakness.


In fact, while we#re on these lines, shouldn't the Nether Blade be able to kill immortals too? I'm pretty sure there's a lore justification for that, being that Os-Gabella wants it to commit suicide

 

[Quetz]

agree on nether blade and godslayer both killing immortals.

 

[Ksi]

So, what are immortals?

Where does their power come from?
Why shouldn't a god-slaying sword be able to finish them for good?

Everything should have a weakness.


In fact, while we#re on these lines, shouldn't the Nether Blade be able to kill immortals too? I'm pretty sure there's a lore justification for that, being that Os-Gabella wants it to commit suicide

The immortals don't have one specific path towards immortality... some have golems made of bone, some have rituals, etc. and while the Godslayer can kill Gods, and is surely a powerful sword, it isn't necessarily the case that it can kill any/everything beneath a God. The biggest problem is there isn't any kind of magic on it keeping things dead when it's struck -- the immunity to magic and ability to kill a God just further symbolizes what was agreed on during the compact.

 

[xienwolf]

It was stated in the Lore somewhere that the Godslayer appears to be and works as an ordinary, completely unremarkable sword. It is only in the rare situation that your opposition is a Deity that it manifests anything special.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The Godslayer's power to slay gods comes from the agreement of the gods to be vulnerable to it if they break their oath to uphold the compact. Presumably it is but collecting on its victim oath, so there is not reason to think it would be effective against anyone who had not agreed to be vulnerable to it. It would probably be useless against Nemed or Os-Gabella (not that she wouldn't like to acquire it to test this out.)


Having the Netherblade negate immortality would make more sense, but implementing that could be difficult.

 

[WarKirby]

It was stated in the Lore somewhere that the Godslayer appears to be and works as an ordinary, completely unremarkable sword. It is only in the rare situation that your opposition is a Deity that it manifests anything special.

Then why does it give +3 strength and immunity to magic? It's far from unremarkable against non deities.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

I dont have any lore justification. I think it should be able to kill immortals though. Isn't the avatar of wrath imortal in FF or was that from a modmod I was reading?

 

[Deon]

Avatar of Wrath is not a god, or am I mistaken?

Again, lorewise, Auric Ascended is not a Mulcarn, he can be his avatar but avatar < god.

Then how do you interprete this:

it isn't necessarily the case that it can kill any/everything beneath a God

and

there is not reason to think it would be effective against anyone who had not agreed to be vulnerable to it

Auric is ascended through a ritual so I don't get this too:

The immortals don't have one specific path towards immortality... some have golems made of bone, some have rituals, etc.

I'd like to get more info on it and does the Auric become Mulcarn itself or just an avatar?

And how does "immortality" on immortals work? If it comes from gods then it should be removed by godslayer like the power of Auric. If not, I'd like to know the source ").

Nether Blade killing immortals sounds cool but too powerful, because it's a guaranteed item for a certain civ.

In fact, while we#re on these lines, shouldn't the Nether Blade be able to kill immortals too? I'm pretty sure there's a lore justification for that, being that Os-Gabella wants it to commit suicide

It would be cool to drop Nether Blade in Sheaim borders and see how their civilization crumbles to it's end in a turn or two .

 

[Ksi]

AA as an avatar just means the form he, the God, has while coming to Erebus. Avatar of Wraith and AA are both avatars but, because of the previous fact, they are not to be grouped in the same category. AoW's is the avatar said arch-angel has while coming to erebus. AA is filled with divine energy and has agreed with the compact which activates the God Slayer. The draw and ascension rituals are much different from say the calabim or how bone golemns are reanimated. While the calabim one does not necessarily have much to do with Gods directly, (instead using souls, etc.) the draw is one of the most terrible rituals in erebus and is directly connected to divinity. Again, you can't group all rituals together.

In addition, magic immunity from the God Slayer is just from no God wanting their magic to be used against the wielder. As for the strength, it is a very technical issue to bring up; there are numerous ways you could explain it. The sword could easily be a little stronger than iron and still unremarkable.

All in all, it would be a headache and a half for the designers to see which immortals the God Slayer can kill and which it cannot, not to mention finding a way to program the function in. It would be stupid for it to "kill" bone golemns, for example. In the end, you're asking the FFH or FF team to do ton of work for a mechanic that isn't exceptionally fun, flavorful, in touch with the lore, or even necessary to balance anything. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would rather the time be used for something better, such as the reworked espionage system that Vehem mentioned might someday be a possibility.

 

[WarKirby]

Why would it be silly to kill bone golems?

They require divine essence to create. Which would generally imply that their constant reanimation comes from some special divine power, beyond normal magic. The godslayer, being the magical sword that it is, could sever that divine link, and return them to inanimate piles of bones.

I'm not sure where you got the conclusion that this would be a "ton of work", though. Shouldn't deaths of immortal units generally run through one or two specific functions? All it would really take is a check in there, to see whether or not the killing unit has the Godslayer or Nether Blade promotions, and return false if so.

I had a look in the pyrhon, and it seems that the deaths of a few specific units (brigit, hyborem, basium) run through a custom python function each. I couldn't find a python function for normal immortal units, but I found a few likely looking things in the dll code with a quick text search.

 

[1234567890]

Avatar of Wraith and AA are both avatars

The Avatar of Wrath is not an avatar, as strange as it may be. Auric Ascended is the only Avatar in the game, the whole race was created for him only.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

The Avatar of Wrath is not an avatar, as strange as it may be. Auric Ascended is the only Avatar in the game, the whole race was created for him only.

odd. Back on topic, the main reason (in my mind) to make the godslayers kill immortals is so that we can have true immortal Auric. That way "mundane" units can kill him only when hes defending the capital, but a worker with the godslayer still has his 50/50. Killing other immortals wouldnt even be necessary, maybe just put a check in killing Auric for the godlsayer promo to allow him to resurrect or not. Or we can leave Auric to be an avatar of stasis that makes it harder to win the game.

 

[Vehem]

odd. Back on topic, the main reason (in my mind) to make the godslayers kill immortals is so that we can have true immortal Auric. That way "mundane" units can kill him only when hes defending the capital, but a worker with the godslayer still has his 50/50. Killing other immortals wouldnt even be necessary, maybe just put a check in killing Auric for the godlsayer promo to allow him to resurrect or not. Or we can leave Auric to be an avatar of stasis that makes it harder to win the game.

It's actually fairly easy to have it be impossible for any unit other than one carrying the Godslayer to properly kill Auric (having him respawn immediately after death, possibly with a negative promotion to hold him in place for a short duration). This would always happen until the Illians ran out of cities or until the unit killing him was wielding the Godslayer...

It would make him a lot more potent in the hands of a player however, until the AI learns that the unit with the Godslayer should be hunting Auric down...

 

[WarKirby]

It would make him a lot more potent in the hands of a player however, until the AI learns that the unit with the Godslayer should be hunting Auric down...

To be fair, I would argue that this point is pretty moot. If you build Auric, you've pretty much already won. Whether the AI knows how to fight him or not doesn't make a whole lot of difference. And at present, he's pretty much already invincible in the hands of an intelligent player.

Anyways, what I'm asking for here, is not necessarily that, but to implement something that would allow me to do that in an xml module - making the godslayer kill immortal units - so that I could just add bImmortal to Auric

I really love FF, and have no intention of breaking off entirely to make my own modmod, I just want to make little add on parts for FF, to add to the awesomeness that it is.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

When I eventually make an FF based modmod, I think I'll give Auric Ascended a <PythonOnDeath> call that returns 1 so to make him a true immortal instead of just bringing him back at his capital city. Using the Godslayer would use CyUnit.setDisablePyDeath(bool) to toggle this function off, and then kill the avatar. That is, if I can't make the <PythonOnDeath> function realize whether it is being killed by a unit with the Godslayer.