It's not a secret that I, Luckmann, master of the towers of azurite, quartz and onyx, defender of the central territories, hero of the hierarchy and cuddler of bears, have a slight preference to the idea of bear mounts.
But I'm not sure, mechanics-wise, if we'd want many different races of a single mount species. How'd you keep track of them all? Sure, at first, it wouldn't be much of a problem. But then, suddently, you have four different kinds of bears, four different stacks of a resource where all are used basicly the same, four different tabs or entries to keep track of, four different units clogging up your build queue. Four different kinds of bears that perform slightly different, all in maybe the same army. They'd all be subject to the effect of the lowers common denominator.
This isn't really a problem, right? Because, "it's just four kinds". Four extra units? Four extra units that you've constructed in the unit-builder.
But let's say we have 6 or 8 different mounts. Let's say 8.
That's not 4 anymore. It's suddently 4 races of all 8 available species. That's 24 extra kinds of units that won't really make that much of a difference, for all the extra work in maintaining them.
Now, if there was a choice somewhere, instead. "What kind of bears do you want to raise in all our bear pens?".
1) Grizzlies.
2) Brownies.
3) Cuddlies.
4) Cavies.
After that choice, any and all bears you'd raise would be Cuddlies. I'm not sure I'd like that system either (Bears should simply be 'bears', resource-wise, if you ask me).
As for the idea of having mounts that also confer an active combat bonus, fighting after the rider have died, I'd have to say no. It doesn't -really- make that much of a difference, and it'd raise all kinds of facepalming from me when I'd see it, wheter or not the channeler have control over it, if it's raging, or whatnot.
i gamble my giraffe against your bear anytime Reduced 88%Original 435 x 500
