<AbilityBonus InternalName="Blood_WraithAbility">
<AbilityBonusOption InternalName="Blood_Wraith">
<DisplayName>Wraith Blood</DisplayName>
<Description>-1 Hit Point per Level, Heals 3 points when an enemy is killed</Description>
<Icon>RoundCrest_Resoln.png</Icon>
<GameModifier>
<ModType>Unit</ModType>
<Attribute>AdjustUnitStat</Attribute>
<StrVal>UnitStat_HPFromKills</StrVal>
<Value>3</Value>
<Provides>Heals 3 Hit Points when an enemy is killed</Provides>
</GameModifier>
<GameModifier>
<ModType>Unit</ModType>
<Attribute>AdjustUnitStat</Attribute>
<StrVal>UnitStat_HitPoints</StrVal>
<Value>-1</Value>
<PerLevel>1</PerLevel>
<Provides>-1 Hit Point per Level</Provides>
</GameModifier>
<HideWhenUpgraded>0</HideWhenUpgraded>
<AIData AIPersonality="AI_General">
<AIPriority>5</AIPriority>
</AIData>
</AbilityBonusOption>

this is how existing wraith blood is defined, changing -1 value to 0 will give no XP bonus/malus per level. 

I am not sure if there is function for steal health/mana per hit (not kill), some experienced moder should know though. Actual values of stolen mana or health per kill however are surely modable.

Vuln to physical attack is doable like this 

<GameModifier>
<ModType>Unit</ModType>
<Attribute>AdjustUnitStat</Attribute>
<<StrVal>UnitStat_Defense_Blunt</StrVal>
 <Value>-1</Value>
</GameModifier>

I am not sure if mod file will overide coreabilities.xml and I am not going to mess with core files, as I could do more harm than good. 

When I tried removing the HP penalties for Wraith and Amarian blood the mod file didn't override the core file, and I started seeing a weird effect with tooltip info showing up twice, and the HP penalty seemingly still there. Totally possible that's just newbie ineptitude though.

I got reckless and just changed the core file in the end, with no harm done yet. I think I currently have Wraith blood set to 5 HP healed per kill with no downside, but am considering changing this to x mana per kill so that Wraith-based factions can get to casting spells earlier (and summon more spiders). Then when I get to grips with modding unit traits HP healing can come back as a trait.

I meant +1 HP drain per level of the unit, with a kill. As more levels the unit, more HP drain with the kill. 

I don't think it is good idea to tie that to +HP per hit, but I guess it is trying and see what happens.

I did read the thread before replying, did you read anything I wrote?  It looks to me like you have not, so I am bolding a few summary issues, here.

The wraith race is designed to work with resoln's strengths and that is sufficient justification for their existence.

Second resoln's blood sigil is seriously bugged -- you cannot play a battle with it active because the game UI will not let the battle progress. That is a huge issue, and it means that almost no one has been playing resoln which implies that the general consensus is based on an ignorance of actual gameplay.

That said, the skill sometimes works properly if you autoplay the battle, and based on that experience, this is things look to me:

Against typical opponents, resolyn troops take almost no damage. City militia is invulnerable when your opponent does zero damage though the one damge per turn from the offensive boost might be troubling in a long batte.

Against strong opponents, they still do not have a chance, but with death magic you've got some very powerful heavy hitters. And, a death magic field can wipe the field (getting a health bonus from each death).

So, in the context of resolyn, you want to turn a starting game buff into an endgame buff.  So a one round combat where a death magic mage wipes a field of 9 armies on his or her first action would, instead of giving 27 health would give 117 health at level 10 and 207 at level and so on? And this against a faction that's already taking no damage except when fighting extremely strong units.  (In my playthrough, I managed on average between one to two death shards per level -- and keep in mind this is also reducing critical hit damage, the weaknesses are to magic and to magic immunity, which is where your heavy hitters need to come into play, you could wage a campaign against death shards to nerf their "armor" but you will need to field masses of armies with high magic resist to do that and even there cities which house death shards will need your heavy hitters.)

Anyways, the wraith race is designed for weak troops and strong heavy hitters which have heavy aoe damage.

If you want to boost the healing per level you should also limit it to only one activation for a beneficiary per turn, or something like that.

 <GameModifier>
<ModType>Unit</ModType>
<Attribute>AdjustUnitStat</Attribute>
<StrVal>UnitStat_ManaFromKills</StrVal>
<Value>3</Value>
</GameModifier>

Is for stealing mana per kill.

I can't find anything for stealing HP per hits, but there is Drain Life function connected to spell, maybe it can be used.

<StrVal>DrainLife</StrVal>

However playing a bit I realized HP drain would make you virtually immortal at lower levels when I count in dodge changes and damage reduction from armor, as most damage monster did to me was 6, tehn stronger enemies did around 12 dmg. 

5 HP stolen per kill is fairly enough + adding 5 mana from kill creates a nearly infinite mana supply where Hallowed Rite & ranged weapons coming in. 

EDIT: health drain faction trait (no matter if per kill or hit) would create a vampiric wolfes, spiders, bears, dragons, anything you can bring under your flag during ur campaign, just imagine insta-healed dragon per use of his firebreath ability

Why not have the vampiric traits only take effect through melee attacks.

That could work -- it would be a tremendous nerf for resoln, of course, but that nerf would demand some kind of improvement to balance it out.

But for something this radical, why not just make a new race?  I am not even sure if this melee combat only heal variant really ties in with the death magic theme here...)

dihir, I think what they are trying to say is that there is no benefit to having the Wraith race even for Resoln.

Personally I think Hallowed Rights is decent for archers. I could see taking Zealot if I had to (ie cheap, expendable archers), but I think 0 HP per level is a little much.

Maybe Zealot should reduce defense instead?

The biggest problem that I see with Zealot is that it gives you a minor bonus (+3 initiative) for a significant penalty (-1 health per level). It's also bad when you compare it to the bonuses other races get - Tarth gets +3 initiative for free if they have fewer than four units in an army, and Amarians get +X initiative for holding X air shards; both of these are much better bonuses than +3 initiative for -1 health per level, especially when you realize that Wraiths with this trait gain 0 health per level. I also can't see a defense penalty, since the default Wraith faction already cannot put much defense on its units as they have the 'no armor' weakness. I could go with a permanent -1 or -2 to health, but not -1 health per level. For that matter, even if Wraiths did not already have -1 health per level, I don't think I'd use this ability since the health cost beyond the first few levels is so high.

What bonus does Wraith blood provide that is designed to work with Resoln's strengths? Crappy trained units, to encourage the use of mediocre shard demons and spiders? A bit of healing to one unit when that unit kills something doesn't provide a synergy with anything except the goal of killing lots of things quickly, and Resoln is not built to do that. If it were 'everyone with Wraith blood heals a bit when someone dies' or 'Wraiths gain a little health back when they damage an enemy', then it would be worth the health penalty, but it still wouldn't be designed to work with Resoln's strengths. Bonuses based on the number of death shards you control - oh wait, no, only Amarians get bonuses from shards, my mistake.

For that matter, what strengths does Resoln have that you could say are designed to work with any race's strengths? Corruption hurts Amarians, because they don't gain anything from Life or Death Shards, spiders and shard demons are equally useful (or useless, depending on strategy and technology) to any race, and lack of armor hurts everyone, most especially the two races that are already lacking in durability - Wraiths, and Amarians.

I see Resoln's weakness stacking with Wraith blood's weakness - no armor and -1 health per level are significant penalties to the durability of your units - but I don't see Resoln's strengths being complemented by Wraith blood's 'strengths'. The only blood bonus I can see that could be noticeably worse than Wraiths for Resoln is that of Amarian blood, since it means that the Corruption spell is worthless (not that I think it's that great in the first place - I'm not impressed by Cyndrum Demons, and wrecking the magic abilities of any champion who isn't a Death Mage doesn't appeal that much to me since Dirge of Ceresa isn't that great of a spell and the most useful Death Magic spells don't gain any benefit from Death Shards). All of the other blood bonuses would be noticeably better than Wraith Blood for Resoln, except possibly Ironeer Blood, if it's expected that you'll always be casting the spells from Death Worship.

The change from 4hp per level to 2hp really hurt Wraiths/Amarians in general.

Yes! I totally agree with you that that is what they are trying to say.

It's just.layed Resoln, and the wraith race is awesome for Resoln, if you play to their strengths.

I have already tried describing their strengths though, so I am not inclined to try that again unless you really want me to?

Anyways, I think this discussion is silly because there is a huge bug in the implementation of Resoln, that is getting no discussion in this thread! (It is supposed to be fixed in 1.03, thankfuly...)

Resolyn, with 10 death shards , is practically untouchable by most units at a comparable stage in the game. But to get that many death shards you have to specialize in death magic, so all other forms of magic will be weak for you, and of course death magic does not give you many useful forms of healing.

Anyways, if you are not taking much damage the reduced health is no big deal, and the *heal on kill* works nicely for death magic wielders that can wipe out most or all of the opposing army with a single spell (dirge of ceresa, with stacked multipliers on damage can do that and prodigy and so on...)

You could say the same of any troops if you do not play them properly.  Other troups need armor, or dodge.  Resoln's need death shards and protective spells for most battles (and the remainder need either offensive magic use or well trained champions).

With Resoln you can shrug off all damage from incoming armies (there are some exceptions but let's cover the basics first). However, they will often be taking self inflicted damage when doing so (one point per round).

This tells me that you have not inspected Resoln's spell list and/or you have not tried the spells

I was wiping the field with dirge of ceresa. Of course, I had a custom built sovereign. But it was literally: cast dirge, battle over.

When I ran into a game breaking UI bug (which was so bad it could only be that almost no one was playing Resoln), my sov looked like this:

level 10, with 10 death shards, 33 hit points, 108 spell mastery, +50% damage from path of mage, +25% from evoker, +50% from warlock, +25% from staff of souls. The spell mastery would mean dirge works on most units and it would do 32 poison damage per turn (and I got my 3 points of health from anything that died on the first turn, I am not sure about deaths on later turns). Meanwhile, shadow bolt does 35 points of unresistable damage (except on ophidians and obsidian guards, they were a problem for my level 10 resoln).

10 death shards with blood sigil also meant my city militia was nearly invulnerable. (except that's where the UI bug broke my game :/), and of course the same benefit also extends to my spiders and demons. And, in the field, wither would achieve something similar.

My biggest problem (other than that bug) was gathering enough power to fuel my spells (sacrifice was looking promising, there, especially on enemy cities without any essences to fuel a blood sigil).

How, exactly? If your answer is the Wither spell, this isn't an advantage specific to Wraith blood - anyone becomes practically untouchable when you're casting Wither boosted by 10 Death Shards because it's -12 attack to every enemy unit on the battlefield. Wraiths don't get any bonuses from Death Shards that any other race wouldn't get.

Dirge of Ceresa, Corruption, Graveseal, and Infection are all from faction traits. Any other race would make use of these at least as well as Wraiths would. Dirge of Ceresa isn't good enough in my opinion that I'd want to ruin the power of all the spells I have outside of Death Magic until I get high level conclaves, and Corruption isn't that likely to help a lot in the early game. Graveseal and Infection are great, but don't depend at all on Death Shards - you can have any number of Death Shards from none to whatever the maximum possible number of shards is, but both Graveseal and Infection will perform just as well with zero Death Shards as with ten million Death Shards. These spells also don't particularly favor Wraiths over any other race.

10 Death Shards and Blood Sigil makes anyone's militia practically invulnerable, because Blood Sigil casts Wither on the attacking army at the beginning of the battle. A 10 Death Shard Wither reduces the attack of every enemy unit on the battlefield by 12 points, and Wraiths get no more advantage out of it than any other race does. In fact, Blood Sigil is probably worse for Wraiths (and Amarians) than for any other race in the game, because it also casts Berserk on your units, which are somewhat lacking in the health department but now have to take damage every turn, and they're lacking enough in the armor department that even with the 10 Death Shard-powered Wither they might just still be taking about as much damage as they're dealing, depending on the weapons and armors being used on each side, and might possibly be taking more since militia tends to have crappy weapons.

1. Your 3 points of health from anything that died only matters if you actually have damage to heal.
2. Dirge of Ceresa (3 poison +1 per death shard for 10 turns, instant casting, 64 mana) is almost strictly worse than either Contagion (Air II + Death II, 2 poison +1 per death shard for 10 turns, 1 casting time, 18 mana) or Horrific Wail (Water II + Death II, 2*caster level damage on casting, 36 mana, 2 turn casting time). Horrific Wail is mostly better than Dirge because nothing is resistant or immune to the damage type dealt by Horrific Wail but many things (such as elementals, which are something that as Resoln I want magical help fighting against) are resistant or immune to poison damage, and Contagion is better because its base damage is only slightly worse and its mana cost is nearly four times less than that of Dirge of Ceresa, and a one-turn casting time isn't that bad.
3. How much would you be doing with a Fireball if you hadn't corrupted all your shards to Death Shards? Is having one or maybe two casters with a really good Dirge of Ceresa worth not having any good casters who don't have Death Magic?
4. Cyndrum Demons are a type of shard-spawned unit that I do not like. They are completely reliant on health for their survival, and rely on killing things to grow more powerful (which, by the way, competes with Wraith Blood's rather crappy +3 health per kill, since the Cyndrum Demon has to make the killing blow for another demon to join the group).
5. How exactly does the power of Dirge of Ceresa benefit Wraith Blood, specifically? Keeping units alive by killing enemies before they can close the range might be more beneficial to Wraiths, whose units are easily killed, than to other races, but it doesn't mean that Wraith Blood is playing to the strengths of Resoln. Anyone would be benefited by killing off enemies before they can get close enough to deal damage.

Yes, wither spell and blood sigil spell. But the question I was answering here was "how can this work".  It's kind of silly to ask multiple questions and then object that an answer to one question is not an answer to a different question, don't you think?

Once again, the biggest advantage is for the death magic users: this gives them a way of healing themselves that's more versatile than life drain (unlike the despair scroll, the spell is single target and takes an extra turn to cast.  Wraiths are "weak troops, strong death magic users".  But, when handled properly, those weak troops can still be quite strong.

Resoln also gets other spells.  I believe I mentioned blood sigil and shadow bolt? And, for that matter, wither. Anyways, it's not any one thing in isolation, it's how everything works together. Dirge is amazing because it's instant and cover's the entire battle field. Because it's amazing, it's incredibly weak in its unaugmented form, but it can certainly be worth augmenting.

Militia usually hit hard in the early game (which is the main time when you have to use them without backup).  They are also disposable, I was just using them for an example.  You are right of course that this does not win all battles.  And, of course city militia alone does not equal city militia with demons and spiders backing them up. But again, it's not just this one thing in isolation.  Resoln's dirge (once boosted properly) goes a long way towards making those death shards a viable strategy.  Mind you, Oracle Ceresa is not tuned for this. I used impulsive and a few other traits.

I did not have those other spell casting schools, because I took too many traits.  But instant cast is in my opinion a big deal. You need a lot of initiative before you can reliably pull off a multi-turn cast (without getting shot full of holes, counter spelled or rushed). Meanwhile, you can usually avoid monsters that you do not want to fight. (That's already how we deal with dragons and such in the early game.)  And, you can use wither with some random infantry if you really need to deal with poison resistant monsters.  (magic immune, however, require something like high level champions - they are painful when you are tailoring your strategy on death magic.)

I will agree though that mana is a big issue here: This is a power-hungry strategy.  And it requires a lot of spell mastery to overcome resistances.  But there are ways of dealing with both issues.

And, for that matter, mana management might be a good reason for not going all death shards - that 50 mana per shard is not subject to tactical cost reductions and there will be times when you need the mana from the shard and cannot afford the risk involved in lowering your mana pool to corrupt it.

Fireball only gets 9 squares. Dirge gets the entire field. And, of course, fireball is not instant cast.

Meanwhile, since this is a power hungry approach, you are not going to have the mana in the early game to many other casters.

But if you pick your battles properly, that's not too bad of an issue.

If you neglect your death shards and protective spells, sure.  But if you neglect your death shards you do not have to deal with those demons, do you?

Wraith blood + augmented dirge gets your caster a nice bit of health.  (And if you are getting hit a lot, your caster is going to have options for health bonuses from level up.)

The wraith design is heavily tailored for death magic users - the biggest weakness of death magic is its lack of healing.

Wraith design is tailored for crappy trained units and champions who don't gain any particularly great benefit from leveling up or killing things. Gaining three health back when you kill something is negligible compared to the amount of damage that anything can do to you if it has an attack rating similar to or greater than your defenses, unless that attack rating is less than 3. For that matter, a level 10 character with 33 health is something that a champion specializing in Fire Magic can kill in one or two hits if I have a handful of Fire Shards and a decent level. All the healing from kills isn't going to help one bit if you're already dead by the time the healing comes.

So does anyone who has Death Magic at whatever level those spells require. They are certainly useful spells, but they aren't aspects of Resoln, nor are they something that the Wraiths make better use of than anyone else. I'd say, in fact, that Blood Sigil and Wither benefit anyone other than Wraiths and Amarians more than they benefit Wraiths, Blood Sigil because Wraiths don't have the health to really absorb 1 damage per turn, and Wither because anyone else has more health to absorb what damage gets through than the Wraiths do.

This benefits only your spell caster. This isn't beneficial at all to anyone else in the army. Also, your spell caster is a weak target for me to attack, and I'd be willing to bet that a level 10 Fire Mage would be able to kill in one hit your level 10 Death Mage, at which point you take an injury or waste a lot of mana. I might still lose the battle, depending on who got their spell off first, but your level 10 Death Mage isn't gaining anything from Wraith Blood, and I'm still able to dish out quite a bit of damage to your army while Dirge is killing me. Moreover, Dirge is potentially denying your units chances at gaining healing from killing my units.

I would like a trait where you gain no HP each level, but instead gain one Attack each level, combined with not being able to equip anything. It would make a glass canon unit that gets more powerful as it levels, but remains easy to kill.

If I am playing that style, my units are for backup and for safety, and I will happily sacrifice them when that benefits me.  Remember that my units are relatively cheap.

Also, this is not multiplayer.

However, hypothetically speaking, I will grant you that my level 10 death mage had only 25% spell resistance and no fire resistance, so that might work.  Still, remember that dirge keeps acting every round, even after I am dead (that is what is so nice about it and that is one of the reasons why instant cast is such a big deal).  So unless you were hardy or had better luck gathering spell resistance than I did, there's a decent chance that both of our casters would die (assuming I had something else on the battle field, to keep the battle going).

Still, you are correct that enemy spell casters are a weakness for this style of play.

And, perhaps it might be worth making a Resoln sov be hardy?

If you do bring units to a battle, and your Wraith spell caster is still getting hurt, either your enemy has archers/spell casters or you're not using your troops properly. If it's that your enemy has archers/spell casters and is using them correctly (by targeting your spell caster), your spell caster is probably going to be dead before the healing effects from Dirge killing off everyone on the opposing side kicks in, since Wraiths get crap for armor and crap for health, and relying on having good armor from loot is more than a little iffy. You can probably get a decent amount of armor, but probably not a full good suit of armor, and playing as Wraiths you don't have anything but leather and the magic robes to cover the missing pieces. If your enemy has only melee troops, then either they had Charge and your caster started on the front lines of your army, or you've done a poor job blocking the enemy units' advance. In which case, your caster is likely to die very quickly (again, assuming that the AI actually uses its troops properly - which I admit is a big assumption) since he/she doesn't have the health to take hits and doesn't have the armor to shrug hits off (unless you got lucky with loot drops).

If, on the other hand, you bring troops to the battle and your troops are the ones taking the hits rather than your spell caster, your troops are the ones who need the healing from kills since your caster isn't getting hurt but your troops are. Trained units aren't great, and they don't gain that much from leveling up, but high level trained troops are still much better army material than low level trained troops are, and since the only two ways you have to heal are to idle for several turns or to kill things (for a whopping 3 health recovered per kill), Dirge isn't boosting your army. By keeping the fights short, it is helping your army survive, but any other race (except Amarians) gets more out of keeping an army alive than Wraiths do, because they gain twice the health from levels that you do.

If you're playing the style where you bring sacrificial troops to a battle to keep your caster alive while he/she destroys the enemy army with spells, Magnar is a much better faction to play with because I have really cheap units and a spell that gives me 20 health and 20 mana for sacrificing one of them for no mana cost - up to 160 health and 160 mana regained per battle, and I can churn out slaves at a rate of one unit per turn, or two if I rush them - which is a much better deal than spending 64 mana (less whatever percentage of the mana cost I save through level up bonuses and enchantments) to gain not more than 27 health (3 health per kill, no more than 9 enemy units in a standard battle). And you'd still have these bonuses if you went for a custom sovereign with some set of magics that you consider better than Death and Fire, or if you made a custom faction with Quendar Race and Fleshbound Tome (and Death Worship, if you really wanted Dirge of Ceresa and Corruption). With Cull the Weak, I also get to choose when the healing comes rather than having to wait for units to die. The healing Wraiths get from their blood ability is negligible compared to the healing you can get from any other source, except when you're looking at large armies dying all at once. Life Drain? Heals me for 12 - that's equivalent to four enemy units dying to a single Wraith, before any bonuses Drain Life gets from death shards and caster spell damage enhancements, and the target of the life drain probably died, too. The three health regained per kill is vaguely useful, but not nearly to the point that it's a strength of the race that is good enough to counteract the loss of one health per level.

I'd also agree that it's worth making a Wraith sovereign hardy - but I'd say that it's worth making sovereigns of most races hardy, anyways, and a Wraith/Amarian sovereign with Hardy is just about equal to any other race sovereign without it, aside from the poison immunity.

You have not tried this.

First off, yes, it is entirely possible to lose a battle.

However, Dirge does instant damage and then damage after every turn the infected unit takes. I have only seen the heal from the instant damage, I have not seen the heal from the subsequent damage - I do not know if that is a bug or not (and since blood sigil is buggy I have stopped playing that faction). But archers have relatively low initiative and the AI is also not good at picking the most important threats. Also, Dirge is instant cast, and there's time for shadow dart or whatever to thin out the archers.  But, yes, if I am hopelessly outnumbered by vastly superior forces, I am going to lose.

Dodge works nicely.  Why have you assumed that I am not using dodge?  And, of course, I am mostly going to be wanting to fight withered archers, so it's only the mages that will hurt.

That's one approach, certainly.  What you are describing has little to do with how I play, however.

...

I have almost never found hardy to be a useful trait.

That said, once 1.03 comes out, it would be interesting to try a resoln style faction with ironeer blood, just to see how it plays.  This would require a completely different strategy, of course, from a wraith blood strategy.