[Bug?] v1.1 Banshee Immune to Blessed Hammer

All +Attack is +Physical Attack, and most weapons are physical attack only.  Banshees are immune to Physical damage.  The only way the extra damage could damage Banshees would be if it was Fire or Cold damage - and that would mean you would be getting damage not resistable by armor against all undead, not just Banshees.

Yeah, I would call that an oversight. But then again the game doesn't have a generic 'magic' type damage, to implement this attack. Of course it is a simple addition to the game and probably a much needed addition to add blessed damage.

Such a niche weapon to begin with, and the scariest undead unit is immune to it!  That IS evil!

I get why it's not damaging the banshee, but yeah -- a weapon with a name such as "Blessed Hammer" should at least inflict some damage, if not be very effective against one.

"Blessed Damage" would indeed be a great feature.

maybe just change it to give fire or electric damage against undead, no reason to add 'blessed' type of damage.

Yeah, that sounds entirely reasonable to me.

No need to do that...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75549875/Fallen%20Enchantress/LH%20Mods/BlessedWeapons/BlessedWeapons.zip

Why not just put that in the items folder.

It adds blessed damage to the game as well as ensuring that the damage doesn't change for other undead with piercing defense. Hence a simple change without changing the game too much. i.e. this weapon will now damage banshee's and will not be resisted by other undead creatures.

Namely defense stat is still pierce, but the resist stat has been completely changed.

Changing the weapon to fire, leads to burning corpse problem... immune 

changing the weapon to any other damage will also just ignore the natural defense the undead had before against the weapon which would lead to some rebalancing of the weapon damages, to ensure that it is a good change.

Adding a new damage type just for that is a total overkill. Far easier to make it deal some magical damage, or why not add armor penetration against just undead.

Would the resist stat stop the armor penetration. The ghost ability is not blocking the "damage" like armor, it is literally is resisting the damage.

Also, the game has 4 elements for each shard

toxic - earth shard

cold - water shard

fire - fire shard

lightening - air shard

What is the damage types for life and death shards? I think they missed these elements and only refer to them with the weapons.

It is easy to add blessed damage and dark damage. Seems missing.

I agree that it is total overkill to add a new damage type for just one weapon, but I figure this is a starting point to create a good base for a series of multiple weapons.

Armor penetration would clarify why it isn't effective against banshees. It can't hit them.

Armor penetration would clarify why it isn't effective against banshees. It can't hit them.

Would adding this damage to the weapon be too overpowered? The hammer is a blessed hammer and it is the only weapon with this name and ability to damage undead greatly.

The damage form I did, to create the blessed damage, was just make the weapon non-resistable from the blessed portion of the damage. The blessed damage base can still be defended by piercing defense, so for example the lich with a large pierce protect, will still have the same protection under this new damage (no change). The only real change to this weapon in game is the damage it does to a banshee, and only the blessed portion of damage which is +10.

The blessed weapon should do damage to all undead shouldn't it?

I think we just disagree with each other, and we're probably not going to reach a consensus. I think adding another damage type is way overboard and I'd rather remove the weapon completely. Meanwhile, +10 Fire damage against undead makes perfect sense to me. You obviously disagree, so let's leave it at that.

I would agree with removing the weapon altogether, since it is such a specific type weapon to the game.

The +10 fire damage against undead would be good (except for the cinder corpse), so I guess lightening would probably be the same solution.

I suppose from a minimalist view keeping the same damage types and utilizing them instead of adding new is better.

Honestly, I was trying to understand from a development standpoint of the problem of adding a weapon damage. Beyond the obvious it is more variables to keep track of when making any sorts of changes to the game. (Hence the reason why I tried to reutilize the same defenses for this particular weapon). I do value your opinion on the matter, I was just curious.

I did agree that my technique was overboard, since it is only one weapon against really only 1 creature. But this is something that I'll leave for others to adapt and modify themselves.

Parrotmath,

Just looked over your code.  Short, sweet, to the point.  Easily implemented.  I like it!

I'm guessing we wouldn't have too many weapons with this attribute in the game, so I don't see the blessed weapons file getting very long.  Hence, the 'full' weapons xml file can remain untouched, and this can exist alongside the existing files (via mods).  Unless the Stardock guys implement this in a patch of course, in which case there won't be much to change.  Nice job!

Looking at the code, I'm guessing that the Banshee would need to be classified as unit type 1 (hence modifying the core monster units file)?

To follow up on your overall suggestion (life versus death), it might be fun to introduce a 'counter' to the blessed hammer, that has the same effect versus creatures of light.  Specifically the Lightbringer and the Wisp come to mind, but I'm sure there are a couple of other suitable candidates that should apply/could be created.  A Death Hammer could have other properties too (bleed, etc.) to apply against 'normal' creatures.

As we have a few weapons already that scale their damage based on the number of shards you control (such as the Flaming Longsword and Freezing Longsword), this would add value to your life/death shard inventory.  Overall, I think this shard weapon concept could be expanded on a bit, but that would be beyond the realm of E:LH I think (maybe in the next installment if we get one).

Thanks,

The part you refer <vsUnitType> is a bool value. Suggesting that the game modifier is only applied when the specified target is of the type <StrVal2>

The banshee is undead, and so it uses that game modifier.

Actually that is the ONLY blessed weapon in the game. The other "blessed" weapons will be additions by other modders, and if someone would like to extend this mod to that situation, then they have a bit of work to properly implement the weapon damage blessed to the game. (I really did a patch job).

If someone were to follow this line of mod making and create a new weapon brands called blessed and such, they would really have to fully fix up the damage type I created here. This would include setting up appropriate damage defense and resistances to all the units in the game around this damage type. That is a large amount of work to undertake.

It would be far easier to say that the blessed hammer sends a holy fire upon the creatures of the undead and add fire damage when attack undead. This damage type is well established and fully implemented in the game. So, there would be little need to change anything along these lines.

I believe that is the point that heavenfall was making in the entire making a new weapon damage, which from the developers standpoint it is a good fix. My fix is really a patchwork and livable for a mod.

True, it would be overkill to add a new damage type for just one weapon. But it does seem like an oversight to ignore Death/Life shard as having a magical damage type. Plus it opens up new spell, ability and item possibilities. Namely, it probably wouldn't just be for one weapon, it could be used to add a whole bunch of new stuff. Also, it might have the added bonus of making it easier to balance things that they have struggled with balancing in the past (like shadow bolt).

These two creatures are actually elementals. Thus, we already have weapons that do more damage to these types of creatures. I would like to see a dark magic damage to be brought into the game as well as a blessed magic. But I'd be happy with a generic "magic" damage. The magic from the light and death shards. Since they are one and the same shard just a corruption of one or the other. Then I would remove the blessed damage and add just this "magic" damage type.

The Death spells currently do damage that there is no resistance to - the only way to reduce it by halving it with spell resistance.  So magic damage could be given to those spells and any others that fit the theme.