So, this reply is eating into my painting time, so I'm going to try to keep it brief.
michael , first let me say THANK YOU for putting so much time and effort into thinking about Butcher 2 and putting yourself out there with something tested for discussion.
I think you’ve developed some very interesting concepts in your draft stat card. I tend to agree with many of the folks on this thread that suggest some of the optics won’t fly with PP even if the changes are good.
Thanks for the appreciation! I appreciate it.
I'm not so much concerned with "whether it will fly with PP" or whether people in CID will complain. Far too many people in CID (for my tastes) don't understand how to play this game, won't admit there's a difference between theory and practice, are
wildly biased, and don't grasp even the basics of probability. The development team seems to have quite a solid grasp of math.
(I never claimed to be a professional mathematician, mind you. But seriously: if a person can't take 20 minutes to google "how to calculate probability", then I don't know what to say...)
But, a for-reals practical example. Everybody remember Kara Sloan? Everybody remember how people f-ing
panicked when somebody came up with a mythical six-Hunter list and somebody theorized that her feat was way too good at assassinating opponents, back when it gave an out-of-activation shot whenever another model in the battlegroup hit with a ranged attack?
Yeah?
Do we all remember how Privateer changed it to a flat "extra ranged attack during activation", and that entire horde of fools all sighed a breath of collective relief and said "Whew, now she's not so good at assassinating you! The odds are way down!"
These are the people we're up against. If they can't think critically and discuss things like human beings, they can board a rocket to the sun. (Like, I don't even care if you get it
wrong. At least show you
tried. Compose some logical thoughts that are remotely connected in some plausible way, that's all I'm asking.)
(P.S. -- none of that is directed at you, Armchair, and probably not anybody else in this thread, either. I still haven't had the chance to go back and read the other pages, yet.)
Impervious Flesh. I get what you’re trying to do. I like what you’re trying to do. Butcher 2 needs to be more survivable on the front lines. But, this change just makes no sense to me in terms of his fluff or use of this mechanic in the game, and even suggesting it in CID is likely to inspire vitriol, rage, and accusations of baseless wishlisting. So, I’d recommend we think about other ways to make Butcher more survivable.
My own suggestion is to add
Steady and Unyielding to his card. Both are thematic to Khador. Also, it’s way to easy to kill casters who get out front by just knocking them down. Unyielding is less fantastical than Impervious Flesh, and both abilities seem “right” to me on Butcher’s card.
Steady + Tough which Butcher has natively is a really nice combination which basically gives you a 1-in-3 chance to pull a rabbit out a hat.
So, Impervious Flesh. For fluff considerations (and I should have posted this sooner, but I was in a rush), I imagined that Butcher's madness had caused his magical energies to turn inward and sort of unconsciously curl around him. He's stuck in his own head more than the real world, and that has manifested with his magic talent becoming outwardly unreliable and inwardly fortifying his already prodigious physique.
From a mechanics perspective:
I already tried Unyielding, and I didn't like it. He is (and I'm generalizing to a degree; cut me a little slack here, I'm in a hurry) back in the same boat of "dies to some boosted guns" and "dies to a charging heavy or two or three charging weaponmasters" again. He simply wasn't durable enough when leading from the front lines -- and he's
always going to be on the front lines and exposed to danger.
Partly, again, this cycles back around to Arcane Dementia. It seriously screws with so many core functions of "warcaster" that it's frustrating some days.
Anyway...
Crap, where was I going with this?
I tried Steady + Tough and dismissed it. I dislike Steady + Tough because I feel like there's too much of a proliferation of this in the game, for one, and for two, it steps on Kozlov's niche a little bit much. Also, nothing in the fluff has ever suggested Butcher is hard to knock down. It doesn't feel right, thematically.
Impervious Flesh does interesting things to the math in a way that Unyielding does not. Fatigue is setting in right now, so I'm not going to even try to explain coherently, and I am not even going to try to transcribe my napkin math on here. If people want to do some math, though, I encourage them to run the following comparisons.
- Karchev on full camp, knocked down, six focus (that is: 34 boxes, ARM 21 vs. melee, 6 focus to Reinforce with. He can, unless Eiryss1 is around or there's a feat in play, be guaranteed 6 focus every turn. I'm assuming knockdown here because, one, it makes the calculations easier, and two, we're assuming Butcher2 is knocked down here in a moment, because that's the start of a highly successful assassination run on my B2.)
- Barnabus2, under Execration, with Spiny Growth, with the attackers under Star Crossed, no transfers, just to keep it simple. (He can't be knocked down, so...)
- Butcher2, knocked down, with Impervious Flesh, on 4 camp (which was about the most he ever realistically had to camp when I played him. He was most often at 2 camp or less when he started getting attacked.)
- CID Makeda3, B2B with a battlegroup model (no knockdown), affected by Safeguard and Battle Driven, no transfers.
- A Devastator or Demolisher. (That is: ARM 23, 34 boxes, and go ahead and assume auto-hits, because why not.)
- Butcher2, knocked down, with Unyielding, on 4 camp.
Attack then with whatever; I don't care. Just keep it consistent. For warjacks (give them all 3 focus, because why not), I recommend: Ironclad (it's just about a perfect average of all warjacks), Doom Reavers, Knights Exemplar with Battle Driven and Divine Inspiration minifeat, Crusader with Choir buff, and sure, why not, fully-loaded Boundless Charge Juggernauts, because people love to cite that as the end-all be-all of attack stuff with warjacks.
Then run those same calculations again and toss in any common buffs at all. For super-duper simplicity's sake, just make those buffs a +2 to damage.
Also, assume B2 only Reinforces when the damage roll deals at least 5 damage, or if he's one attack away from death, or if the number of remaining incoming attacks are less than or equal to his remaining focus.
Be sure to do the smart thing and just buy additional attacks against B2 with Impervious; don't boost. That's a bad idea.
(Wait, is that a true statement? Is it a trick question? What does the math say?
)
Murder Spree. I don’t like this change. I understand what you’re trying to do, but this isn’t the direction I would want to take Butcher 2. It feels unbalanced on the face of it - no, I haven’t done math so this is a gut check, but given that I and other dedicated Khador players are having this gut reaction I can only imagine the reaction from those outside our communities when seeing this suggestion. Yikes. I also don’t like a mechanic which cuts off my own ability to pac man through armies, and cutting ability to use Overtake with an uncontrollable thresher feels off to me.
So the thing with Murder Spree: flat-out Overtake without this is way too strong. Put the current in-print B2 on the table with "Homicidal Maniac" changed to "Overtake", and watch him eat armies. This is as much a fluff rule as it is a balancing rule.
The thing I miss most from his previous edition iterations is the fact that he is as dangerous to his own army as he is to the opponent's army. How else are you going to achieve that feeling? Also: everybody does realize that my Murder Spree + Homicidal Maniac only generates one additional attack, right? If he kills five guys with his first Murder Spree initial, he doesn't get 5 more free attacks out of it. He gets one more swing, due to the way the core rules work. Granted, that extra swing might end up hitting 5 more guys, but, it's not like he can roll up to a colossal, thresher once, kill ten dudes, and then make ten attacks onto the colossal because of it...
Making Murder Spree mildly detrimental to the Pac-Man chain increases the value of Eliminator. I found that it forces interesting decisions on how to spend his Arcane Power spell. In practice, also, it wasn't a significant hindrance. It just required me to think a bit about how I was going to plan out the killing spree. Which way do I go first, that sort of thing?
Unnatural Disaster. Regarding his spell list, I
really like adding one spell that does something for melee troops. On this note, michael, I think you’re inspired. In terms of game mechanics, I truly don’t like abilities that feel skornergistic, and so don’t like the wording on Unnatural Disaster. I think I’d be OK with it if the duration was Turn not Round so that the bloodlust backlash is really only hurting you on free strikes and retalitory strikes.
Honestly, I think modifying Unnatural Disaster to COST 3 and changing the duration to TURN might be perfect. Butcher 2’s CMD stat is 7, so the threat extension on this is somewhat limited. On paper it feels too limited, so the question is if you use CONTROL range is it too powerful?
So, this spell started life as Dark Guidance and I really hated the way it felt. Butcher2 turned into a park-in-the-back-and-play-support caster and that was super lame.
As I mentioned in my design notes, Unnatural Disaster affecting all models is fully intentional. It allows Butcher to play support, but
at a cost. (Practically, it matters little for a lot of armies. Do your opponents have any difficulty hitting Man-o-War or Iron Fangs? But don't tell that to non-Khador players, they'll freak out.)
I found this forced interesting choices of where and when to apply this spell. I also found like it made a lot of fluff sense. Every time Butcher goes unhinged in the stories, absolute carnage seems to erupt around him just by pure happenstance. Remember the "Orders, fool! We have orders!" scene from...
Reckoning, or whenever it was? That, that is what we're going for.
I disagree with the "skornergy" assessment. This is a heck of a lot more mild of a penalty than Iron Flesh used to carry around. Everybody remember what -1 SPD used to do to you? We played with that spell for
years and we
loved it. (Also, "skornergy" really ought to be used properly, as in "a rule that seemingly provides benefit but actually hinders the core functionality of the models in question". This was coined, so far as I recall, when Tyrant Vorkesh was released for the Cataphract Cetrati, and gave the unit Spell Ward. The Cetrati thrived on the multitude of buff spells available to them in Skorne, and thus, using Vorkesh was purely a detriment to your army. "Skornergy" would be something like the Shocktrooper's Shield Wall order preventing them from making attacks, or something stupid like that. As-is, Unnatural Disaster just has a drawback.)
Anyway...okay, I've burned like 40 minutes of painting time now.
I need to get back to more important stuff!
Hopefully none of this came across as too disagreeable. Like I said, I've been on this journey for quite a while and it can be very difficult to see how I arrived here. I didn't do a great job of explaining things earlier, either, so that's partly my fault.
The air brush, she is a-callin....