[Wesnoth-dev] Proposed Balancing Changes

[Richard S .]

Hello Fellow Devs.

We've decided on a new round of balancing changes. Most of these 
changes deal with the Undead and the Northerners.
At this time, Its pretty apparent that opinions on the Undead are 
heavily divided. Depending who you ask, the faction is either "too 
weak" or "too strong."  Therefore we think it is apparent that the 
faction suffers from a lack of consistency.  Our next round of 
balancing is intended to rectify this problem. Of the four differing 
factions, the Undead are balanced vs three; the northerners, knalgans 
and the Drakes. Really the problem with the Loyalist and the Rebels is 
due to the mage and the Undead's weakness to fire. The same problem is 
not present vs drakes because the drake's reciprocal weakness to cold.  
So really the problem is not a general problem against fire, but 
against the strategies of the Loy/rebs, specifically the mage. Having a 
weakness of fire makes for a good balance overall. So we don't think a 
major rebalancing of add  fire resistance to skeletons will do anything 
except blow the current balance right of the water.

Our solution would be to bolster the current strategies that the Undead 
have to combat the loyalists and the rebels. The main part of our plan 
is to fundamentally change the Ghoul, conceptually and statistically. 
Our change would be to make it more of a tortured spirit that exists 
between life and death, one that is alive, but doesn't feel pain or 
fear in combat. On the balancing side this involves giving it more 
human like resistances- 0 to fire, but retaining its better 
resistances.
Holy            -100%   
Blade   10%     
Pierce  30%             
Impact  0%      (-10% now)
Fire            0%      (-20%now)
Cold            40% (60% now)

Since the Loyalist and the rebels have serious vulnerabilities to 
poison, this will give the Undead a far more effective strategy for 
dealing with them.
In addition, we would propose a slight change to the ghost to increase 
its effectiveness. We'd like to see a 10% increase in fire resistance 
and a 10% decrease in crush resistance. The 10% decrease is a bit of an 
esthetic change. Since a ghost has a vapourous constitution, something 
with crush (ie a large surface area) would probably do more damage than 
something with pierce or blade.

Finally for the undead we also would like to change the movement costs 
for Undeadfoot in hills from 3->2 and 4-> 3 in mountains. There doesn't 
seem to be any rational from limiting these factions from full movement 
in these terrain, and it prevents the faction from being able to take 
good defensive terrain.

Also there will be the addition of the Dark Sorceror (lvl3) to the 
Undead and the Slurbow(lvl3) to the Northerners.

We hope you find this agreeable.

DK and Noy