Theorycraft - Ethereal race (or Hero for starters)

*This got much longer than I predicted. Sorry.*

Hey guys. I've been doing some brainstorming around this idea, and I'd like to share a bit of my conclusions and doubts with you. My goal is to make an all ethereal race. So, immune to physical attacks, extra effect from some spells and magic damage. To start, let's think of a Hero.

"You must be crazy", you must be thinking. "A Hero immune to physical damage?" Well, yes. I know, it's umbalanced, that's why I'm bringing the topic here for your input.

Let's first deal with the lack of attack. I know I could give every Hero a couple damage inflicting spells. However, suppose the player wants a support skill for the Hero's first skill. He will then never make XP to get to the second level, for he won't be able to kill enemy units with a support spell and no attack. So, all the spells should be damage inflicting, which sounds lame.

So I thought of giving them all a non-Hero skill for damage infliction. Since common Heroes have a normal attack apart from their skills, it shouldn't be unbalanced (except that this one is immune to such attack, but we will address that later). However, I'd like to activate it with smart orders, as attacks do. Is there a way to do so? I can think of some JASS for it, checking for smart orders, if the target is an enemy of the ordered unit, if it is ethereal and has the custom attack ability, ordering it to do so, etc., but I was hoping for something more simple. If not possible, I might work on my JASS idea.

Now for the invulnerability. Obviously every race has at least a couple casters available at relatively low levels, but most creeps can't cast (or have magic attack-type). The hero should have some weakness against common foes, but since the idea of an Ethereal Hero is that it should be inherently different from the others, it shouldn't just take damage from common foes, or there wouldn't be a point. I thought of the common attack draining mana, but a Hero with no mana is still alive. I thought of it draining life instead, but it just makes no sense. Then I thought - what if the Hero had negative life regen?

Sounds cruel, but it fits. Ethereal beings can be easily thought of as fragile and temporary. Imagine a ghost as essence of life holding on to this world, but as the body dies, the essence fades. This obviously unbalances it even more, but now to the other side of the scale. Then I thought, what if the Town Hall (or other structure) works as a Fountain of Life? Say the ghosts (or spirits or whatever they are) sprout around an artifact or place of power, which gives them Life and Mana?

So, this way, even though most enemies can't harm our Hero, the very fact that he is out of his base makes him vulnerable. He couldn't hold a fight for long, until higher levels. But then, it couldn't be done by the Hero's life regen value, for it increases as the Hero levels, and if it is negative, it will decrease instead. So I should give him a hidden passive ability that causes damage over time (and possibly mana loss, too?).

I believe this balances the Hero, but I'd like some input. I don't need much code help at the moment, so far it's mainly conceptual. I know it sounds weird, and doesn't really fit the KISS concept, but hey, I thought it was interesting and decided to give it a try.

And remember I'm going for a whole race, this is a start.

hmm a 100% etheral race would be somehow gay .....give some heros or units an ability like phaseshift which will shift them in the normal eh ...world for a (fixed? or maybe de/activateable) ammount of time (those unit should have an normal attack then aswell).
This will bring some variety to the gameplay of that race.

Also maybe other races should get an ability to pull etheral beings to corporal form for some time ...maybe also a spell or purchaseable items.

I like this, really. Hadn't thought of that. Have an issue, tho. This would be a skill too specific. What if none of the players want to play Ethereal? So whichever Hero has this skill will never level it, for it is now useless. However, here's something else I had thought of: the ethereal "attack" is kinda like Possession, but damaging the unit instead of controling it. Possessed units gain a special ability, however, to "fight back". So they can only damage the ghost unit that is attacking them.

As for the corporeal form thing, I thougth of a Hero skill for that. Actually, I've thought of quite a few Hero skills, enough for at least two or more; only the tanker would have the ability to turn physical. This would give him a normal attack, but make him vulnerable to others, too.

A race 100% ethereal is the core of my idea. I was hoping for suggestions on how to make that playable, not to change that :P Thanks anyway.

You must redesign the other races if you want this to fit. All the races are so similar, a change like this throws everything out of balance. Though 'tis a cool idea.

You could completely redesign 'ethereal' so that it has a life degen, and *can* attack, but only ethereal units. Then you can give the ethereal race some skills to pull units into the ethereal realm, and stuff like that. It'd be pretty cool, considering you could SEE ethereal units, but you can't damage them and they can't damage you except with magic.

Yeah, man, that's exactly what I mean.

You can edit the Ethereal ability for that? I thought of using a separate passive ability; since Ethereal is already hidden in a Spellbook, I could put it there too.

As for the other races, yes, I plan on redesigning them, too. This is the most radical, tho, and to tell the truth I do want it to be different from the others (but in a balanced fashion!).

Also, I don't want the other ones to have attacks specifically against this one. I'd rather make this somewhat vurnerable to them, but in a completely different fashion.

I have already a skill which throws enemy units in the ethereal realm (making them lose life accordingly), plus a few ideas of AoE with similar effects. For instance, a Stomp type spell with knockback. Only it causes no damage by itself (ethereal realm does, tho), and only does knockback to the unit's soul. So, the soul must reach the body again to stop losing life. Currently, my skill is based off Banish (w/o the movespeed decrease) + triggered Rejuvenation (with negative life regen), so it's not a passive skill that damages the target unit. This might be changed, tho.

Or maybe the opposite, the Hero "sucks" the souls of nearby units, drawing them nearer (in the ethereal realm), and stealing their mana. This could be a cool ultimate.

edit - Didn't pay attention to "maybe a purchaseable item". That's a VERY NICE idea, actually.

edit 2 - Made a few JASS experiments with the attack. Works fine, except: the Hero doesn't automatically acquire targets, and doesn't keep on attacking after the first order. Suggestions?

What I mean by different is, if you add a race like this which is different, you have to redesign the other races to be just as different.

No you cannot edit the ethereal ability like that - you'd have to trigger it.

Hm, thanks. Is there a way to make a unit un-targetable, except in the same circumstances as the Ethereal ability (without using the ability, obviously)? If so, I should be able to make a custom "Ethereal" ability which doesn't affect the unit's attacks.

Not that I know of. You could try using chaos to morph a unit into its ethereal form. That'd actually probably be the easiest way. Or you could try messing with attack indexes and UnitAddType().

True. There is a Unit Type Etereal in the GUI, but in the object editor it's not there. I played around with it once, and it did really nothing. Perhaps I could use it as a flag and just trigger it so that if a unit tries to attack it, it is given a stop order instead.

Won't be as pretty as if the unit actually had the Ethereal ability (as in, the enemy won't automatically acquire it as a target, the game error message, etc), but it might work.

Anyway, I'm off the internets for a couple hours. Thanks for the input, will play around unit classifications and chaos and stuff.

One last thing - what do you mean by "messing with attack indexes"? You mean like, first and second attack? Ethereal kills them both :(

By that I mean, if you were to forget about using ethereal the ability, and complete trigger it, and maybe switch over the attack index to 2 (which can only target ancient or something), and then do UnitAddType(unit, UNIT_TYPE_ANCIENT (or something)).

What about an AoE Spell, which switchs dimensions...means, etheral units become corporal, and corporal units etheral, such an spell would be useful, even when not playing against this new race.

this would be cool, to make etheral units attackable,
or to protect your own units from corporal attacks...when you face another normal race.

Cool. I can set the unit type Ancient right in the objec editor, since the unit is going to be ethereal by default.

But then again, I thought of using Ancients in a different fashion for another race (since the worker becomes the Ancient upon building)... Ah, crap. Will figue out something.


Actually, it would be a good attack spell. My idea is that all units in the ethereal plane have negative life regen. The ethereal race balances that by having their Town Hall regen their life.

I'm thinking this damage per second on the ethereal plane will be a fixed ammount for all units, independent of unit type and level.

UNIT_TYPE_SUICIDAL also works.

Yes, I was thinking about that, too. Originally I thought of using actual suicidal units, but not anymore.

The original question, however, stands. Conceptually, what can be improved, keeping the race ethereal, but balancing it with others? I know for now I haven't mentioned the others (haven't worked much on them, to be honest), so let's suppose this one replaces Undead, and the other races are the standard 3 left.

There is an ability that it is autocast and could work as a substitute for the standard attack order. I think it is spore or soemthing like that.