That sounds like good fun to me. When you say "corrupt a living champion" are you talking about enhancing someone already with your faction or stealing a rival's champion? I'd like to see both as possibilities, with a 'friendly' name for the voluntary enhancement version and a corrupting sort of name for the steal-a-champion version. The extra costs for the steal-a-champ version could be worked out lots of different ways, or they might be pretty simple if the essential 'material component' is the corpse of the rival's champion.

Well, I had just meant corrupting your own champions, but I do like the idea of trying to corrupt an opponent's champion now that you mention it. There's certainly no shortage of examples in fantasy *cough*Nazgul*cough*!

Yes, I'm replying to my own post...

Speaking of Nazgul, how about in addition to using spells, you could craft an item which, when equipped by a champion, had a chance of corrupting them to your side?  Then you just quietly "leak" that item into the world and see what you catch.

We can't even drop 'excess' inventory like a 3rd speed ring yet, but I've long liked the idea of being able to forge cursed items and leave them for rivals to collect.

For Fallen sovereigns wanting to enhance a champion with Death magic, the spell could have a name like Blessed Flensing. I have no idea how big an art burden it would be to make a sort of 'skinless skin' available for the champ units, but going for something with the same basic shape as an unflensed champion seems easier than going for something like a skeletal form or even a dessicated/rotting mummy/zombie look.

Ah, wasn't sure what the current state of things was.  Unfortunately none of the betas in recent months have been able to run on my desktop.

Might not be too difficult to just change the skin tone to pale, superimpose a veiny texture on top of it, blacken around the eyes, and then maybe remove the irises/pupils.  But I say that as someone who has zero idea how easy that is.  Perhaps they could just make the character model semi-transparent and call him a ghost.

The betas are painful in general, but everyone's pain is unique...

I also have no serious idea what might be hard (expensive) vs. easy for Stardock to do about this sort of detail.

Re ghosts, again I pine for a basic outline of the Metaphysics of Elemental. In some stories, ghosts are stricly nocorporeal and the only effects they can have in the living world are psychosocial. In others, ghosts with sufficient anger/hunger/motivation can do some physical things, and so on.

You could really mess someone up with that. Even better if we could create neutral critters. Make a neutral troll, give him a cursed item, turn him lose in the mountains. Eventually, some hero will kill him and, if he dosen't check too closley, use the item. Once the game is really going you would need to check pretty much every item you find to ensure it isn't a cursed trap.

Although corruption curses that turn them to your side would be cool, straight up killing curses would be nice too. Pretty cool amulet of protection, right? that is, until you get into a fight, and then suddenly its an amulet of strangulation. Opps.

Could be a very fun mechanic.

I read somewhere that the genetics and creature system was inspired by Spore. If it's well implemented it could not be a bad thing.

Or a pain if death curses are included. It would mean that before using anything you simply check it with an identify spell, trap defeated. If you can't identify you lose characters randomly to death curses. I like the idea of creating dodgy gear and setting critter lose with it, especially if everything is identify on equip only, but killing characters is too much....

Also will champions be a limited resource? Otherwise its just like witches huts in HoMM3, send in a dud hero to test it and if its good let a good hero use it.

Thats easy to beat, super items should pull the binding trick. Most awesome sword ever, put it on a dud hero to check it, comes out clean and super awesome, give it to a real hero, and its cursed! Sword picks its owner and is cursed for everyone but that dud hero now.

Or have it a test of skill. The enchanters skill at curse making and concealing vs the finders skill at detecting.

And these are the ultimate heroes, right? they should be able to handle one magical garrote. The catch is, if it goes off in the middle of a serious battle you might have a problem. It is about timing as much as power.

TBH, i think curses should be incorporated into most items that you find. On the flip side, they should be powerful. If you want a crappy little ring +1, make it yourself. After all, if an item made it through armegedon, it should be strong and have an attitude.

Yeah fair enough.

I could see that for example that the magic items curse triggers upon any damage to the wearer then this could be interesting. But then its not a killing curse, its a damage curse and damage at not a life threatening level.

I like your ideas, as long as no death curses. How would it actually play, as in how would a player expliot it? Would the best artificer flood the land with crap knowing that the other players would not know what was crap and what was good, and thus maybe not risk using anything they find (and thus not know they have the ultimate game winning artifact)? Or would it be too energy intensive (the artificer benefits the player by doing other things) to churn out crap and so only the occasional crap item be sent as a trap for other players?

Its not a bad idea at all.

Even for a powerful artificer, churning out lots of cursed items strong enough to harm a hero and evade detection would be too hard. I was thinking that perhaps it could be more targeted. Make a single powerful cursed item and spell it to seek out a single powerful hero, kind of like the One Ring. It can manipulate any stupid neutral creature it encounters like trolls or goblins or whatever into moving it closer to its target. Kind of like a magical homing fire-and-forget missle. It could give minor penaltys to anyone holding it, enough to ensure they die, and encourage them to move towards the target hero in some way.

Or set the item up with preset triggers and put it on a goblin. If it detects no hero above level 10 within 6 tiles of the goblin, it inflicts a sleep and invisible spell on the goblin. If it spots a hero above level 10 within 6 tiles, it drives the goblin into a bloodrage and sends it at the hero. Hero kills goblin and takes item as trophy, not knowing its a cursed item.

What I immedietly thought about when I read about corrupting artifacts:

Oh shizzam! the obvious one, and we all missed it. Good catch.

Obvious to some, a random-looking cover of a fantasy novel to those of us not in the know. What is that blade & who's holding it?

I would love for the game to include autonomous/sentient items.

That is arthas with the sword frostmourne. Its from Warcraft 3, and got incorporated into world of warcraft. And ovbiously i did think one ring before frostmourne, but frostmource fits just as well as the one ring.

Spoilers for WC3 below! beware!!

Arthas is the heir to human kingdom of goodness and is paladin in training. The Lich King decides to use him as his ultimate champion, so he sets him up. He forces arthas to kill innocent peasents to keep a zombie plague from spreading, and other such things. After a series of evil deeds for good ends, Arthas goes forth to find frostmourne, A blade powerful enough to defeat even the lichking. Arthas finds it, takes it.

Only Frostmourne is cursed and starts whispering in his ear and eating at his soul. Arthas returns home and greets his father the king, as usual, and then kills him.

Basically, a combo of the Lich Kings plans and frostmourne turned arthas from a hot-headed paladin and heir to to a kingdom into a hot-headed death knight out to kill all who oppose the lich king.

AKA Nazguls for those prefering the One Ring idea.

Please don't compare Warcraft to Tolkien's works.  Just... please don't.  

Thanks. I thought it was maybe a really bad Elric & Stormbringer pic, but Stormbringer was more of a slippery ally than an overwhelming force of corruption on account of Elric being kind of corrupt on his own.

Arthas is an idiot, not hot-headed. One of the reasons why after loving so much Warcraft 1 & 2, I hated Warcraft 3 (that and other details of gameplay).

Oh, and everybody knows that Tolkien ripped off WoW.

Naw, tolkien didn't have any room left in bag of ripping-folks-off for WoW. Tolkien just ripped off every other fantasy story of the time, and the ones he didn't rip off, he declared to be not "real" myths, since he didn't like them. He was a total asshole. He went to another mythologist's funeral who he hadn't liked and spent 30+ minutes talking about how the guy was wrong and all his work was wrong and how the world is better now that he is dead. Tolkien was like the poster boy for assholes.

If you enjoy tolkien, avoid taking any myth history classes. Lots of those folks hate him, and for good reason.

Your elf eats cookies, mine makes 'em!

I'd love to make a mod where the entire world pits Kellogs' Keebler elves vs. those Rice Krispy elves.  Those little Snap, Crackle, and Pop bastards deserve a straight out butt whooping!   

Now *that* is a fearsome foe. But i am pretty sure the lucky charm elf would beat them all. After all, he can fire off stars!

Keebler Elves....

Rice Krispy Elves....

More bloody elves!

Why can't elves be like orcs, you only have one type. Bog standard orc. Ugly and strong. Orc.

I would hate to be ambushed by elves, I'd spend 5 minutes consulting my "Gandalf's Guide to Elves 2010 editon" finding what type of elf they are. By then I'm dead.

"Ambush! They are.... Hmmm ears longer than 1.5 inches..... not thin.... could be  Keebler Elves...." GACK!

*edit* actually looking at the pic I think Keebler Elves would have ears longer than 1.5 inches. I mis-identified.