[Pod 0] Pillar of Hár (Crypolith) - Playtesting

[Astroking112]

Originally Posted by flameslayer93

Pillars of Height sounds silly, but Pillars of Hár almost sounds like they’re built to worship someone. A god? An archkyrie of times past? That is workable.

Ironically, Hár is just the first thing that popped up when I looked up the Norse word for height.

Some kind of long-forgotten god (probably an Archkyrie before more people discovered the wellsprings in the modern times of Valhalla) sounds like an interesting concept.

[NecroBlade]

Pillar of Hár (or some other Norse word) seems like a reasonable approach.

[Astroking112]

Does anyone have any objections and alternative suggestions to Pillar of Hár? I'm fine with proceeding with that name, since it gives us plenty of storytelling wriggle room.

[flameslayer93]

Any opinions on these thing’s stats?

Earlier I suggested 3 Life and 4 defense. Anyone have other suggestions?

[NecroBlade]

No immediate objections to 4D/3L.

[Astroking112]

3L/4D sounds like a reasonable starting point to me.

The main alternative that I could see is lowering the defense but adding an automatic shield to match the official Destructible Objects that we saw, but we want these things to be considerably more fragile than those were, and many squads with 2 attack would really struggle against an auto-shield.

[robbdaman]

Just as a thought I don't feel it makes much sense to have these be so easily scalable given ladders take a lot of movement points to use. If these are 10 tall then it should take at least that to get to the top anyway.

Since it is flat standing on the top should require being center of the thing I'd say.

As for destructible, that'd be fine but I'd be disappointed in it providing some special effect as that seems off given no other terrain does so. Terrain is for fighting around, the figures in the game are the focus.

[Astroking112]

Originally Posted by robbdaman

Just as a thought I don't feel it makes much sense to have these be so easily scalable given ladders take a lot of movement points to use. If these are 10 tall then it should take at least that to get to the top anyway.

Since it is flat standing on the top should require being center of the thing I'd say.

As for destructible, that'd be fine but I'd be disappointed in it providing some special effect as that seems off given no other terrain does so. Terrain is for fighting around, the figures in the game are the focus.

If it takes 10 move to climb the sides of these, very few figures other than fliers will ever be able to scale them. Requiring a figure to sacrifice their normal move is already often going to be somewhat slow, and since we don't have any ladders to let figures stop partway, it feels like a decent compromise for this direction to me.

Personally, the idea of these being destructible is one of the highlights of using them. Classic HeroScape technically only ever saw the Fortress Door as a Destructible Object, so I think that it's an interesting yet mostly unexplored design space. The negative powers other than Scaling are just to balance it out more, because towers heavily favor ranged and flying units and our line of sight blockers are limited.

[robbdaman]

I agree making them destructible would keep them from being too advantageous, sitting Raelinontop isn’t as useful if it can be blown out from under her.

It could be provided with some limitations of figures not being able to effect others nearby either targeting other figures or providing clear sight powers while on it.

[flameslayer93]

Originally Posted by Astroking112

Does anyone have any objections and alternative suggestions to Pillar of Hár? I'm fine with proceeding with that name, since it gives us plenty of storytelling wriggle room.

Pillar of Hár sounds good to me.

Regarding the prospect of them getting powers that limit ranged attacks/powers/etc, I believe I more or less was out voted on measures that would make them less intuitive than these weird twisty columns already are.

Thanks so much for your thoughts @robbdaman !

[Astroking112]

Originally Posted by flameslayer93

Regarding the prospect of them getting powers that limit ranged attacks/powers/etc, I believe I more or less was out voted on measures that would make them less intuitive than these weird twisty columns already are.

You and me both.

Is anyone opposed to Pillars of Hár for the name? I'd like to stop calling them Cryptoliths, and it gives us plenty of room to flesh them out more with the plot of the set.

[caps]

I am fine with Pillars of Har and the way it falls on the ears, but effectively naming them "Pillars of Height" feels a little too on-the-nose.