How to fix All Minions (Along with Myth)

[manic fox]

Here are the changes to minions that would make minions actually an option, as well as Myth becoming a minion school again and not just melding with other schools.

1. Add 7 Minion Enhancement cards to Myth. Similar to the puppet taunt card. That card should be removed and instead have Minion Enhancement cards that can be applied to any minion including monstrology minions and Deaths Animate card, any summons. This would include a:
   -Tank enhancement card (taunts and perhaps shields and heals self),
   -DPS enhancement card (blade self and attack)
   -Healer enhancement card (heal allies and self),
   -Blader enhancement card (blades allies),
   -Shielder (places shields on allies),
   -Trapper (traps enemies),
   -Debuff Charms enhancement card (adds debuff charms to enemies).
   Perhaps all minions would only have certain roles that could be applied to it. Players would have to choose the minion that fits what they want based on the cards the minion will be given with a role applied.
   This would be Myths speciality and give us what we thought wed be getting with the Minion Class. It would allow myth to assign any minion any role.

Each minion would have different cards for each role that could be playable and only unlocked with the applied Minion Control enhancement card. This would allow the player to choose and look up exactly what they want and add in for strategy. For example a certain minion would only blade certain blades, perhaps one would only add certain pierces, etc. all in a certain school. So Myth would find the minion that only blades myth blades if they turn it into a Blader role. It could have Myth blades and the spirit Blades, and would always cast Spirit Blades first to save the Player a pip.

[manic fox]

2. Allow all classes to fill up all ally slots with minions and monstrology minions. If players want to spend this many turns to add help, let them.
   Dont have a one minion cap for myth or any school. Whats the point? We can just have friends there and they are better anyways. This will make a solo play through much more entertaining. This doesnt need to be myth specific.

3. Add another monstrology unlock thats more expensive than house guest. This last unlock would allow you to unlock the permanent summon card for that minion instead of treasure cards. Let us grind if we want. We can use the treasure cards to rent or try out the minion but if we want it forever, we can grind for it and make it a permanent card.

4. To expand the minions, there could be additional minions for each spellweaving class. This way myth players could have access to minions from each school depending on what they choose. If a Myth player really wants to heal and have minions that mostly heal, they can choose to spellweave life.
   These minions would always use spells from their school.
   Other schools could weave into Myth and gain up to 3 Minion Control enhancement cards that fit or aid their own school. Like Ice could gain the Tank, Shielder and Debuffer enhancement cards, Life would gain the Healer, Shielder and DPS Role enhancement cards, Death the Trapper, Debuff Charm, Blade enhancement cards, etc. All schools would gain that card in the early spell weaving levels and then they could eventually all unlock the dps and blade role cards later. Perhaps ranks 3, 5 and 7 would be the levels.
   Now that Death Wizard can be the Necromancer they always wanted to be with Animate + any of the enhancement cards.

5. Add Stun resist to Bosses instead of never being able to stun any bosses ever. Of course Bosses would have a higher stun resist, so it wouldn't be easy to stun them. This will be a gamble we can take and will make stun cards actually worth playing.

[night burrow]

for 4, I honestly disagree, I think Minions should be a reward for a later rank in weaving into Myth specifically, given Myth already has so many minions.

[night burrow]

with multiple minions, I believe it's a programming issue. I have to figure out if Monstrology Minions don't let you stay in a fight if you die, but if not, we can reasonably think that we can have multiple minions at the same time.

[manic fox]

Myth currently can have 3 monstrology minions out at once, they could easily do it for all classes. It was just their design choice.

[manic fox]

Updated a bit, but for some reason this disappeared from my suggestions sub tabs. I hope the KI team sees this so Myth can go back to being original instead just another hit class with a couple slightly different mechanics.

For all classes this would add a fresh way to play and would tie monstrology into the game more and make it actually worth doing.

[night burrow]

so, when you ignore a tab you've been following for a while, it disappears from the side. That does not mean the suggestion itself has vanished, nor is it invisible to the team.

[manic fox]

Oh okay thats good then! Thanks!

[manic fox]

6. All Minions should be 0 pip cost. The design of them costing anything doesnt make sense. They already cost 1 turn, which is already too much since Players can just join and take a spot. Even if Minions are upgraded to how I listed, they still will never be as a good as a Player. Once the minions are redesigned as stated above, minions will no longer need to be stronger than other minions. Each minion will have a purpose based on the Players strategy, each having different cards that will applied based on the enhancement card role its given.

There are 4 spots no matter what, so the design should be based on that. This is should be thought about again just how KI went back to cards and redesigned them towards Pip cost.

How to fix All Minions

How to fix All Minions (Along with Myth)

[night burrow]

I'm not sure I like that, especially since the team plans to give minions scaling stats and health.

[manic fox]

That would work great with this. If the minions scale with the player, the only difference between minions would be the strategy of the cards their role holds. Role enhancement cards would also adjust the stats as well, causing a minion to be higher health and defense if the tank role was played.

Minions should act as player replacements when no players are in a slot and players dont cost pips, they dont cost turns either. So this still has a cost because each minion placed would cost a turn.

[fervent umbra]

Idk if this has been suggested but minions scaling every 10 levels might be a good idea. Either with better cards or stats, or even more variety in spells and even 1 or 2 cheats at higher lvls

[vale zealot]

Yeah, they could scale depending on your current “completion badge” (similar to what spellements in worlds you can still farm for)

[manic fox]

Yeah that would be great, they could easily just scale their hp or stats with the casting Wizards lv

[hard geyser]

Help me understand your suggestion correctly: These Minion Role cards, would they make it so that the minion they're applied to only cast what their role card does (ie the Shielder would make it so the minion only casts shields, the trapper only cast traps, etc), or just that the minion would be more likely to cast those, but still having the chance to cast whatever else is in their moveset?

I'd love a viable minion-centric playstyle. I've always gravitated to those classes in other games, and having one in W101 would provide a great change of pace compared to the current meta of questing. I also agree with the idea of the purpose of a minion being a 2nd player stand-in while questing - obviously not as good as a player, but an option if you're stuck on a less popular dungeon and can't get anyone else to join. Every school gets a trained summon in Zafaria, after all, and I don't think I've ever heard of anyone using them.
My main concern regarding such, even with the changes you suggest, is that minions would be detrimental during boss fights later on in the game, where they could inadvertently trigger cheats, and I think that's the biggest hurdle for that kind of gameplay.
A couple of people in this very suggestion thread have mentioned minion scaling (and I'm not sure if Old Scratch mentioning "the team plans to give minions scaling" is referring to that being already in the dev pipeline or not), and that's a good start, but there's still the issue of triggering cheats.

There's also the issue of Henchmen existing, so making minions too good would lessen incentive to buy Henchmen, which I don't think KI would want to do. Would probably require buffing henchmen, as well, to compensate. Maybe giving them cheats that the regular minions wouldn't be able to get? Just something that provides incentive to get one over using a regular minion.

I do love your 3rd point, however. That would definitely get me super into monstrology. I haven't really done much with it in the past; I don't know how much grinding the house guest requires, so I don't have a frame of reference to how much more expensive the trained spell version would need to be, but that would give me much more incentive to use monstrology than just a house guest or one-time-use summon.

Even with "soft" control over a minion, I can still see a world where you don't have to spend as much time buffing or aiming to oneshot the boss, because your minion can shoulder some of the damage load.

[next ferry]

I must be able to control the minion or the pips aren’t worth it because it could do totally useless things depending on why I used it

So I don’t use minions

[hard geyser]

That's something else I was just thinking of, actually. If you're questing and could get through a fight in, say, 5 turns, and spend however many pips on a minion. That minion may end up doing absolutely nothing at all, so all you did was just lengthen the time of your fight by an additional 2-3 rounds (or more if the minions eat your traps). Soothe exists, so you could at least make the minion the enemies' target for a round, but that increases the length of the fight for another turn for a not-often-worth-it return.

What if you could set minions to automatically join your fight, without you having to spend a turn to summon it?

This would require some other cost to summon, some tradeoff, since youre no longer spending pips (and time) to summon. Maybe minions summoned this way cannot be manipulated or resummoned? Maybe it reduces your hp, mana, or what have you for the fight? You get a minion, and you could toggle on or off whether you want it to join your fight. Have it on, and when the fight starts, or maybe after a round, the minion will automatically be summoned.

You wouldn't have to make any changes to their functionality, since you don't have to spend pips and a turn to summon them, so a little less control makes sense. Have this feature be available to trained minions only (or monstrology if eventually you could train those)

[next ferry]

Yes this is a big problem for me

[native acorn]

What if the Minion Enchancement seplls came from the Wysteria Teachers and setup to be similar to the Astral and SHadow OR even make them part of Weaving.

[manic fox]

Yes exactly, so the role cards would only allow them to cast certain spells in those categories so they dont trigger anything if you dont want them to and it gives the player actual control over whats being casted.

[night burrow]

Canonically the Wysteria schools of magic don't exist, and I dunno about Minion Enchantment, but I do think Minions will have to be one of the weaving utility spells coming as soon as Ice Rank 5 or 6.

[night burrow]

for this Minion automatically joining the fight thing, how does that work for Animate, where the minion you'd summon is dependent on pips, and for Spectral Minion, do you randomly get either the Fire Elemental, Ice Guardian, or Water Elemental?

[manic fox]

Yes exactly so for 6. that would fix it, since it only cost one turn and no pips. Then the Henchman would still be worth it since they dont cost a turn.

[manic fox]

Wysteria would be awesome, they definitely need to weave that into the game more

[hard geyser]

Good question. The spectral minion was already random, so it'd still be a random one of the three. As for the minions that require a variable amount of pips, random from whichever could be chosen, perhaps some sort of level-up system, where it gives you a better chance at the better summons with a higher summon card level

Though this conversation should probably be moved to the full thread I made on the topic; i don't want to derail Eric's thread (sorry, Eric)

[manic fox]

They could rework those cards a bit, perhaps they still cost the pips but they cast a spell when summoned so the pips arent wasted

[night burrow]

like they're guaranteed to cast something as soon as they're summoned? Would this be a set card, such as Freddo always casting Blizzard turn 1?

[manic fox]

Yes and it would tell you the spell theyd cast right when you summon them, so basically you're casting that spell and you get a minion

[night burrow]

Would the card look something like this?

(Mander can't cast Bladestorm currently, but if it had to immediately cast any 1 thing, Bladestorm would probably be the most useful)

[manic fox]

Yeah it could if only one minion was an option, but if it was like Animate, it would probably need to show the different spells depending on the pip amount that would be cast in a pop out

[night burrow]

For animate, maybe the card below can say "varies", and what it'd be is Plague for 1-2 pips, Deathblade for 3 pips, Virulent Plague for 4 pips, and Ship of Fools for 5 pips?

for Cyclops and Troll, their movesets are actually nearly identical across pip cost, so they can have just the one thing.

[manic fox]

Yeah or they can also have a spell like heckhound or tempest attached to them but in their school