Idea for a new jack caster

[baronvonchaos]

Re: Knight Alcan.

Sadly, he's broken. Batten + Fortify == ARM 26 Templars every turn of the game, and add Full Throttle or Unearthly rage on top and they're just unstoppable killing machines. His feat is really unnecessary because your jacks are already indestructible.

Avoiding the focus multiplication spells that shoehorn jack casters was actually one of the design goals for my caster. I wanted a more toolbox caster instead of the guy who just recasts (or upkeeps) the same spell every turn and doesn't do much else. If you want that, we already have Amon. The fact that he's kind of weak in MM (although he can sing on one jack himself, and his feat was reworked to not require the Choir, so it's not so bad in very small MM games) isn't a terrible burden IMHO. MM is a fruity format anyway.

Yes Alcan is off the charts for silliness that you can practically apply to jacks. So make it Defender's ward so that he can put it on troops (so he doesn't completely ignore troops), or remove it completely. My point is that any caster is a "jack" caster because they can't control warbeasts. What you can do with those jacks to augment them beyond focus manipulation and abilities comes to spells. Abilities are nice, but they don't have limits so you can just use them every turn. Ergo there's no forcing a choice of 1 spell over another because you only have 4 focus left (or something like that). It's an ability and I choose to implement it. (See where I'm going?)

Lucitan is great in that you can make 3-5 different abilities to implement and use one of those for all jacks in your command range and make it so they don't count as being "hymned" so you can have a choir too. This can get OP'd really fast, but it'd be cool. Any new jack that comes out has to be careful that rules interactions don't make it like Rhyas and the Warchief, bouncing around at mat ~15+ pow ~28+ or some such nonsense.

Given all this, the so called "jack caster" would fail, imo, if it didn't have some way to buff all models in battlegroup via a spell. It should cost you something tactically to augment an entire battlegroup. And not just for 1 turn like Amon and his feat, which is great, but a 1 time use only. All of his jacks that he likes to have are focus starved.

I'd say try and steer clear of augmenting support. A support of a support makes for exponential increase as opposed to just multiplication. Otherwise he'd have to be a +1 to any buff he gives just to not make him insane coupled with the awesome support options we have. A +1 guy would be a yawn on paper. pSev already does that.

One thing: I am all for Elite Cadre [Choir] and making the song range their CMD rather than the 5". That would be sweet and not OP'd.

[Cannotcope]

An alternative is to go the Grissel route:

-Drop most of his spells. He'll have 2-3 only. Perhaps Convection, Jackhammer and Harmonize (changed to allow a Choir Hymn to be stacked with Pavarotis' Hymn, rather than just two Hymns)

-Make the Hymns he has CTRL/CMD(CMD is safer for balance purposes) area effects (affecting Jacks in Battlegroup), he can choose one per activation (any time during activation ability, not an action), they count as Hymns so would not stack with Choir Hymns (much like Grissel's Fellcalls don't stack with Fellcaller solos). His Hymns would need to be reworked to be worthwhile/balanced*. Note that the choir could sing first to get a jack covered by a different Hymn, as Hymns do not overwrite each other.

-Change his Elite Cadre to increase the Choir Hymn range to CMD and also to allow them to be "soloists" (each member can choose a different Hymn)

-Feat would be essentially Grissel's, allowing battlegroup jacks in CTRL to receive all 3 of his Hymns, perhaps allow it to be a step up from Grissel's (as Warmachine feats tend to be better) by allowing the Choir to add an additional Hymn from their selection.

*I think the initial version of Aggression might be okay in this version (though perhaps just "Boundless Charge" with no boosted attack roll would be safer), while the Immunity Hymn seems a bit weak, perhaps change to Incorporeal?. I think the Protection of Menoth (defenders ward) Hymn would be fine in this version.

Thoughts?
(this is almost a total rewrite)

[jandrese]

I'm not sure dropping the spells is the right way to go. Grissel has access to excellent spells like Rush and Far Strike and +3 STR.

[Cannotcope]

I'm not sure dropping the spells is the right way to go. Grissel has access to excellent spells like Rush and Far Strike and +3 STR.

All of your examples cost 1/3 of her full Fury (iirc a majority of Trollblood animi are cost 2), have range 6 with no arcnode access and affect one model only. While essentially she can have many many different "spells", none of the animi really stack up to real spells*.

I think it's perfectly fine for a caster with strong automatic (no focus cost) abilities that hit multiple models in CMD/CTRL to have fewer spells. Essentially, Pavarotis' Hymns in my latest set of suggestions end up being his additional/missing spells.

Additionally, at a certain point, adding spells to Pavarotis isn't worthwhile. You'll want to allocate some of his focus and/or camp. And you won't find too many people thinking it's balanced if all his abilities/spells work together perfectly.

That said, perhaps 4 spells would be ok, but definitely not an amazing focus/threat multiplier spell like Energizer, I think that's too much synergy with everything else. I wouldn't really see any problem with adding a spell like Blazing Effigy, however.


*If we (Menoth) ever got a caster with Far Strike, Rush and Rage, as written(cost 2, 6", target 1 model, not upkeep), as spells, you would actually be able to hear blood vessels bursting over the internet as we (Menoth players) all rage about how complete and utter "carp" said caster would be and how we would all never play it.
I think I just raged a little typing this...

Seriously though, while Animi are great with the Fury system they fall flat when theorizing them in the Focus system and compared to Focus spells. The big culprits here are typically # of target models and lack of upkeep-ability.

In anycase, however, other than the spell count, how did my suggestions sound?

It takes a while to hone in on balanced, so while the initial posting of Pavarotis(by the OP) was overpowered, my latest suggestions might be underpowered and we'd then be looking for a happy middle ground.

[jandrese]

Making his hymns cover everything his CMD area and then buffing the Choirboys seems somewhat pointless. The Choirboys are either going to be useless or he's not going to be using his own Hymns very much. Since Hymns don't stack anyway, there's no need to make a special provision that they don't stack. That's why I don't think the Hymns are such an amazing power boost for this guy, because they're just replacing the already awesome Choir hymns (or not being used). It basically gives you more options, but not more power.

[Cannotcope]

Making his hymns cover everything his CMD area and then buffing the Choirboys seems somewhat pointless. The Choirboys are either going to be useless or he's not going to be using his own Hymns very much.

It gives options, makes the choir more survivable, and lowers the points spent on support.

Your original version almost requires that you take 2 choirs, regardless of the number of jacks you bring, just to properly benefit from Harmonize. This eats into the issue of how much support Menoth needs to bring.

Under my version, you really only need enough choir for your jacks, and depending on how you plan to run the jacks you could even cut back a little. Choir will activate first, sing from relative safety of CMD range, and give specific jacks what you want (sheilding, passage or battle) thanks to Soloist. Pavarotis could then activate to cover any remaining jacks. Since you can pick and choose with the choir, you could give your shooty jacks battle, while you give others sheilding or passage, and if you have more jacks then choir, Pavarotis gives the rest Defenders Ward or Incorporeal. On the engagement turn, Pavarotis feats and the choir adds Battle.

Alternatively, by covering CMD/CTRL range with his Hymns, Pavarotis can run jacks without the choir at all, saving points for more jacks or other support. And you could add a choir to run additional jacks off on a flank. Menoth currently can suffer from having to brick up as well as having too much support that can be somewhat easy to snipe. The elite cadre choir would enable our forces to spread more to deal with larger/separated zones and suffer less from sniping.

As for the Hymns not stacking bit, that was mostly for clarity. Choir Hymns don't stack. Any new rules that work like Choir Hymns would have to specific that they suffer the same non-stacking or are specifically "Hymns".

FWIW, more options, that will have times when they are the better option than the current options, are strictly speaking an increase in power. That said, it is true that the additional option of new Hymns might not be a huge increase in power.

[jandrese]

Your original version almost requires that you take 2 choirs, regardless of the number of jacks you bring, just to properly benefit from Harmonize. This eats into the issue of how much support Menoth needs to bring.

That's actually why I gave him his own copy of Hymn.

[Cannotcope]

That's actually why I gave him his own copy of Hymn.

That makes sense.

I think that, No Spelly + No Shooty > either of those + DW or Immunity for most turns, so it would still be really tempting to get the second choir just for the No Spelly/Shooty at same time. Which is what I meant by 'almost required'. It's almost like a trap spell.

[jandrese]

I guess it wasn't clear (I didn't word it well I guess), that everybody has access to all 6 hymns in my original version. I still think that's reasonable too since the Hymns are still exclusive.

One thing that hasn't been commented on too much is his FOC 7 stat, which I gave because he doesn't have any crazy focus efficiency spells like Full Throttle. I'm imagining most of his focus will go to his jacks each turn, although he might pull out Energizer for some tricky maneuvering at the cost of starving half of his jacks.

[Hashmal]

I like the FOC 7. I too am sick unto death of FOC 6 'casters. Why does Cryx get to have all the fun?

[ArneB]

We don't need a choir caster, we need choir boy UA.

[MetaphoricDragon]

An alternative is to go the Grissel route:

I was thinking of Grissel too when I first read this, and I'm glad you stated it better than I could.

[baronvonchaos]

We semi-hashed this already but Grissell only has 3 spells because she has access to Animii. When I looked at the Warlocks and was shocked that they only had 3-4 spells on average I wondered what the deal was until I got to the "Spells and Animii" section in Primal.
　
Pavoratis would be like Grissell, and I think with some modifications (i.e. not the normal choir hymns), you can have a feat of a "chorus." Not unrealistic or OP'd, imo. I'm TOTALLY down with a hymn that's CMD range and different than the normal choir hymns that can stack with choir hymns (things like speed buff would be nice, free charge/slam/trample) and a spell like Iron Aggression so it's 1 target and not necessarily Unearthly Rage.

My problem is without a cool focus multiplying spell like Terminal Velocity, Unearthly Rage, Full Throttle, or even Coup de Main you might as well run pSev or Amon and call them a "jack caster."