Idea of a possible offensive Necromancy spell

At first, I wanted to thank to all of the creators of The Protectors mod. I love the Warlords franchise since 2000, when I played the WBC for the first time as a kid.

You are doing a great job and giving massive amount of love to Etheria.

About an hour ago, I read your article on moddb about the changes, since the WBC3, and met the below sentence:

"We are still addressing the lack of an offensive spell, and are looking into tweaking Strip Flesh into something more adequate to fill this niche."

I'm not sure, if you found a valid replacement to the Strip Flesh, but my first thought about the game with good offensive necro spells is an old strategy game, called "Lords of Magic".

In "death" faction, there was an interesting spell, named "Lost Soul". It creates a shadow of the victim, which slowly goes after it. If the shadow meets with its aim, it kills the victim.

I'm not sure, if is it possible, to create spell like this in The Protectors mod or WBC engine. Moreover  I do not have any knowlegde about the validness with Warlords lore, but maybe this would get you some inspirations to create similar spell .

Maybe some variation of this spell, with time duration, or weakened to only give some damage, would be better choice. I'm only a simple gamer, so I can only share my thoughts

I've submitted the description of the spell from Lords of Magic  



Best regards.

Thank you for the suggestion, I really like the description of the spell. However, it seems to me that it will only encourage micromanagement (the defending player would need to click many times to dodge the shadow). Perhaps we can make an adjustment, something like creating units (shadows) that auto-attack their targets or die trying. An interesting thought indeed.

I also have an idea: an instant life-draining spell that also heals caster and may target only living creatures. I 'd call it "Life Drain".
I believe it would be fun if it could target 3-5 highest level enemy units nearby (if this type of targeting restriction is possible) including the enemy heroes unless they are undead, deal either cold or magical damage and add a percentage of the damage dealt back to the caster as hp (i.e. you kill 5 goblins, you don't get much, you kill 5 knights - you get yourself a nice fat heal) + perhaps add a despair affliction to the targets that survived that as having your life drained away from you is not exactly a spirit-lifting experience.

Better to make the spell rather costly as well, around 40 mana or something and it could work as a nice last-ditch spell for situations when the hero is cornered.

I suppose you could re-use the Ice Storm graphics or perhaps re-color Wildfire to a grayish tint.

Does this sound fun?

Thank you for the answer.

I agree with your objection. Maybe adding self-destruct ability would be nice?

One more thing. In LOM, shadows were the same as the defender. It probably may be difficult to create the spell, which mirrors defending unit, but maybe some darker sprite of Necromancer would be cool idea? I like the idea of shadow too, so it's only suggestion.


Life drain is nice idea too, it nicely fills the lack of offensive instant damage by Necromancer.