Epic Blood Mechanic

[xirsoi]

xirsoi needs to finish this. Its all planned out for a basic release, but I have tons of ideas about how to make it better. Basic principles are in two steps;

1. A character will occasionally have the option to 'emulate' one of the heroes of the Homeric Epics. This is fairly common and provides very small boosts to the character's stats (+1 to an attribute or to fertility).
2. This character will then be eligible for the Personal Legend Events. There are 5 classes of PLEs. An event from the 1st class will give the flag personal_legend_1. Having the flag for a class of PLEs prevents other events from that class from firing. The 5th class is special, in that it is specifically about the hero that the character is emulating. So, a person emulating Achilles will get an event that makes them look particularly Achilles-like.

Basically all of the events are about the character being epic. I tried to bunch them together into semi-related groups. Here are my notes for the ideas.

Once all five flags have been achieved, a big narrative event will fire to give the character the Reborn trait for their chosen hero and to select all of their descendants and give them the appropriate "Blood of" trait. Reborn traits give large bonuses, blood traits have more modest bonuses, selected with the idea that these bonuses exist because others believe the character to be the reincarnation of an ancient hero.

Class 1: Divine Favor

• Good Omens Bless the Character
• An Enemy's Weapon Shatters on the Heroes Shield
• Gaining the Theologian Trait (from WoL)
• Lightning Strikes an Enemy (could just be a noble or a peasant that dared to dishonor the character, not necessarily combat related).
• Hero Displays Wisdom From the Gods (wax philosophic and sound awesome)
• Scholar/Mystic (get the trait)

Class 2: Culture

• Find an ancient artifact
• Build a Grand Monument
• Create an amazing work of art (tapestry, mosaic, painting, sculpture, etc.)
• Become an Architect (WoL trait)

Class 3: Physical Prowess

• Hunter (WoL trait)
• Hunting Story (white stag, encounter with wolves or bears, etc. Basically something badass)
• Show of Bravery (save children from a burning building, that kind of thing)
• Perform Well in Sporting Events (think perhaps tied to some kind of Funeral Games event chain, or maybe the Olympics?)
• Kill an Enemy (army) Leader in Single Combat

Class 4: Leadership/People Skills

• Administrator
• Master Schemer
• Strategist
• Game Master
• Master Seducer/Seductress
• Resolve a Dispute (kinda like the ones for the improve diplomacy ambition)
• Solve a Crime

Class 5: The Hero Events

• Achilles: Lead an Army that takes a holding. If we wanna get fancy, create some kind of counter and require they take at least 10 (or something). Achilles was known as "the Taker of Towns" for his many successful sieges.
• Odysseus: You must succeed in a Plot to Kill, but be discovered. ~20% chance that, on discovery, the brilliance of your plan will make you into a legendary figure.
• Nestor: After years at the negotiating table, knowledge of your diplomatic skill has spread far and wide.
• Hector: Break a Siege on one of your holdings. Like the Achilles idea, this could potentially get more complicated.
• Aeneas: No idea.
• Paris: A lover has a moment of indiscretion and lets slip how amazing a lover you are. Rumors quickly spread throughout the realm and the next thing you know, people are comparing your lovemaking skills to Paris of Troy.

I have half a dozen of these implemented (but not localized) in a very basic way. For the first pass, I'm okay with most of these being fairly flat events, but I'd like them to be more sophisticated in the future, with some actual hard decisions to make (do you run the risk of injury or death to get a personal legend rating?).

I'd also like to have it that gaining certain traits will force the character to either abandon emulating their hero or try something potentially costly in order to shed the unwanted character trait. After all, you can't long stay a coward if you are trying to be like Achilles or Hector :)

Other possible enhancements would be more events and heroes. I'd like to replace Paris with Adonis (no one liked Paris), add Atalanta and Hyppolita, add Theseus, Heracles, and several other "founder" heroes, and maybe even Cassandra.

[jbelig]

Hi from me, I did it at last even with my xp... On subject, these sound too cool. If you want to add more characters, it would be easier to skip the event that asks to choose between greeks and trojans. The possibilities are endless then,anyone from the mythology could get in. How do you plan to handle 'blood of' trait? When you play someone with this trait, he should be able to get the same chain again to 'upgrade' to 'reborn'. Maybe he could get the option to continue with the same hero and start somewhere at the middle or start with a new hero from the beginning? And if he ends up with a different hero, what happens with his descendants? Will they get 'blood of' both his hero and his father's hero?

[xirsoi]

The "Greek or Trojan?" event is just a convenient way to divide them up. You can only fit so many buttons on one event.

I'm not super keen on characters being able to "upgrade" from 'Blood of' to 'Reborn.' I also don't have a way to prevent a character from being Reborn twice. Yet.

I'd like to wait to see how common it is for the characters to appear before we decide if a character can become a reborn hero when they already claim epic blood.

[xirsoi]

You do bring up an excellent point about characters currently collecting personal legend events suddenly having their parent become a reborn hero.

This isn't very likely to happen to the player (they'd need to abdicate to their child, then grant their parent a duke or higher title, or re-load as a vassal child), so I'm not very concerned about it for the first (or second) version. Something to think about though.

[xirsoi]

Five years later, to the day, and this still isn't done...

The bloodline mechanics added by the Holy Fury update make this 10x easier to accomplish, not to mention my vastly greater modding experience.

The Alexander the Great event chain may prove to be a useful template.