[Campaign] Environmental effects and Harpy Race

[Limitteditemeater]

Hey, all so for the campaign I am creating I plan to add environmental effects such as an area of water has begun having a storm and all units that are inside take x amount of damage or have a certain penalty. I was wondering what are some environmental effects people would find interesting and would want to see.

Another thing I have been working on is a playable harpy race and would like to have some suggestions for units, heroes and abils. Currently, they have 2 ground units which are wind elementals which are designed to be a bit tanky to stop ground melee troops from destroying all your stuff. A basic Harpy that does good melee damage to air units and alright damage to ground units, a wind-focused spell caster and a lightning based spell caster. Their design is gonna focus on low health units that focus on a lot of spells that relate to wind and lightning as they are like in wow.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Snowstorm: Slows and reduces accuracy.
Sandstorm: Deals damage and reduces accuracy.
Duststorm: Greatly reduces accuracy.
Windstorm: Pushes all units in the AoE in one random direction every X seconds.


Harpy spells: If they're supposed to be low-HP, how about spells that focus on knockback:
Gust Of Wind: Pushes target unit backwards.
Wingflap: Caster is pushed backwards in a straight line.
Eye of the Cyclone: Pushes away all units around the caster.
Tailwind: Pushes all units near the caster in the direction of the caster's facing, then gives them increased movespeed.
Sow the Wind: Channels (can be voluntarily interrupted), the longer the channeling lasts the more effects are put on enemies.
Effects:
* Reduces enemy movespeed
* Reduces enemy accuracy
* Enemies are pushed at random
* Lightning strikes enemies every X seconds

 

[Limitteditemeater]

Like those ideas. With the environmental stuff I was also thinking of including stuff like rocks or shipwrecks that would damage navy units if they came to close etc Not sure what the ground equivalent would be

 

[Chaosy]

If you are a bit clever, you can go beyond weather.

For example, if the harpies are in the barrens geysers could erupt in poison gas occasionally, damaging nearby units who stay in the cloud.
Basically, smaller environmental effects. Not just large global ones like weather.

 

[Limitteditemeater]

Ye could do that as well. I think what I will do is add small and larger regions which if I can randomly generate one of the environmental effects.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Alternate geyser use: gives casters a buff that makes them regenerate mana faster but lose accuracy.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Some interesting ideas, but how exactly do you have them lose accuracy? only thing I can think of is the cloud buff when cast on a large area

 

[Pyrogasm]

Curse has a miss chance attached to it.

 

[Limitteditemeater]

Ye could maybe spawn a unit in the centre of a region that just casts a version of curse on every unit that enters the region till the effect goes away. Unless there is a easier version of course

 

[cleavinghammer]

I was thinking of it putting a modified Curse or Drunken Haze buff, yes.

High Flight: The harpy flies further up, putting it out of range of most attacks/giving it very high evasion, but also preventing it from attacking.
Bombing Run (Active, Channeling): The harpy flies forward (and is uncontrollable), dealing damage at regular intervals in a line beneath it (either by dropping rocks/feathers or spells).

 

[Limitteditemeater]

Nice Harpy ideas. Gonna look at including most of them and ye those environmental effects I can probs use a version of curse/haze that has no cd and a random range not sure what the range will be. Npc generated effects like that will be interesting since I can make them randomly spawn anywhere meanwhile I don't think you can do that with region based effects.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Thunderstorm: Lightning strikes the ground at random locations, severely damaging all units near the strikes.
High Winds: All flying units are forced to land and treated as Ensnared for the duration of the effect.
Low Cloud Cover: Flying units have Evasion, reduced sight range and accuracy for the duration of the effect.

Enslaved Wyvern: Scout unit with no attack. Has a chance to defect to the closest enemy player if a harpy is not within X range of the wyvern.
Harpy Strongwing: Large tank unit (relatively speaking) with high HP, Abduct and Carry.

Abduct (Active): Carries an enemy ground unit and can drop it (dealing damage to the unit and in AoE around the unit), gradually losing movespeed (when movespeed reaches zero, unit is released). If the Strongwing is killed while carrying a unit, the abducted unit is considered to have been dropped at the Strongwing's location.
Carry (Active): Carries an allied ground unit and can unload it. Loses movespeed when carrying. If the Strongwing is killed while carrying a unit, the abducted unit is considered to have been dropped at the Strongwing's location.
Roost (Active): Targets a tree. The harpy heads for the tree and gets a Sleep debuff, regenerating mana and HP at high speed, waking up when fully healed. If the spell is removed (y dispelling or attack), so is the regeneration.
Hoard Shinies (Passive): Has a chance to steal gold from a killed enemy. A harpy with this ability has a chance to give gold to its killer.
Tornado Wings (Active): Sends a small tornado in a straight line towards the target point. Does no damage to affected units, but causes them to be trapped in their own whirlwinds (as with the Tornado spell).
Ascension (Active): Traps a unit in a tornado. Target unit is unable to move or attack but is vulnerable, and is now targeted as an air unit.
Plucking Winds (Active): Targets a unit. Target unit is hurled into the air, taking severe damage and is stunned on landing (single-target Impale).
Grapple (Channeling): Targets an air unit. Target unit is unable to move or attack as the harpy latches on and viciously attacks (melee-range Aerial Shackles).
Nest (Active): Targets a tree. Turns tree into a Harpy Nest that can be upgraded into other harpy buildings.