Should lizardmen get the lore of life?

pdc4930#3270

Should the Lizardmen get the lore of life in the form as Green Slann Mages Priests and Skink priests?

it would give back the lizardmen ability to have strong heals, but would it be overpowered?

thoughts?

SubjectEighteen#6930

Abso-fricking-lutely. With the Cold-Blooded re-work they're really lacking in sustainability. Apotheosis is the only heal they have at the moment and that's just on Maz I believe.

Earth blood would keep your infantry in the fight longer and could really be effective on blobbed dinos.

Helhound#7332

I'd rather the Slann have a second multi-lore variant that also includes apotheosis.

Bogdanov89#9316

Lizardmen are pretty damn garbage and lore-wise someone on their side should know the Lore of Life.

So YEA they should have the lore of life, probably on a skink hero.

Frankly apotheosis is a trash heal, even overcast it is pitiful.

Just give LM a lore of life caster and they may become semi viable in multiplayer.

lucky_dutch#7258

Their whole army seems to be designed to "grind it out" yet they lack any form of healing since the cold blooded nerf.

Please give them lore of life!!

Michael4537

Lore of Life was THE Lord of Magic for the Slann. The Lizardmen should absolutely receive more Slann lords. We're still missing...

Lore of Life Slann
Lore of Beasts Slann
Lore of Fire Slann
Lore of Metal Slann
Lore of Death Slann
Lore of Shadows Slann

There should be a Slann variant for each of the eight main lore and the lore of High Magic.

SaurianDruid#4682

Lore-wise the Slann should have access to all the standard lores of magic plus High. I don't see any reason not to give it to them if the Empire got all the lores.

Though I do like their multi-lore set up. I think that would be a nice compromise for the Slann. Access to spells from every lore but not necessarily every spell from every lore.

We could have a slann of life and beasts, a slann of fire and metal, and a slann of death and shadows added.

Valkaar#2507

Yeah, Lizardmen absolutely need some sort of compensation for losing 'Cold Blooded'. IF they became OP as a result (unlikely) then something else could be nerfed to compensate.

But seriously, is ANYONE? really concerned that the Lizardmen are on the verge of being OP at the moment? Even when they had 'Cold-Blooded' as a heal, there was maybe only 1-2 effective cheeses that centered around Kroq-Gar that I think most people felt were 'too strong'. But even that wasn't super prevalent. Lizardmen weren't dominating tournaments or anything, and weren't the most powerful race on the ladder even before Mortal Empires was released. However 'OP' the healing cheeses supposedly were...at least vanilla Dark Elves had been able to consistently deal with it. And High Elves likely WOULD have been able to deal with it if they had had access to Sisters of Avelorn at the time.

And this is all before the Old World races entered the fray ^^. After Mortal Empires released/the various Lizardmen nerfs rolled out, it's only been downhill for the Lizardmen. So basically, if we look at this retroactively, access to healing in the past has never before made the Lizardmen dramatically OP.

In regards to the one-off cheeses, now that Kroq-Gar has been independently nerfed (which should have been the original solution in the first place imo), I highly doubt that particular cheese would return.

I should say, I'm okay if Lizardmen just get some healing back. It doesn't specifically HAVE to be Lore of Life. Reversing course on Cold Blooded, or giving healing support abilities of some kind to one or two of the DLC units would technically be sufficient.

Nevertheless, it is frustrating that the progenitors of magic use in the Warhammer setting have access to fewer lores than multiple other races, including the Elves whom they freakin' taught magic to! I understand they probably can't give Lizardmen the loreful 'access to everything'...but I don't think just 1-2 additional lores would hurt anything. And out of the lores available, Life I think has the best synergy with the Lizardmen's playstyle, and would go a long ways towards fixing their shabby position in the multiplayer scene.

Draxynnic#3149

To be fair, the High Elves also taught magic to the Empire, and the High Elves have less lores currently than the Empire. It's also noted in the Lizardmen book that in some ways High Elf mages are more innovative than the Slann.

I think there's really two philosophical questions raised in this thread:

The first is: Should races that have access to all lores on the tabletop, have access to all lores in TWW?

It'd certainly be more true to the fluff and to the tabletop if they did. On the other hand, however, having tighter restrictions does allow more of the character and distinctiveness of the races to shine through. Wood Elves, for instance, had access to a whopping ten lores in 8E, but in practice, the overwhelming majority of Spellsingers and Spellweavers (that weren't originally trained among the Asur and Druchii before defecting to the Asrai) probably focused on Life, Beasts, or Shadow. Dark Elves, as another example, are an inherently selfish and spiteful people which don't have the mindset to be a good fit for the Lore of Life or certain other more cooperative-inclined lores such as Light - there's nothing stopping them from learning these lores, but most Sorceresses probably favour lores that are more disposed towards making them one-woman engines of destruction rather than supporting allies (and do we really want mass healing to become part of the Dark Elf playstyle?).

The second question, which itself can be split into two, is: If the answer to the first question is no, is the Lore of Life a characteristic lore for the Lizardmen?

One of the components of this is balance. Apotheosis should be available to High Magic Slann, so at least some healing is available, and as I'll get to in the second part, Life does not seem to be an appropriate lore choice for Skink Priests. So if the Lizardmen are to get access to Lore of Life, they'd only be able to do so through having a Lore of Life Slann Mage-Priest as their General. So if the new Lizardmen balance situation becomes one where they need Life to be viable, that effectively renders most of their Lord choices non-viable. So from a balance perspective, it's probably better to balance the Lizardmen out so that they don't need the Lore of Life to be competitive.

On the fluff side of things:

There is some precedent to Skinks having access to lores outside of Heavens and Beasts, in the Sacred Hosts rules - wherein Skink priests dedicated to specific Old Ones would have the lore associated with that Old One. With those rules as written, Life is actually the only lore that is not available to Skink Priests at all. With that said, though, some of the lore assignations in those rules seem a bit... questionable. In particular, Quetzl, the Lizardmen god of protection, would probably be better suited to Metal or Life than to the lore of Death that Quetzl was assigned in the rules. Broadly speaking, though, Skink Priests using anything other than Heavens or Beasts seem to be so rare that they can probably be ignored for the purpose of TWW.

So we come back to looking at the Slann. Is the Lore of Life something that is likely to be favoured by the Slann?

If the Sacred Hosts rules are to be taken as an accurate representation of which lores are associated with which Old One, this would appear to be a mark against the Lore of Life. From a religious perspective, in fact, the Slann could well favour every lore except Life and Beasts (since Sotek is largely viewed as a god of the Skinks). To present a counter-argument from the religious perspective, however, the Coatl is a representation of the Lizardmen god of magic, air, and sacred places, Tepok, and while Tepok is associated with the Lore of Light in the Sacred Hosts rules, coatls have access to three lores - Light, Heavens, and Life. Tepok is one of the most important of the Lizardmen deities (behind Sotek and Chotec) so Tepok's apparent patronage of the Lore of Life is probably a mark in its favour, possibly more so than being the primary lore of a more obscure Lizardmen god.

From a practical aspect, the value of a lore with a focus on manipulation of water and vegetation in the Lustrian jungle should be self-evident.

A third aspect is the "personality" of the lore. Among humans, at least, each wind is linked to certain personality archetypes, which produces a cyclical relationship between the personality of a wizard and the wind that they're linked to: the closer a Magister's personality matches the archetype, the more attuned they become to the wind, which further enhances the compatible personality traits and suppresses the incompatible ones, and so the cycle continues, to the point where powerful Magisters essentially start to become avatars of their wind. While this effect is certainly at least substantially reduced for High Magic-capable races such as Elves and Slann, it is probably still the case that winds whose personality matches that of the Slann - which is generally of a calm, contemplative, and introverted nature.

It's worth noting that, by accident or design, the current lores available to the Slann fit this to a T. Conversely, lores such as Fire and Beasts both promote wilder, more impulsive personalities than is typical among the Slann. The Lore of Life is somewhat extroverted, but still generally more on the calmer side, so it probably fits in well there.

The kicker, though (which I hadn't actually considered when I started writing this up) is that Ghyran is one of the winds most tied up with geomancy. Of the eight core lores, the Lore of Life has been the one most generally associated with earth magic since the Lore of Light was overhauled in 6E, and in the Empire, it's the Jade Wizards that are mostly focused with looking after the ley lines (aka waystone network, aka geomantic web...).

So, my conclusion is that yes, Slann should get the Lore of Life, although other balance changes should be made so that this doesn't become a must-pick. Skink Priests, however, should not.

Tempus_fugit#2711

+ 1.

The nerf to cold blooded and the terrible heal provided by the life crystal bastilodon means that there are no reliable ways to heal and the revivification crystal bastilodon is a complete waste of a unit slot that will rarely if ever be able to make back its costs in a battle, almost regardless of how long it lasts.

There is a counter argument that lizardmen have high health and therefore should have less access to healing, but apotheosis single target heal and then the reviv crystal bastilodon is a good compromise.

If there is some reason not to give Slann the choice from generic lores, then I think a rejig of their current light+high magic spells to include apotheosis and replace the useless exorcism passive, which works for about 2 races in the entire game.

Steppelord

I think we should wait till the next dlc, I'm sure they'll get skunk priests with magic or something.

Dracklor#9977

Yes they should definitely have it, it makes no sense that they don't without Cold blooded they would have as much healing as the Empire which is honestly already weird enough

Dracklor#9977

Valkaar said:

Yeah, Lizardmen absolutely need some sort of compensation for losing 'Cold Blooded'. IF they became OP as a result (unlikely) then something else could be nerfed to compensate.

But seriously, is ANYONE? really concerned that the Lizardmen are on the verge of being OP at the moment? Even when they had 'Cold-Blooded' as a heal, there was maybe only 1-2 effective cheeses that centered around Kroq-Gar that I think most people felt were 'too strong'. But even that wasn't super prevalent. Lizardmen weren't dominating tournaments or anything, and weren't the most powerful race on the ladder even before Mortal Empires was released. However 'OP' the healing cheeses supposedly were...at least vanilla Dark Elves had been able to consistently deal with it. And High Elves likely WOULD have been able to deal with it if they had had access to Sisters of Avelorn at the time.

And this is all before the Old World races entered the fray ^^. After Mortal Empires released/the various Lizardmen nerfs rolled out, it's only been downhill for the Lizardmen. So basically, if we look at this retroactively, access to healing in the past has never before made the Lizardmen dramatically OP.

In regards to the one-off cheeses, now that Kroq-Gar has been independently nerfed (which should have been the original solution in the first place imo), I highly doubt that particular cheese would return.

I should say, I'm okay if Lizardmen just get some healing back. It doesn't specifically HAVE to be Lore of Life. Reversing course on Cold Blooded, or giving healing support abilities of some kind to one or two of the DLC units would technically be sufficient.

Nevertheless, it is frustrating that the progenitors of magic use in the Warhammer setting have access to fewer lores than multiple other races, including the Elves whom they freakin' taught magic to! I understand they probably can't give Lizardmen the loreful 'access to everything'...but I don't think just 1-2 additional lores would hurt anything. And out of the lores available, Life I think has the best synergy with the Lizardmen's playstyle, and would go a long ways towards fixing their shabby position in the multiplayer scene.

Oh and you couldn't pick the slann with life and Kroq gar since both are lords

Crossil#2134

Well in my book Slann and HE always struck me as a more marshalled and disciplined forces and thus would sooner take whatever lores of magic are deemed necessary on the battlefield. Skinks and DE however would bring whatever they want to use or what they prefer more.

But, yeah, due to gameplay it might not be best overall so I'm not gonna go on a tirade if that's not how it'll be.

Draxynnic#3149

Crossil said:

Well in my book Slann and HE always struck me as a more marshalled and disciplined forces and thus would sooner take whatever lores of magic are deemed necessary on the battlefield. Skinks and DE however would bring whatever they want to use or what they prefer more.

But, yeah, due to gameplay it might not be best overall so I'm not gonna go on a tirade if that's not how it'll be.

One could also note that full High Magic requires mastering all of the regular lores, even if technically any harmonious mix of two or more is a form of High Magic (the 6E Lore of Athel Loren could be an example of this). Dark Magic, on the other hand, doesn't require any skill with the individual Winds apart from the ability to gather them and compress them into Dark Magic - and that's the easy part that human wizards can achieve accidentally. (The hard part is controlling it once you've got it.)

It's worth noting that 8E was the first edition for a while that gave Dark Elves access to every lore.

I think it is still reasonable to say that some lores are more prevalent among certain races even if those races have access to all. Based on my prior analysis, though, Life does seem to be one that should be reasonably prevalent among the Slann.

Technically, there should also be a Slann option that has access to one spell each from multiple lores, a la High Elf Loremasters. Which would possibly be one way to represent their breadth of knowledge without having nine different varieties of Slann - they could pick out the lores that are most appropriate to add (Life and Death, perhaps?) and then have a sixth Slann type that has a bit of (almost) everything.

CaesarSahlertz

Slann have access to all lores of magic.

Skinks only have access to Heavens and Beasts.

So if you let Slann have access to lore of Life, sure why not? Skinks, not so much...

SubjectEighteen#6930

CaesarSahlertz said:

Slann have access to all lores of magic.

Skinks only have access to Heavens and Beasts.

So if you let Slann have access to lore of Life, sure why not? Skinks, not so much...

Having not played TT, may I ask what the justification for that is? Why can skinks only learn those two lores?

CaesarSahlertz

SubjectEighteen said:

CaesarSahlertz said:

Slann have access to all lores of magic.

Skinks only have access to Heavens and Beasts.

So if you let Slann have access to lore of Life, sure why not? Skinks, not so much...

Having not played TT, may I ask what the justification for that is? Why can skinks only learn those two lores?

They aren't particularly magically talented, so their "nature" lends itself best to these two lores of magic. Theoretically there is nothing that prevents them from learning other lores, but being what they are, it would be extremely unlikely and exceedingly rare.

SaurianDruid#4682

Speaking of lores, there was an entire short story in an older Lizardmen armybook about a bright mage seeking out the lizardmen who worship Chotec and challenging them to a duel of fire. He lost, and the intensity of the magic was so great that the members of the Bright College could feel the heat back in Altdorf. Bright mages are now forbidden from traveling to Lustria to seek out the reptilian pyromancers.

Draxynnic#3149

CaesarSahlertz said:

SubjectEighteen said:

CaesarSahlertz said:

Slann have access to all lores of magic.

Skinks only have access to Heavens and Beasts.

So if you let Slann have access to lore of Life, sure why not? Skinks, not so much...

Having not played TT, may I ask what the justification for that is? Why can skinks only learn those two lores?

They aren't particularly magically talented, so their "nature" lends itself best to these two lores of magic. Theoretically there is nothing that prevents them from learning other lores, but being what they are, it would be extremely unlikely and exceedingly rare.

Broadly, yes: Skinks are lower on the totem pole in terms of magical potential than humans. However, it's more to do with function. Prior to the rise of Sotek, one of the primary roles of almost all Skink priests was interpreting prophecy, hence why Heavens was favoured. Skink Priests worshiping specific Old Ones, however, learn a different lore based on that Old One (see link below for the specifics, noting that I think that some of them are poor fits). Beasts is the lore associated with Sotek, and usage of the Lore of Beasts for Skink Priests in the army book (and now TWW) reflects that there are a lot of Skink Priests that revere Sotek, while Skink Priests that specifically revere one of the other Old Ones are fairly rare.

SaurianDruid said:

Speaking of lores, there was an entire short story in an older Lizardmen armybook about a bright mage seeking out the lizardmen who worship Chotec and challenging them to a duel of fire. He lost, and the intensity of the magic was so great that the members of the Bright College could feel the heat back in Altdorf. Bright mages are now forbidden from traveling to Lustria to seek out the reptilian pyromancers.

It wasn't in an army book but, rather, in the fluff of the Sacred Hosts article.