Starless heroes

Starless heroes may only be taken on an attack team. They can’t be assigned to a defense team.

Starless heroes have zero HP, zero attack, and zero defense. They can not be targeted by enemy attacks or abilities.

Starless heroes provide unique benefits to their attack team, and are generally themed to work with specific color cards and or classes.

Starless heroes still take up a card slot, so players are effectively trading a fifth hero for a different benefit.

If all other four heroes are killed, then the starless hero is also considered killed.

Green Starless:
The Bard

  • Each attacking Druid hero starts the game with one companion for each level of companion unlocked (max of 3).
  • When a thorn minion is destroyed, it explodes, dealing 50 damage to the enemy hero that killed it.
  • At the start of the game, the Mana speeds of all attacking heroes in the battle are randomly reassigned.
  • Any time a buff is applied to one of your heroes, an additional random buff or debuff is also applied to that hero (66% chance buff, 33% chance debuff).
  • The bard will only join a team of all green heroes.

Purple Starless:
Sin

  • at the start of the game, select one enemy hero and one friendly hero. Those heroes swap places.
  • Sin will only join attacking teams consisting of: purple heroes, wizards and sorcerers

(So you can swap a 1* hero for the enemy’s best hero / their tank.)

Yellow starless:
Shield of Light

  • all defense bonuses/buffs for the attacking team are doubled.
  • Friendly buffs can not be dispelled.
  • Attacking team gets +15% attack for each buff.
  • The enemy team starts with a ‘blinded’ debuff: all enemies have a -33% accuracy for 4 turns.
  • Shield of Light will only join a team consisting of Paladins and Clerics. Will not join a team with any purple heroes.

Blue starless:
Zephyr

  • After an attacking hero uses a special skill, one random enemy is frozen. The frozen enemy can not attack or use a special skill for 3 rounds. (This effect can be dispelled. ). An enemy who is frozen may be selected to be frozen again. If this occurs the duration is extended by an additional 3 rounds.
  • (I’m trying to decide what effect this should have on a Titan. I am thinking titans would be immune.)
  • Zephyr attacks only alongside other blue heroes, or rangers.

Red Starless:
Ichor

  • when an attacking Barbarian inflicts Wound to an enemy, the enemy receives between 2-4 stacks of bleed instead of just one stack.
  • The first time a barbarian is killed during this battle, the barbarian deals 412% damage to a random enemy.
  • Sometimes goes berserk and inflicts 200 damage to ALL heroes. (20% chance of occurring each round.)

Very interesting idea @Duaneski

So a Starless hero is a little bit like a superminion or super troop.

A few questions or observations -

  • Will the enemy target the Starless, a bit like Amoena in ghost mode? This is a big advantage
  • does a Starless hero devalue slow AoE heroes further? They effectively lose 20% of their damage capacity.
  • how and when would Starless be available? One would need to have a full roster to make suitable teams. Maybe they could replace the useless colour specific 3* training at the top end of the training camp?

Some of the effects look like great fun - Horghall could be fast, players would suddenly take Fletcher in every Purple stack etc

Obviously, the Bard is the best of the lot. @Petri, I’m happy for this to be implemented, I’ll even waive my normal consultancy fee.

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I don’t think that they should, no.

That’s a good point, and the answer there has to be a resounding yes. So, that is sad.

I figure they’re definitely end game cards. That plus the amount of testing they would need. Hah. I can’t imagine :stuck_out_tongue: so let’s say a yet to be available TC slot. Like TC25.

I would think you could slot them into some existing summon event. Would be a mixed bag for a new player to pull one of these instead of a 5*. And by mixed bag I mean, probably pretty frustrating lol.

I had people in mind when I named that one and zephyr… was trying to think up a spot for garanwyn but got sucked into worrying about the card details and balancing instead - like a chump :stuck_out_tongue:

I realized after writing these cards that SG probably already had plans to utilize some class specific effects, maybe in the form of like ‘equippable artifacts’ or ‘new troops’ or just heroes who in general affect only specific classes.

The relative cruddiness of the barbarian and paladin have me convinced of this ;p … so then I felt like, eh, this starless schtick May be an unnecessary gambit. BUT I kinda like the trade off of losing all that HP and Attack, too. So, I dunno man. I appreciate the kind words but think The Bard is too complicated, Yellow is too strong, and blue probably needs a total rework. And that’s just eyeballing it hah. The other two I like on paper but I mean really, who knows.

Actually - this would probably be a good idea. In general, no. But maybe the Yellow Hero instead of one of its existing abilities, has that it is targeted sometimes instead.

I imagine that is easier to balance, flavorful, simple to code.

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