8th Ed. Homebrew Lizardmen Lore of Magic

[The Great White Lizard]

Hello!
I've never liked the fact that we as LM have to use what is essentially high elf magic with a decent lore attribute. I decided to try to make a decent homebrew Lore of Magic for Slann. What's below are my efforts thus far.


Any feedback is much appreciated! I'm still unsure on things like casting values, so hopefully I can clear those up a bit. I'm also planning on making some homebrew casters that use this lore.

The Great White Lizard

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

Just been reading this after you referred to it in your welcome thread, and I must say it's pretty impressive! I've never seen this many summoning spells in one lore and perfectly captures the myriad creatures of the Lustrian jungle coming out to play when the right magic words are spoken! I just have a few comments:

• Breath of the Blot Toad does a lot for a casting value of only 10+ - forcing the enemy to take a Panic Test at -2 penalty, reducing both their Strength and Toughness by 2 and spreading a Blot Toad to their unit is pretty darn powerful. Conversely Savage Roar isn't as strong, I would swap Breath of the Blot Toad with Savage Roar in the listing, reduce Savage Roar's casting value to 10+ and increase Breath of the Blot Toad's casting value to 13+ or 14+.
• Call Cold Ones has an unnecessarily high casting value to summon just 5 Cold Ones, especially as it's the Signature Spell. I'd reduce its casting value to something like 8+ or 9+.
• Feral Cold Ones don't suffer from Stupidity because in the lore it's the taming process that causes Saurus Cavalry to suffer from Stupidity. I would just use the profile for them from Storm of Magic, which reduces their Attacks value to 1 and lowers their Leadership to 3 but gives them Frenzy and removes Stupidity.
• Feral Ripperdactyls don't need to use the Flying Cavalry rule because they're not mounted - they're just flying Monstrous Beasts - and they should have the Toad Rage special rule.
• I'd also add in some randomness to some of those spells, the summoning spell for Vampire Counts and the reanimation spells for them and Tomb Kings all use D3s or D6s to summon models to make it more balanced and exciting. I would change the spells to summon D6 Cold Ones, D3 Salamanders and D6 Ripperdactyls respectively, and change the lore attribute to heal D3 wounds to a friendly Jungle Swarm.

I also like the idea of the Skink Priest mounted on a throne carried by snakes - that really adds some Cult of Sotek hype to an army and, combined with the attribute for the Lore of Lustria, helps Jungle Swarms to become much more viable. I'm really looking forward to seeing your conversion!

 

[The Great White Lizard]

Thanks! I definitely see what you mean on Breath, the signature spell, and replacing hard numbers with dice. I'm still trying to decide if I should reveal my Skink Swarmcaller now or wait until I finish with my expansion book. I'm also thinking about replacing the Cold Ones with Verusaurs, basically Dilophosauruses. I really appreciate any feedback on my custom rules as it gives me the stamina to keep making them.

 

[custodi]

I appreciate this was 6 months ago, but some thoughts:

I am not a fan of the Lore Attribute, although that's largely because I'm not a fan of anything that relies on you having a specific unit like that.

Savage Roar should probably specify that it's affecting only friendly units. As well, if you intend to allow this to be cast on a unit that had Frenzy and lost it, you should specify that it allows units to regain Frenzy. Further, as it stands it increases the attacks of monsters etc permanently. That might be intended, but I thought I should point it out if it wasn't. Based on similar spells from official sources it should probably have two casting values. One with a higher range that affects one unit, and one with a smaller range that affects everything within that range, although that's obviously not necessary.

Breath of the Blot Toad is an interesting one. I'm assuming it requires the panic test at -2 Ld to get around Inspiring Presence, but as it stands, that means that if a unit is outside of IP it takes the test at -4 Ld (-2 for the test, -2 for the other effect of the spell). Plus, it can currently be used to wipe out certain units (Skinks, for example) because it reduces Toughness without a minimum. I'm also thrown by the choice to make it a magic missile spell, because it reads like a hex. However, if what I think you're trying to do is correct it would probably be better stated as: "Breath of the Blot Toad is a Hex spell with a range of 24". You may place a Lustrian blot toad marker on the target unit. The target unit has its Toughness and Leadership reduced by 2 (to a minimum of 1) until the strat of the caster's next magic phase. It then takes a Panic test, which cannot benefit from Inspiring Presence. Units in combat automatically pass this panic test."

That neatly solves the issues I pointed out (assuming they are issues for you of course).

 

[Felian]

cool stuff!
I was wondering, why didn't you use as a base the existing spells from previous Lizardmen army books?
For example, in the 5th edition, Lord Mazdamundi has 4 unique spells

 

[The Great White Lizard]

Thanks for the feedback! I unfortunately don't own the 5th edition Lizardmen book, only 6th, 7th, and 8th. I've made the suggested changes, and things are looking a lot better now.

 

[Felian]

Thanks for the feedback! I unfortunately don't own the 5th edition Lizardmen book, only 6th, 7th, and 8th. I've made the suggested changes, and things are looking a lot better now.

I sent you a PM