I was thinking of a new style of hero wars and thought of a great idea! What if you can actually design your spells through a list of multiple choices? You are possibly given a number of points to spend on each spell and as your building the spell it uses these points?

This is just an example of what I mean...

Choose what type of spell this is...
- Summon
- Morph
- Defensive
- Teleport

How many seconds should this spell last for...
(The more seconds chosen, the less points remaining to build and improve the spell)
- 2.5 seconds
- 5 seconds
- 7.5 seconds
- 10 seconds

Other spell factors could include Range, Mana cost, Stun duration, Count of units it influences, Delay time, cooldown time etc...

Sound good or no?

Sounds much better than any of your other maps. Though you'd want to include some pre-designed spells that are character-specific, for both gameplay and technical reasons.

Not necessarily. It really depends on what kind of game you're going for.

I'm considering using this for a project that I've kept on the backburner for some time now. I'd have a few jack-of-all-trades presets, of course, for newbs, but no character-specifics. As I said, it depends on what kind of game you want, and the game that I'm rotating in my mind is different than an AoS, where you would have to have some preset char-specifics.

A good idea. However, this map will be a pain to trigger and balance. Also, you would be sacrificing amount of spells for the customize-ability of the spells.

While you're in the "custom spell" idea, you should also add "custom hero" with the ability to build a hero by adding points to "life" "attack" "defense" "speed" "range" and "magic". Unlike CHW, all the units start the game balanced, and start with # amount of points. Range = ranged unit, and how much range that unit has. Armor can either be $$ for armor, or a bigger unit, or repeated shield regen (if toss?). All heroes start slowed by triggers; as this attribute upgrades, the frequency of the slow is reduced.

What exactly is a "morph" spell?

Your unit changes into a different unit. Could be problematic; full heals are always exploited...

Yeah, it'd be like HS except that you select your presets beforehand instead of as you level in-game. This could be applied to RPGs, Arenas, AoS-style, heck, even defense games (to a more limited extent).

Someone has already made a map like this. I just can't find the thread

Here it is: http://www.staredit.net/topic/7895/

It is not like HS at all. HS uses preset heroes with preset spells. Using the hero idea i suggested allows weird combination, such as a hero that runs 3X faster than all the other heroes, and is a necromance. (ie: zergling with fully upgraded speed and has necromancy as a spell).

And full heals are only exploited if the map maker failed to trigger correctly.

I get it.

How the heck do you prevent full heals from being exploited? It killed an AoS that I was working on where every char had a secondary form (For example, ghost-vulture was one combo that I had).

Don't put full heals in. QED.

I was actually gonna make a map like this but with computer Ai bots fighting with the spells that you buy and upgrade

It's easy, and I did it in HS 2 different ways.

First of all there was MM and AI who both have alternate units (Scv, Vulture). To prevent full heals when accessing these units, I stored them in a holding area where they were owned by let's say neutral and whenever (or maybe just at the start of game / life / whatever the case is with your map) you modify the second unit's life the same way you do for the first or primary unit. For example, You respawn and the Tank is created at base, get's set to current max life and the SCV OWNED BY NEUTRAL IN THE HOLDING AREA gets set to the same %. This will allow you to use give triggers instead of create triggers and then you are free to adjust the HP / Armor / any other values pertaining to that characters to even it out.

The second method I use (and this is confusing to some people) is with CoM. What I did was have the alternate form be a spell unit as opposed to a real hero- meaning that it didn't appear with an HP determined by vitality (your maximum life) but rather it would appear with a pre-set amount of life depending on how you formed into it. For example, use a first level spell, it appears with very low life. use a second level spell, more life. If you use the strongest level spell with elixir, then you will get the highest possible starting HP for that summoned unit (in this case hydralisk).

I'm sure there are more methods of doing this as well, but the above I can recommend as they have worked well in a map of mine.

That still doesn't solve the problem that AI can switch to an alternate form when one form is low on health. Essentially, he has more HP than any other hero, if it's done right. It could essentially break PKing in HS if AI abuses it as much as possible. Doubtless there are difficulties with abusing it; stuns and things like that can interrupt the effect. But the AI will still be able to heal back to whatever his full vitality is merely by switching forms. It's not a 'full heal' as in 100% life, but it's still 100% of whatever vitality the player is at. And that could be exploited.

That's why people who make the game have the character who is able to do this half a fraction of the normal life they would have if they had only 1 form... or nerf it in other ways to balance it out...

I assumed you'd say something like that. Sorry, I just haven't played HS enough to know the precise character hitpoints and stuff.

It's really a great game, but I don't seem to have the time to play on Battlenet much...