Heroes of the Storm Build Concept: The Game Master

Combat Trait

Let the games begin

When the game begins, you start with the King Piece. If the King dies, all other chess pieces are killed.

Your respawn timer is reduced by 50%.

The King uses a resource called Act that is required to deploy, move and cast the other piece's abilities.

Can have a maximum of 10 Act. You gain 1 Act every 4 seconds.

You can have up to 5 Pieces active on the board at any time.
(The King and the Queen do not count towards this limit.)

More Information

(D) Deploy: Pawn

Cost: 2 Act
Cooldown: 2 Seconds
Range: 12

Summon a Pawn that falls down in the targeted square after 1 second. Enemies in the impact area take 60 damage and are slightly knocked away from the sqaure.

Pawn Stats

Teamwork

The King is not the only unit you can cast abilities with. You can use the abilities of other chess pieces by selecting them. But be careful of where you leave the king, if he goes down the other pieces do too.

Primary Abilities

(Q) Deploy: Knight

Cost: 3 Act
Cooldown: 4 Seconds (Cooldown is shared between Deploy: Knight, Deploy: Bishop, and Deploy: Rook)
Range: 12

Summon a Knight that falls down in the targeted square after 1 second. Enemies in the impact area take 60 damage and are slightly knocked away from the sqaure.

Allies within adjacent squares upon impact gain 15% increased movement speed for 2 seconds.

Knight Stats

(W) Deploy: Bishop

Cost: 3 Act
Cooldown: 4 Seconds (Cooldown is shared between Deploy: Knight, Deploy: Bishop, and Deploy: Rook)
Range: 12

Summon a Bishop that falls down in the targeted square after 1 second. Enemies in the impact area take 60 damage and are slightly knocked away from the sqaure.

Allies within adjacent squares upon impact are healed for 100 health. Increased to 200 health to other chess pieces.

Bishop Stats

(E) Deploy: Rook

Cost: 3 Act
Cooldown: 4 Seconds (Cooldown is shared between Deploy: Knight, Deploy: Bishop, and Deploy: Rook)
Range: 12
Knockback Distance: 4

Summon a Rook that falls down in the targeted square after 1 second. Enemies in the impact area take 60 damage and are knocked away from the sqaure.

Rook Stats

Secondary Abilities

(Q) Command: Move

Cost: 1 Act
Chess Piece Cooldown: 2 Seconds

Order a Chess Piece to move. (A chess piece can't move or cast spells more than once every 2 seconds.)

(W) Command: Target Attack

Order a Chess Piece to target a unit within their attack range.

(E) Command: Rallying Advance

Chess Piece: Knight

Cost: 1 Act
Chess Piece Cooldown: 3 Seconds

Grants allies in adjacent squares 15% increased movement speed for 2 seconds. Chess Pieces in adjacent squares move for free the next time they move.

(E) Command: Restorative Prayer

Chess Piece: Bishop

Cost: 1 Act
Chess Piece Cooldown: 3 Seconds

Heal an ally hero for 200 health or an ally chess piece for 400 health.

(E) Command: Iron Bulwark

Chess Piece: Rook

Cost: 1 Act
Chess Piece Cooldown: 3 Seconds
Knockback Distance: 2.5

Deal 100 damage to enemies within adjacent squares and knock them back. Chess pieces inside the area gain a shield that absorbs 150 damage. Shields last for 4 seconds.

(E) Command: Protective Barrier

Chess Piece: Queen

Cost: 1 Act
Chess Piece Cooldown: 3 Seconds
Grant all allies within adjacent squares a shield that absorbs 200 damage. Increased to 400 shields to other chess pieces. Shields lasts for 4 seconds.

Heroic Abilities

Deploy: Queen

Cost: 1 Act
Cooldown: 60 Seconds (Cooldown starts when the Queen is killed.)
Range: 15
Knockback Distance: 3

Summon the Queen that falls down in the targeted square instantly. Enemies in the impact area take 200 damage and are knocked away from the sqaure.

Allies in adjecent squares gain a shield that absorbs 300 damage. Increased to 600 damage to other chess pieces. Lasts for 5 seconds.

The Queen does not count towards the maximum amount of Pieces allowed on the map.

Queen Stats

Tactical Cheats!

Cost: 3 Act
Cooldown: 70 Seconds

Passive: Increase the number of chess pieces allowed on the map by 3.

Activate: Generate 1 Act every 1 second for 10 seconds. Your Deploy ability cooldown recharge 100% faster while it's active.

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Talent Tier 1 (Level 1)

	(Passive) A New Strategy ? Quest: Chess pieces have died. ? Reward: After 15 chess pieces have died, all chess pieces gain 10 Armor. ? Reward: After 30 chess pieces have died, armor is increased to 20 and oooooooio you can have 2 additional chess piece on the map.

	(Passive) Bonding ? Gambit: Chess pieces gain 100% increased damage and 20 armor when adjacent to another chess piece. oooooooio Every time a chess piece dies, the damage bonus is reduced by 2%.

	(Passive) Heavy Impact ? Quest: Hit enemy heroes with falling chess pieces. ? Reward: After hitting 15 enemy heroes with falling chess pieces, oooooooio increase the fall damage of all basic Chess Pieces by 400%.

Talent Tier 2 (Level 4)

	(Passive) Diseased Impact Enemy heroes hit by a falling chess piece, they receive 25% less healing for 2 seconds. You gain 1 Act for each enemy hero hit.

	(Q) Rallying Advance Gain access to the Knight's ability, Rallying Advance. Increase maximum amount of Act by 1.

	(2) Tactical Retreat Cooldown: 10 Seconds Activate: Select a basic Chess Piece, after 3 seconds it is unsummoned and you regain 2 Act.

Talent Tier 3 (Level 7)

	(Q) Gallop Knight's Command: Move costs no Act and it's cooldown is reduced to 1 second.

	(W) Restorative Prayer Gain access to the Bishop's ability, Restorative Prayer. Increase health of all Chess Pieces by 25%.

	(E) Blasting Aura Rook's deal 20 damage per second to all enemies within adjacent squares. ? Quest: Kill enemies with Rooks. ? Reward: Every minion killed by a Rook increases the damage of Blasting Aura by 1. oooooooio Takedowns grant 5 bonus damage. Up to a maximum of 80 bonus damage.

	(D) Survival Squad If a chess piece dies, adjacent chess pieces gain 50 armor for 3 seconds and heal for 50% of their maximum health over 5 seconds.

Talent Tier 4 (Level 10)

(Heroic 1) Deploy: Queen

	(Heroic 2) Tactical Cheats! Cost: 3 Act Cooldown: 70 Seconds Passive: Increase the number of chess pieces allowed on the map by 3. Activate: Generate 1 Act every 1 second for 10 seconds. Your Deploy ability cooldown recharge 100% faster while it's active.

Talent Tier 5 (Level 13)

	(Passive) Durable Leadership Increase the maximum health & respawn timer of the King by 100%.

	(E) Iron Bulwark Gain access to the Rook's ability, Iron Bulwark. Increase damage, healing and shielding done by chess pieces by 30%.

	(1) Rapid drop Basic chess pieces drop instantly and deployment cost is reduced by 1 Act.

Talent Tier 6 (Level 16)

	(Passive) Knight Specialization: Chariot Knight's gain 100% increased damage dealt and can move 1 more tile with each move.

	(Passive) Bishop Specialization: Conjurer Bishop's grant heroes within adjacent tiles 15% Spell Power. Targeting an ally with Restorative Prayer grants them 25% Spell Power for 3 seconds.

	(Passive) Rook Specialization: The Tower Rook's gain 33% increased health and enemies within adjacent tiles are slowed by 40%.

Talent Tier 7 (Level 20)

	(Heroic 1) Towering Presence Increase the Queen's damage by 100% and extend her range to 4 squares, but she can only move 1 square at a time.

	(Heroic 2) Overload Increase maximum Act by 6. Increase Act generation per second from 1 to 2 while Tactical Cheats is active.

	(Passive) Reach of Royalty Increase deployment range of all chess pieces by 25%. ? Quest: Spending 10 act increases this bonus by 1%. Including Act spent so far.

	(Passive) King Specialization: Warrior The King's damage is increased by 250% and spending an act increases the movement speed of the King by 5%, up to 40%. Lasts for 4 seconds.

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I can't believe you could've thought of a hero that is so unique! At first I thought this was an event idea because of the name (I recommend naming them something else as it is confusing, maybe something like 'The Game Master' or maybe even 'The White King'. that way you'll maintain their aura of non-personal identity, but still have a decent name)

If I'm getting this right, they're like the Lost Vikings yes? You can control multiple bodies at once? I assume these chess pieces count as Heroic targets because if not then they can be really OP, or maybe they're just Heroic Summons that gives XP when killed but won't affect Hero-specific quests. I don't know if I'm missing something, but I think it would be better if your Deployment Abilities get moved to a single Ability; the Trait.
So like the 'D' key would be "Deploy Chess Piece" and once you click it and cast it on the ground, you get an Ability Wheel which you can use to specify which piece you would want (similar to the Pinging Wheel where you get to choose what type of Ping you use).

Then the '1' key would be "Select Chess Piece" and this can work similar to TLV's selection secondary abilities, but instead of individual vikings for each key, you get 1 key which you can keep pressing to alternate between deployed chess pieces. Or alternatively you could always make it so that you can manually select the chess pieces.

This way it'll free up your Q, W, and E for each individual Chess Piece abilities as you have listed (question; can you have more than 1 piece of each type? Like more than 1 pawn etc? I think that can get a bit confusing especially if individual pieces have different Cooldowns)

Also side note, have you tried posting this on the Forums or Reddit? This is a really cool concept and deserves more recognition!

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(2) |

Hey, thank you for the idea of the name change, I had a hard time figuring out one so I'm definetly swapping to 'The Game Master', which sounds fun!

You are correct about this concept being sort of an alternative or related gameplay wise to TLV. I hoped to make them a game within a game, by having to play it somewhat different than as if you were playing Jaina, Diablo, or Raynor for example.

I imagined the concept to not be focused on 1 single Chess Piece (kind of). Ofcourse the king would be the most important, but he does barely anything without the other pieces, just like in normal chess. You can control each piece seperatly. So when you select the king he has the deployment abilities on D, Q, W, E, and optionally R if the Queen was chosen. But then you can select other pieces to get their set of abilties. Which would be (Move - Q, W - Empty/or Tactical Retreat(talent), E - Special Ability(talent)).

I do think that the idea of a ping type deployment wheel could be cool and would probably work just as well as the one I imagined, but I personally like the idea of having to select the pieces so I'm gonna stick with that for the concept as of now.

Even though that would free up 1-2 ability slots for the pieces, adding more abilities to them would be even more overloaded than it already is.

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(2) |

Not Lilmy, but you can have multiple pieces of the same type: The base limit is 5, the King and the Queen don't count towards this limit, and there are only four other types of pieces. The ability wheel is super clever though, it really makes you wonder how far you could go with a concept.

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(2) |

Wow, another brilliantly unique concept, and the beautiful formatting is always a nice touch. There are some grammatical issues, but the concept itself seems really fun to play (not that I think I'd be good at it. I'm not good at micro-managing in HotS).
One question though, can you soak XP from your pieces?

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(2) |

Thank you for the nice words and for pointing out the grammar issues, I will fix some of them shortly. :)
About the exp soaking, I am unsure of what would be best. But in my head, the pieces can soak experience because the king is so squishy. I've made the king very important (maybe too important), so forcing a player to have to soak with the king would put them at great risk for doing the bare minimum.

But I am not sure how it would be balanced, if the king can drop pieces to soak exp, then that would make him probably the safest laner I assume? I'm open to ideas if you can think of anything. :)

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MORE HERO INFO The Chess Event is a boss inside of Karazhan which has to be killed before being able to challenge the final boss. It's a different way of playing the game, which is exactly what it is supposed to be in Heroes of the Storm aswell. The map has a chess grid with 2x2 squares that all chess pieces (except the king) align with. New pieces can only be deployed in empty squares. Square Size = 2x2 (4 Toxic Nests in a square shape)	+ Strengths		- WEAKNESS'
	+ Soaking + Late Game Power + Battlefield Control		- Low Health Pools - Can fill multiple roles but doesn't excel at any - Easily shut down by killing the king

The Game Master by Lillmy

The Game Master

The Game Master

Chess Event of Karazhan

Chess Event Boss

KING STATISTICS

GAMEPLAY IDEA

BOSS FIGHT

"The Chess event in Karazhan must be solved in order to reach Prince Malchezaar. The raid plays a sort of chess match against Medivh."

+ Strengths

- WEAKNESS'

Combat Trait

Primary Abilities

Secondary Abilities

Heroic Abilities

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Talent Tier 1 (Level 1)

Talent Tier 2 (Level 4)

Talent Tier 3 (Level 7)

Talent Tier 4 (Level 10)

Talent Tier 5 (Level 13)

Talent Tier 6 (Level 16)

Talent Tier 7 (Level 20)

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