(For the record, this design predates the HoMM 6 implementation of boss monsters. I haven’t played either the demo or the beta, so I don’t know how HoMM 6 handles them.)
I think it would be fair to say that, in taking creatures from the world’s mythologies and making them available for recruitment in numbers, the HoMM games have taken the extraordinary and made it ordinary. Boss monsters are my attempt at reintroducing the extraordinary into the game, and hopefully keeping it that way. My intention is to use boss monsters to enrich the fantasy world with mighty yet elusive creatures and their lairs, and thereby stimulate awe and wonder of interacting with it.
Boss monsters are immensely powerful units (vastly more powerful than HoMM 3 Azure Dragon) that can only be encountered at special adventure map locations. They occupy a hefty chunk of the battlefield arena. They don’t stack, but exist in solitary fashion. This allows variation in basic attributes, so two boss monsters of the same type (two Behemoths, say) won’t be the same.
Boss monsters are aware of their immense power, so even if they join forces with a player, they will only take commands from a hero in battle if the hero has mastered the necessary (very advanced) skills. Until then, they will fight on the same side by exercising their own judgement. During this time, they won’t benefit from combat bonuses that the hero bestows on his troops. When boss monsters are fighting for a player, they need not be killed in order to defeat the player’s army. If the regular troops are defeated, depending on their nature, the boss monsters will simply leave or disappear.
Territorial beasts
Territorial beasts are the most straightforward example of boss monsters. Their name derives from the fact that each terrain type has a boss monster beast associated with it. They have many special abilities, most of which are not shared by other creatures. They live in special lairs that are uniquely suited to their abilities.
This is my list of territorial beasts:
• Titan [snow]: lives on Mount Olympus, atop Magic Clouds. It has Lightning immunity. It can draw on the storm clouds to cast Lightning Bolt, as well as strike units with its gladius, to generate the chain lightning effect
• Kong [jungle]: lives at the World Tree. It can travel across the battlefield by swinging on tree branches, it can climb on the tree to hide from ground-based melee attacks, and its landing causes tremors that inflict damage on non-flying units
• Colossus [desert]: a kind of Golem that resides at the Artificer’s Workshop. It has complete magic immunity, it can animate other objects found in the workshop to fight against its enemies, and, once destroyed, it disintegrates into smaller Golems that continue to fight
• Abomination [lava]: resides in The Void. It intimidates its enemies through Fear, Terror, Frightful Presence and Fright Aura abilities
• Erawan [grassland]: the many-headed white elephant from Hindu mythology. It knocks back units based on the distance of its run up, and is able to trample all land-based non-boss monster units
• Behemoth [dirt]: can pick up objects and hurl them across the battlefield, and pick up tree trunks to use them as clubs
• Kraken [sea]: can grip units with its tentacles, bash them against each other, throw them about, devour small unit stacks, and detach its tentacles when damaged
Elemental
It has always bugged me that elementals, which, to me, embody nature’s raw power, have been designed as such mediocre units.
In this design, Elemental is a result of the Force of Nature spell being cast at a high level of sophistication. It is immune to non-magical attacks. It disappears at the end of combat.
Elemental is able to occupy combat arena tiles simultaneously with material units. It attacks by simply moving across the battlefield, leaving devastation in its wake.
When the Force of Nature spell is cast at a high level of sophistication for all four schools of magic, the resulting Elemental has the ability to bring about Armageddon.
Elementals also occur in the wild, at special locations renowned for their high concentration of elemental power.
Archons
Archons serve as divine protectors of the factions that have been entrusted to their care. Each faction has one. Archons don’t reside anywhere on the map, but only materialise once summoned onto the battlefield.
In order to use an Archon, the following prerequisites have to be met:
• The player must build the Temple structure (very advanced) in at least one of his towns
• A hero of the same alignment as the town must visit the Temple structure
• The hero must now master the Divine Favour skill to be able to call on the Archon in battle
The Archon’s power is directly dependent on the power of the kingdom – the more powerful the kingdom, the more powerful its protector. Specifically:
• The Archon’s health is equal to the total number of units of the same alignment in all the kingdom’s armies
• The Archon can cast all the spells that are available in the mage guilds from the kingdom’s towns of the same alignment that have built the Temple structure
• The Archon’s attack, defence, spell power and knowledge attributes are equal to the sum of these attributes from all the kingdom’s heroes of the same alignment that have mastered the Divine Favour skill
• The Archon’s skills correspond to the skills of the hero who has summoned it
• The Archon’s special abilities derive from the shards that have been placed in all the kingdom’s Temples of the same alignment; shards must be of the same alignment as the Temple to be placed inside it
This means that a Human hero, for example, can only summon the Archon that is associated with the human faction (Angelic Archon), and that the Archon’s power is directly proportional to the power of the Human faction component of the player’s kingdom.
A Temple can only be activated to summon an Archon once per week.
You can have then these Heroic Monsters; Territorial Monsters; Elementals; Anchons; and perhaps something older, greater, like part of the world itself, that can suddenly come to life and enter a battle whenever something is starting to overwhelm the world (e.g. general number of killed units on that month is too high, calling forth the "Death").
Although they're the topmost unit from the Coral Abyss faction, not really a unique beast.
) which is a good idea, I believe there are some balancing issues as I separated above on your quote:
