Lily Pad

By default, water tiles do not allow non-aquatic plants to be planted directly. If the tile already has Lily Pad, it gains a carrier layer; the upper plant still runs its own HP, allegiance, attacks, click behavior, and special state. Lily Pad supplies planting legality, not a change to the upper plant's plant type.

The Lily Pad and the upper plant on the same tile should be read as two layers: the lower pad stores its own HP and state, while the upper plant stores its own HP and runtime state. If the upper plant is recovered, moved, or rewritten by an outside effect, Lily Pad does not merge or disappear for that reason; if the pad is destroyed, the support condition is lost with it.

At present, Lily Pad's base HP is 400. That value gives brief tolerance, but a bare Lily Pad has no attack, no shove, and no high-HP banding; compared with Wall-nut, it handles tile legality rather than front-line blocking.

When planted from the seed slot, Lily Pad can also be placed on land. A bare land Lily Pad is ignored by the zombie bite-target check; its HP still belongs to the pad, but it usually is not spent like a front-line plant.

When terrain is later rewritten into water, an existing land Lily Pad can act as the prior support condition, letting the non-aquatic plant above it remain legally supported. If the tile becomes water and did not have Lily Pad beforehand, the water-retention condition is not met.

In particular, land preplacement does not create water-tile behavior early. It only marks a tile that may later become water as already supported; whether zombies attack and whether the upper plant acts are still decided by the current upper plant and terrain state.

When movement or redeployment sends a non-aquatic plant toward a water tile, the target tile passes the position check if it already has Lily Pad; otherwise the water tile lacks support. The check reads support at the destination, not at the movement source.

When Potato Mine is planted on Lily Pad, the pad only opens water-side endpoint legality. The plant that gets linked, eaten, moved, and used to decide whether the line exists is still the upper Potato Mine; Lily Pad itself does not become a line endpoint.

Chained Lily Pads can split water into several legal landing surfaces, but they do not automatically create paths, attacks, or protection. Any path effect still comes from the corresponding upper plant, such as Potato Mine's endpoint line.

Lorus attacks through surrounding lotus flowers, and clicking the body can reposition those flowers. On water, target display and repositioning checks depend on a recognizable anchor; Lily Pad supplies that water-side anchor, not a damage bonus.

With Lily Pad support, Lorus on water regains more readable target display and lotus repositioning. The interaction solves target-layer and landing recognition; it does not rewrite the lotus attack formula.

Corchid and Lily Pad operate on separate layers: Corchid expands lotus repositioning range, while Lily Pad stabilizes water-tile recognition. Both can participate at once, but they are not the same kind of bonus.

In the story, Lily Pad enters the party at the Lower Waterfall, immediately next to the water-combat lesson: Wall-nut warns of its arrival, and Lily Pad turns water combat from a terrain restriction into tile management.

It also handles preparation work: bringing information, keeping field-guide notes, and introducing Lorus, a pond friend, into the party. Unlike Cherry Bomb's immediate deletion or Wall-nut's front-line stop, Lily Pad makes key tiles recognized as usable first.

The role is quiet; when the carrier layer is missing, water plants, movement landings, Potato Mine endpoints, and Lorus anchors all expose their dependence on the same tile rule.