The Behemoth

[tinkthank]

When I revive a Behemoth, is that supposed to make the mage who cast that ritual spell unable to cast spells in combat until the Behemoth dies or only the commander under which the Behemoth is placed? To be honest, I could have sworn I have seen Behemoth-masters cast spells, but am no longer sure if they switched commanders....

[Norfleet]

The behemoth is simply a normal unit with no spellcasting ability. There's no "behemoth master", and the mage that summoned the behemoth doesn't lose his ability to cast spells: A Behemoth is an entirely seperate unit consisting, thematically, of the undead elephant with a mage riding on it: It's just like a knight or heavy cavalry. The blurb text about not being able to cast spells basically is meaningless fluff that exists only to justify why the mage on the behemoth has no spellcasting capability (because he's not a commander, he's a normal unit).

Technically, you can GoR a Behemoth, and then empower it so it CAN cast spells.

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
The behemoth is simply a normal unit with no spellcasting ability. There's no "behemoth master", and the mage that summoned the behemoth doesn't lose his ability to cast spells: A Behemoth is an entirely seperate unit consisting, thematically, of the undead elephant with a mage riding on it: It's just like a knight or heavy cavalry. The blurb text about not being able to cast spells basically is meaningless fluff that exists only to justify why the mage on the behemoth has no spellcasting capability (because he's not a commander, he's a normal unit).

Technically, you can GoR a Behemoth, and then empower it so it CAN cast spells.

OK, but I think you misunderstood me. I meant the blurb in the text; I thought it was refering to the mage casting the ritual spell, I didnt realize there was supposed to be a little magelet on the behemoth itself. Well whatever, ok, I was mislead by the text then.

[Norfleet]

No, I understood you just fine. You were mislead by the blurb text, believing that the mage summoning the behemoth was drafted into the behemoth-control role and lost his ability to cast spells. However, that's not the case: The mage casting the behemoth-creation spell also creates the mage riding the behemoth.

[Arryn]

I, too, was misled by this poorly-phrased text when I first began playing Dom 2. I learned the truth about the spell by doing a search on this forum's old Posts.

[Norfleet]

I managed to totally evade this trap through a combination of age-old biases from other games: Firstly, in pretty much every game of this type I've ever played, summoning has always been a subpar to useless route, and the undead have never been worth spit.

So naturally, I saw "summoning, undead", and nothing about "blow stuff up", and quickly passed over it for immediate consideration.

Since then, I've come to realize that Dominions II has a far smaller list of stupid stuff than you find in other games: Nearly everything is useful to SOMEBODY, at some point, if not you. Even the stuff that I personally don't tend to use, in Dominions II, I no longer dismiss as a useless gew-gaw. Like those Vine Ogres: I ordinarily don't use them, due to my national and pretender preferences, but nor do I consider them to be useless.