Etherealness

[Gurthang]

I would like to understand what are the exact effects of being ethereal. Does it only afford protection against non-magical attacks? To the extent that a wizard donning a Robe of Shadows is like naked in front of hostile spells and magic attacks, and should be protected through a different armor?

All help appreciated!

[tratorix]

Ethereal means 75% of attacks miss, not effective against magic or magic weapons iirc.

[OmikronWarrior]

Originally Posted by Gurthang

I would like to understand what are the exact effects of being ethereal. Does it only afford protection against non-magical attacks? To the extent that a wizard donning a Robe of Shadows is like naked in front of hostile spells and magic attacks, and should be protected through a different armor?

All help appreciated!

Essentially, it means 75% of normal melee and missile attacks will be ignored. So, its very helpful on a thug or a super combatant that expects to fight line troops or independents. However, it won't help against any magic attack. Almost all (or maybe all) forged weapons count as magic, as the do most spells. There are a handful of spells that cause "mundane" damage that could be neutralized by Etherealness, but I think those are mostly Earth Magic.

The Robe of Shadows is one of those pieces of equipment I don't think gets much use. Back row mages don't benefit much from etherealness since they shouldn't be fighting line troops. Meanwhile, thugs and SCs benefit more from armor that grants protection to say nothing of the extra benefits of Hyrda Armor (regen), Rainbow Armor (revig and MR), Copper Armor (shock immunity), Jade Armor (Quickess), etc.

[Knai]

Originally Posted by OmikronWarrior

Essentially, it means 75% of normal melee and missile attacks will be ignored. So, its very helpful on a thug or a super combatant that expects to fight line troops or independents. However, it won't help against any magic attack. Almost all (or maybe all) forged weapons count as magic, as the do most spells. There are a handful of spells that cause "mundane" damage that could be neutralized by Etherealness, but I think those are mostly Earth Magic.

There is also the Caelum issue. Caelum has a lot of troops that have weapons that count as magical, and Etherealness goes nowhere against them.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Originally Posted by OmikronWarrior

Back row mages don't benefit much from etherealness since they shouldn't be fighting line troops.

Doesn't etherealness protect against mundane arrows? If your mages don't have "air shield", wouldn't etherealness still be worth casting? Or have I have I been wasting my astral mages' time ?

[DeadlyShoe]

Generally speaking your mages should never be taking arrow fire if you have deployed correctly. It's not impossible, but your astral mages are usually better employed either killing the enemy or buffing your troops... AKA arrow catchers.

The most common reason mages take arrow fire is that they are too close to archer groups; enemy archers set to Fire Archers can and will scatter arrows onto the mages.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Originally Posted by DeadlyShoe

Generally speaking your mages should never be taking arrow fire if you have deployed correctly. It's not impossible, but your astral mages are usually better employed either killing the enemy or buffing your troops... AKA arrow catchers.

The most common reason mages take arrow fire is that they are too close to archer groups; enemy archers set to Fire Archers can and will scatter arrows onto the mages.

Ah, well I think Im probably often guilty of that. Thanks for the reminder!

[Bananadine]

But, yes, ethereal body will help against ordinary arrows.