Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires

[duke_commando]

Maybe vampires should get some natural protection, like ten or so, since they're supposed to be hard to kill and all.
With this and regeneration they'll be strong but can still be killed by enough regular troops.

This would make the VQ pretty uber if you gave her etherealness through items, but if you're gonna spend 175 points she should be badass.

Right now with no protection and mediocre defence they even fail against archers in melee without enchantments. Seriously, I don't even trust them to take out militia.

[NTJedi]

Humakt said:
cast a blood ritual which reduce age by 10 (for ten slaves).

As a side note for everyone: This spell does not work for the undead Tartarians and the spell will still take your blood slaves.

[Chris_Byler]

Why did they lose etherealness anyway? Even if they were overpowered it seems like the wrong fix, taking away one of their thematic and interesting strengths. They could have just lost some strength, skill, MR, or had their cost increased (and the number that appeared in a random event decreased). Now they can be killed easily with conventional weapons, which is inappropriate and pathetic.

I realize that vampires and the VQ could be abusive in Dom 2, but with all the other changes that have come since then, I think they may have been overnerfed.

[Folket]

Ethereal are not thematic. Vampires were not ghosts last I looked. Perhaps that they could have a change shape command and become an ethereal cloud of mist.

[thejeff]

Mistform would be more thematic, though it doesn't really work the way traditional vampire mist abilities do.

[Burnsaber]

Humakt said:
If you have age problem, abysia warlocks can cast a blood ritual which reduce age by 10 (for ten slaves). Seems to me easier than N/W boots.

Expect that many of them are over 10 years old age. So you'll have to cast it twice. Besides, Boots of Youth are pure blood item (con6, blood2 to forge).

[Baalz]

Vampire lords (and LA Ulm counts) have blood magic, so they can sabbath slave. Assuming you have some other astral/blood mages you can uber buff them - have a couple communion masters cast invulnerability, fire shield, phonix pyre, soul vortex, breath of winter, hell power, etc. etc. Use cleverly timed reinvigoration to keep from overfatiguing them with off path spells, and use the communion boost to cast whatever nasty battlefield enchantment you have available (wrathful skies, foul vapors, grip of winter etc.) Have the masters withdraw and the slaves attack. You get pretty ridiculous immortal kamikaze killing machines with a good chance of wiping out entire armies and little chance of any losses on your side.

Oh, regular vampires - which you'll have for free from your vampire lords are great in this situation to cause a distraction while your communion goes off - who cares if they die in droves? Best to berzerk your Vampire Lords though, don't want them routing because the chaff dies.

[thejeff]

Careful with communioned hell power. It horror marks the slaves, doesn't it?

[Baalz]

Yes it does, but on immortal kamikaze units that doesn't really matter. Even if you're pretty terribly horror marked (20+) you don't get a horror attack anywhere near every round. As long as you stay in dominion and don't give them items (as befits a kamikaze squad) then it doesn't matter terribly much if your guys are occasionally eaten by horrors. Granted, you don't want to horror mark them for every border skirmish, but it is a small price to pay if you use it to kill a big scary army.

If you're particularly wicked have an otherwise tough dude equipped with two shields of the accursed run forward to let the enemy's front lines whack at him for a couple rounds while the communion is going off. Now those hell power spawned horrors just add to the carnage instead of working against you. Unless he's berzerk your shield wielder will quickly get overwhelmed by fear from the horrors drawn to his location and book it out of there so you've a good chance of him living considering he's got +18 defense from the shields.

[Baalz]

Yeah, the thing about Demon Knights is its almost always better to do blood stones with anybody who can summon them with the exception (as mentioned above) of Ritual of the Five gates and Infernal Crusade. One nice thing, by the time you can cast Infernal Crusade you can also summon Demon Lords (using just blood magic) and there is at least one (maybe two...I don't remember) demon lords who can cast Infernal Crusade. I find it much more likely to amass them (along with several other useful units) by casting ritual of the five gates. Its a fairly cheap spell for what you get, the only hang up being B5 mages probably aren't falling off of trees - but then again it isn't terribly difficult to get 3 blood boosters.

If you do have earth mages, weapons of sharpness, legion of steel, strength of giants, bloodlust - now there's a damn scary force of hell knights.