Death vs. Fire bless

[Omnirizon]

the fact that the D9 damage is AN synergizes well with the increased affliction chance though. if they are protted to hell, then you might get the AN damage through, if they are MR to hell, then you might get normal damage through, either way, you can probably get some afflictions through.

and even with minimal damage infliction, if you start getting some afflictions on, anything becomes a lot less of a threat.

wonder how F8D9 might stack up to F9W9, especially considering the gain in design points. something with higher armor and low defense, that wouldn't benefit from the weak effect of water.

[JimMorrison]

Dammit you guys! I JUST started an EA game, and now you've got me all curious to try Kailasa. Maybe I'll do some SP tinkering to work it out.....

Was just playing with pretenders a bit - I do think N4 is pretty useful for Kailasa. Though, I suppose you could just plan to mass buff with Ethereal/Luck by the time it really matters.

Also, their recruitable anywhere sacred, is not the archer, so this somewhat complicates the issue. While I'd agree that the Death bless is still very viable for them, the fact that most of your sacreds would be full time melee, kind of changes the rest. I was looking at a Master Lich with 6A/9D/4N which seemed pretty viable as far as retaining decent scales as well.

However, overall it seems like you are best off trying to use blockers to eat arrows. That being the case, the Air could be dropped altogether, to give them a bigger Nature bless which could be enough to keep the archers up (you should have at least some protective buffing going on before things get really hairy), and also provide a lot more benefit to the melee.


Okay, I'm getting carried away! To sum up, yes I agree that Kailasa is a good example of Death potentially being better than Fire.

[sansanjuan]

In my first MP game I chose a pretender with D10 (as Eriu) in hopes of leveraging the affliction bonus on Rituals with the caster wearing the Shroud of the Battle Saint (seeking arrow, leprosy) and for the additional penetration my pretender would get casting undead mastery. The game was great fun but I didn't seem to see the dramatic D10 affliction multiplier I expected.

-SSJ

[chrispedersen]

Omnirizon said:

EA Kailasa's Yavana Archers

until now thought completely useless. I think A10D9 might work with them.

they could work quite nicely by themselves, or with chaff if necessary; and Kail has no shortage of chaff to choose from

No need to rush for Gandharvas or Arrow Fend, you could get Celestial music fast. D9 blessed longbow archers with the high precision of the Yavanas firing twice a turn, you could place em so far to the back, and with a little chaff to stall stuff, they would empty their quivers. anything left alive would get killed by them in melee once they were finally reached.

Yeah, this is what I wrote up as my preferred usage of yavannas long ago.

The other interesting thing, is these archers make the fire and flee order interesting. On offense, its pretty self explanatory. Multiple successive F&F waves.

On defense, Keep high ration of leaders to archers. Concede the territory, but keep the force intact.

[Renojustin]

Because the Death blessing 2 AN attack requires a MR check to be successful, and the Fire blessing 6 AP attack doesn't, it seems that the Fire blessing would be of better use in a wider range of situations.

For instance, SCs and thugs, or any valuable troops, attacking you would always have to use Fire resistance or be eaten alive. In early and even mid game, that can be quite problematic for a lot of nations.

Against Death bless effects, these units already have high MR nearly by definition. So already, Fire works better against the troops that really matter. The only unit that a Death bless would work better against would be high protection, shielded units with low MR. And that window of opportunity will not last long, because MR is easily buffable through Earth and Astral magic.

Therefore, the affliction chance for your casters is likely the most useful effect from a Death bless, for many nations overshadowing the +4 Attack bonus from the Fire blessing. Death is also cheaper for many of the applicable pretender chassis. To me, it appears that that might be for a reason!

[JimMorrison]

Renojustin said:
Against Death bless effects, these units already have high MR nearly by definition. So already, Fire works better against the troops that really matter. The only unit that a Death bless would work better against would be high protection, shielded units with low MR. And that window of opportunity will not last long, because MR is easily buffable through Earth and Astral magic.

Therefore, the affliction chance for your casters is likely the most useful effect from a Death bless, for many nations overshadowing the +4 Attack bonus from the Fire blessing. Death is also cheaper for many of the applicable pretender chassis. To me, it appears that that might be for a reason!

That's the thing, those sacred troops also have the Affliction bonus. Against units of singular power, you are not relying on the damage boost - but the non-resistible Eye-Arm-Nose-and-Toes loss.

As you pointed out, obviously an experienced player will endeavor to have FR on their thugs/SCs if you have a Fire bless, but they can MR all they want to, there is no Affliction Resistance.

[MaxWilson]

Renojustin said:
For instance, SCs and thugs, or any valuable troops, attacking you would always have to use Fire resistance or be eaten alive.

That turns out not to be the case. A 6 AP Fire attack does minimal damage to a thug with 22 Prot (on the order of 0.2), and a thug going up against a fire bless is going to be relying on Prot instead of Def. It does force him not to have fire vulnerability, so no naked liches or raksharajahs.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
As you pointed out, obviously an experienced player will endeavor to have FR on their thugs/SCs if you have a Fire bless, but they can MR all they want to, there is no Affliction Resistance.

Well, actually yes there is. High HP, regeneration, high Defense, and high Prot all contribute to affliction resistance. SCs are designed pretty much by definition to be immune to armies, and if the army can't do any damage, +350% of 0 afflictions is still zero. This is why Cursed SCs can still prosper under the right circumstances.

-Max

[Omnirizon]

my question here is probably covered before...

but how is fire weapon damage factored?

my guess is it is factored against protection separately from normal damage. correct?

does it have its own DRN roll? so the fire weapon does AP damage 6 + DRN?

[Baalz]

Omnirizon said:
my question here is probably covered before...

but how is fire weapon damage factored?

my guess is it is factored against protection separately from normal damage. correct?

does it have its own DRN roll? so the fire weapon does AP damage 6 + DRN?

Yes, yes, yes.