Protection and Defense

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen

Err, no, or rather yes to the last postulate and no to the earlier "vanishingly unlikely" one.

There are several SC chassis that start out with extremely high defense and routinely sport well over 30 defense, the most obvious one being our friend, the Djinn, who starts with a defense of 20, hits 30 with ease with one shield and possibly a bit of experience, and is often seen dualwielding shields, but more generally any SC type unit devoted to anti-SC duties where not being hit at all by an opponent's weapon of doom takes on increased importance over being able to survive the weapon hitting you. (Fragile SCs like the queens of elemental air are other obvious candidates for stacking defense rather than protection). Shields like Shield of the Accursed are in their element here, as are Shield of Valor and Shield of Gleaming Gold.

There are lots of defense 15-16 chassis in the game, many good for a pair of boots of speed as part of their thug/SC duties, that will hit 30+ defense with a bit of experience under their belt should you be willing to invest in them and while it may not happen in your MP games, it certainly happens a lot in mine.

It certainly isn't the most common way to see thugs and SCs kitted out, but it has its place and isn't vanishingly rare.


As an example, here's my favourite anti-SC SC from an ongoing game (where his job is obviously to jump anybody using an SC or the like in my dominion). Everything is easily and cheaply replacable (except for the Mage Bane, which is in no way essential to making him exceedingly nasty - it just makes him even nastier versus his intended prey), and his high defense means that most SCs and even armies of normal units are likely to miss.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/1889/antisc.jpg (picture is with an E4D4B4 minor blessing as prophet in dom 10 and with heroic toughness 56)

Any attacks that does go through his does not have to deal with much protection but does have to deal with 81 hp regeneration/round. Other armours used to counter whatever the opponents are fielding (resistances, even more defense, reinvigoration+even more MR - the hydra skin is just the basic fallback for the last ~24 hp/round). This one is definitely a "nuke with Gift from the Heavens" type of SC, for overwhelming him in melee with thugs/SCs (probably armed with morningstars if they want to hit) is likely to end up with the surviving winners horrormarked very feriously.

Which non-artefact shield would be a better choice for him in general than the Shield of the Accursed he is using? Some other shield might be better for specific niché uses, but that's what swapping equipment to better face known threats is for.

I can of course not speak for Agema, but I find it likely that he did not include a shield's parry value in the defence value, which you evidently do. The thing is that the parry part of the defence is not as good as pure defence. A shield hit is still a hit.

The added protection is nice, of course, but nowhere near as good as not getting hit. AP weapons halves the protection provided, AN weapons makes it irrelevant and as long as some damage goes through all sorts of nasty special effects still apply.

Your SC is a rather good example of the state of things, I think. It does have a high defence in the upper twenties, but a lower protection. A good shield makes the effective protection a lot higher in most instances, but 30 protection is still not that much considering it includes the shield protection. At the level of equipment indicated by his gear punching through 30 protection is rather easy. Just put him up against himself - he has a strength of 31. Using AP or anti-undead weaponry will make it even more effective.

Also, do not make too light of the Mage Bane. The weapon has one of the best defence values in the game. Without it he is much easier to hit.