What killed my frost father??

[sourdust]

I just got this game and am getting my head around all the mechanics, so apologies if this is a noob question! I haven't found the answer in any other posts...

Here's the situation:

I'm playing Ulm Early Age against AIs, with a frost father as my pretender.

About 25 or so turns in, I get attacked by one of the AIs, just some Formorian militia and a handful of small fry. My defenders consist of around 25 province defense and my pretender, with a small bodyguard.

The battle is going well, my sizable PD is easily handling the intruders with some spell support from my pretender and a PD spell-caster.

But my frost father quickly gets up around 100 fatigue, due to some overly-ambitious spell scripting on my part. No problem, I think, the battle is going my way and Frost Father can just have a nap.

Wishful thinking... instead of his fatigue going down, it keeps going up, by perhaps 20 or so every round! Eventually it goes over 200, and a few rounds later my pretender is dead. Oh, it hurts...

Now, he was definitely not casting spells or doing anything else to increase his fatigue over 100. There were no spell casters among the enemy, and no enemies got anywhere close to him. I can't figure out why his fatigue continued to go up.

The effect seems similar to being frozen or something like that. Could it be that his frost aura actually froze him, once he fell unconscious due to spell casting fatigue? If so, that seems pretty harsh, but it's the only thing I've come up with. Any other ideas?

I've watched the reply like 10 times and am certain the enemy attackers (melee units only) had nothing to do with it.

Best answer gets a free astral pearl.

Sourdust

[vfb]

What's his CR? Did he cast Stoneskin or wear Marble Armor?

[Sombre]

Sounds like stoneskin.

[sourdust]

Yep, CR was down to 50. I scripted stoneskin. What a creative way to commit suicide.

[Ink]

it happens. I once outfitted a small army of Ghost General thugs with Marble Armor, sent them off thinking victory was assured; I watched them all die in battle to their own Cold Auras. Ouch! Gotta watch out for that stuff.

Thing is, with undead Blacksteel Fullplate is just as good as Marble Armor, so should always use that. Not so with a Frost Father though...

[BigDaddy]

Robe of invulnerability is (or was)the same level as marble armor, of course it's much more expensive... of course the frost father is your pretender.

[thejeff]

You can also just script Resist Cold or Breath of Winter, either should boost you back up. BoW stacks with the Frost Father's innate Chill.

Be careful with BoW, though. The AI may refuse to cast it if there are friendlies nearby who'll be hurt, due to many complaints about back line mages casting it and killing their neighbors.

[Sombre]

Yeah that's a problem with the way some spellcasting AI has been improved. It should be less likely to cast it when not scripted to, not less likely to cast it overall.