Naiads

[cleveland]

In CBM it's only 3N, and at that price, I found it extremely cost effective for my LA Pangaea Pans & Panic Apostates (330 & 320 gold, respectively; neither are sacred).

The spell turned 22 gold/turn units into 0 gold/turn animals. The major drawbacks are the chance of feeblemind (I guesstimate that's around 10-15%) and the loss of slots (most of the animals only have misc slots). However, I did once get a flying, fire-breathing chimera that could self-cast Invulnerability & Personal Regeneration; another time, I got a Winged Monkey with full slots. More typically, you get various animals with interesting abilities (like mountain-survival cave drakes, flying wyverns, or stealthy moose).

Plus, when your unit becomes feebleminded, it always transforms into a Foul Spawn of some variety, which can be not-so-terrible...

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive had excellent results with it. Sure some of the results have lost slots, and some of the results have died or been worthless. But in general its been something that was fun to make use of. The magic almost always stayed the same. Almost all had leadership (many increased that stat). Almost always it was a nice increase in hit points, armor class, movement, morale, and special abilities. I had particular fun with the Great Eagle, Hydra Hatchling, and Giant Spider.

Its probably not a good spell for the spreadsheet strategists in a small MP game. But its a blast in a large solo game.

Edit: added note. The terrain its cast in does make a difference. Ive also had naiad turned into a sea serpent at a water lab.

[ano]

The terrain its cast in does make a difference. Ive also had naiad turned into a sea serpent at a water lab.

Does it mean that you can never be feebleminded underwater as there can be no foul spawn? (I know that one of the spawns has water breathing but I don't believe this was thought of )

[Wrana]

Do I remember correctly that your Luck score has an effect on Transform results?

[Gandalf Parker]

ano said:

Does it mean that you can never be feebleminded underwater as there can be no foul spawn? (I know that one of the spawns has water breathing but I don't believe this was thought of )

Interesting. I only made one. The Sea Serpent wasnt very interesting and I couldnt think of many things in the water that would be interesting. Maybe I should have tried more.

[JimMorrison]

Hmmmm.....

What would you say the approximate odds are of having hand slots? So say if you had easy access to N2 mages that you wanted to mass transform using Thistle Mace to boost them, would you lose too many maces to even keep the serendipity value? I suppose if you had access to Moonvine Bracelet, they all have misc slots, so 90% of the time you'd be fine, you'd only lose it if they died?

[Gandalf Parker]

The terrain would affect the percentages. And luck also I believe. But in any case, I suspect that the animal forms outnumber the other forms, so you percentage would probably be bad.

[Baalz]

Gandalf Parker said:

Interesting. I only made one. The Sea Serpent wasnt very interesting and I couldnt think of many things in the water that would be interesting. Maybe I should have tried more.

I've made sharks and sea lions underwater.

[Endoperez]

JimMorrison said:
mass transform using Thistle Mace to boost them, would you lose too many maces to even keep the serendipity value?

You don't lose the Thistle Maces. They are put into a lab if there's one in the province, i.e. every time unless there's some weird bug with the lab-destroying event, which probably would have been noticed already.

[JimMorrison]

Oh really, it goes into the lab? So you'd only lose the Mace on death then? That's pretty neat, I'll have to do a test on it, since there seems to be some confusion surrounding this still.