Balancing the blesses

[MaxWilson]

Xietor said:
Earth is obviously great for casters, but the 4 protection does not really help that much on low protection units. I like the theme of Earth, but would 8 protection put Earth on scale with Fire, water, and nature?

Too much, IMHO. 8 Protection would make Earth far and away the best bless for too many units. Take the Niefel Giant, for example. 66 hit points, Prot 14, Def 13. Most units of the era have an Attack of no more than 12 and do not more than 15 points of damage per hit. They'll usually get in 1 or 2 swings because the cold aura freezes them solid. Say there are six of these opponents attacking per Niefel Giant. My Monte Carlo says they'll do about 11 points of damage per turn. A +4 water blessing would cut this to 7.3 points per turn. An E9 blessing as it now stands would cut this to 4.3 points per turn, in addition to keeping fatigue low to avoid crit-hits. An E9 blessing that give Prot +8 would cut this to 1.4 points per turn. It's true that an N9 blessing would also net 1 point per turn after counting 10 points of regeneration, but it wouldn't do anything about fatigue and it wouldn't scale as well. (Give each of those attackers 2 stars and it goes up to 12.75 - 10 = 2.75 points per turn for N9, and 1.5 for E9.)

Obviously this isn't true for low-Protection units. Interestingly enough, E9 appears to add to your armor protection and not to your basic protection, so it doesn't work at all on units without armor (Machakan spiders) and it doesn't completely stack with bonuses from Berserk. I suppose you could make it a natural Barkskin instead of a +4 armor bonus; I don't know exactly what the formula is but it makes Niefel Giants go from Prot 9 (14/8 head/body) to Prot 12 (17/12 head/body), so it would help the unarmored warriors without boosting high-end units much. Stoneskin would actually be more thematic than Barkskin but it might be too much. Either is better than a flat +8 to armor Prot.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Here's one more thing: a comparison of death and fire weapons. Again ignoring attack/defense rolls, here are the (Monte Carlo) break-even points. That is, in general fire weapons do more damage than death weapons, but for a given Protection there is a certain MR at which death weapons becomes a better bet. Here's the breakdown for Prot 1-20 and how much expected damage is dealt per-hit at each level. (For Prot 9 and below, fire weapons are always better but I show the expected damage for MR 10 for comparison's sake.)

Prot 1 MR 10 Fire dmg 6.40 Death dmg 1.44
Prot 2 MR 10 Fire dmg 5.70 Death dmg 1.46
Prot 3 MR 10 Fire dmg 5.70 Death dmg 1.42
Prot 4 MR 10 Fire dmg 4.70 Death dmg 1.62
Prot 5 MR 10 Fire dmg 4.65 Death dmg 1.48
Prot 6 MR 10 Fire dmg 4.08 Death dmg 1.46
Prot 7 MR 10 Fire dmg 3.81 Death dmg 1.45
Prot 8 MR 10 Fire dmg 3.20 Death dmg 1.41
Prot 9 MR 10 Fire dmg 3.19 Death dmg 1.51
Prot 10 MR 5 Fire dmg 2.68 Death dmg 2.57
Prot 11 MR 6 Fire dmg 2.68 Death dmg 2.38
Prot 12 MR 8 Fire dmg 2.21 Death dmg 2.15
Prot 13 MR 9 Fire dmg 1.99 Death dmg 1.88
Prot 14 MR 10 Fire dmg 1.63 Death dmg 1.54
Prot 15 MR 10 Fire dmg 1.66 Death dmg 1.53
Prot 16 MR 11 Fire dmg 1.44 Death dmg 1.14
Prot 17 MR 11 Fire dmg 1.40 Death dmg 1.15
Prot 18 MR 13 Fire dmg 0.97 Death dmg 0.82
Prot 19 MR 12 Fire dmg 1.06 Death dmg 0.91
Prot 20 MR 14 Fire dmg 0.71 Death dmg 0.66

Again, take these numbers with a grain of salt since they're empirical. Nevertheless, "he who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense," and number-crunching is an old tradition for wargamers. For instance, it's apparent that death weapons are a better bet in LA than in EA.

One thing this doesn't take into account is that it's *possible* that death/fire weapons still take effect on shield-hits. Fire weapons will do negligible damage on a shield-hit, but death weapons are AN, so it's possible that death weapons are a better bet against shielded units. Maybe I'll test this if I learn enough about modding to create a low-def, heavily-shielded unit.

-Max

[Foodstamp]

Your smart

[Taqwus]

With the death weapons, don't forget about the higher affliction chance, too.

Cheap, high- or multi-attack, death-blessed units (flags?) might make good cripplers. A blessed commander with a Bow of War might be really, really annoying.

[B0rsuk]

Death bless and arrows
Does it really work ? I mean, you can perforate light infantry anyway. As for heavies, especially with shields, they're not likely to get more that 2-4 damage anyway. We know affliction chance is based on damage dealt compared to creature's max health. So 2 damage arrow isn't very likely to cause an affliction. How much does death compensate for this ?

Replacements for Blood9
1. I'd call it Pain Mirror. It would work much like Blood Vengeance, except it mirrors damage instead of redirecting it. Sacred unit still takes damage, it's just likely to cause automatic harm to attacker.

2. Hp increase ! For example max(3, totalhp/5). It would be roughly +15 percent extra health, or +3 hp, depending on which is higher. It would feel a bit like Earth bless, except it would help against some spells/poisons more. In cases where totalhp/5 is more than +3, it wouldn't matter much anyway because big high hp creatures usually have low protection.

3. How about Rotting instead of Curse/Horror Mark ? It wouldn't work at all against many creatures, but would cause serious harm to most living creatures.

Gandalf: unless it's a Horror Mark, Shroud of the Saint wouldn't be of much use on an assasin. I think regular Curse really isn't all that scary on a regular commander, or even priest or mage. He's not likely to go into melee.

Maxwilson: very interesting research. Also thanks for the Python code, I'm trying to learn the language because it puts fun back into programming for me.

Keep in mind that Fire/Death damage probably interacts much better with multiple attacks, because each attack gets +6 damage. As far as I know +1str = +1 damage, potentially.
Also, some of weapons have'strenght of the wielder not added' property. This is actually quite common. All kinds of sacred animals and cavalry have hoof, bite, peck etc attacks. Then there are strange wieldable weapons which don't benefit from extra strength. (20+6ap Lance is an overkill...)
Why is Sling a 'strength not added' weapon, anyway ?

Is the Lance wasted if it doesn't hit ? If true, Fire bless would be even more valuable.

I think that Fire reacts especially well with Water. Fire is a synergy with itself. Water is +50 percent attacks on average, and each of these attacks will get +6ap.

I would look into Earth bless, too. How about
+4 for units with 15+ protection total
+5 for units with total prot between 10 and 15
+6 for units with total prot between 1 and 10*

* total 0 prot means the unit doesn't wear any armor so Earth bless won't help.

[Endoperez]

Sling is a "strength not added" weapon because we there's no #clear command for weapons, and when I had time I didn't have Edi's list which shows all units armed with slings. I'd have modded it a long time ago otherwise.

#selectweapon 22
#clear
#name "Balearic sling"
#dmg -2
#att -2
#ammo 15
#range 33
#end

If I could remove the "strength not added" tag (e.g. with a non-existant #clear tag), this would do str-2 points of damage, so 8 (instead of 9 the sling currently does) in most cases. Enough experience would add to damage, the +str spells would add to damage, and the range is long enough to make slingers useful against archers.

As it is, the most I'll be able to do is a Jotun Slinger. In fact, I'll do that. You better go check the mods subforum.

[Sombre]

For those who don't check the mod forums, here's a mod that puts the strength based sling into the game. No Jotun slingers in this one though.

It's attached. Enjoy :]

[Sir_Dr_D]

Wouldn't a death bless because of the increased infliction chance be deadly against SC's and giants?

[MaxWilson]

I don't know about "deadly." It does increase the amount of protection a given SC needs against his attackers but even a quadrupled chance of afflictions doesn't matter if you can't damage him in melee in the first place, so it's a deterrent but not an absolute one. Except, I haven't played any MP. Do people feel worse about an afflicted SC than they do about a dead one? It might give you a psychological advantage.

-Max

[Evil Dave]

thejeff said:
Death does work with arrows

It does? Hm. Then either it's buggy, or the description is wrong, 'cause the description says:

Death Weapons (2 an+mr damage)
All enemies hit by a melee weapon will suffer extra damage from the death bless effect if they fail a magic resistance roll. The damage is magical and will be effective versus ethereal beings.