My Mage is a Looney -- and paid the price

[tinkthank]

Playing Pythium, I was very happy when Bart the Very Excellent Priest showed up at my wizard's tower to fight for my cause. I put him with my Arch-Theurg the prophet and two-dozen Communicants, gave him a Copper Plate armor and scripted him for "communication master, quickness, mistform, personal luck, mirror image, spells". My Prophet had no such armor, but a crystal matrix, and was scripted "resist lightning, wrathful skies, quickness, divine blessing, body etheral, spells". A couple of spring hawks on "guard commander" finished up the platoon of otherwise 26 units, all commanders.

My prophet is scripting just nicely. But Bart seems to have a chip on his shoulder. He'll cast "master", and "quickness", and often mistform, but sooner or later, instead of smiting, or casting the otherwise favorite post-5-queue Pythium spells (ghost wolves or falling frost for some odd reason), or the ones I had hoped he would cast (e.g. thunder strike, orb lightning, soul slay, enslave mind),
he will just run out to meet whomever it is that is charging at him and try to punch him to death.

He actually survived quite a few battles doing this, thanks to his mistform and often body etheral. He never actually *harmed* anyone doing so, but who cares.

I checked him time and time again: there were *NO* berserker attributes on him at all, and no one ever cast "Rage", or anything else of that type. But consistently, he and only he would run out of the pack and duke it out with the baddest of them all. And that is where he met his fate -- in hand to hand combat with an enemy Earth Mother on the far side of the field. Yikes!

My question: Is Bart a natural born looney or am I missing something yet again?

[Arralen]

1) why didn't you assign him some bodyguards, preferably some with high movement so they could keep up with him?

2) Is it possible that he had heroic quickness too, or some other 2nd source of increased AP or reduced movement?
I noticed that sometimes heros with high quickness use up their 2 actions/turn, have some movement points left and start to wander about. Maybe that was the case with him too.

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by Arralen:
1) why didn't you assign him some bodyguards, preferably some with high movement so they could keep up with him?

2) Is it possible that he had heroic quickness too, or some other 2nd source of increased AP or reduced movement?
I noticed that sometimes heros with high quickness use up their 2 actions/turn, have some movement points left and start to wander about. Maybe that was the case with him too.

1. He did -- he had some of those Spring Hawks. Didnt have any other lightning-resist troops however.
2. Actually that could be -- a shame that isnt used for casting spells, or ... eating icecream, or something not involving running out at the enemy and trying to bite their kneecaps.

[Boron]

once a mage is in hand to hand combat he has only a 50% chance for casting spells the other 50% he will meelee

quickness + heroic quickness stack but you can only cast 2 spells per turn i think
so there's not much to avoid the wandering around and perhaps dieing

[Taqwus]

I've personally had Orokestes with Heroic Quickness and Boots of Quickness casting four spells per turn.