Blood Spells

[Edge]

I have questions about a couple Blood spells.

Calling a doom horror in battle, is it true it will attack troops from both sides? Does it focus on the summoner first, or is it totally random?
And Bloodletting, it will take 1 hp from everyone in the battlefield, does the mage recieve all those hp, and are they permenant?
What is the most useful Blood/battlefield spell in your opinion?

Thanks

[PvK]

A horror attacks both sides, doesn't focus on summoner. Does focus on units (of either side) who have Horror Marks.

I'm not sure about bloodletting, but I think the mage does receive all the HP, but only up to their maximum HP-boost level - as with Life Drain, I think it maxes at something like 150% of the mage's base HP. They then wear off slowly from month to month if the mage survives with boosted HP.

I think the word "useful" has been so heavily twisted in this forum, that is has no more meaning, except as a flag to attempts to reduce a multi-dimensional problem into a one-dimensional problem with one best answer. The only best strategy is to mod the game so you win in one turn automatically.

There are several quite potent blood spells, if you are set up to exploit them. "Most Useful(tm)" in general is probably Hell Power, since it lets a strong caster (with other paths) do much more stuff. Blood Vengeance and Harm can also be rather good, but again: for the right casters.

PvK

[Taqwus]

I haven't experimented much with blood battle magic, but there's also Leech and Hellbind Heart.

Incidentally, Zen's 'conceptual balance' mods alter some of the blood spells; IIRC, the Sabbath spells no longer require blood slaves, for instance, which makes Blood's equivalent of Communion much easier to achieve. In addition, the removal of Gift of Reason gives Hellbind Heart (blood) and Charm (nature) an advantage over Enslave Mind when used on commanders of interesting ability; the latter (now irreversibly due to lack of GoR) turns the victim into a normal unit sans equipment (lost even if GoR is allowed) and magic (formerly possible to re-roll via GoR).

Blood has a reputation as a ritual summoning/construction school, however, and there it's rather strong even if it's a bit lacking in massive area/massive damage spells that the elemental schools tend to have.

[The Panther]

I have never found blood battle spells useful for two reasons:

1. Most of them require you to use slaves to cast, and the slaves can often get killed during battle.
2. The blood summoning spells are so darn good that I never seem to have any excess slaves left over to put them on commanders.

[deccan]

Summon Imp makes bloodhunters just about immune to normal assassins I think, and Rush of Strength can be quite good.