Re: armor vs defense stat for SC
 

Dual wielding/multiple attacks dont add encumberence as your only preforming one turn of actions. Shadow brands are awesome against everything ive put them against and they are by far my favourite of the three weapons.

Re: armor vs defense stat for SC
 

Great to know, I'll have to take a more serious look at some of the low level equipment.

Re: armor vs defense stat for SC
 

The shadow brand is a very good weapon. It will 'do a number' on just about
anything. I always forget about its existence though, because death and earth
is not a combination of the magic paths of any nations that I play. It is also,
unless I am mistaken, a construction 6 item. This makes it a slayer's weapon,
rather than a SC's.

Re: armor vs defense stat for SC
 

A couple paths of air magic go VERY well with a high defense (20+) pretender. Whether its the fact that mirror images disappear once a hit gets in or that missile weapons pay little attention to defense, or mistform has a 1% chance of disappearing with any hit, air plays very well. If you've got a high defense super and rarely get air magic with your nation, you won't regret a couple levels of air even with a starting cost of 50. 80 might be a bit much. If you get plenty of air mages, the value drops quite a bit for low level air.

On the other hand, air is not an effective minor magic path for a high protection super. Even if you don't take any damage, you will still get hit quite a bit, and the spells will soon evaporate, gaining you only higher fatigue.

Re: armor vs defense stat for SC
 

Doom Glaives are easy to forge (just level 2) and fun to give to a couple of Censor thugs as LA Ermor. I can't say the area Decay worked to great effect, since the afflicted units died before hitting old age.

Re: armor vs defense stat for SC
 

IIRC, mirror images stay until you take *damage*, so they play just as well with high protection as with high defense.

-Max

Re: armor vs defense stat for SC
 

Looks like My SC has to worry about horror markings, not troops. Anyone have any experience on how many horror markings it takes to start getting the nasty ones? My SC just got horror marked 3 or 4 times last battle. Do horrors inflict more horror marks with astral claws even if they miss? Looks like I need to pump up magic resistance as well just in case I go against one with blood vengence. sigh. My poor pretender!

Re: armor vs defense stat for SC
 

I believe somebody once set up a test case involving an SC running into astral mages spamming horror mark, and it took quite a while for the Eater of Gods to show up. Assuming that nobody's accelerating the process by sending/calling Horrors, and you're not using an item which does.

As for Astral Claw, IIRC it requires a hit to horror mark. But yes, MR is good -- and vital if Umor shows up with the 'save-or-die' attacks, or Kurgi with Blood Vengeance +7.