Re: Magic shield effects
 

14-15 morale would, for all due intents and purposes, pass the morale check every time unless you have fear.

Practically speaking, vine shield is almost always more effective than awe, which is really fickle even against standard 10 morale units. Syncing with fear is another story, but remember that many units simply don't care about morale. Vine shields will work against undead, berserks, morale 30, etc. Gleaming Gold Shield would not.

Re: Magic shield effects
 

Yah Vine Shield is def. MR based.

I made a troll king with 30 MR hit an opponent with vine shield for 50 rounds.

He never got entangled even once.

I made him strip down to naked and hit an opponent with vine shield for another 50 rounds.

He got entangled a couple times (Troll King = 17 MR, which is still pretty good).

So the high MR units don't have to worry so much about vine shields.

Good to know, I guess some other shields are useful after all, although vine is still the most broadly useful.

Re: Magic shield effects
 

I looked up the Gorgon and the Aegis in the wiki. The gorgon is listed as petrify +2 and the aegis is listed as petrify +1. I've tested the gorgon, which have pen 13. So I assume that the aegis is pen 12. I guess that they would stack, so that a gorgon with the aegis would have penetration strength 14.

Re: Magic shield effects
 

I wonder what I have been doing with my life. I recently started my first game since then :D

I guess the mechanism was the same and I just got really unlucky. The open ended die must have hit that 0.5% chance of blinding my tartarian. According to the probability table in the manual a 18MR thug would have an 11% chance failing the MR check. Even with a decent MR of 20 he would have 6% chance of failing the check. So thugs failing the save will not be too uncommon.

By the way, didn't someone claim that the probability table in the manual was wrong and posted a more correct one?

Re: Magic shield effects
 

I am going to disagree here. In particular about the 'almost always' bit.

Yes, the Vine Shield is better against generic human chaff and I even agree that it is useful in more situations than the Shield of Gleaming Gold, but there are also quite a few situations where the latter is better.

Given that the penetration numbers in this thread are correct - and they seem to agree with my in-game experiences - MR needs to be 2 higher than morale for the two shields to be on even footing when it comes to averting attacks from sizeable numbers of units. This is not that uncommon in standard troops as long as you go outside the purely human nations - firbolgs and agarthans would be two examples.

Thugs with higher MR than morale are definitely not uncommon; particularly not since MR-enhancing gear is very common. Added to that is that when we are talking about fewer, but harder, attacks per round, the fact that the Shield of Gleaming Gold has much better parry and protection values really comes into play.

Furthermore, it is not particularly relevant to view the Shield of Gleaming Gold and awe in a vacuum. Fear attacks are pretty common, not just as items or inherently on thugs, but also from spells. For that matter you can just fight in your own dominion and automatically give your opposition a penalty on morale. These are all things that at least I tend to use regardless of access to awe. The shield is often a rather effective way of capitalizing on what I am already doing for other reasons.

As mentioned there are some units against which awe just does not work, but reasonably speaking you equip your thugs with whatever you have that is effective against the expected opposition. Sometimes an item is just not right for the situation, but that goes for all things - including the Vine Shield.