Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Will a successful Repel attempt lower defence? I.e., does the repel count as a hit.

If it prevents defense from being lowered, high attack and a long weapon might help a high-defense thug. Demon Whip comes to mind, especially in CBM 1.4 where it's Constr 4 and only Fire 1.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Pretty sure repel comes before the hit/miss calculation made by the attacker.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

And to add to that - it wouldn't matter if you hit them with the repel if they have high morale. They are only stopped if the 1 damage from successful repel to hit roll + successful damage vs prot roll kills them (as with dragonflies) or they fail their morale test. If you're against stuff with bad morale and you have high att and a long weapon, repel pretty much stops them hitting you.

That's how I understand it to work, anyway. So being good at repels only helps an SC if he's against things with shorter weapons which will suffer badly from taking 1 damage (and have lowish prot) or have bad morale.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Which makes a long weapon a weird sort of substitute for Awe. So a Demon Whip might be worth trying if you have inherent Fear.

I've tried this a couple of times but could never figure out if it was working better or worse than another tactic would.

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

I think you get a -2 penalty on each repel roll beyond the first you make each round. It'd assist Awe perhaps, but I don't think it'll substitute for it.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

The problem with using Repel together with Awe is that everything that cuts through one will cut through the other...
But against most generic mobs, it is a good additional layer of defense. Mostly thinking about giants and sacreds.
Wonder if the wine whip triggers on a repel hit?

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

I'd assume repel instead of Awe. Especially with Fear.

It's not the same level of protection as Awe, but with other defenses it helps. Especially since it also works as a minor damage shield. Since you always attack the front square if you're surrounded, eventually that 1 hp per repel adds up on the other sides and you can watch them disappear for seemingly no reason.

Special effects of the weapon, like the Vine whip's entangle, do not trigger.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

It only does 1 damage if you beat their prot. Which is less often than you'd think. Though with a high strength thug or high damage weapon, it might happen fairly often. Not exactly sure how that part of it works.

It would suck with a whip though. They'd never do 1 damage unless it was against 0 prot stuff.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Yeah, repel doesn't hurt, but I find it almost never makes enough difference to promote somebody to "thug" that wasn't there already as to approximate awe you have to have an absurdly high attack skill - which is cross purpose to a crowd control thug. I find it does do a pretty noticeable effect in troops (ie pikemen) who often only get attacked one or two times in a round and are often matched up against normal morale troops.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

The more interesting question, I think is if demon whip will trigger.

Becomes devestating against small chaff. If you have and high attack and a demon whip and it does a small area fire on every repel....