Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Well, see, I like blood magic.
I also like vampires and hellish cavalry.

Sadly, Vampires seem woefully underpowered, having lost ethereality. Same goes for vampire lords, really.

Demon knights are good troops, but their close to impossible to mass- not because their expensive, but because there is not a single Blood/Earth mage among nationals, and short of infernal crusade, no way to summon more than one at a time.

My question, essentially, is whether I'm overlooking something: are there any B/E mages, not only for demon knights but also blood stones, and is there a use for vampires?

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

I know that EA and MA Pangaea have blood and earth mages with their Pans. There might be others too, I can not recall. Demon Knights might take awhile to mass, but they are surprisingly good.

The Vampire commanders are nice but not the troops.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Pan. Hmmm... thats an idea. Might try it.
Wait. There's a mod nation with B/E mages, that are vampires! Sanguinia!

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

LE Abyssia has some Earth on their warlocks.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

MA abyssia Warlock also has 25% chance for a Earth pick.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

I understand there was a thematic reason for the de-etherealization of vampires, but could we see somesort of a buff for them, and for the vampire queen, presently the most overpriced pretender of all. Maybe a second attack, possibly antoher life-drain, or maybe an AOE-type stun or something? Or general stat boosts? Natural protection to represent immunity to weapons? That's a relatively common vampire theme from what I can find online. Regrettably (from a balance POV) most of what I can find googling/wikipedia-ing, most characteristic vampire traits are weaknesses. E.g. sunlight, garlic, holy relics, inability to enter private places without an invitation, etc etc.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

The Conceptual Balance Mod decreases the cost of the Vampire Queen.

I don't think it does anything to improve vampire summons though.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Vampires are good because their immortal, if you get say 80 of them eventually you will have an experienced army of vampires, combine that with a spell like army of gold and you have flying, regenerating killing machines, that just come back if they die. However on their own vampires kinda suck, try combining them with other strategies.

Demon knights! oh they are awesome!! I'd go for, um LE Abisya with a god that can make the magic item "boots of earth" for 10 earth gems each, they increase earth magic by 1 and you need 2 earth and blood to cast demon knight? which means when some warlocks get earth magic you can just give them the boots, and when they start getting diseased take them away and give them to another one, cause they will get diseased.

Oooooh! also there is a pure blood spell that summons Demon knights, "Ritual of five gates" summons a Demon knight, A fiend of Darkness, a devil a Frost fiend and a Storm Demon/fiend/devil all at the hefty price of 28 blood slaves.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

If I were to play LE abysia, I'd make a god who can forge Blood Stones (Earth2,Blood3, Construction4, Earth +1 and produces one earth gem month) and I'g give them to my Earth guys. Now they can summon Knights, produce Earth gems and not die to old age (since they now can wear Boots of Youth also). But maybe that's just me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

If you have age problem, abysia warlocks can cast a blood ritual which reduce age by 10 (for ten slaves). Seems to me easier than N/W boots.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Maybe vampires should get some natural protection, like ten or so, since they're supposed to be hard to kill and all.
With this and regeneration they'll be strong but can still be killed by enough regular troops.

This would make the VQ pretty uber if you gave her etherealness through items, but if you're gonna spend 175 points she should be badass.

Right now with no protection and mediocre defence they even fail against archers in melee without enchantments. Seriously, I don't even trust them to take out militia.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

As a side note for everyone: This spell does not work for the undead Tartarians and the spell will still take your blood slaves.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Why did they lose etherealness anyway? Even if they were overpowered it seems like the wrong fix, taking away one of their thematic and interesting strengths. They could have just lost some strength, skill, MR, or had their cost increased (and the number that appeared in a random event decreased). Now they can be killed easily with conventional weapons, which is inappropriate and pathetic.

I realize that vampires and the VQ could be abusive in Dom 2, but with all the other changes that have come since then, I think they may have been overnerfed.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Ethereal are not thematic. Vampires were not ghosts last I looked. Perhaps that they could have a change shape command and become an ethereal cloud of mist.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Mistform would be more thematic, though it doesn't really work the way traditional vampire mist abilities do.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Expect that many of them are over 10 years old age. So you'll have to cast it twice. Besides, Boots of Youth are pure blood item (con6, blood2 to forge).

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Vampire lords (and LA Ulm counts) have blood magic, so they can sabbath slave. Assuming you have some other astral/blood mages you can uber buff them - have a couple communion masters cast invulnerability, fire shield, phonix pyre, soul vortex, breath of winter, hell power, etc. etc. Use cleverly timed reinvigoration to keep from overfatiguing them with off path spells, and use the communion boost to cast whatever nasty battlefield enchantment you have available (wrathful skies, foul vapors, grip of winter etc.) Have the masters withdraw and the slaves attack. You get pretty ridiculous immortal kamikaze killing machines with a good chance of wiping out entire armies and little chance of any losses on your side.

Oh, regular vampires - which you'll have for free from your vampire lords are great in this situation to cause a distraction while your communion goes off - who cares if they die in droves? Best to berzerk your Vampire Lords though, don't want them routing because the chaff dies.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Careful with communioned hell power. It horror marks the slaves, doesn't it?

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Yes it does, but on immortal kamikaze units that doesn't really matter. Even if you're pretty terribly horror marked (20+) you don't get a horror attack anywhere near every round. As long as you stay in dominion and don't give them items (as befits a kamikaze squad) then it doesn't matter terribly much if your guys are occasionally eaten by horrors. Granted, you don't want to horror mark them for every border skirmish, but it is a small price to pay if you use it to kill a big scary army.

If you're particularly wicked have an otherwise tough dude equipped with two shields of the accursed run forward to let the enemy's front lines whack at him for a couple rounds while the communion is going off. Now those hell power spawned horrors just add to the carnage instead of working against you. Unless he's berzerk your shield wielder will quickly get overwhelmed by fear from the horrors drawn to his location and book it out of there so you've a good chance of him living considering he's got +18 defense from the shields.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Yeah, the thing about Demon Knights is its almost always better to do blood stones with anybody who can summon them with the exception (as mentioned above) of Ritual of the Five gates and Infernal Crusade. One nice thing, by the time you can cast Infernal Crusade you can also summon Demon Lords (using just blood magic) and there is at least one (maybe two...I don't remember) demon lords who can cast Infernal Crusade. I find it much more likely to amass them (along with several other useful units) by casting ritual of the five gates. Its a fairly cheap spell for what you get, the only hang up being B5 mages probably aren't falling off of trees - but then again it isn't terribly difficult to get 3 blood boosters.

If you do have earth mages, weapons of sharpness, legion of steel, strength of giants, bloodlust - now there's a damn scary force of hell knights.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Demon Knights are wonderful troops, indeed, B5 mages aren't actually too rare: Athame+Brazen vessal on a regular B3 dude works.

In a recent game, I had a god up to B12, casting infernal crusade when I could.

Well, up until about when my demon knights discvered that they weren't shock immune.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

While vampires surely aren't ghosts, Etherealness also denotes the fact that vampires are usually impervious to normal weapons, which is essentially what etherealness does. While the name might be wrong, the effect is right. If you shoot a vampire with a normal gun, he is unfazed by it. In dom3, he would be dead but back in a month, which seems contrary to most vampire lore, where magic weapons harm them normally but normal weapons rarely do much unless used in a ritualistic manner(cut the head off or stake the heart).

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Well, lots of depictions show a vampire being wounded by a normal weapon, then healing quite rapidly.

Maybe they could have their regen boosted to 50% or so to reflect this, without making then ethereal again.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

I know we have had this discussion before, but I too am sad about the state of vampires. They were scary in Dom2 like they should be, and now they're just a laugh. I'd rather have ethereality back and have an occasional VQ rush than have pathetic vampires.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

But following mythology Dominions vampires have always been far scarier than vampires are ordinarily represented.

How many stories have you heard of blood drinking women in nightgowns taking on whole armies and beating them, straight up in a fight? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Generally in literature even a small party can beat a solo vampire.

What would be nice, though, is a reduction in her path costs. 50 is too high; i'd like to see somewhere in the range of 20-30 per new path. The VQ could also have Seduction, and all Vamps should, perhaps, have glamour. All Vampire commanders should eat a few pop per turn as well.

We chould also have some summonable Vampire Princesses as well as if you give them seduction.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Just give regular vamps back ethereality and leave it off the VQ. Its a matter of usability and balance.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Only in Hollywood lore. It was the same with Werewolves and silver. According to the original Vampire lore (in most of the West at least) a vampire could be killed in the same way as anyone else. It was keeping them in the grave which was the problem - they'd rise up at the next full moon. Over here in England traditional practice was to bury those suspected of vampirism with the coffin facing downwards, which would mean that any awakening vampire would find themselves tunneling the wrong way once they woke up. The French were more practical - they would dig up the corpse, behead it, stuff the head with garlic and bury it at a crossroads, while the body was cremated and the ashes scattered in a churchyard. Not much coming back from that one.

Course, in most Vampire lore they actually were walking corpses, not dapper gentlemen in evening wear. Blame Bram Stoker for that one.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Don't forget the vampiric squash. Hollywood's overlooked that one as well.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

They didn't overlook it, they passed on it under pressure from Squash lobbyists.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

I have said it before in dom-II forums when I've first heard the plan to take ethereality from vampires in dom-III, I'll say it again - Vampires should be scary and powerful in a creepy way for no better reason than that they are a lot more fun to play than wimpy vamps.

I'd like to either see ethereality back or a different buff given to them. If not in a future patch then maybe in the balance mode.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

I suggest vampires have automatic mist form.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

If you have earth mages and blood hunters (like vanheim) you can also eventually spend some blood for empowering a few earth mages in blood.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Both those quotes sum up exactly what I think should happen with vampires.

At the moment vampires are just a sad joke. I have heard even souless and militia are taking the mickey out of them... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Don't think you can mod in mistform

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

There's no "built-in mistform" ability, so it can't be modded and even Johan would have to create a new ability for it. It might not be hard to do, mind you, but it wouldn't be just changing a byte in a unit's special attributes line.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Hmm, i'd either work that into the Immortality abilty or give them a Glamour ability to simulate the "stealthy" nature of Mistform.

However, what makes Ethereal so powerful is the fact that it allows the caster to fight, which doesn't match the idea of Mistform rendering the caster impotent for the duration.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

How about having vampires shape shift on death into a form that is effectively invulnerable and harmless. Give that form negative regeneration and shape shift on death back to the first form. Maybe only in the dark?

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Uh,... if you have vampires turn into something on death and that thing turn into a vampire when it dies, they'll be in a loop and might be completely impossible to kill in combat (or maybe afflictions will kill them eventually).

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

I assume that a creature shapeshifting has its morale reset, but what is the effect on squad morale? For instance, if a vampire form has 10 morale and a misty form has 1 and a squad started that started with 10 vampires is now 5 & 5 then is it now below 80% of the "starting" morale? I'd guess it is but don't know.

Giving the misty forms morale 50, so they don't count toward squad morale, might also work if, when they changed back, they check if the squad routed. Would they?

And yes, vampires would be impossible to kill short of staking, garlic, fighting in the daylight, or cutting off their retreat. I think that's pretty thematic.

Re: Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires
 

Onis turn into ghosts when they're "killed". Maybe you can have vampires do the same. Too bad Oni Troops in base aren't exactly a good model for usable troops =D. (I actually find myself making them in cb at times though)