Awe
 

How does awe work? While do guides say to take high dominion when you have awe on your pretender? edit: i figured out the second part.
Still, does basic awe stack with, for example, a golden shield and if so, how does that work? Two checks or just higher numbers to beat?

Re: Awe
 

Whenever a unit goes to make a melee attack or trample a unit who has awe, they need to succeed on a moral check. The check gets more difficult based on the strength of the units awe. (Awe +0 means they need to beat 10 + DNR with their moral + DNR, I think.)

Buying a dominion of 9 will grant your pretender the awe ability with a strength of +0. Going all the way to dominion 10 will grant awe +2. This of course assumes your pretender doesn't already have awe. The Virtue, who starts at awe +4, will move to awe +5 at dominion strength 9, and awe +7 at dominion strength 10.

Edit: The bonus from the shield stacks. It will be one check, just a point higher. Assume that Awe +0 means awe 1 and awe +2 means awe 3. If you add awe +0 to awe +2, you get awe +3. In other words 1 + 3 = 4. This makes more sense when stacking fear. As it takes fear 5 to get fear +0. Each rank of death magic grants fear 1, but it won't produce an effect until you have five ranks. This explains why equipping two items that each grant fear +0 grants a total of fear +5. Also, fear and awe is synergistic as fear lowers moral.

Re: Awe
 

OKay, thank you, AoE.

Two more questions:
1) if i have multiple sources of awe (pretender awe and a golden shield), how does it work?
2) if i have multiple sources of fear on one unit (or on a pretender), how does that stacking work? Lets say the standard of the damned (Name?), a horror helmet, a lantern shield, basic unit fear... how does that work?

Re: Awe
 

Strangely enough I answered both of your questions in my edit.

Re: Awe
 

AoE answered it well, but I'd like to also point out that there are units that are effectively immune to awe, that is, most undead have morale of 50, with few exceptions (ghouls, intelligent undead leaders). Also troops that have berserk go from their base morale -> 99 morale when they berserk, which nullifies the awe. And of course there are simply those troops that have very high morale, such as Pangaeas Maenads and their ~17 morale.

Re: Awe
 

Let me try to break it down and see if i get it:

Lets say that my pretender has awe+2 as a base function.
If i give him a golden shield (which i think is awe+0), then his awe becomes +3.
If that same pretender has no base fear but death 4, then it has no fear effect but if i give it a horror helmet, it now has fear +4 and if i give it a horror helmet and lantern shield (i think it has fear+0), then his fear becomes +9?...
As another example, if the pretender had no base fear but death 6, it would have fear +1, with a horror helmet this becomes fear +6, and with two fear-effect items (lets say added a lantern shield), this becomes fear +11?...

Anyway, thank you all again.

Re: Awe
 

That's it exactly.

Re: Awe
 

So combine with frigthen or terror as applicable for best results?

Re: Awe
 

Regarding the strange stack effects of "Awe +0", in case it wasn't clear: all units are supposed to have every available ability at value "-1", so if a unit gets "+0" by some item or other effect then it means that this item/effect raised the ability by one.

Re: Awe
 

If you wanted to see it that way, then fear would be an exception and start with a value of -5. However, internally I don't think this is that case.

The fact that fear 5 equals fear +0 is rather important. The base effect of fear is an AoE 5 moral damage effect centered on the unit. Only units with a moral of 30, 50, or 99 can escape this damage. Each additional bonus to fear increases the area of effect by another square. So fear +6 (a.k.a. fear 11) affects 11 squares centered on the unit. If I remember correctly each +5 bonus adds to the damage done as well. So I guess that if everyone has fear, they either don't affect any squares, or aren't doing any damage in those squares until they get the first five ranks.