[magnate]

Hmmm. Well, I've been sticking with Quickness, Personal Luck, Body Ethereal, Ironskin and Mistform (A2W2E2S2). It worked fine against indies - almost no attacks got through at all, and those that did only did 1 damage.

It worked equally well against Abysia (and somehow he didn't take any fire damage either).

Then he went to take a Caelum province. Just 20 or so winged infantry dudes with a seraph. By this time he was armed with four enchanted swords (3 def each), for a total def of about 26.

He nearly died!! Watching the battle replay was really odd - he didn't get hit at all at the beginning, when he was most vulnerable while buffing. His hp stayed at 102 for the first four rounds. Then suddenly blood started splashing everywhere and I watched his hp plummet to 65 then 35 then 18 - he picked up four afflictions and I was sure he'd die, but at 18hp the last couple of guys routed.

I can understand that a lucky OE roll could have got rid of the mistform, and that fatigue could have halved his protection from 20 to 10, and that being surrounded lowers defence ... but surely he should still have been hit only 1 in 8 attacks (1 in 2 from Luck and 1 in 4 from Ethereal)? The seraph was casting attack spells; I didn't see anything which would have suddenly given the troops magic weapons. Do Caelum units have magic weapons anyway?? Is there a bless that gives magic weapons? Caelum would hardly have F9 blessing - and besides, there was no priest in the battle, just a mage.

Grateful for any thoughts as to how this might have happened. Fortunately he's healing quite will under the ministrations of the local priestess, but it was a scary close call ...

CC