[Shovah32]

Just lost a long post due to connection trouble so here is a new one:

Im in agreement with Micah and Sant_Dude. Its too powerful and effective for its cost. If your SC is running from or specifically prepared for VotD it's probably not doing his job or is atleast not doing it as well as it could be.
Its not an expensive or high research spell and unlike certain other assasination spells its not hard to cast so dosn't require the time of a very powerful mage in many cases.
With its cost, path requirements and the seeming penetration bonus for overland spells it dosn't seemunlikely that you could get one penetration per turn.
If you managed 1 penetration per turn on, say, a 250 kill SC(after his first decent battle) then in its 4th battle against the undead, assuming it won the previous battles(a difficult task), it would be in battle with 2000 undead - a number near impossible to kill without being specifically prepared for that many undead.
Of course, after winning that battle(a feat that would probably require very high level magic making him more of a mage than an SC) he would have to face 4000 undead, if that many can evil fit on the enemies side of the battlefield.