[konming]

I do not see what the fuss is about a pretender killed by VotD. Each cast is 3 pearls and requires a S3D1 mage turn. You also need to add penetration items to make it effective. The max achievable is +5 pernetration. For that you need thau4+const4. But with just const4, you can equip your pretender with rainbow armor+ amulet of antimagic, which moves his base MR to 25. Then you stay in your own domain, even a 4 domain means +2 MR. +5 penetration vs. 27 MR succeeds around 2% of the time. So you spend an average of 150 astral pearls and 50 mage turns to kill a single target. That must be quite unbalancing.

I would rather take my 150 pearls for something more useful, and the mage time alone is like 350 RP.