[thejeff]

I am amused by the level of counters and counter-counters that will be employed to kill or protect a single Skratti thug.
I mean, obviously you're going to back up every thug with teleporting Astral mages to block Mind Hunt and multiple (teleporting? If not how do they get there on demand?) Blood mages with enough slaves to send any anti-SC thugs to kokytos.
I thought the point was to make thugs cheap and disposable.

Sure, Blood-hunting provinces may be worth protecting and they'll have Skratti available for Claws anyway, but the original context here was using Skratti for anti-raiding duty. Now we're talking 1000gp in mages + ?? gems to stop raiding parties. Spread out like that and you're already losing.