Holy Pyre and Fire Resistant Demons

[Cohen]

This spell is supposed to do Fire Damage against Demons.
But many demons are Fire Resistant naturally.

Those demons don't get any damage from this spell, that however is suited to fight demons/undead (*3 damage).

I believe this spell should bypass the fire resistance of the demon-flagged being, since it's imbued of holy power. Same for Undead with fire resistance (even if given by items).
While non demon troops with fire resistance benefits from common damage reduction (since the Holy Power is not effective against them).
Is this possible to be in the next patch?
What do you think about?

[Norfleet]

I think this is unnecessary. It does fire damage, triple against undead/demons. That's still an entire Category of critters it works against, except a very narrow Category: Devils. So it doesn't work on devils. Big deal.

[Cohen]

Devils, Imps, Arch-Devils, and the bigger ones have usually at least 50% Fire Res.

And those are the most common Demon troops you can find ...

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Cohen:
This spell is supposed to do Fire Damage against Demons.
But many demons are Fire Resistant naturally.

Those demons don't get any damage from this spell, that however is suited to fight demons/undead (*3 damage).

I believe this spell should bypass the fire resistance of the demon-flagged being, since it's imbued of holy power. Same for Undead with fire resistance (even if given by items).
While non demon troops with fire resistance benefits from common damage reduction (since the Holy Power is not effective against them).
Is this possible to be in the next patch?
What do you think about?

I think it does make sense thematically. It is Holy Pyre after all. And IMHO it would probably not be too difficult to implement, since Dom2 already have some "exception form the damage type immunity" rules, such as posion that is not affected by poison resistance, etc. (that is just a guess of course). No idea what devs will think of this suggestion though.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Stormbinder the obsessive:
I think it does make sense thematically. It is Holy Pyre after all. And IMHO it would probably not be too difficult to implement, since Dom2 already have some "exception form the damage type immunity" rules, such as posion that is not affected by poison resistance, etc. (that is just a guess of course). No idea what devs will think of this suggestion though. [/QB]

Much as I hate to agree ... The damage could be done as fire - which the devils are immune too. Then the tripling of damage against demons/undead could be done as holy, which fire immunity would not help against.

I'm not sure how "triple" damage is done - if you have 14 base, is the 14 tripled and then 2D6 (oe) is added? Or is is (14 + 2d6(oe)) * 3? Either way, it's not that hard to come up with a formula and code to handle both immunity and partial resistance, not to mention fire susceptibility.

And, heh - speaking of partial resistance to fire, the bloody "Burning Pearl" is only supposed to grant partial, but gives 100%, plus attack bonus.

[Boron]

i think it would
1. overpower marignon which has it as starting spell and already good enough against undead / demons . the holy damage already exists in form of the holy spell smite demon this is enough .
2. if it would be really so powerful it would imbalance the whole game especially if the damage would be (14+2d6 oe)x3 as caine supposes in his possibility 2 .
if demons further on even couldn't get fire immunity via items it would be really unbalancing.

if it is made holy damage instead demons / undeads should be given the ability to get 100% holy resistance too.
and for thematic reasons the arch demons / undead/devil pretenders should start with 50% already or even 100% .
because they are so evil and strong that they should easily find a way to protect against unimportant holy units like priests.
for dominions 3 it would be cool if powerful creatures like pretenders or arch demons would be 100% immune to everything which weak units cast / do .
e.g. poison from a poisonslinger does not harm any pretender .
but if another pretender can inflict poision damage against this he needs protection via e.g. items.
there could be 3 resistance levels :
against lowlevel units like poison slingers , lvl 2 priests ...
against midlevel units like mages with pathlevels from 5-15 , priests with holy >4 ...
against hihglevel units like pretendergods , archdevils , queens/kings of air , water ... , mages with paths >15 ...

so a poison slinger e.g. would easily kill other soldiers via poison but do no harm via poison to a pretender which is very realistic in fantasy worlds i think

[Cohen]

Smite Demon is almost useless, since MR is checked and often they avoid to take any damage at all

Marignon is suited to fight undead and demons ... the Holy Inquisition!
Really the holy magic isn't so good (if we compare especially to unholy that can raise MR of Undeads and raise their stats), and the damaging spells like Smite and Smite Demons aren't very good since MR check occurs.

Considering Holy Pyre should strike properly (I mean hit the target), and it's area damage to that it could strike eventually your troops fighting the demons, I don't see it too strong if modified in this way.

About the level of protection, I believe the Magic Penetration is already considered, since if you've a mage with more magic levels than the spells's required ones it improves to Magic Penetration.

However it could be nice than even the Elemental Resistance were like Magic Resistance ... I mean a Fire2 mage could cast a small low burning fireball, a Fire9 mage could cast a fireball far more hotter and bigger that could ovverride a 100%Fire res ...
With a formula similar to the MR Penetration it could be implemented the Resistance Penetration.

[Endoperez]

Marignon is MEANT to be the bane of any demons and/or undead they happen to fight versus. They are the bane of Ermor (esp. the undead themes), and Mictlan (although less so).

And as Death and Blood are said to be the strongest paths, and they certainly are that for summoning, it is nice that there are some options to get rid of those demons. They have very high stats!

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Cohen:
Considering Holy Pyre should strike properly (I mean hit the target), and it's area damage to that it could strike eventually your troops fighting the demons, I don't see it too strong if modified in this way.

All area spells automatically hit all troops in the target area. (6.4.2, page 16 of the manual.) Assuming the target area hit is the area you intended to be hit, as the spell may deviate.

The real problem is confusion on the part of players due to this spell being misleadingly named. It isn't Holy, that is, a Divine spell. It's fire-based Evocation. It could just as well have been (and more appropriately) called Demonbane or Flame Wrath. IMO, the word "Holy" should have been reserved exclusively for spells actually in the Divine school. Once you get over the fact that the spell isn't holy, nor was it intended to be, the spell is just fine as is.

It really should be renamed.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Boron:
i think it would
1. overpower marignon which has it as starting spell and already good enough against undead / demons . the holy damage already exists in form of the holy spell smite demon this is enough .

Wouldn't overpower Marignon at all as a starting spell - it'd only make it somewhat effective against devils / demons, which one is generally not going against early in the game.


2. if it would be really so powerful it would imbalance the whole game especially if the damage would be (14+2d6 oe)x3 as caine supposes in his possibility 2 .


How would it imbalance the game? The damage is already being tripled against undead and demons, and would continue to use whatever math is currently used, simply shifting the extra damage to holy damage instead of fire.


if demons further on even couldn't get fire immunity via items it would be really unbalancing.


They'd still have fire immunity. Fireballs, etc, still have no effect on them. We're only talking about one spell that is supposed to be very effective against undead and demons.


if it is made holy damage instead demons / undeads should be given the ability to get 100% holy resistance too.
and for thematic reasons the arch demons / undead/devil pretenders should start with 50% already or even 100% .
because they are so evil and strong that they should easily find a way to protect against unimportant holy units like priests.


First - "unimportant holy units like priests" can't cast Holy Pyre. It's only fairly powerful (Fire 2) mages who can cast it. As others have said - what priests have is Smite Demon, which anything more powerful than a rodent-sized imp shrugs off already because of magic resistance.

About them being able to resist holy damage 100% - why? Can liches, vampire queens, the Prince of Death resist the 'Dust to Dust' or 'Wither Bones' spells? No. Why should devils get near invulnerability to everything more easily than various undead Pretenders?