Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn

[quantum_mechani]

FrankTrollman said:

That's a needlessly confrontational way to state that opinion.

First of all, the question wasn't "what's the most awesome build", it was "what can you make on an extremely limited budget of gems". Some games are played with a site frequency of 25, getting even a single death site ever just because you invested in Death magic on your god is by no means a sure thing.

Secondly, even your opinion that lifestealing weapons are necessarily more powerful than the alternative is subject to debate. Remember that while Regeneration works on any living or undead characters, and while life stealing will grant life to a living, undead, or lifeless Super Combatant; nonetheless Lifesteaing only gives benefits when you damage living opponents. There are entire groups of enemies against which lifestealing is a waste of time, and there are entire national armies composed exclusively of those groups!

A Wraithsword against Ermor is just an expensive two-handed piece of junk. You'd way rather have a charcoal shield and a herald lance. A Blood Thorn against an army of Mechanical Men is worse than a Thorn Spear.

And even more tellingly so, Quickness makes a bigger difference against an enemy SC than does Lifestealing. And not by a little bit either, the difference is ginormous.

Lifestealing gives you back half as many hit points as you inflict on your enemy. This means that in an otherwise even competition, you'd expect to have regained about half your hit points when you killed the enemy SC (assuming for the moment that your enemy is a living enemy, which is often not the case when it comes to SCs). On the other hand, adding Quickness doubles your number of attacks, so it also would expect to leave you with half your hit points left when you triumph over an otherwise equal opponent. But Wait! The Quickness also comes with an Attack and Defense bonus, and the Lifestealing doesn't.

There are lots of abilities that you want on your Super Combatants:

Quickness
Life Stealing
Regeneration
Elemental Immunities
Flight
Fire/Astral Shield
Luck
Etherealness

But if you have to purge one, Lifestealing isn't even the best, it's just really good. Really really good, yes. But not indespensible. Nor is it *always* available.

-Frank

You're right, for every rule, there is an exception. All I am saying is that in about 90% of cases, a lifestealing weapon is the best choice. And in 90% of the cases where you want one, the paths/gems can be made available.

Oh, and if you want a 100% tactic for getting lifestealing with a non-death/blood nation: take some blood magic on your pretender and blood hunt a bit. While I don't recommend this tactic except for extremely low magic site games, it is nonetheless available.