Def and Prot

magnate · #1 August 18th, 2005, 11:00 AM

Do mounted troops get a bonus to def? (It's the only way I can account for the high def of the Vans) If so, does it vary at all? eg. does a guy mounted on a horse get the same bonus as one mounted on a spider? Does the bonus go away if certain items are equipped? Is it shown anywhere? I noticed because my archmage picked up a tower shield after a fight and I thought "that's odd, he shouldn't be able to use one while mounted", and I started investigating whether he was getting the bonuses from it. He was getting the prot bonus but not the def bonus, or so it seemed. Very weird.

Secondly, why does Invulnerability not work the same way as Bark/Stone/Ironskin? With any of the latter three, your natural prot is set to 10/15/20 and your armour prot is added according to the formula in the manual addenda. But with Invulnerability your prot is set to 30 no matter what armour you're wearing. Is this deliberate? It renders the spell less useful than Ironskin for any well-armoured SC (ie. nearly all of them).

CC

Oversway · #2 August 18th, 2005, 11:09 AM

Vans have glamour, which is plus 4 defense. Mounted troops get the advantage that the enc penalty for armor doesn't count. Not sure about the tower shield for archmage... maybe hes not correctly set as mounted?

I thought invulnerability was deliberately done that way.

Endoperez · #3 August 18th, 2005, 12:21 PM

I think mounted units do get a defence bonus. It mighn't be hard-coded, or could just be the def penalty of armor being removed.

Turin · #4 August 18th, 2005, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Oversway said:
Vans have glamour, which is plus 4 defense. Mounted troops get the advantage that the enc penalty for armor doesn't count. Not sure about the tower shield for archmage... maybe hes not correctly set as mounted?

I thought invulnerability was deliberately done that way.

part of that is incorrect.
All mounted troops get a bonus of +3 def. glamour doesn�t alter defense in any way. The no encumbrance part is correct for melee purposes, it still factors in when casting spells.

Endoperez · #5 August 18th, 2005, 12:59 PM

The Vanir have Glamour (they can't be seen on army reports), but they also have the Mirror Image-like ability that does add to defence before it is disspelled. I don't remember if that shows up outside battle.

Turin · #6 August 18th, 2005, 01:05 PM

Well it doesn�t add to the defence stat, it just is a free mirror image spell at the start of the battle. The higher your air magic, the more images you get.

Oversway · #7 August 18th, 2005, 02:18 PM

My mistake. I misremembered the thread "Little question about Defense rating".

magnate · #8 August 18th, 2005, 02:50 PM

Hmm. That thread is here http://tinyurl.com/bp99k

What does Kristoffer mean by the last part of "so now every mounted [unit] gets +3 and have their armor defense subtraction added"?

He can't mean that mounted units ignore armour penalties for defence, because they don't (the van, vanherse and vanjarl all get -1 from the chain cuirass). Perhaps he means that (unlike in Dom1) mounted units DO now suffer the encumbrance penalties of heavy armour. Will have to test this.

Does anyone know if this +3 applies to ALL mounted units (spider riders, wolf rider, etc.)?

Also, still hoping someone can explain why Invulnerability works differently to Ironskin ...

CC

Oversway · #9 August 18th, 2005, 04:07 PM

My guess is any unit with the #mounted attribute gets the penalties.

Quote:

Also, still hoping someone can explain why Invulnerability works differently to Ironskin ...

I think it is to make it harder to get protection too much higher than 30.

magnate · #10 August 18th, 2005, 07:36 PM

I guess so. It's a bit ham-fisted though - with a decent body armour, hat and/or shield you can get well over 30 prot with Ironskin.

Ho hum.