Countering Blade Wind - Early Era

[Zebion]

Yomi has that one National protection spell that increases their armor to 10

[FAJ]

Only works on the Oni .

Also, how useful is flaming arrows? It seems, because my armies consist of almost exclusivly archers, flaming arrows would be pretty effective. A volley of 200 archers with flaming arrows would be more effective than a blade wind, right?

[dirtywick]

Yes, absolutely. 200 Flaming Arrows would be pretty devestating.

[Taqwus]

Flaming arrows are considered magic weapons for the purposes of smacking ethereals IIRC, and the fire damage (separate!) is armor-piercing. It's a nasty spell.

With enough archers, you'll even hit somebody with an Air Shield-80.

'Fire at commanders' was a possible order in the first Dominions game, but was eventually removed -- it's both unrealistic (spotting the commanders over the throngs, during battle, is not necessarily easy unless it's a dragon commanding hoburgs -- and for that, there's 'fire at large monsters') and unbalancing (imagine R'lyeh illithid squads scripted to fire their always-hits range-100 mindblasts specifically at commanders, for instance, or Firbolg snipers with an eye of aiming for PREC-20, boots of quickness and a nasty xbow). Although... 'fire at mages' still exists, for a particular Troll Archer from what I hear.

Otherwise, anything fast -- especially anything that flies or tramples -- can help you get to the mages.

[FAJ]

Also, in the spell description, when the damage is a number: the HP lost, is that [damage - (armor +DRN)]? and if the damage is (damage+), the HP lost is [(damage+DRN) - (armor+DRN)]?

[Taqwus]

Damage is practically always +DRN. Ditto protection.

When the damage, range, or number of spell effects has a plus sign as a suffix, that means it increases if the mage is a higher-than-required level in the primary path. I don't recall what the rate of increase is.

[mivayan]

FAJ said:
Also, in the spell description, when the damage is a number: the HP lost, is that [damage - (armor +DRN)]? and if the damage is (damage+), the HP lost is [(damage+DRN) - (armor+DRN)]?

Both attacker and defender always gets a DRN. 10+ damage just means a bonus for having higher magic skill than needed.

So, hp loss is attacker roll - defender roll
attacker roll: DRN + spell damage + damage for extra skill, for some spells
defender roll: DRN + 0 (or +armor/2 or +armor, depending on if it's armor negating, armor piercing, or neither).

[FAJ]

Thanks!