As an anti-pretender contingency

[sum1lost]

Is there anything wrong with my idea of horror marking the crap out of the poor pretender? And then running away?

I was thinking 3-5 astral mages scripted to "horror mark^5" and then running.

[Valandil]

is he on his own? Mages sometimes (often) decide to target the wrong things...

And anyways, unless he is really well equipped, you might be able to paralyse/soul slay him to death if he's alone.

But horror mark should work, yes.

[Jazzepi]

If you get it high enough, the pretender will be attacked by epic horrors he can't defend against. Even the moderate level horrors have astral claw attacks that leave the victim more horror marked. While this isn't terribly useful if the pretender is bearing down on your capital, it's a great long term strategy. Immortal pretenders have no way to remove horror marks.

I've been told, and I think this is right, that mages target units with the most hitpoints when they're trying to pick "biggest threats" for single target spells like paralyze. So giant pretenders should be easier to single out than ones like enchantress.

Jazzepi

[Valandil]

Generally, yes.
Horror marks are rather brutal long-term, but there is a good deal of luck involved.

Astral geyser, maybe? Even more marks, and pretty likely to hit if there is a small enemy force only.

[Saxon]

Curse is nice as well, as it helps build up afflictions. Long term though.

[Saint_Dude]

Horror marks can effectively eliminate a pretender from the game, permanently. Much better than just killing them in the long run.

On several occasions I have had pretenders severely horror marked. It is then only a matter of time (if severely horror marked it doesn't take long) before a doom horror shows up and kills said pretender. While this is bad (if you are the one loosing their pretender), the worst part is that when you call back your pretender it is still marked. When severely marked the pretender is often targeted by a horror on the very round that it returns, and since it has no equipment, or specialized scripting, it is often killed right then and there (getting more severely horror marked in the process). This story repeats itself each time the pretender is re-summoned. Eventually, the pretender is diminished to such an extent that it is not worth the effort to re-summon.

Bye-bye pretender.

[Ygorl]

Which, I think, is thematically awesome.

[Valandil]

Quite.