use of bane lords

[parcelt]

Sounds good!

I don't have wraith lords yet but only a few turns away. Are they amphibious too or did you give him some item so he could go underwater?

What paths do you need for Soul Vortex?

[Loren]

parcelt said:
Sounds good!

I don't have wraith lords yet but only a few turns away. Are they amphibious too or did you give him some item so he could go underwater?

What paths do you need for Soul Vortex?

I just tried wraith lords a few days ago. Even with soul vortex they kept getting killed but they just return to the capital and I can send them out again. They were collecting afflictions but I don't know if it mattered, I got a dominion win soon after I started using them.

Soul Vortex is pretty high level, Alteration I think.

[Shovah32]

IIRC Soul vortex is a level 6-7 alteration spell requiring 3 levels of death magic(which wraithlords have).
What were your wraithlords dying to Loren?

[Loren]

Shovah32 said:
IIRC Soul vortex is a level 6-7 alteration spell requiring 3 levels of death magic(which wraithlords have).
What were your wraithlords dying to Loren?

I don't remember.

I'm thinking that the Soul Vortexes bleed each other's health also.

[Psientist]

OK, here was my use for a bane lord.

Equipped with:
Woundflame
Lead Shield
Ivy King crown
Sandals of the Crane
Luck amulet
amulet of resilience or barkskin

Champion's Skull while waiting to buff up attack, etc.
Watched one battle go on insanely long while an enemy army of 600+ tried to chase my bane around the battlefield while the Plague slowly whittled them down to nothing.

Also tried giving a bane a robe of shadows or bone armor, but the bane's natural armor gives prot 20, so it almost seemed to be worse than no armor.

Downside: it seems pretty hard for Woundflame to actually start the plague process.

[Baalz]

Just so happens that I was playing around with woundflame last night...gave it to a water queen and her recuperation/regeneration stayed solidly ahead of the disease (she stayed diseased but always had full hp and I only ever saw one affliction that went away after one turn). Anyway, seems like the plague infection is based on a MR check, so to get it started you need to hit the unit, not kill them, AND have them fail a MR check. The cool thing though is once it is started, it seems to spread fairly rapidly even in high MR units, I'm guessing maybe they have to make a MR check for each plagued unit next to them so they're quickly making half a dozen checks a round. Quickness is a good thing to get, obviously it doubles your chances of starting a plague each round.

One interesting side note, the plague not only causes 1 hp/round of damage, it also causes a mild amount of fatigue damage each round. Pretty annoying when my 0 encumbrance water queen went up against a large group of skin shifters and everybody ended up just taking a nap while their regen stayed ahead of the plague...:/

[MaxWilson]

Yeah, the problem with Woundflame is that it usually kills anything it hits, so there's no one to spread the plague. It's worth trying against heavily protected units (Ulm, LA Man) or big units (Niefelheim, Lobo guards/shamblers) but for smaller armies it may be better to just cast plague with a D4 caster.

-Max

Edit: that is, smaller in terms of individual unit hit points. Plague works wonders against large armies. Here's two necromancers and some meat shields against 1000 R'lyeh chaff in a SP game: . That's far better than I would have expected from any map killer. You still have to survive long enough for the Plague to take effect, but combined with Army of Lead it's great. Of course there's still the matter of "friendly fire" plague casualties. You can either kamikaze your units, use undead units (which are immune to plague), or get a small amount of regen through a Nature bless or Mass Regeneration spell.