Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

[lch]

Kuritza said:
As for 'kill them all', he WOULD kill them all were it not the turn limit. Did you even bother reading the post?

Yep, I certainly did. Failure to kill a hundred undead before the turn limit hits you makes it sound an awful lot like your commander either does not have enough reinvigoration to never pass out from fatigue or didn't use area attacks like Fire Brand, and didn't employ what SCs usually do: passive effects like a fire shield, the aegis, or other weapons of mass destruction. And as Baalz repeated again, there are far worse things to happen after a failed MR check. Mind Hunts are only 2 astral pearls per cast, BTW.

[llamabeast]

It does sound to me though like it should be the undead who die, and not the victim if the turn limit is reached.

[Kuritza]

1) Mind comparing the research levels needed for a mind hunt + soul slay and vengeance of the dead?
2) Mind hunt is easy to counter.
3) Caelum has no way of crafting a fire brand or fire shield, and it was FAAAAR to early for Aegis. My ally was just about to make a fire brand for me ofc, next turn, but alas.
4) For aoe, my pretender had a frost brand, but of course, these undead are immune. Still, he was good enough to slay anything that went his way. My point is: its rediculous that unkillable otherwise SC dies to a lvl4 spell without a chance to defend himself just because special mobs in an assassination-type combat dont have a commander (or he is just as mindless) so routing doesnt affect them.
5)

Failure to kill a hundred undead

Not hundred. Over four hundred.


As for 'its a resistance check' - he resisted it several times in a row, but eventually any repeatable roll WILL be failed. Even despite friendly dominion, rainbow armor and an amulet of antimagic, there's nothing you can do about it.

[Tuidjy]

It's a powerful spell, that's fine. But when the turn limit expires, the
target should wake up, i.e. win. I consider this a bug. And I am scared.
My pretender in one of my games has 1073 kills. She may or may not be able
to kill them in 75 rounds. In the same game, I have a wraith lord with 247
kills. He is set up for SC hunting, and I know he cannot kill 247 targets
in 75 rounds. His MR is nothing to write home about, either.

Just make it so that they rout or dissolve at the end of the turn limit.
It's both fair and thematic.

[lch]

Tuidjy said:
In the same game, I have a wraith lord with 247 kills.

He is not susceptible to Vengeance of the Dead since undeads never sleep. One of the exceptions to it, just like Mind Hunts have theirs. And since Vengeance of the Dead takes two different magic paths to cast, your enemy needs Spectres or would have to be either Ermor or Agartha, or something. And I like that they have a thematic SC-counter. Why should you have an unbeatable unit that they can't counter? In any case, important commanders should carry MR-boosting items like the amulet of antimagic before anything else.

You can even prevent your thugged out unit to get too many kills. I'm not sure about Fire Shields, but somewhat certain that the Snake Bladder Stick doesn't raise your bodycount.

[Kuritza]

1) Please do read the post and comments. His mr was high, I equipped him for it, but you are 100% likely to fail one roll eventually.
2) He was unkillable for this stupid chaff. Otherwise, he was just a very strong combatant. You can still kill him with thugs if you catch him (eye of the void to take care of his main protection, mirror image), paralyze him and swarm with F9W9 shadow vestals (its MA ermor for a reason) - same lvl4 thaumaturgy research btw, shoot him with massed nether bolts etc.
3) For a soul slay to work on him, he should end up on the same battlefield with a soulslaying mage. I used my god to finish off small parties and to harass to avoid it, successfully.
4) I had no astral caelum mages, but I could counter mind hunt with indies - lizard shamans and sorceresses, I had both.
5) Yes, it was MA Ermor, so what? Lvl4 spell killing SCs on overland map is still stupid.
6) Preventing SC God from killing too many units? Is it a joke?

[jutetrea]

I vote for GP's solution, sounds good. I also agree anyone who survives 75 turns of an assasination attack should be the winner.

[lch]

Kuritza said:
1) Please do read the post and comments. His mr was high, I equipped him for it, but you are 100% likely to fail one roll eventually.

I do read everything, could you please stop insinuating that I don't? "High" is a subjective number, 20 is not "high", more like 25+ and this should cancel MR-based remote attacks (almost) all the time. Your enemy would more likely waste more than a dozen turns trying to have one successful cast which still would not be a guaranteed kill in any case.

Kuritza said:
2) He was unkillable for this stupid chaff.

Just as that chaff was not possible for him to kill in that time. The turn limit is a necessary evil which I use to great advantage. You don't have to be in a position to beat an enemy army, you just have to have units that can't be taken down in that time, causing the enemy to route. Then you need to make sure that there is no province around them to retreat to, and you kill off the entire enemy army.

Kuritza said:
6) Preventing SC God from killing too many units? Is it a joke?

Do I look like I'm joking? I have used exactly that to keep the bodycount for my pretender down in a game of mine. A pretender is important, contrary to an expendable SC, I don't want it high in the HoF with lots of kills. It seems like you didn't know what you're up against and now you're just bitter. Vengeance of the Dead is a good anti-HoF spell which will get to you in time, since even if you had defeated all those enemies you'd have doubled your bodycount by that and would then have to face double that next time.

[GrobRIM]

If I may, I think the whole problem is the 50 turn limit.

I guess this limit has been set up to make sure that all battles eventually end, so battle resolution cannot lock-up turn resolution; and I can think of many more-or-less theoretical situations where a battle might not end in a reasonable number of turns, like two SC's fighting heads up, each one with a life drain attack; or a skelly-spamming high-reinvig necromancer against a good banishing priest.

But maybe the 50-turn limit should be made more flexible; for example, once turn 50 is reached, give another 5-turn grace period, after which the battle is ended, unless at least one unit has been killed, in which case we reset the countdown to another 5 turns; or, instead of counting the number of units killed, take into account the net amount between units killed and units created.

This proposition should take care of the "SC against horde of chaff" situation raised by Kuritza.

[Gandalf Parker]

Purely on an RPG thematic argument (translation: getting Kristoffer to bug Johan about this)...
it seems to me that if someone is attacked, and outlasts the combat, that should be considered to be a win. If you want a thematic result to the fact that the combat ran into overtime with attackers still on the field, then toss them into a general combat as if they were attacking the province.