Blood Magic, Demon Knights, and Vampires

[Folket]

Ethereal are not thematic. Vampires were not ghosts last I looked. Perhaps that they could have a change shape command and become an ethereal cloud of mist.

[thejeff]

Mistform would be more thematic, though it doesn't really work the way traditional vampire mist abilities do.

[Baalz]

Vampire lords (and LA Ulm counts) have blood magic, so they can sabbath slave. Assuming you have some other astral/blood mages you can uber buff them - have a couple communion masters cast invulnerability, fire shield, phonix pyre, soul vortex, breath of winter, hell power, etc. etc. Use cleverly timed reinvigoration to keep from overfatiguing them with off path spells, and use the communion boost to cast whatever nasty battlefield enchantment you have available (wrathful skies, foul vapors, grip of winter etc.) Have the masters withdraw and the slaves attack. You get pretty ridiculous immortal kamikaze killing machines with a good chance of wiping out entire armies and little chance of any losses on your side.

Oh, regular vampires - which you'll have for free from your vampire lords are great in this situation to cause a distraction while your communion goes off - who cares if they die in droves? Best to berzerk your Vampire Lords though, don't want them routing because the chaff dies.

[thejeff]

Careful with communioned hell power. It horror marks the slaves, doesn't it?

[Baalz]

Yes it does, but on immortal kamikaze units that doesn't really matter. Even if you're pretty terribly horror marked (20+) you don't get a horror attack anywhere near every round. As long as you stay in dominion and don't give them items (as befits a kamikaze squad) then it doesn't matter terribly much if your guys are occasionally eaten by horrors. Granted, you don't want to horror mark them for every border skirmish, but it is a small price to pay if you use it to kill a big scary army.

If you're particularly wicked have an otherwise tough dude equipped with two shields of the accursed run forward to let the enemy's front lines whack at him for a couple rounds while the communion is going off. Now those hell power spawned horrors just add to the carnage instead of working against you. Unless he's berzerk your shield wielder will quickly get overwhelmed by fear from the horrors drawn to his location and book it out of there so you've a good chance of him living considering he's got +18 defense from the shields.

[Baalz]

Yeah, the thing about Demon Knights is its almost always better to do blood stones with anybody who can summon them with the exception (as mentioned above) of Ritual of the Five gates and Infernal Crusade. One nice thing, by the time you can cast Infernal Crusade you can also summon Demon Lords (using just blood magic) and there is at least one (maybe two...I don't remember) demon lords who can cast Infernal Crusade. I find it much more likely to amass them (along with several other useful units) by casting ritual of the five gates. Its a fairly cheap spell for what you get, the only hang up being B5 mages probably aren't falling off of trees - but then again it isn't terribly difficult to get 3 blood boosters.

If you do have earth mages, weapons of sharpness, legion of steel, strength of giants, bloodlust - now there's a damn scary force of hell knights.

[Valandil]

Demon Knights are wonderful troops, indeed, B5 mages aren't actually too rare: Athame+Brazen vessal on a regular B3 dude works.

In a recent game, I had a god up to B12, casting infernal crusade when I could.

Well, up until about when my demon knights discvered that they weren't shock immune.

[Autochthon]

thejeff said:
Mistform would be more thematic, though it doesn't really work the way traditional vampire mist abilities do.

Hmm, i'd either work that into the Immortality abilty or give them a Glamour ability to simulate the "stealthy" nature of Mistform.

However, what makes Ethereal so powerful is the fact that it allows the caster to fight, which doesn't match the idea of Mistform rendering the caster impotent for the duration.

[Wick]

How about having vampires shape shift on death into a form that is effectively invulnerable and harmless. Give that form negative regeneration and shape shift on death back to the first form. Maybe only in the dark?

[Sombre]

Uh,... if you have vampires turn into something on death and that thing turn into a vampire when it dies, they'll be in a loop and might be completely impossible to kill in combat (or maybe afflictions will kill them eventually).