Death vs. Fire bless

[chrispedersen]

Omnirizon said:

EA Kailasa's Yavana Archers

until now thought completely useless. I think A10D9 might work with them.

they could work quite nicely by themselves, or with chaff if necessary; and Kail has no shortage of chaff to choose from

No need to rush for Gandharvas or Arrow Fend, you could get Celestial music fast. D9 blessed longbow archers with the high precision of the Yavanas firing twice a turn, you could place em so far to the back, and with a little chaff to stall stuff, they would empty their quivers. anything left alive would get killed by them in melee once they were finally reached.

Yeah, this is what I wrote up as my preferred usage of yavannas long ago.

The other interesting thing, is these archers make the fire and flee order interesting. On offense, its pretty self explanatory. Multiple successive F&F waves.

On defense, Keep high ration of leaders to archers. Concede the territory, but keep the force intact.

[Renojustin]

Because the Death blessing 2 AN attack requires a MR check to be successful, and the Fire blessing 6 AP attack doesn't, it seems that the Fire blessing would be of better use in a wider range of situations.

For instance, SCs and thugs, or any valuable troops, attacking you would always have to use Fire resistance or be eaten alive. In early and even mid game, that can be quite problematic for a lot of nations.

Against Death bless effects, these units already have high MR nearly by definition. So already, Fire works better against the troops that really matter. The only unit that a Death bless would work better against would be high protection, shielded units with low MR. And that window of opportunity will not last long, because MR is easily buffable through Earth and Astral magic.

Therefore, the affliction chance for your casters is likely the most useful effect from a Death bless, for many nations overshadowing the +4 Attack bonus from the Fire blessing. Death is also cheaper for many of the applicable pretender chassis. To me, it appears that that might be for a reason!

[JimMorrison]

Renojustin said:
Against Death bless effects, these units already have high MR nearly by definition. So already, Fire works better against the troops that really matter. The only unit that a Death bless would work better against would be high protection, shielded units with low MR. And that window of opportunity will not last long, because MR is easily buffable through Earth and Astral magic.

Therefore, the affliction chance for your casters is likely the most useful effect from a Death bless, for many nations overshadowing the +4 Attack bonus from the Fire blessing. Death is also cheaper for many of the applicable pretender chassis. To me, it appears that that might be for a reason!

That's the thing, those sacred troops also have the Affliction bonus. Against units of singular power, you are not relying on the damage boost - but the non-resistible Eye-Arm-Nose-and-Toes loss.

As you pointed out, obviously an experienced player will endeavor to have FR on their thugs/SCs if you have a Fire bless, but they can MR all they want to, there is no Affliction Resistance.

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
As you pointed out, obviously an experienced player will endeavor to have FR on their thugs/SCs if you have a Fire bless, but they can MR all they want to, there is no Affliction Resistance.

Well, actually yes there is. High HP, regeneration, high Defense, and high Prot all contribute to affliction resistance. SCs are designed pretty much by definition to be immune to armies, and if the army can't do any damage, +350% of 0 afflictions is still zero. This is why Cursed SCs can still prosper under the right circumstances.

-Max

[Omnirizon]

my question here is probably covered before...

but how is fire weapon damage factored?

my guess is it is factored against protection separately from normal damage. correct?

does it have its own DRN roll? so the fire weapon does AP damage 6 + DRN?

[Baalz]

Omnirizon said:
my question here is probably covered before...

but how is fire weapon damage factored?

my guess is it is factored against protection separately from normal damage. correct?

does it have its own DRN roll? so the fire weapon does AP damage 6 + DRN?

Yes, yes, yes.

[Omnirizon]

excellent!

any thoughts on where (or if) a high enough strength might make a weak blood bless potentially more useful than a strong fire bless? Consider the extremely high protections and usage of fire resistance common with SCs. I think the challenge in this is to find a unit with high enough attack to remain powerful _enough_ against normal squads of units when using a blood bless (relative to a fire bless), but that would benefit more from higher strength against thugs and SCs.

[MaxWilson]

Omnirizon said:
does it have its own DRN roll? so the fire weapon does AP damage 6 + DRN?

But remember, the armor has an opposed DRN. Fire weapons do (6+DRN)-(Prot/2+DRN), before accounting for fire resistance/vuln. Thus they are weak against high-Prot units.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Renojustin said:
For instance, SCs and thugs, or any valuable troops, attacking you would always have to use Fire resistance or be eaten alive.

That turns out not to be the case. A 6 AP Fire attack does minimal damage to a thug with 22 Prot (on the order of 0.2), and a thug going up against a fire bless is going to be relying on Prot instead of Def. It does force him not to have fire vulnerability, so no naked liches or raksharajahs.

-Max