Fire-9 bless needs rebalancing !

[Arralen]

Balancing Issue

Fire-9+ bless is exceedingly good for certain nations at least, worth about 2x than any other bless, and making the blesseable troops way too strong for their price (what all other blesses don't!)

Why?

The level-9 gives not only +4 ATT, moving most troops from the 40-50% to-hit range to 80%+. It also does:

FIRE BLESSING
Kristoffer O
#269728 - 26/05/04 12:53 AM
Fire blessing is one extra 8 AP hit if the primary attack hits. A hero with 4 attacks (2 sword of swiftness perhaps) will get up to four additional 8 AP hits.

So every single melee attack gets an additional flaming weapon hit - not only 1 attack per unit. This is even true for natural weapons, spider fangs and bites and claws at least - obviously, if a target spontaniously bursts into flames, it must have been hit by a flaming weapon.

Problem is obvious: Troops with multiple attacks get multiple additional attacks, too. Eg. Mictlan Jaguar Warriors are sacred and have 3 weapons (Bite (20), Claw (29) x 2) in Jaguar form .. they end up with 6 attacks per turn at ATT-15, which makes pretty much sure they hit mundane troops.

Compare that to sacred Jotuns:
- The Jaguar comes @20 gold and with 30hp (total). With ATT-15 it can hit the Jotun Woodsmen (DEF-10) with 89.2% (2.68 hits per turn). Each of this to-hit rolls results in a 18+2d6oe damage roll AND a 8(AP)+2d6oe. Against Furs, accordings to Cherry's tables this results in 2.68x(16.06+4.75)= 55.77 damage points after it turned into a Jaguar (and soaked up the first 24+ damage points that way). Even if all damage rolls are low one turn and the target is not killed, it still gets -6(!) DEF for the rest of the turn. Furthermore, excess attacks from multiple weapon may spread to other units in the same square ... to kill e.g. the Vaetti next to the Jotun as well. On top of it, the fire attack could cause burning (-1hp) for at least one turn.

- The Jotun Woodsmen comes @50 gold for 32hp. It's to-hit with ATT-12 against DEF-11 of the Jaguar result in 85.5%, or 0.855 hits per turn. Damage rolls are 31+2d6oe + 8(AP)+2d6oe, or (against natural prot-5) 0.855x(26+3.99) = 25.6 damage points.

So, with F-9 bless, both the Woodman and the Jaguar have roughly equal HP and DEF, but the "damage output potential" of the Jaguar is 2,2 times that of the Woodman, but it costs only 40% !!

To compare the results with those of N-9 or W-9 bless I'll leave as an exercise for interested reader...