Wow. Paralyze is the Super combatant killer!

[Taqwus]

Penetration might be pretty high.

Bear in mind, 'tho, that there are assorted personal instant-death spells, such as Soul Slay, Petrify, Disintegrate, Magic Duel, Opposition; as well as delayed-death spells like Maggots and Decay; and spells that come close to instant death for many, like Incinerate. If it weren't for a penetration bonus, Paralysis would be weaker, since there's still a chance of surviving.

[NTJedi]

Yes I've seen the same thing about Paralyze... even wrote a topic a few days back. What happened in my scenario:

I was attacking the AI enemy at his capital and his pretender had 6 water and 2 astral. Anyways almost instantly my pretender and earth king were PARALYZED solid then my Kharionic Lions were getting targeted. I still won the battle but the enemy pretender was only casting paralyze the entire time.

What makes this spell so powerful:
A) targets the largest monsters then the wizards.
B) anyone paralyzed is not going to wake up... thus if you start to lose you're dead.
C) the spell rarely fails


Personally I feel the spell is way too powerful.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Bear in mind, 'tho, that there are assorted personal instant-death spells,
. . .
If it weren't for a penetration bonus, Paralysis would be weaker, since there's still a chance of surviving.

In practice something that takes your opponent out of the conflict and kills them if you win is close to being as good to simply killing them for most approaches based on winning the battle. Sure it means paralyse isn't so deadly as a spoiler used by a losing side but most truly powerful combo's are based around winning battles not losing them.

I have become a bit sceptical about wether SC's are very powerful in Dom2 given the range of counters. I'm back to my Dom1 postion of preferring to provide a mass of targets than a few juicy ones once the game gets developed.

Cheers

Keir

[jbw]

I've found that a pretender Lich with magic resistance enhanced to 26 is easily paralyzed by a few Illithid soldiers (using their mind attack) before he can make a single move. I'm still trying to come up with an effective tactic to counter this (besides raising huge armies to fight a few soldiers).

Incidentally, I noticed that when you examine a paralyzed unit and click on the paralyzed icon, it gives you a number. Does anyone know what the number means? I thought it might mean the number of turns you were paralyzed, but when it was 3 the unit was still paralyzed 5 turns later.

In that particlar case, I attacked an army of illithids, trolls, and humans with my Lich pretender and some human commanders and soldiers. The illithids routed all my soldiers and then paralyzed my pretender, but only after he had cast Fire Shield and Breath of Winter. The entire army (60 units) surrounded and attacked my paralyzed pretender, and all of them died trying to finish him off, so I won the battle after my army had been routed.

[Saber Cherry]

Hmmm.... maybe paralysis has no MR save. That would not be good at all. It certainly neutralizes any small army of powerful units against ryleh or any paralyze-casting nation. Completely neutralizes them.

[apoger]

It does have a save.

I have found that paralyze will affect a pretender (unaugmented) about 25% of the time. Not shabby.

In contrast spells like soul slay works about 5% of the time.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Hmmm.... maybe paralysis has no MR save. That would not be good at all. It certainly neutralizes any small army of powerful units against ryleh or any paralyze-casting nation. Completely neutralizes them.

Mind bLast does have a MR save, which is obvious when you watch a replay. Troops often survive a single attack while taking no damage and gaining no paralysis.

Mind bLast has a penetration of 11 or 12, so to get past a MR of 26 takes a lucky roll on the part of one illithid and an unlucky roll on the part of the Lich.