Wow. Paralyze is the Super combatant killer!

[SurvivalistMerc]

Wow paralyze does seem powerful.

Maybe what really needs to be changed is not its power but its targeting. I like that it targets large supercombatants first. That part makes sense to me. No sense in your mages ignoring that huge golden naga casting devatating spells and paralyzing a front-line infantryman.

I just wish it would skip over normal-sized mages in its targeting list. Otherwise, astral nations would seem to have too much of an advantage. But if I (still a newb) have learned anything, it is that in Dominions things are often not as they seem.

What are people using as counters to the major astral nations in MP? How well does an amulet of antimagic work in this circumstance to prevent penetration? When I speak of counters, I am not really talking about protecting the huge supercombatant from the effect if there are two or more magi casting paralyze. That seems futile. I am speaking rather about preventing your combat mages from being completely neutralized.

[NTJedi]

My pretender and earth king had over 20 magic resistance yet were still paralyzed during the first few turns of combat.
(only one enemy astral mage)

Other spells like Flare, Fireball, Magma Bolts, Thunder Strike and so on don't target super_combatants or mages........ definitely seems UNFAIR that this one does.

[ December 23, 2003, 15:15: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

[Taqwus]

Hm. If there is a penetration bonus (which does seem likely), it should have been mentioned in the documentation. Spells easily resisted, after all, get marked as "Magic resistance negates easily" (4 pt. penalty, for base penetration of 7 instead of 11).

Could indeed be +4, that'd be symmetric. Base penetration of 15 + (magic-required)/2? If you want more penetration, Rune Smasher and Spell Focus each give +2, and the sorcery and wizardry rings each give +1. (A Crone, with three misc slots, could thus get +6. Ouch. No armor, 'tho; might want to use Amon Hotep or an invulnerability spell.).

[Slogan]

R'lyh can be very destructive to pretenders. Even with only a 25% chance of success, if you have 10 squidies with 10 mind bLast each success is nearly guaranteed. Throw in a 'greater'(?) otherness or three and there will be one dead pretender faster than you can say, "Cthulhu fghtagn"

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Slogan:
R'lyh can be very destructive to pretenders. Even with only a 25% chance of success, if you have 10 squidies with 10 mind bLast each success is nearly guaranteed. Throw in a 'greater'(?) otherness or three and there will be one dead pretender faster than you can say, "Cthulhu fghtagn"

Well, that'd be a given, since I can't say that at all. BTW the complete quote is
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."
-- I happen to have a book of Lovecraft handy...

Anyway - the best antidote to mindbLasts is to have lots of non-mindless units to either distract the squidheads, or at least get in the way of the other units that are coming for your paralyzed guys. Longbows also work well unless R'lyeh is using the armored squids (which have a steep resource cost, especially for the resource poor ocean) - illithids count as both "archers" (since they have a ranged attack) and "large monsters" (size 4), IIRC.

[Truper]

Either MindbLasts are bugged, or the description should be changed to read "magic resistance negates when Hell freezes over".

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Truper:
Either MindbLasts are bugged, or the description should be changed to read "magic resistance negates when Hell freezes over".

Well, going by Saber Cherry's table
and the devs statement that mind bLast has a penetration of 11, it seems like a magic resist 9 unit will be paralyzed 75% of the time. This might seema bit much, but Illithid's are also very fragile, and very expensive.