On the effective early use of Pretenders in combat

[atul]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
I have a hard time imagining anybody massing mind dueliests without somebody carrying a Banner of the Northern Star or casting Light of the Northern Star to boost the horde of duelists to astral 2.

Which gives you a 5 to 2 situation.

There's this one thing that's been bugging me for a while concerning mind duel and I don't think I've seen any notions about it during the time I've been following this board.

Namely, you can boost your magic level by using one gem. So, if you give a mind duelist one astral pearl and he/she/it uses it, does it raise the effective level of duelist by one? This would give attackers a slight edge were they equipped with gems (in situation quoted those 2 levelers would be 3 etc).

On a completely different subject, does anyone know the answer to following. As dom2 has introduced a distinction between undead and demon, but has most of its spells identical to dom1, how do some of these spells work?

Say I have a Moloch pretender. Is it correct to suppose he is immune to such spells that target only undead but not specifically demons, like Dust to Dust, Wither Bones, Maggots and like? If so, is the same demon vulnerable to spells like Vengeance of the Dead? As in dom1 Moloch was undead you didn't have to worry about killing too many opponents, now when playing with him I'm a bit cautious for the possibility of VotD. I wonder whether there is any reason to worry.