Demon Pretenders

[Endoperez]

Demons and undead were't separated until DomII, and they share many traits. However, there are some differences.

Undead are usually cheap and from weak to mediocre with few exceptionally good ones (wraiths, banes, their commanders). Undead are easy to mass, except those few really good ones. All undead have encumberance of 0, so they do not get fatique. Many undead, but not all of them, are mindless.

Most demons are elite types but have next to no equipment. They have very high abilities (att/def/magic res. of 18 plus very high hp... ). Demon knights come with good equipment, but there are no national mages capable of summoning them. Other demons might have a weapon but have no armor. They have good natura protection, and although it helps it does not protect them if they get hit. Unique demon commanders are very tough mages that often have special abilities and/or come with magical equipment build-in. I think demons have low encumberance but no 0, so they will fatique out if the battle takes long enough.

There are spells and items that are deadly against undead, demons or both undead and demons. For spells, nature Maggots kills undead, blood Banish Demon demons, Wither Bones, Dust to Dust etc. death spells devastate undead. Priests have Banish versus undead and Smite Demon vesrus demons. Both are negated by magic res. and better undead and all demons have so high magic res. that priest spells only rarely work versus them.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Chazar:
What about the holy low-level mass spell "banishment"?

This works on both demons and undead.

[Taqwus]

One note: if you're an undead pretender leading an army of non-undead, then you risk being the focus of every anti-undead spell the enemy throws.
Some of them can be quite brutal -- if you're not ethereal, then Maggots can be surprisingly dangerous, for instance.

[En Forcer]

Now here's a thought...

What about giving an amulet of focus and a rune smasher to a priest? And maybe a druid's eye as well?

Does the penetration value apply to holy spells?

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by En Forcer:
Now here's a thought...

What about giving an amulet of focus and a rune smasher to a priest? And maybe a druid's eye as well?

Does the penetration value apply to holy spells?

Yep. Hence a H5 priest gets better effect using banishment / smite demon than the lesser ones. Also, communion can help (especially for Pythium) and the items you mention.

Sadly - those items are also very important to many unholy priests, as their undead for some reason want to resist their beneficial spells, many of which magic resistance negates easily.

[Thufir]

Originally posted by Boron:


hm that never happened to me so far .

there is one banishment order : smite demon .
but it "only" does 15+ an damage .
mr saves though .
so either you were very unlucky and lost your mr save throw a couple of times which is very rare or perhaps only your imps routed and your pretender fled and it looked like he got banished ?
because demons are almost "immune" to smiting even "fodder" demons like devils or fod's have about 16 or 17 mr which makes them hard to hit with smite demon .

Going back over the battle, it's a little hard to tell exactly what happened. There were two banishment spells going off in succession and a bunch of longbowmen in the vicinity (though it looked like they were targeting other troops). Looking closely at the combat, there was a puff of blood as Moloch disappeared - I don't know if thats an indicator that he was killed by physical damage. OTOH, he disappears the exact moment the second banishment spell is displayed, which might be an indication that he was banished.

FWIW, banishment affects undead and demons, it says damage 7+ (armor negating), in the case where it is resisted. Since Moloch had 17hp, on the round prior to death, I at least know it was not the failed saving throw damage (alone) that killed him.

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by Thufir:
If this is the case I'm wondering how people cope with undead/demon pretenders, as this seems to be a very serious vulnerability...

A magic resistance of 18 makes it very so that a "MR negates" spell will succeed about 8% of the time. A pretender's MR increases in friendly dominion, and with appropriate equipment you can bring it up to more than 25. This will make all MR negates spells succeed only around 1% the time. At that point, you are fairly safe.

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So, perhaps then I just need to keep Moloch in a spellcasting only role until I can get his MR up to 25? What I had been doing was spellcasting for 5 rounds, then attacking, is this overly agressive for opening play? Or perhaps if I had a better attacking force with the pretender, there would've been less opportunity for any of the opposing troops (archer or priest) to target Moloch.

So the question then is whether Moloch is a reasonable candidate for engaging in combat, or should I instead just think of him as robust spell caster. Looking at his stats he has a great attack skill but def/prot/mr are not through the roof. Here's his stats:

HP 82
Pr 15
Mor 30
MR 19
Enc 1
Str 20
Atk 29
Def 15
Pre 2
Ldr 170

On the magic side, I had him as 9 Fire, 2 Water, I guess I had planned on him being something of a hybrid throughout the game, generally entering combat after turn 5. Is this still a viable strategy, perhaps after I get a chance to equip him? Or, do I need to back off on this, and either go to a different pretender, or focus on his magery?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Thufir:
FWIW, banishment affects undead and demons, it says damage 7+ (armor negating), in the case where it is resisted. Since Moloch had 17hp, on the round prior to death, I at least know it was not the failed saving throw damage (alone) that killed him.

It could have easily been the damage from a single casting of banishment. The damage from banish increases as the level of the priest increases, and there is still a comparison between two open ended dice rolls to determine exactly how much damage occurs.

So, perhaps then I just need to keep Moloch in a spellcasting only role until I can get his MR up to 25?

There's no need to do that. Like I pointed out, banish is unlikely to affect him, but it's still possible. If he only had 17 hitpoints, then he was probably in unfriendly dominion, so his stats would all have been lowered.

Looking at his stats he has a great attack skill but def/prot/mr are not through the roof.

The Moloch's MR is the same as all pretenders, his defense is better than any other than the ghost king, and his protection is better than anything other than the immobiles and the cyclops. You still have to be careful with him.

Is this still a viable strategy, perhaps after I get a chance to equip him?

There's nothing wrong with your strategy, you just got unlucky.