Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn

[quantum_mechani]

FrankTrollman said:

That's a needlessly confrontational way to state that opinion.

First of all, the question wasn't "what's the most awesome build", it was "what can you make on an extremely limited budget of gems". Some games are played with a site frequency of 25, getting even a single death site ever just because you invested in Death magic on your god is by no means a sure thing.

Secondly, even your opinion that lifestealing weapons are necessarily more powerful than the alternative is subject to debate. Remember that while Regeneration works on any living or undead characters, and while life stealing will grant life to a living, undead, or lifeless Super Combatant; nonetheless Lifesteaing only gives benefits when you damage living opponents. There are entire groups of enemies against which lifestealing is a waste of time, and there are entire national armies composed exclusively of those groups!

A Wraithsword against Ermor is just an expensive two-handed piece of junk. You'd way rather have a charcoal shield and a herald lance. A Blood Thorn against an army of Mechanical Men is worse than a Thorn Spear.

And even more tellingly so, Quickness makes a bigger difference against an enemy SC than does Lifestealing. And not by a little bit either, the difference is ginormous.

Lifestealing gives you back half as many hit points as you inflict on your enemy. This means that in an otherwise even competition, you'd expect to have regained about half your hit points when you killed the enemy SC (assuming for the moment that your enemy is a living enemy, which is often not the case when it comes to SCs). On the other hand, adding Quickness doubles your number of attacks, so it also would expect to leave you with half your hit points left when you triumph over an otherwise equal opponent. But Wait! The Quickness also comes with an Attack and Defense bonus, and the Lifestealing doesn't.

There are lots of abilities that you want on your Super Combatants:

Quickness
Life Stealing
Regeneration
Elemental Immunities
Flight
Fire/Astral Shield
Luck
Etherealness

But if you have to purge one, Lifestealing isn't even the best, it's just really good. Really really good, yes. But not indespensible. Nor is it *always* available.

-Frank

You're right, for every rule, there is an exception. All I am saying is that in about 90% of cases, a lifestealing weapon is the best choice. And in 90% of the cases where you want one, the paths/gems can be made available.

Oh, and if you want a 100% tactic for getting lifestealing with a non-death/blood nation: take some blood magic on your pretender and blood hunt a bit. While I don't recommend this tactic except for extremely low magic site games, it is nonetheless available.

[Molog]

Wouldn't the Rime hauberk be nice for a jotunheim sc.

Also do a Pangea sc.

[Taqwus]

Depends what you're up against. MR, prot or other resistances would probably be more valuable unless you're absolutely mobbed by cold-susceptible weak squishies, 'tho, and in such cases a Charcoal Shield or *eek* Bone Armor (but watch the prot if you go this way; easier choice if you can cast invulnerability, have a very high base prot, or wear the extremely lovely, if cursed, Amon Hotep) might make more sense.

'course, the rime hauberk IS easier to get...

[Chazar]

(This is interesting stuff, especially since I seem to experience cases where lifestealing is not so easy to come by (as oppossed to quantum_mechani). So let me assume again a scarce availability of adept forgers (i.e. not all paths available) and a scarce supply of gems (including blood slaves):

One of the things I fear most are battle afflictions. These can be prevented by:
a) Regeneration
b) High defensiveness: defense, protection, luck,..

So what are the experience-based advices in order to make the appearance of battle afflictions an unlikely event? Is high regeneration a must have? Is a PendantOfLuck better than a RingOfRegeneration in this respect? At which base protection is a high-protection armour better than a HydraSkin armor in order to prevent afflictions?

What about being cursed? Does a LuckyCoin cancel out a curse evenly? Is it generally stupid to send out a cursed pretender alone against masses of weaklings instead of still-useful-but-no-risk office duty?

(Actually for an example, I am sending a cursed[i] Titan pretender out against masses of human weaklings controlled by Marignon AI (Järnsaxa in a Shepherd Game). She is currently equipped with
SnakeBladderStick
CharcoalShield
HyrdaSkinArmor
BootsOfQuickness
PendantOfLuck
BurningPearl
100% fire resistance seems useful vs. AI Marignon nevertheless it would really hurt to get e.g. the mindless affliction, so I wonder how to improve the mass killing capabilities while not getting hurt. I thought to add either a ring of Resilience or Regeneration (plus FireHelmet instead of BurningPearl). The script is SummonEarthpower, Personal Regeneration, Mistfrom and IronSkin in order provide some Reinvigoration and to decrease the affliction risk.)

[Turin]

FrankTrollman said:

A Wraithsword against Ermor is just an expensive two-handed piece of junk. You'd way rather have a charcoal shield and a herald lance. A Blood Thorn against an army of Mechanical Men is worse than a Thorn Spear.

-Frank

lifestealing works against undead(ermor etc) . It just doesn´t work against lifeless units(mech men, most other constructs).
The reason lifedraining is so important is not the nice hp gain effect, but mainly the fatigue stealing aspect.
A high prot, high def SC with 90 fatigue and 300 hp is very easy to kill, a high prot high def sc with 0 fatigue and 50 hp is far harder to kill.

[Oversway]

Ligas Addedum says that:

chance of affliction = damage taken/total hp
+25% if cursed
-10% if regenerates

I don't think the amount of regen matters as far as afflictions.

[Saber Cherry]

Things that reduce afflictions:

Regeneration - any amount, no matter how high or low - cuts affliction rates to 1/8. Undeads other than Vampires cannot regenerate, so they are more vulnerable. That's one reason I like Ice Devils as SCs.

Luck reduces successful hits by 1/2, which reduces affliction rates by roughly 1/2 (possibly more, due to various cumulative side-effects).

Ethereality reduces non-magical hit rates to 1/4 or less (I think that ethereal targets do not suffer the defense penalty from attacks that miss due to ethereality), and thus cuts affliction rates to roughly 1/4 versus a purely mundane army, or not at all versus mages, enemy SCs, and anti-SC squads.

Mistform reduces damage to 1, which makes afflictions highly unlikely. Of course this is not a really good solution for most SCs because it requires air magic, along with Mirror Image.

Air Shield reduces normal projectile hits to 20%, cutting afflictions from that source. Crossbows are dangerous to SCs.

Defense, protection, and resistances obviously reduce afflictions by reducing damage from relevant sources. Protection is usually better since it is not reduced after every strike, works against projectiles and AOE attacks, and reduces damage even if the opponent rolls higher than the defender. Consult the dice-roll-chart thread for exact numbers in a given situation. Hydra Skin Armor and Black Steel Full Plate cannot be compared without knowing the stats of the attacker(s) and defender.

Reinvigoration and/or lifedrain prevent fatigue buildup. Fatigue reduces defence and protection, which increases damage and thus afflictions.

High hitpoints reduce afflictions because the probability of receiving an affliction from an attack that does X damage is X/(MAX HP). Please note! This makes pretenders and prophets HIGHLY vulnerable in hostile dominion, where a dragon might have a temporary "256 current HP," but due to hostile dominion, only "32 max HP." Inflicting a non-fatal 128 damage on this dragon (by multiple attacks, like crossbow bolts) will cause an average of 4 afflictions!

Immortality makes afflictions almost irrelevant, since immortals heal their own afflictions very rapidly. Thus, even though undeads cannot be given regeneration, many of the best ones don't need it anyway...


Things that increase afflictions:

Curse gives a base 25% chance for any damaging attack to cause an affliction. So once a combat unit is cursed, it's done. Luck does not counter curse. However, I think regeneration reduces affliction rates from Curse to 1/8 of normal, or about 3%.

Things like Blindness, Heart Finder, Eye Shield, and various artifacts cause afflictions that cannot be prevented by anything.

Seeking Arrow causes an affliction if it hits and does damage, but Luck, Air Shield, extremely high protection, and (possibly) good shield will prevent this.

Disease causes afflictions, but they seem to be reduced by regeneration, from my observation.


So, as to your questions:

Regeneration is vital.
A Pendant of Luck is worse than a Ring of Regeneration.
Hydra Skin Armor versus good armor: It depends.
Never send a cursed pretender alone versus massess of weaklings... unless he is healing or immortal, or regenerating and lucky and high protection and (ideally) a trampler. Units with trample like Earth Mothers don't suffer much from afflictions.


Edit: Note that all this is from my memory and I have a very bad one. But I'm very certain about most of it.

[FrankTrollman]

Yeppers, Regeneration kicks Luck hard when it comes to beating battle afflictions. Of course, Luck applies against Soul Slay and Regeneration does not.

As for a Pangean build, sure. Pangea has access to virtually limitless Nature and a reasonable amount of Blood Slaves and Death Gems. As such, you might want to make a build of:

Blood Thorn
Vine Shield
Horror Helmet
Hydra Skin Armor
Boots of the Messenger
Lifelong Protection
Cat Charm

You end up with no Quickness, but you have some Fear going, and the Vine Shield combines well with the Lifelong Protection. Unfortunately, Pangea is not very good at item crafting, since both Nature and Death are craptastic at making equipment for supercombatants (except for the Hydra Armor/Ring of Regeneration).

-Frank

[Saber Cherry]

FrankTrollman said:Unfortunately, Pangea is not very good at item crafting, since both Nature and Death are craptastic at making equipment for supercombatants (except for the Hydra Armor/Ring of Regeneration).

-Frank

I find Nature essential for SCs. Good, non-artifact items other than RoR / Hydra Skin include:

Totem Shield (versus enemy melee SCs)
Eye Shield
Vine Shield
Leather Shield (great no-encumbrance shield for early-game SC, like Earth Mothers)
Ring of Poison Resistance (when you expect poison, but need better armor than Hydra Skin)
Horned Helmet
Cat Charm (great when used with - for example - boots of quickness, main gauche, shield of the accursed, bracers of defense, and chainmail of displacement, for +24 defense unless I miscalculated)
Amulet of Resilience
Boots of the Messenger
Thorn Spear (also for early-game pretender SC, to grant repels versus barbarians and HI... Astral and Earth are the only other paths that can do this)

Granted, it's hard to fully equip a unit with just nature, as it lacks good weapons or boots. And some of these are special-case. But I've equipped SCs with all of them except the Vine Shield, at various times, and I hear some people do use Vine Shields on SCs.

Death, I agree, is not very good for equipping SCs; it offers only the Wraith Sword, Duskdagger, Horror Helmet, and Wraith Crown. Death should have lots of weapons, at least; and probably some cool armors and trinkets.

[FrankTrollman]

Totem Shield (versus enemy melee SCs)

Pangea cannot make Totem Shields except with its god, and even then only if it alchemizes or finds some astral pearls.

Leather Shield

It's half. The size. Of the Weightless Shield.

That's bad.

Horned Helmet

It's not the worst helmet. But it's pretty close.

Cat Charm (great when used with - for example - boots of quickness, main gauche, shield of the accursed, bracers of defense, and chainmail of displacement, for +24 defense unless I miscalculated)

+25 I think, but you're talking about a SC who has no meaningful weapons and can't be built by Pangea, so I'm not sure what the point is here.

Amulet of Resilience

The Heart of Life is better.

Boots of the Messenger

These are not, in fact, the worst boots. But they are close. The winged sandals and the boots of quickness are the ones you actually want.

Death, I agree, is not very good for equipping SCs; it offers only the Wraith Sword, Duskdagger, Horror Helmet, and Wraith Crown. Death should have lots of weapons, at least; and probably some cool armors and trinkets.

I disagree. I'm totally OK with Death sucking the funky hot dog when it comes to equipping SCs. They get to make all the Bane Lords they want and their summons are all cheap and awesome and their special leadership comes in gang piles.

Unless and until Death users are forced to pay gem totals comparable to what Fire has to pay to create an army or blast a province, I'm really pretty content with them being virtually incapable of outfitting a reasonable SC without help.

-Frank