I hate horrors

[NTJedi]

Ranger said:
In my current game my pretener God got a horror mark, and has now been killed six times! This god had level 5 magic in 5 areas, 6 gems each for each area, 140 guards, magic items, armor, nothing seems to work. My god is now a complete weakling.

What's truly terrible about the horror marks is that every time the pretender or mage is attacked by a horror then most horrors have an attack which add additional horror_mark levels!! Its those astral claws.
There's no chance of hope or healing those horror marks... even the spell of WISH will not work. There's also nothing special about winning a battle against the horrors. There is no light at the end of the tunnel with horror marks... these things are just black holes of death.

Ranger said:
Watching the horror attacks
The horror teleports right pass the guards, attacks and kills my god outright on the first turn, my god never casts spells, guards are useless. I've only see guards protect against minor horrors.

I agree this is a huge annoyance... and there's not a single creature which can be summoned which arrive with horror marks. If gamers could summon creatures which had horror marks then they would be excellent guards for a pretender!
If the developers add a few ritual summonings which provide creatures with high horror marks then at least the gamer could try protecting its pretender. Hopefully we're given these creatures within a patch to at least have something.

Ranger said:
What will counter Horror Attacks?

Shouldn't the horror mark go away after my god is resurrected?

Unfortunately death doesn't remove horror marks... in fact many horrors have those astral claws which INCREASE the number of horror marks! As I mentioned earlier your pretender, SC or mage enters this black hole of death which has no hope.
As far as countering horror marks... the first step is to avoid being horror marked. Pretenders of large size will be more likely to receive a horror mark on a battlefield..... the same as when casting curse usually the largest creatures are targeted. Countering means either killing the horror very quickly or quickly retreating using a spell like Returning. If you want to try quickly killing these horrors then use weapons which do extra or special damage to magic beings like the moon blade because Horrors are considered magic beings.

Ranger said:
This seems to unbalace the game, once your god gets a horror mark, your god is useless.

Basically it means your pretender has entered this black hole of death... sure precautions and commands can be set to help him stay alive, but his/her overall effectiveness will never return to normal.


We can only hope the developers create a few summoning creatures which arrive with high horror marks to help protect those pretenders or mages with the horror marks.

[Endoperez]

It's true that if your pretender somehow gets a very high horror mark, he could die any turn, including the one in which he is recalled. However, getting a high horror mark is very, very hard. It can happen, of course, e.g. if your pretender has very good regeneration and lots of hitpoints, and can survive dozens of turns against one of the Doom Horrors, while still being hit by the Astral Hook attackss during most of those turns. However, it's a very rare occurence. AFAIK, players can't intentionally cause horror mark that would be strong enough to cause this. As it is, this is one of the few "bad luck, you're screwed" events that have always existed in Dominions.

I agree in that some kind of a counter would be nice, similar to taking Luck and/or Growth to protect you from early plagues. However, personally I don't think this is an important issue.

[Teraswaerto]

Well, a lone pretender against a group of mages (and some chaff probably) hitting him with multiple Astral Geysirs might do it.

[Meglobob]

Astral Geysers deliver 2 levels of horror marking apparently and can be cast by a lvl 2 astral mage, so I should imagine its very easy to give a pretender high level horror marking making a potential god useless.

A potential god should have someway to counter horrors but it should be very difficult to do, carry out.

[Endoperez]

Meglobob said:
Astral Geysers deliver 2 levels of horror marking apparently and can be cast by a lvl 2 astral mage, so I should imagine its very easy to give a pretender high level horror marking making a potential god useless.

A potential god should have someway to counter horrors but it should be very difficult to do, carry out.

Have you tested it? The last time I tested Horror Mark (the spell), it took several mages almost 20 fights (each fight consisting of [5xHorror Mark, Retreat] for every mage) to cause a Doom Horror attack. I never tested Astral Geyser, and I'm afraid I don't have time to do it now.

A mod with the following:

#modname "Test"
#selectspell "Astral Geyser"
#researchlevel 0
#pathlevel 0 1
#fatiguecost 10
#end


and any 5-to-10 province map with e.g. Pythium and Bandar Log, and you controlling both nations, is enough. It doesn't take much time to set the test up, and it's easy to change the mod to test various other things.

[Meglobob]

Endoperez said:

Have you tested it? The last time I tested Horror Mark (the spell), it took several mages almost 20 fights (each fight consisting of [5xHorror Mark, Retreat] for every mage) to cause a Doom Horror attack.

No I have not tested it.

I will assume that Horror Mark delivers 1 level of horror marking so based on your previous test it will take several mages almost 10 fights to cause a doom horror attack with astral geyser.

So I agree with you Endoperez, its not a big problem, as its very hard to do.

However it would be nice if you could for example wish 'purification(name)' which would remove all negative effects from the named being, ie...all horror marking, curses, old age, old age afflictions etc...

Yes that would be very, very nice. It would also not unbalance the game.

[Baalz]

Mildly off topic, I was playing around with the Astral Corruption global last night and had a bit of a humorous turn. I had the spell up, but wanted to forge a ring of wizardry with my pretender, so I gave him some blood slaves and scripted him to cast "life for a life" (no MR save, 999 damage, 100 precision).

Then the doom horror showed up. Stupid +7 blood vengence, level 9 in blood magic couldn't overcome that...

Anyway, that was the first time I've seen a doom horror (Theft of Reason, or something like that). I couldn't think of any reasonable way to kill him, has anybody actually killed him outside of freakish luck? This is a SP game I'm just goofing around with and I thought it'd be fun to try and craft a SC that could take him out in a rematch, but even best case scenario it seems you'd end up collosally horror marked by taking more than a turn or two to kill him...kind of a pyrrhic victory for an expensive SC. Hmmmm, maybe that incineration wand plus boots of quickness, plus fire resistance, plus penetration bonus items (does that help against blood vengence? Or is it your own MR?). I assume blood vengence covers ALL the damage types: poison, paralyzation, etc. Does anybody know if those "unresistable" blood spells which send you to hell circumvent blood vengence? What about other non damage dealing spells, like hell bind heart (I'm assuming you can't actually keep him, can you?), confligration, numbness, etc. ? What about stuff that causes a delayed damage, like fire/death clouds, does that damage track back to the caster? What about reactive damage like a fire shield, aegis, etc.?

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by NTJedi

What's truly terrible about the horror marks is that every time the pretender or mage is attacked by a horror then most horrors have an attack which add additional horror_mark levels!! Its those astral claws.
There's no chance of hope or healing those horror marks... even the spell of WISH will not work.

Well, kind of. With enough pearls you can Wish yourself a replacement pretender, Gift of Reason him, and Empower his magic levels up to whatever level. Plus, then you no longer lose hit points and MR and enemy Dominion, unless you prophetize your new "pretender."

Yeah, I know, not very cost-effective. But if MY liege lord got horror-marked badly enough I would overthrow him.

-Max