Whips and spears on a thug for repelling?

[Reay]

I think if the target of the repel fails the morale check and does not attack, its morale goes down? I think I have seen this happen before. Like when a unit has fear the units surrounding that unit can get reduced morale if they fail the fear morale checks.

If the target passes the morale check and attacks it might get 1hp damage if it passes protection. As Dedas said if you keep getting 1hp damage it counts as a wound in the heavy losses requirement for another morale check.

I guess it could all add up if you had lots of repels.

[Saulot]

1 hp wouldn't count as a wound on anything except for some insects or animals. It needs to have 80% of it's hitpoints or less. Humans tend to have 10 or more.

If multiple successful repels are occuring on your troops, and that is enough to route your army, then the problem is most likely caused by there being a significant gap in the quality of your troops and the enemy troops.

Overall, I have to agree with Sombre on this one, repel isn't a major consideration when picking troops, and perhaps it should be made somewhat stronger.

The most thematic suggestion I could make is that repel has a bonus vs. mounted units and vs. trampling. Then at least it would be situationally useful. Furthermore, while I'm aware that 0 length weapons are easier to repel, I think that aspect should be expanded, so the overall difference in length is used, so for example a pike repelling a dagger is significantly more likely than a pike repelling a spear.

[Endoperez]

If trample could be repelled at all, even by something like pikes, elephants would be much, much weaker. They have poor morale AND poor defense, and an elephant trying to trample a squad of pikemen would probably have to pass 3 repel checks. If en elephant does manage to get through, his friends might not be so lucky and he's all alone next to 20 or so pikemen.

Not that I wouldn't like to see units capable of repelling tramplers.

[OmikronWarrior]

Speaking of repel... I once had an SC pretender holding off enemy armies in my dominion. My opponent liked casting swarm for some reason, which summons a bunch of 1 HP insects. Mostly used as a screen, the pretender still killed all the insect when they attacked due to repel. Made it much easier to move onto the important targets.

[Reay]

Saulot,

The manual states: "A wound is simply 1 or more hit points of damage that reduces a unit to 80% or less of its normal hit points.." "...every hit there after (even for 1 point) will continue to count...".

So the 1 hp repels will count as one wound once the unit is below 80% health. Thus creating more morale checks.

On the other hand I still agree repel is kind of weak and should be expanded on as you said.

[Baalz]

Hmmm, I always thought that certain weapon properties should be triggered on a successful repel damage. Taking damage while being repelled by a thorn staff seems like it should subject you to poison damage, a flambeau should triple the 1 damage vs undead, etc. This would give a nice boost to weapons which are rarely used such as the thorn staff and bane blade, while in cases where this would be overpowering (like the magebane or frostbrand) the effect could be considered to need to charge up and only be effective for a full attack.

[Dedas]

I've seen thorn staff give poison when repelling.

[Taqwus]

It would be a bit harsh to invoke the area-1 save-or-die on a repel from a banshee's wail (length 6).