Spells: What are your favorite buff combinations?

[MaxWilson]

Hmm. E9 Cyclops has something like 29 base protection already. Let's say his armor is 15. (For simplicity, we'll make it 15 on both head and body.) Base protection combines with armor according to the formula

total = base + armor - (armor*base/40).

Thus, before Legions of Steel he would have 29 + 15 - (29*15/40) = 33.4 protection. After Legions of Steel, he would have 29 + 18 - (29*18/40) = 33.95 protection. Depending upon how rounding is done, he's getting a +3 armor bonus without changing his total protection at all. Does that sound like what you saw? If so, it's not Legions of Steel's fault.

-Max

P.S. All you guys that talk about buffing spells for SCs, how do you deal with the fatigue? Do you just make amulets of resilience mandatory gear for your thugs/SCs? (They probably should be anyway, but it's one less slot open...)

[thejeff]

Some form of reinvigoration is mandatory for anything except 0 encumbrance non spellcasting SCs.

Soul Vortex or life drain weapons work too. Some way to keep fatigue down.

I'm generally willing to risk moderate fatigue for a few turns after buffing, if it's dropping quickly. Ex. Dai Oni casting Soul Vortex get quite a bit of fatigue that will last until they get surrounded. If they don't take a critical hit right away they'll be fine.

[moderation]

I like Summon Earthpower for reducing fatigue. The only downside is that if you want to use it on an awake SC, it requires researching Conj 3 early when you might want to research something else.

I'm not sure about the exact armor values, but I will look at them later. Maybe there was a chance that the Cyclops *missed* himself when casting Legions of Steel.