Death vs. Fire bless

[thejeff]

No, the 2AN damage part of the death blessing doesn't apply to archers or spells. Only the extra chance of afflictions counts.

LA T'ien Ch'is Ancestor Vessels are heavy cavalry archers and very nice with a death bless.

[Baalz]

Just to be clear since there seems to be a bit of confusion about what I said, what I meant is just what Jim said...the vast majority of times a shield hit is *effectively* a miss (causes no damage) for a fire bless but *effectively* a hit for a death bless (causes 2AN damage). So *effectively* a death bless ignores the shield defense, and thus any time the shield defense is greater than 4 it's *effectively* better than the attack bonus for a fire bless. I guess I was a bit ambiguous, I think of a "hit" in this context as an attack which causes damage.

[cleveland]

Gotcha. Sorry for misinterpreting.

An interesting, lesser known effect of the D9 bless is that Death Weapons cause disease directly. The weapon "bless death" (wpn #448) calls its own secondary effect "Disease" (wpn #143), which doesn't seem to check MR and gives the target the Diseased affliction...in addition to the +350% chance of other afflictions.

Of course the targets are only affected by disease if they fail the original MR roll, so it's not as devastating as it sounds. But it'll make your opponent think twice about sending his elephants against your lowly flaggies.