Spell effect questions

Trumanator · #1 February 1st, 2009, 05:58 PM

I have a few questions about specific spells and their effects. I will probably add to this thread whenever I have a question, and others are free to do this as well.

1: The "Summon Behemoth" spell says that the caster cannot use magic while controlling the behemoth. However, I recently had three seperate Marshmasters all cast it, then I put the three behemoths under the command of one, and then sent them into battle against some indy barbarians set to skelly spam. All three cast spells during the battle. What exactly is the effect of summoning a behemoth?

2: When somone is poisoned, they take the rest of the poison damage at the end of the battle if they have any duration left. Does the spell Foul Vapors actually poison them, or does it simply deal poison damage? My reasoning is that it could be interesting to have a marshmaster cast it, then raise skellys a couple times, then retreat, and the enemy would take heavy damage with little losses to the C'tis player.

thejeff · #2 February 1st, 2009, 06:18 PM

1) It's simply flavor text. You actually summon an undead elephant and a mage who rides/controls it. That mage cannot use magic. The mage who cast "Summon Behemoth" in the first place can do whatever he wants.

JimMorrison · #3 February 1st, 2009, 06:59 PM

Maybe the Behemoth was meant to be (or once actually was?) a battlefield summons? There are numerous erroneous descriptions that were written years ago.

As far as #2, I'd say go try it. But a few things - first I am pretty sure that all poison is time release, so if someone is hit for 5 from Foul Vapors, will probably take 1/turn for 5 turns. Also bear in mind that it will likely not stack up enough to kill anyone, as the BE will end once the caster leaves the field. And the skellies will dissolve immediately as well, though they aren't much needed because the BE will be over anyway, and the remaining poison damage will tick out at resolution as well.

Could be interesting if you had a high Death pretender, and put a Shroud on your Marshmaster, so that you are at least spreading numerous afflictions around the army. This will still be much more effective if you can at least bring bodyguards to drag the fight out, so you could script Foul Vapors + Holdx5 + Retreat. That much duration might even get a few kills, but you have to survive that long.

lch · #4 February 1st, 2009, 07:52 PM

1. is being asked countless times... it's just flavor text. On top of the Behemoth, there's some guy. Description says that it's a death mage. Some smart guy might say that he wants the death mage to cast spells in combat, then, flavor text says no deal.

2. the only thing that poison does is stick to a unit like fatigue. Damage is done separately, the manual explains how. For the supposed tactic, this would be frowned upon in MP gaming. The skellies will dissolve when the marshmaster leaves the battlefield, too, more or less instantly. You won't kill too much with this, I think, because then Foul Vapors is cancelled and given how poison does its damage over time.

vfb · #5 February 1st, 2009, 08:03 PM

Why would it be frowned on? It's just like popping in with a Rain of Stones and then fleeing or Returning. Head in, poison everyone, and then bail.

But better yet, bring along a few Marshmasters, have them Resist Poison then skelly spam the poisoned battlefield and don't even flee.

archaeolept · #6 February 2nd, 2009, 02:27 AM

yeah, nothing wrong with the tactic, other than it being not especially effective

VFB's suggestion is better - but I have the feeling that the OP was looking at a cheap raiding force, not a classic ctisian battle group.

Trumanator · #7 February 2nd, 2009, 03:20 AM

I was sure that I've seen in assassination battles for instance that even if the assassin dies, as long as he managed to score a hit the commander had a decent chance of dieing too, since the poison would still do all the damage it would have over the course of its duration.

lch · #8 February 2nd, 2009, 06:02 AM

Assassins have strong poison or Death poison. That's very different to Foul Vapors.

llamabeast · #9 February 2nd, 2009, 06:14 AM

Sorry, I don't understand how Foul Vapors damage is different to poison weapon damage. Could you clarify?

lch · #10 February 2nd, 2009, 06:26 AM

The difference is in how much poison the unit initially obtains or accumulates. Depending on that, it determines how much poison damage the unit gets per turn. With Death poison or strong poison, this can be as high as 5 HP or more per turn for the first couple of turns, I didn't check their damage. With Foul Vapors, this will probably be no more than 1-2 damage per turn, as has been remarked earlier. That could kill 10 HP units, but they probably have a good chance of making it out of this alive.