SC's vs Thugs

[shovah]

Tom_Scudder said:
Where would Bogus the Troll fall on the scale?

id put bogus down as a thug, but he could become a high lvl thug/very low lvl sc if given some great items but not worth it imo. bogus is actually quite a good example of a thug now that i think of it

[Oversway]

The Greenstone armor that bogus wears isn't that great - high enc for its prot. But his other equipment is decent.

Troll Kings can be really nice, with the right equipment. You get high str and regen built in. Can cast summon earthpower and invulerability. Sea Kings are good too -- quickness and breath of winter. Although I frequently have Sea Kings casting falling frost instead...

I'm not sure if I'd say the troll kings are high end thugs or low end scs. They can't compete with air queens, but they can destroy most regular troop armies.

[shovah]

i would put troll kings as high end thugs unless they are equiped. give them a lucky pendant and an amulet of anti magic/amulet of resilence/amulet of missle protection. then give flying shoes/boots of quckness

[RonD]

Troll kings are great anti-SC artillery (petrify).

[Vicious Love]

Boron said:
There are some exeptions. Illithids can luck e.g. with their paralyze mind blow, Jotuns can also be lucky and kill a SC.
Then there are some troops with alternative attacks, like web+poison from the machaka spiders.
Ulm arlabests can also luck, pythium hydras maybe too.

I was wondering when someone would mention those exceptions. I hadn't thought of Machaka's spiders, though, nor about national troops with magic weapons and high attack. Nice catch.
However, I do disagree on the point of the hydras. And a true SC should always have either the protection or the Air Shield to survive an army of unenchanted crossbowmen, even on a bad day.

As for the 100 black knights, most SCs would have some combination of fear, Breath of Winter, Soul Vortex, etherealness, Mirror Image, Mistform etc to survive melee combat with a few of them, and chase or kill off the rest before they can use their lances.

Still, "most SCs" is not "all SCs", and I'm willing to grant that a few of the combat monsters I'd term "SCs" would still be taken down by large amounts of higher-end national troops, unless specially kitted to counter knights/jotuns/spiders/whatever. Point taken.

[Graeme Dice]

Vicious Love said:
Still, "most SCs" is not "all SCs", and I'm willing to grant that a few of the combat monsters I'd term "SCs" would still be taken down by large amounts of higher-end national troops, unless specially kitted to counter knights/jotuns/spiders/whatever. Point taken.

I've seen about 30 of my centaur warriors take down an air queen with jade armour and a wraith sword, so it's certainly possible, though perhaps unlikely. Of course, centaur warriors are one of the top national troops, so that's not really representative of the human nations.

[Boron]

Vicious Love said:
...
However, I do disagree on the point of the hydras. And a true SC should always have either the protection or the Air Shield to survive an army of unenchanted crossbowmen, even on a bad day.
...
Still, "most SCs" is not "all SCs", and I'm willing to grant that a few of the combat monsters I'd term "SCs" would still be taken down by large amounts of higher-end national troops, unless specially kitted to counter knights/jotuns/spiders/whatever. Point taken.

First i didn't want to sound know-it-all, i hope you didn't get this intention from my post .

I am personally no big fan of SCs. Problem is that you never can't design your SC to survive all possible threats.
If you give your SC e.g. an Airshield this takes away 1 important misc slot.
I said Arlabests, not X-bows . An Arlabest does 17 ap damage, a X-bow only 10.
So even with a robe of invulnerability the Arlabest should do some damage.

But what's more important and that makes me normally rather dislike SCs: The enemy will also have mage support or thugs.
If the enemy has a combination of high damage troops and anti-SC mages you can't protect vs. everything.
I am not talking about high end Mages atm but rather about average ones. If your MR is low there is e.g. paralyze.
Then there are several good elemental attacks like incinerate or lightning bolt or thunderstrike.
If your SC is undead dust to dust is dangerous.
Also some spammers of phantasmal warriors, false horrors, ghost wolves or skellis probably can't defeat an enemy SC but at least stall him till the 50 turn limit. If the SC has encumberance they can maybe even kill him.
That's all just weak stuff though.

If you take Ctis e.g. they can skelspam, relief, drain life, and bane fire with their cheap 180 gold Sauros.
That's very tough for an enemy SC.
Then if your SC has astral magic he might get mind duelled etc. .

So you have to try to design your SCs in a way that they are both good vs. mages and troops. Because SCs have a mobility advantage and can get support too they are still good but vs. humans SCs can rarely Solo, only in the early stages of the game (QMs infamous SC pretenders!).

[Folket]

Does CB increase damage of arbalests? Last I looked they did 13ap damage.

[OG_Gleep]

From a lot of responces, an SC is not dertmined by the mob, but by the effects it has either natural or with equipment, or for the effects it CAN have via buffs?

But on the other hand, from the other threads, certain mobs are always going to be classified as Thugs, such as Banelords, no matter how they are equipped.

Out of all the possible units in the game, there must be a huge list of units that will "never be SC's", a small list that "Could be SC's", and an even smaller list that "Will always be considered an SC".

One person mentioned the 3 stats (Prot/Attack/Def). Is that where that line is drawn, at statistical markers? Does Hitpoints play a factor at all? Are there certain effects that must be present?

PS. I looked at most of the threads on the subject, but no one really defined where the line is drawn. I'm more trying to determine what column to put the various units in.

[shovah]

a model like an airqueen/king of the world/doom horror is usually automatically considered and sc equiped or not, then some things such as the doom horrors when well equiped become uber scs