Horned helmet

[djo]

The horned helmet is the Wyrm's favorite headgear. He's got good strength to boost the attack, good hp and regeneration to not care about the loss of defense, and he can wear two. Plus, with his lack of other body slots, it's the only way he can express his individuality through clothing.

[Jazzepi]

djo said:
The horned helmet is the Wyrm's favorite headgear. He's got good strength to boost the attack, good hp and regeneration to not care about the loss of defense, and he can wear two. Plus, with his lack of other body slots, it's the only way he can express his individuality through clothing.

I disagree. The wyrm wins battles almost exclusively through fear routing. Giving -2 defense just makes him that much easier to hit, and wound, especially when he's likely to get surrounded by smaller units. He also has issues with the 0 length letting him get repelled by everything.

Jazzepi

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Certainly, fear can win battles... but do you always want your opponent running? Sometimes you want defeat in detail.

As Agartha, or other no-cavalry races, lots of fear is pretty much a guarantee you'll see that army again soon enough, unless you can push forward NOW.

Let's check out the manual - it would be good for me to see the worm in practice with this setup, but I haven't tried it yet, so I'm a paper jockey.

"If the result is a hit, the attacker must make a morale check or abort his attack." Don't pretenders have 30 morale? Not quite 50, but more than enough to continue their attack.

So, the only consequences of being repelled is one point of damage taken by the attacker per attack, but the attack goes through anyways, so the short length shouldn't be a problem on a Wyrm. Besides, the worm attacks fewer times than his regen.

On the other hand, a unit gets a penalty to its defense for being swarmed, and apparently also gets a repel penalty each time it has been attacked, as well.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't tested it.

[Jazzepi]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
Certainly, fear can win battles... but do you always want your opponent running? Sometimes you want defeat in detail.

As Agartha, or other no-cavalry races, lots of fear is pretty much a guarantee you'll see that army again soon enough, unless you can push forward NOW.

I can't imagine a battle I wouldn't want my opponent to route in. Routing is such a huge advantage for the attackers with the -4 to defense. Strategically it is better to win battles than lose battles. I would also like to note that you don't route the /entire/ opposing army at once with fear from the wurm pretender God, they route in squads. So it'd be great if you could route one squad of their main forces early in the battle with fear and split them off from the rest.

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
"If the result is a hit, the attacker must make a morale check or abort his attack." Don't pretenders have 30 morale? Not quite 50, but more than enough to continue their attack.

This isn't really important, with the 30 morale you're guaranteed to make the strike with your low length weapon, but that isn't the issue. The problem comes because when you have unit A attacking unit B and unit A has a shorter weapon (such as the horned helm) then they get hit by unit B during the repel attempt. This is just one more chance that you're going to have each round to get hit and one more chance to take a wound.

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
On the other hand, a unit gets a penalty to its defense for being swarmed, and apparently also gets a repel penalty each time it has been attacked, as well.

You're reading it wrong. The -2 repel applies to the defender with the longer weapon.

Really my issue with the helm, more than anything else, is the -2 to defense. I just think that the wurm can't handle getting hit anymore than it already does even with Awe. I know I wracked up 4 afflictions on my wurm in Starfall just by chewing through indies.

Jazzepi

[Micah]

Given the abysmal base 8 defense that Wyrms have the 2 points isn't going to make a whole heck of a lot of difference. Early game Wyrms survive combat through the awe/fear combo, regeneration, and a bit of natural protection. Their defense might save them from 1 attack out of the 20+ that will hit them if they're surrounded by size 2 units, which isn't at all a significant value.

The repel damage is also fairly insignificant, as the repel has to hit and penetrate the Wyrm's protection to matter, and even then it only does a single point of damage. The increased kill rate will generally be well worth the few points of damage, as it helps cause the assailants to rout and flee before they have a chance to kill it.

[HoneyBadger]

In my opinion, the best combo for Wyrms in early game is horror helmet and horned helmet. Horror helmet ofcourse adds to fear, but the ones you can't scare away you might as well kill, and an extra attack is very nice. Defense for wyrms is laughable-if you don't want your wyrm getting hit, add earth magic, luck pendant, etc. 2 points is nothing to worry about.

[BigDisAwesome]

I'd have to agree with HoneyBadger. If you have a wyrm, you should get a Luck Pendant on it ASAP.

[Sombre]

Repel is worthless in a lot of situations and fighting a wyrm is one of them - it /might/ do 1 damage and will never stop him attacking. Real scary.

[Jazzepi]

My point is that it's more important to avoid taking more wounds than making your wurm able to do something that is highly irrelevant to his combat capabilities.

Jazzepi

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I agree that its very important to avoid taking more wounds than necessary. But, I don't feel that Horned Helmets are a problem.

1). chance of a repel attack permanently afflicting a Wyrm is less than 1% in neutral dominion. This is based purely on hitpoints, and disregarding the benefits of regeneration.

2). any actual afflictions are likely to be caused by units attacking normally, especially cavalry, as they can, unlike repels, cause consequential damage, and the chance of an affliction is tied to the damage compared to max hit.

3). the horror helmet has the same defense penalty as the horned helmet. Any helmet is better than no helmet at all, as it will help prevent lost eyes, mute, etc.

4). 1 point damage wounds CAN be a problem, I'll give you that.

5). With a defense of eight, four attackers will have you down to zero def. A single square of three normal infantry will almost always get a hit in. Another minus -2 doesn't matter much unless you're going one on one in a deathmatch.