Wow. Paralyze is the Super combatant killer! - Page 3

Taqwus · #21 December 23rd, 2003, 05:19 PM

Hm. If there is a penetration bonus (which does seem likely), it should have been mentioned in the documentation. Spells easily resisted, after all, get marked as "Magic resistance negates easily" (4 pt. penalty, for base penetration of 7 instead of 11).

Could indeed be +4, that'd be symmetric. Base penetration of 15 + (magic-required)/2? If you want more penetration, Rune Smasher and Spell Focus each give +2, and the sorcery and wizardry rings each give +1. (A Crone, with three misc slots, could thus get +6. Ouch. No armor, 'tho; might want to use Amon Hotep or an invulnerability spell.).

Slogan · #22 December 23rd, 2003, 11:20 PM

R'lyh can be very destructive to pretenders. Even with only a 25% chance of success, if you have 10 squidies with 10 mind bLast each success is nearly guaranteed. Throw in a 'greater'(?) otherness or three and there will be one dead pretender faster than you can say, "Cthulhu fghtagn"

Chris Byler · #23 December 25th, 2003, 03:30 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Slogan:
R'lyh can be very destructive to pretenders. Even with only a 25% chance of success, if you have 10 squidies with 10 mind bLast each success is nearly guaranteed. Throw in a 'greater'(?) otherness or three and there will be one dead pretender faster than you can say, "Cthulhu fghtagn"

Well, that'd be a given, since I can't say that at all. BTW the complete quote is
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."
-- I happen to have a book of Lovecraft handy...

Anyway - the best antidote to mindbLasts is to have lots of non-mindless units to either distract the squidheads, or at least get in the way of the other units that are coming for your paralyzed guys. Longbows also work well unless R'lyeh is using the armored squids (which have a steep resource cost, especially for the resource poor ocean) - illithids count as both "archers" (since they have a ranged attack) and "large monsters" (size 4), IIRC.

Truper · #24 December 29th, 2003, 04:02 AM

Either MindbLasts are bugged, or the description should be changed to read "magic resistance negates when Hell freezes over".

Graeme Dice · #25 December 29th, 2003, 06:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Truper:
Either MindbLasts are bugged, or the description should be changed to read "magic resistance negates when Hell freezes over".

Well, going by Saber Cherry's table
and the devs statement that mind bLast has a penetration of 11, it seems like a magic resist 9 unit will be paralyzed 75% of the time. This might seema bit much, but Illithid's are also very fragile, and very expensive.

NTJedi · #26 December 29th, 2003, 10:48 PM

The Illithid's do a paralyze which almost always has a single digit for the length of the paralyze. Small chance the unit will wake up from the paralyze. {{The number does not indicate the number of turns.}}
The spell paralyze always has double digits which I have seen as high as 35 ! Thus IMPOSSIBLE to wake up from the paralyze.

[ December 29, 2003, 21:09: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

Truper · #27 December 29th, 2003, 11:12 PM

Quote:

Well, going by Saber Cherry's table
and the devs statement that mind bLast has a penetration of 11, it seems like a magic resist 9 unit will be paralyzed 75% of the time. This might seema bit much, but Illithid's are also very fragile, and very expensive.

Its my experience that units with MR of 22 or 23 are paralyzed 100% of the time. The units in question were a Succubus and Arch Devil each with Amulets of Antimagic. Each faced a single Illithid, and each was paralyzed instantly.

Teraswaerto · #28 December 30th, 2003, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Truper:

quote:
Well, going by Saber Cherry's table
and the devs statement that mind bLast has a penetration of 11, it seems like a magic resist 9 unit will be paralyzed 75% of the time. This might seema bit much, but Illithid's are also very fragile, and very expensive.

Its my experience that units with MR of 22 or 23 are paralyzed 100% of the time. The units in question were a Succubus and Arch Devil each with Amulets of Antimagic. Each faced a single Illithid, and each was paralyzed instantly.

When playing with R'lyeh I've had multiple illithds mind bLast a single vaetti or jotun giant several times before they were paralyzed. So it's not 100% even with much lower MR than 22.

NTJedi · #29 December 31st, 2003, 08:04 AM

Whatz really really bad about paralyze is that 99.8% of units won't wake-up from paralyze. They should change the name of the spell into 'Petrified'.... because once hit that units a statue for the rest of the battle. This spell should at least cost one astral gem since it's so powerful.
.

I believe there is also a bug with paralyze. When clicking on the icon of paralyze it shows a number which I believe was suppose to be turns during a battle. However that is not the case as a Paralyze(2) could easily Last 10 turns.

[ December 31, 2003, 06:07: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

Kristoffer O · #30 December 31st, 2003, 12:01 PM

To my knowledge there is no bug in paralyze. It works as follows (or something like this):

(paralyze value + roll) vs (size + roll) / 3 = turns of paralyzation. I'm not sure if /3 is the correct number.

Regarding the spell: paralyze is one level lower than soul slay and easier to research, thus more commonly seen. Lvl 2 mages will cast paralyze, as will lvl 3 mages with some fatigue. It has the same penetration as soul slay, but being one level lower it is slightly easier to paralyze your opponent ((skill-level)/2=penetration bonus).

Paralyze is a SC counter because it is more available, not because it is more powerful (unless something is broken - but the mr mechanics are the same so i see no reason it should be).

Paralyze is of course more effective on SC's relative ordinary units. If you win your units survive, but the SC is often crucial in winning. Ordinary units rarely are.