Rain of stones, and gifts from the sky

[Tuidjy]

Before I waste a few hours testing this for myself, I would like to know whether
anyone knows how Rain of Stones and Gifts from the Sky work. Namely:

1. Does arrow fend help with either of these?
2. Do the stones/meteors cound as magic weapons?
3. Do Luck, Twist Fate, Mistform affect the damage?
4. What are the chances a random unit is affected (not necessarily damaged) by
Rain of Stones?
5. How are the meteors from Gifts from the Sky spread? Do they ever hit the
same spot multiple times?

[Foodstamp]

You mean "Gifts from Heaven"? It won't matter much if they hit the same square, seeing how they do a gazillion damage a pop.

[Xietor]

Arrow fend only works on spells that target a single person, and does not work on battlefield spells like rain of stones.

If you look at blade wind and shadow bolt, as examples, the area of effect is a single target. Arrow fend does work on these spells.

It also only works on "normal" damage spells. Magical spells like mind burn are not effected by arrow fend.

[CUnknown]

I'd like to know how these work, too. But, let me make some guesses:

1. Does arrow fend help with either of these?

Maybe against Rain of Stones.

2. Do the stones/meteors cound as magic weapons?

I'm sure meteors do. Stones probably not.. but I believe the manual would say for sure.

3. Do Luck, Twist Fate, Mistform affect the damage?

I bet luck and twist fate would, mistform I seriously doubt (unless they are not magic weapons).

4. What are the chances a random unit is affected (not necessarily damaged) by Rain of Stones?

I thought it was 100%, isn't it?

5. How are the meteors from Gifts from the Sky spread? Do they ever hit the same spot multiple times?

From experience, they seem to be in a roughly identical pattern each time, fairly equally spaced. With their precision modifier (negative), if they were all 3 individually targeted, they'd be wildly spaced out and that doesn't seem to happen.

So, I don't think they can hit the same space.

[Micah]

1.No
2. No/Yes
3. Yes
4. 100%
5. Spell descrip says it hits 3 separate squares, and I don't recall seeing otherwise. Targeting is based on precision and scatter.

[Shovah32]

Micah has it right as far as I remember. For number 5, a mage with incredibly high precision might hit the same square with more than one, but it might not work that way.

[Twan]

If I've understood correctly (and my memories of using this spell had results around this) rain of stone has one effect per square and so touches about 1/3 of all units per cast (if they are size 2, and so are 3/square).

Like earthquake, it's mundane dammage, so body ethearal works against this, and mistform is only negated if dammage roll is high (but it's less safe than earthquake, the 14 dammage + DRN often remove mistform on some protection 0 units like unfortunate mages).

[llamabeast]

Twist fate definitely works against Gifts from Heaven, as in my last MP game it saved countless of my S9 sacreds from it.

Mistform is amazing. Even against magical things they will only take 1 damage, although it will be negated. So with something like Gifts from Heaven, that's an extra life. I bet it will make units almost immune to Rain of Stones.

[OmikronWarrior]

Llamabeast beat me to it, but mistform is pretty neat. Yes, magic weapons will dispel the effect (as will really lucky hits or really hard hits), but the dispelling hit will still only do 1 damage, even if it is magic. I'm sure this effects Gifts from Heaven as well.

[atul]

Are you people really certain that Rain of Stones affects every square in the battlefield? That isn't what I've seen. If you pause the game just at the RoS animation, you see that the visual effect doesn't hit every square, maybe about 1/3 of all. If it'd hit every square, it'd be even better mage-killer than it is currently.

Mistform really is a life-saver, especially against Banefire-casting nations, like LA C'tis...

[Kristoffer O]

atul said:
Are you people really certain that Rain of Stones affects every square in the battlefield? That isn't what I've seen. If you pause the game just at the RoS animation, you see that the visual effect doesn't hit every square, maybe about 1/3 of all. If it'd hit every square, it'd be even better mage-killer than it is currently.

Mistform really is a life-saver, especially against Banefire-casting nations, like LA C'tis...



To save graphics or the watchers eyes, most battle field spells do not display an animation on every square. I think all battlefield spells target the whole field, but there might be exceptions.

[Edi]

Rain of stones indeed hits everything on the battlefield. Physical damage, so helmets and armor help a lot against it. Otherwise you need luck and/or ethereality.

[atul]

Okay, that's what I get for trusting my own eyes. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But then, I assume Twan's interpretation is right, for I've seen many unarmoured mages survive RoS castings? Or should I replace my memory in addition to my eyes?

[Twan]

Edi said:
Rain of stones indeed hits everything on the battlefield. Physical damage, so helmets and armor help a lot against it. Otherwise you need luck and/or ethereality.



Yes I wasn't thinking so but it was because I often used the spell against undeads who have sufficient protection or hp to often survive one cast. I've done a test using 2000 protection 0 Machaka militia instead and the spell killed 1646 of them, it really hits all units and not one per square (the strange thing is : like previous poster I also remember to have seen many unprotected/unbuffed mages surviving the spell in some games).

[Dedas]

That spell is very good when playing MA Ulm. One out of ten smiths have a chance of casting it.

[Endoperez]

Dedas said:
That spell is very good when playing MA Ulm. One out of ten smiths have a chance of casting it.



One out of ten smiths have 25% chance of being able to cast it, which is considerably worse. Still, Ulm will get access to it, even though it will probably take a long while.

[Kristoffer O]

There might be a avoidance roll involved, like with earthquake. Not sure, but I think there was such an avoidance with falling frost once. Not sure if there still is. Possibly affected by shields.

[Dedas]

Not with the amount of smiths I usually pump out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[PyroStock]

Twan said:
I've done a test using 2000 protection 0 Machaka militia instead and the spell killed 1646 of them



From what I've also seen, protection/armor/helm doesn't help at all. So the 14+DRN appears to be armor negating, which isn't shown in the game's spell description.

Do avoidance rolls depend on defense #?

Anything else help besides mistform, ethereal, luck, & twistfate?

[Fal]

not true, protection definitely helps against RoS, but from what I've seen damage varies, some units take more damage than they are suppose to, whereas some units take no damage.

perhaps they make a defense/MR roll against RoS?

[PyroStock]

Fal said:
not true, protection definitely helps against RoS, but from what I've seen damage varies, some units take more damage than they are suppose to, whereas some units take no damage.



How big is that DRN roll? Does the damage vary over 2000 since Twan had his Machakas at 2000 protection?

[Edi]

RoS is more likely to be a head hit, I think, so unhelmeted units suffer more.

[Fal]

Hmm, not sure about that Edi, I've been using fog warrior + rain of stone constantly in several MP games. from what I've observed it's not helmet that's making the difference, I've seen, for several times, unarmored mages survive two rain of stones.

Pyrostock, Twan meant he made a game with 2000 units with protection of zero.

[PyroStock]

Twice I cast RoS with mages (seperate battles) who had head (and body) protection over 30 and one got wounded for 5 and the other died (9hp mage). IF RoS isn't armor piercing/negating as the spell suggests than the DRN is pushing the physical damage over 40.

[Twan]

I am sure RoS is not armor negating.

In a recent game I've used army of gold + 3x rain of stones without fog warriors, and lost 0 mage / 40+, when my opponent lost all he had.

If your wounded mages were the rain of stones casters, and you used the spell with just one gem (= 100 fatigue), it may explain the huge critical dammages.

[Fal]

yep armor definitely helps against RoS. But yes Twan that could be one explanation, the fatigue of your caster is affecting the effectiveness (i.e. physical damage/precision) of the spell.

[PyroStock]

Twan said:
If your wounded mages were the rain of stones casters, and you used the spell with just one gem (= 100 fatigue), it may explain the huge critical dammages.



They were E4 mages with ~80fatigue after RoS. Perhaps I underestimated critical damage potential from fatigue.

[Dedas]

If you read the manual you will understand why fatigue is very, very dangerous.

[Lingchih]

Read the manual? There's a novel idea.