I hate horrors

[Endoperez]

It's true that if your pretender somehow gets a very high horror mark, he could die any turn, including the one in which he is recalled. However, getting a high horror mark is very, very hard. It can happen, of course, e.g. if your pretender has very good regeneration and lots of hitpoints, and can survive dozens of turns against one of the Doom Horrors, while still being hit by the Astral Hook attackss during most of those turns. However, it's a very rare occurence. AFAIK, players can't intentionally cause horror mark that would be strong enough to cause this. As it is, this is one of the few "bad luck, you're screwed" events that have always existed in Dominions.

I agree in that some kind of a counter would be nice, similar to taking Luck and/or Growth to protect you from early plagues. However, personally I don't think this is an important issue.

[Teraswaerto]

Well, a lone pretender against a group of mages (and some chaff probably) hitting him with multiple Astral Geysirs might do it.

[Meglobob]

Astral Geysers deliver 2 levels of horror marking apparently and can be cast by a lvl 2 astral mage, so I should imagine its very easy to give a pretender high level horror marking making a potential god useless.

A potential god should have someway to counter horrors but it should be very difficult to do, carry out.

[Endoperez]

Meglobob said:
Astral Geysers deliver 2 levels of horror marking apparently and can be cast by a lvl 2 astral mage, so I should imagine its very easy to give a pretender high level horror marking making a potential god useless.

A potential god should have someway to counter horrors but it should be very difficult to do, carry out.

Have you tested it? The last time I tested Horror Mark (the spell), it took several mages almost 20 fights (each fight consisting of [5xHorror Mark, Retreat] for every mage) to cause a Doom Horror attack. I never tested Astral Geyser, and I'm afraid I don't have time to do it now.

A mod with the following:

#modname "Test"
#selectspell "Astral Geyser"
#researchlevel 0
#pathlevel 0 1
#fatiguecost 10
#end


and any 5-to-10 province map with e.g. Pythium and Bandar Log, and you controlling both nations, is enough. It doesn't take much time to set the test up, and it's easy to change the mod to test various other things.

[Meglobob]

Endoperez said:

Have you tested it? The last time I tested Horror Mark (the spell), it took several mages almost 20 fights (each fight consisting of [5xHorror Mark, Retreat] for every mage) to cause a Doom Horror attack.

No I have not tested it.

I will assume that Horror Mark delivers 1 level of horror marking so based on your previous test it will take several mages almost 10 fights to cause a doom horror attack with astral geyser.

So I agree with you Endoperez, its not a big problem, as its very hard to do.

However it would be nice if you could for example wish 'purification(name)' which would remove all negative effects from the named being, ie...all horror marking, curses, old age, old age afflictions etc...

Yes that would be very, very nice. It would also not unbalance the game.

[Baalz]

Mildly off topic, I was playing around with the Astral Corruption global last night and had a bit of a humorous turn. I had the spell up, but wanted to forge a ring of wizardry with my pretender, so I gave him some blood slaves and scripted him to cast "life for a life" (no MR save, 999 damage, 100 precision).

Then the doom horror showed up. Stupid +7 blood vengence, level 9 in blood magic couldn't overcome that...

Anyway, that was the first time I've seen a doom horror (Theft of Reason, or something like that). I couldn't think of any reasonable way to kill him, has anybody actually killed him outside of freakish luck? This is a SP game I'm just goofing around with and I thought it'd be fun to try and craft a SC that could take him out in a rematch, but even best case scenario it seems you'd end up collosally horror marked by taking more than a turn or two to kill him...kind of a pyrrhic victory for an expensive SC. Hmmmm, maybe that incineration wand plus boots of quickness, plus fire resistance, plus penetration bonus items (does that help against blood vengence? Or is it your own MR?). I assume blood vengence covers ALL the damage types: poison, paralyzation, etc. Does anybody know if those "unresistable" blood spells which send you to hell circumvent blood vengence? What about other non damage dealing spells, like hell bind heart (I'm assuming you can't actually keep him, can you?), confligration, numbness, etc. ? What about stuff that causes a delayed damage, like fire/death clouds, does that damage track back to the caster? What about reactive damage like a fire shield, aegis, etc.?

[Wish]

I once killed the eater of heroes (who was on an indy province) with a well equipped Lord of the Night - using that sharpest tooth or whatever (the really poisonous one) as the weapon.

He wasn't marked so the horror spent some time on the skeletons from the wraith crown and the doom bats.

also i think blood vengence is the sort of thing you need MR to overcome... always risky though.

[mivayan]

Baalz said:
Then the doom horror showed up. Stupid +7 blood vengence, level 9 in blood magic couldn't overcome that...

Magic skill doesn't matter, if the spell would harm him without blood vengeance, your own MR determines if you or him gets the pain. Equip all the MR items you can forge and have slots for.

Meglobob said:
Why don't the horrors/doom horrors just move in fullstop, destroy the gods, slaughter everything and turn the world into doom horror paradise?

Would'nt be too difficult for them really given there power.

They're too far out into the astral dimensions to be able really see the world unless someone light a target flare/horror mark.

Or, they like it the way it is, so they can come in and feast on magical energies now and then.