Fear?

[llamabeast]

They force morale checks, I think. I'm pretty sure I've frightened off units which haven't taken any casualties.

[Shovah32]

Ctissian sauromancers spamming both raise skeletons(to hold the enemy and occasionally hit them) and terror can rout most troops with morale below 15 and probably higher(only used against 15 morale or less).

[TwoBits]

Well, for example, Frighten is supposed to cause a "Fear +15 attack". But what the heck does that mean?

Says nothing about lowering anyone's moral. I know a squad forced to make a moral check needs to beat a "fear roll" (p.80), but again, that's for the whole squad. If your spell only hits part of a squad, does the whole squad have to pass the check?

The mechanics are a bit confusing...

[Kristoffer O]

> They force morale checks, I think. I'm pretty sure I've frightened off units which haven't taken any casualties

Correct.

> If your spell only hits part of a squad, does the whole squad have to pass the check?

In the case of 'Frighten' and other single target fear effects- no.
In the case of all area fear spells - yes.

[Baalz]

Kristoffer O said:

> If your spell only hits part of a squad, does the whole squad have to pass the check?

In the case of 'Frighten' and other single target fear effects- no.
In the case of all area fear spells - yes.

I don't understand, I thought moral rolls were only checked at the squad level. Only whole squads can route, so how does a single unit making a check differ from a squad making a check? Presumably a failure routes the whole squad, right?

Also, I read somewhere somebody claiming that a fear aura effectively stacked with awe because it lowers moral, but that doesn't fit my understanding of how it works. Do the mechanics of a fear aura work the same way (forcing a moral check to people within the radius, but not effecting moral itself)?

[Digress]

Carrying on from Baalz point above .... well, slightly .... I am having a somewhat frustrating time in a game at the moment trying to make use of the fear effect of False Horrors (Fear 0+).

Trying to rout some particularly low morale troops without any success. The False Horrors fly in and then get trampled by elephants with minus something (-5 to -1) morale. No more False Horror and unrouted elephants trampling their merry way deeper into my rather thin ranks of fliers.

Does the fear effect have to work on a significant chunk of a squad to yield a morale check or is one individual in the squad enough ?

[Sombre]

I don't think we've actually gotten anywhere in understanding this.

If frighten doesn't cause the squad to make a morale check and doesn't lower the morale of the units hit, what does it do?

I was under the impression that fear etc reduced morale and caused a check - if they don't actually reduce morale that seems sort of crappy.

[Ballbarian]

(Hopefully I won't add to the confusion,) but frighten will lower the morale of the units hit and then other events (such as dying comrades) will cause a morale check and you get your payoff. And in the case of false horrors against elephants, making them skittish is good, but you need to be able to hurt them some as well to push them over the brink and into full rout.

[Ironhawk]

Digress said:
The False Horrors fly in and then get trampled by elephants with minus something (-5 to -1) morale.

Yes.

Don't use false horrors against things that can trample them. Or armies with lots of arrows, as they ignore defense and can mass thier attacks easily to break ethereal.

[Digress]

In my example I didn't really need them (the false horrors) to stick around very long - kept spamming them hoping to generate more morale checks. At least one a Horror - assuming that morale checks are carried out BEFORE melee combat.

I guess the Strategoi standards are stacking and helping in the battles I lost.

Should you see the effects of the standards in the battle replay ? The units further away from the standards seem to have the worst morale but even the units near the standards have pretty poor morale.