Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

[RedWurm]

It's not an easy issue. While VotD is less than ideal in some ways - undead adding to the unit count, death by turn limit - it is designed to be an anti-SC spell, and a nicely ironic one at that. if the turn limit had no negative effect, there would be yet another defense against it in the form of very good armour.

er... so I agree with all three of Tuidjy's positions. VotD in its current form has to be overpowered in some situations to be effective in the rest. the default resolution, likewise, is not very satisfying, but 'you wake up and find it was all a dream' is not an improvement.

the questions I'm having trouble resolving are whether VotD does what it's supposed to do. are the special cases we're discussing broken or not according to its intention? should there be a more powerful version where the enemies pose more of a direct threat, rather than victory by exploit? these are all balance questions, and I'm not good with those. All I know is that while invincible SCs are only nice if you've got one, irony always rocks.

[Velusion]

Buff up the MR of the SC or equip yourself with items that will kill undead quickly. The end.

P.S.
Don't get so attached to your SCs.

[Micah]

Vengeance against a high-kill SC is far and away the most effective ritual to use when presented with such a target. It is effectively a save-or-die situation once the kill counter hits critical mass (around 800 or so should prove too many to kill in 75 rounds for most SCs, even a quickened AE weapon only hits 6 ghosts per round...even with a damage aura on top of that it'll be hard to keep up)

Granted a battlefield-wide spell will work, but if you have to script that to counter Vengeance then you've already lost your SC since all of a sudden he's a support mage and not an SC since you'll have to keep the BE scripted at all times, and this also requires high paths or boosters which take up SC slots. A BE cast to kill the ghosts is not an effective counter for the same reason that hiding in your capital behind 4 domes isn't...your SC might as well be dead, even if they're not actually buried.

It is massively more effective than any other remote spell because spell-sent assassins will get destroyed by any half-decent SC (earth attack, manifestation, etc.) and mind hunt has a variety of counters. The other reason that Vengeance is so annoying is because it will always target the same commander, so you can't recruit decoys.

SCs are pretty damn counterable by the correct tactics without having Vengeance in its more powerful form, and even if the 75 turn death was removed it would still be effective against any thugs that can't last for 75 turns (meaning no fatigue accumulation and a way to regain HP in battle for most of them or they'll get pinged to death) as well as any artillery mages that get a decent kill-count. It would be a niche spell at that point, but still usable when the occasion arose instead of being the go-to for a 0-risk SC kill. Lowering the gem cost to 1 or 2 in return for weakenking it would also be fair.

I guess my thing is that since SCs are on the front lines they're wading into battle turn after turn as it is, and there's plenty of chances to kill them once you're in a fight. (Soul slay, paralyze, life for a life, drain life, spamming an elemental attack they're not resistant to, beating them to death with buffed up troops, teleporting or air trapping a counter-SC in to do righteous battle...there are plenty more)

Even if the spell isn't overpowered on its own I strongly dislike any spell that is hard enough to counter that it might as well not be counterable, as is the case here (I argued against a fully-functional wind ride for the same reason). It doesn't allow an opponent a way to respond to your tactics. Doing something unexpected should be rewarded but everything should have a reasonable counter available for it.

[Velusion]

Micah said:
...mind hunt has a variety of counters.

By variety do you mean having Astral Mages? Not exactly a lot of variety.

Unless you have an SC with just a giganto-huge number of kills equipping him with a charcoal shield or casting fire shield is usually enough eat through enough chaff undead. Unquenched Sword, and the Ark are also artifacts that will do this.

Personally - I think Mind Hunt is much stronger/unbalanced, simply because mind dual/seeking arrow can counter any astral presence. Without astral presence Mind Hunt is evil.

I would agree that there are too many remote leader killer spells (it stagnates the late game) but as compared to say, Mind Hunt, I don't think it is much worse.

[Valandil]

Thanks for the info, Saint Dude. I did not know that.

Obviously, the battlefield enchs. were not really proposed as a counter to VOTD, just as a way to kill 1200+ undead.
I was responding to the OP, who stated that VOTD was uncounterable, which it is not. As many of you correctly point out, these 'counters' are impractical in that they deprive your SC of the ability to act in an SC role, effectively neutralising it. This is, I think, true of several other remote assassination spells.

It is possible that VOTD is unbalancing, but it seems unlikely, given the rare occasions where it is useful. The bell of cleansing would be pretty imbalanced if it targeted non-demons too (maybe...actually, probably not).

[Xox]

I also vote #3

This spell is fine except for an obvious bug that causes the defender to lose a turn limit stlaemate. Defender should win that. Submit to bug list and see what devs say.

[Aethyr]

I also vote #3.

[Kuritza]

So, if we agree upon #3 (I sure do), who's going to submit it to bug list? I dont know how it's done.

[Micah]

Decoys were the other option I was thinking of Vel, which obviously doesn't work whatsoever against Vengeance. It's not optimal certainly, but it helps out a good deal (I'll usually recruit a commander in a province I just took over since that happens before rituals...30g for a 50% resistance to mind hunt with no MM is a fairly good deal) If your opponent is launching volleys of them that'll go through the chaff then yes, having your own mages is the only real viable solution, but if you don't have any mages that far into the game you're kind of screwed anyhow. And it's a sweet bonus when you feeblemind their mages with astral casters, which won't happen with Vengeance.

Plus since intelligence isn't optimal the appearance of astral mages is usually enough to stop the mind hunts, even if there isn't a mage in the province. It's a lot riskier to spam it.