Newbish question

[MaxWilson]

Jim,

I'm not sure what was going on with your tests. Battle losses don't drop Morale, they affect the bonus that units get for being mostly intact (which doesn't show up on the screen). I don't know why you didn't see a correlation between Fear strength and the morale drop, but it's possible that you don't realize that Fear +X refers to the AREA of fear. The strength of the Fear effect is 1/5 of that, according to KO. Try testing Fear+50 vs. Fear+0 and you'll see it drop quickly, but if you tried Fear+0 vs. Fear+4 you wouldn't see any difference except that 9 squares would be affected instead of 5 (which you probably wouldn't notice).

Multiple overlapping fear effects are indeed fearsome. Frequently troops will rout even against enemies they could easily beat, if the enemies didn't have Fear. That's precisely why Onyx Amazons are so annoying, but it didn't show up in your test because the militia were ALSO getting cut down like wheat (and probably the ones who were within the Fear aura were mostly dead as well as Fear'ed, and thus irrelevant--although you said you did some a morale drop on some of them, and that was from Fear).

-Max

[JimMorrison]

MaxWilson said:
Jim,

I'm not sure what was going on with your tests. Battle losses don't drop Morale, they affect the bonus that units get for being mostly intact (which doesn't show up on the screen). I don't know why you didn't see a correlation between Fear strength and the morale drop, but it's possible that you don't realize that Fear +X refers to the AREA of fear. The strength of the Fear effect is 1/5 of that, according to KO. Try testing Fear+50 vs. Fear+0 and you'll see it drop quickly, but if you tried Fear+0 vs. Fear+4 you wouldn't see any difference except that 9 squares would be affected instead of 5 (which you probably wouldn't notice).

Multiple overlapping fear effects are indeed fearsome. Frequently troops will rout even against enemies they could easily beat, if the enemies didn't have Fear. That's precisely why Onyx Amazons are so annoying, but it didn't show up in your test because the militia were ALSO getting cut down like wheat (and probably the ones who were within the Fear aura were dead as well as Fear'ed, and thus irrelevant).

-Max

Well with a D10 PoD, the turn after he attacks the enemy, they are still at full morale. The turn after that, some are 4 down, some are 6 down, some are 8 down, and some units were alread at -2 or -3 morale.

I can definately assure you that morale erodes over the course of a battle. Every round, more and more units are showing lower scores, which I must attribute to their losses/damage, and the routing of nearby squads.

Though you are entirely correct, I didn't read the entire description of fear (my bad), I put the manual back down after I had confirmed that it states that its purpose is to force a morale check.

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
Well with a D10 PoD, the turn after he attacks the enemy, they are still at full morale. The turn after that, some are 4 down, some are 6 down, some are 8 down, and some units were alread at -2 or -3 morale.

I can definately assure you that morale erodes over the course of a battle. Every round, more and more units are showing lower scores, which I must attribute to their losses/damage, and the routing of nearby squads.

You should check a normal battle. IME, unless a unit with Fear is involved, the shattered remnants of the army that finally flee have the same Morale that they had at the beginning. When you smash a barbarian horde or a bunch of indies, they still say "Morale: 8" or "Morale: 10". I think a Fear aura is like Soul Vortex or a Chill aura, it kicks in at the beginning of your turn. Only, Fear auras aren't visible.

Turn 1a: Enemies do their thing.
Turn 1b: <Fear>, PoD flies to attack. The Fear doesn't affect the enemies because it comes before they're in range.
Turn 2a: Enemies do their thing.
Turn 2b: <Fear>, PoD attacks. Enemies are down lots of Morale because this time the Fear aura covers them.
Turn 3a: Enemies do their thing or rout.
Turn 3b: <Fear>, PoD attacks.

Etc.

-Max

P.S. If Fear really is like Soul Vortex, you should also note that Quickness makes Soul Vortex happen twice per combat round too.

[thejeff]

Standards seem to counter the cumulative Fear effect very well. They don't seem to have much effect normally, a slight morale boost (probably capped?), but against Fear that boost seems to be added every turn, bringing morale back up toward normal.

[llamabeast]

Standards add one point of morale to every unit in an X square area every turn. If that would result in the unit reaching morale more than 5 points higher than they started with, the standard doesn't work.

So yes, in a combat with a fear-causing creature, the standard would probably continue to give a morale point a round for the whole battle.