Touch of Entropy OP?

from Elemental Forums

This spell is level 4, costs a good bit of mana, but is 50 damage unreducable.  can one-shot kill just about any sovereign.

 

Maybe a little too good.

 

Solution: perhaps some spells need to be more easily resistable, or spell protection needs to be used more.  AI should definitely  use this more at least vs sovereigns/impossible units until  countered.

 

Maybe resist needs bigger effects, or some spells should get a dex bonus  to resist.

 

 

elemental
7,473 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Nah it's fine. I'd like to see this become a mandatory spell for the AI player that way nobody can walk about saying "Can't Touch Dis".

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Make it 25+1/2*Int, at a huge cost. Or make it 40 give it a draining effect: if you cast it, your sovereign is drained for 3 rounds and can't act.

 

Also, it's spammable...

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

No matter the requirements or costs or drawbacks, anything that can kill an important unit (such as a sovereign) on the first round of combat is a bad idea. It reduces combat to a game of "let's see who gets to go first." There's no chance of back-and-forth, move and countermove, if your enemy can be dead before he even gets to his first turn. At that point you may as well ditch tactical combat and flip a coin to determine winner.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Austinvn, reply 3
No matter the requirements or costs or drawbacks, anything that can kill an important unit (such as a sovereign) on the first round of combat is a bad idea. It reduces combat to a game of "let's see who gets to go first." There's no chance of back-and-forth, move and countermove, if your enemy can be dead before he even gets to his first turn. At that point you may as well ditch tactical combat and flip a coin to determine winner.
End of Austinvn's quote

Yep the same could be said for spells like Curgens Inferno. Touch of Entropy should cause INT * 1.5 damage and Curgens Inferno should reduce the population of the city by 50 %.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

If you think about how powerful wizards battle it out in movies and cartoons, there are alot of defensive spells in action. One guy flings a fireball, and his opponent surrounds himself in ice or something. Perhaps all DD spells need to take a full round to cast, so that in every case you can counter it if you have the right magic.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

A better solution would be to make sovereigns invulnerable to all spell damage.  Forcing victory through strength of arms is fine by me.

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Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

How about it does 50dmg - targets intelligence. That would balance out i think. Would make it less a kill all and more a warrior killing spell.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Dsraider, reply 7
How about it does 50dmg - targets intelligence. That would balance out i think. Would make it less a kill all and more a warrior killing spell.
End of Dsraider's quote

Too good against warrior-type sovereigns, who already have to split between 3 stats.

A better solution would be to make sovereigns invulnerable to all spell damage.  Forcing victory through strength of arms is fine by me.
End of quote
It can still one-round kill major champions and legendary units. I think that's a bad idea.

1-round kills (from a single unit, not from ganging up) should only work against weak opponents.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Reducing damage, better resistances,, better defenses, and more opportunity cost to use it would all help. Otherwise, it's the basic Save-Or-Die problem from D&D. Doesn't matter what the other guy does or how powerful he is, he flubs a single roll and goes splat. Or gets no save at all (more an issue with high level epic spells).

 

After all, if you can wipe out a good chunk of health on turn one, that automatically puts the other guy at a disadvantage since now they have to play very defensively (or extremely aggressive).

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

it's not that bad, just that there are no other spells capable of dealing that magnitude of damage. though i will agree it does need some way for the target to mitigate the damage. if only we had a saving throw system. the new magic resistance is a good start, but it only works as an all or nothing mechanic, instead of reducing damage.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sethai, reply 10
it's not that bad, just that there are no other spells capable of dealing that magnitude of damage. though i will agree it does need some way for the target to mitigate the damage. if only we had a saving throw system. the new magic resistance is a good start, but it only works as an all or nothing mechanic, instead of reducing damage.
End of Sethai's quote
The irony here is that a "saving throw" generally means an all-or-nothing system, whereas "resistance" tends to be a proportional reduction to damage. A saving throw system is actually what we do have, whereas an actual magic resistance is what you're asking for.

This pedantry brought to you entirely free of charge.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Cruxador, reply 11

The irony here is that a "saving throw" generally means an all-or-nothing system, whereas "resistance" tends to be a proportional reduction to damage. A saving throw system is actually what we do have, whereas an actual magic resistance is what you're asking for.
End of Cruxador's quote

i guess i was thinking more of the D&D system where a successful reflex save means you take half damage or so forth. and also, everyone has some reflex save worth mentioning, whereas (correct me if i'm wrong) only characters with good INT currently have spell resistance?

when you figure in monster abilities and morale effects, there are actually quite a lot of opportunites for saving throws in this game. i think they'd do better axing magic resistance and going for classic D&D will, reflex and fortitude saves based on wisdom, dexterity and con respectively.

Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

What school/book is it in? Is it empire or humans? Both? I've never seen it, or the entropy book.

 

The ones I've seen: Air, Fire, Earth, Water, Enchantment (Base) and then Summoning, Life and Combat later

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

I think the solution here is to buff sov hp and not to nerf this spell.  I mean really stacks of units have hundreds of hp.  We need magic that can deal with them.  The issue is currently that sovs die too easily when compared to normal unit stacks.  Con points need to grant dramatically more hp.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Delmoroth, reply 14
I think the solution here is to buff sov hp and not to nerf this spell.  I mean really stacks of units have hundreds of hp.  We need magic that can deal with them.  The issue is currently that sovs die too easily when compared to normal unit stacks.  Con points need to grant dramatically more hp.
End of Delmoroth's quote
Not really. We need spells that scale with unit group size (a sort of area spell that has an area of "1 tile" :p). And we need real area spells to scale with unit size too.