I played WoM a bunch back in the day and just got into the FE beta today.

I had lovingly crafted a sovereign, Niobhe, and an Empire of Manflayers to call her own, and I started the game.  

About eight turns in, I had recruited a champion, trained a militia, and summoned a couple clay golems or whatever they're called.  With this small army, I spotted a bear near my empire's capital and decided to attack...  What did I have to fear from a little bear?  Everything, apparently.

I moved my troops in and hit the bear a few times, removing about 1/3 its health. I'd heard they saying "don't poke the bear," but until now I had no idea...  Nothing could prepare me for the beast's combat turn.  He attacked my champion and I saw the word "Maul" float above him.  I laughed.  But the bear attacked again and again, with the word "Maul" appearing above the beast.  The bear's first attack round ended with my dead champion.  

My laughs became tears and I ran.  Unfortunately, my sovereign couldn't get away because those golems were blocking her (who knew I would run from a bear)...

The bear attacked my sovereign with three mauls on its next combat round and killed her.  The great Empire of The Manflayers had been decimated by a bear.

A bear.

I am [PAM].  Niobhe is (was) [PAM].  The Empire of Manflayers are [PAM].

Cap it at 2 extra hits with -10 and -20 acc. Even today after the nerf I've had 6 hit maul chains land on my characters. Honestly until it's nerfed much more it's just going to cause people to reload a lot. What's the point of talents like double attack anyway if maul is just so much better?

Galwinganoon lol.  And +1 for seanw posting that pic.  Maul is OP no doubt, but don't knock it till you try it, as Das mentions if you can find a weapon with it you just won the game 

Is there a maul spell?  That would be a fun nature enchantment.

How about new tweaks in this week's slipstream? 

The good news is you guys are great at making epic weapons. Maybe make an Ancient Beserker Battleaxe that is used by some endgame villain? I do like how it forces me to cast alot of spells to keep that bastard away from my units. 

@Wintersong being required to develop tactics such as 'sacrificing troops' and 'don't get into melee combat' scream that the ability is out of balance with the rest of the game. Maul is rediculous because it trumps special abilities. Maul would be fine if it functioned once at half damage. I would even be okay with letting special abilities proc maul if it worked this way.

Indeed all special abilites should proc crits, poisons, slows or whathaveyou that the weapon normally does on attack. Using special abilites should be weighted against the pros/cons of other special abilities, not against the regular attack option.

I like it in the game, but I look forward to tweaking it. The hit chance needs to be reduced after each successful hit or something. My sovereign's early game army was destroyed by an upgraded butcherman unit with Maul. My sovereign of about 60 hit points was taken down in a single around with -4 to -10 damage hits.

Maul + High accuracy = pure death.

i thought the point of maul was to force the player to use units with high dodge to tank the bear. if this is the case then it's good and should be kept.

one simple solution is to not attack bears if you're not prepared. i think the whole concept of maul could be introduced slightly more gently though. perhaps there could be a couple of bear encounters that the player can survive but get punished if they don't have the apropriate squad to deal with it and later have encounters with more bears or stronger individual bears.

Blind works great.

It's not that maul is impossible to counter, it's just too common for being so very devastating. An ability that can kill champions in one round should not be on common early game foes, and likewise an ability that can kill drakes in one round should not be on easily obtained midgame weapons. Really it's the latter that bothers me more - bears need to get lucky to get the most out of maul, but champions can be specifically built to get ridiculous strings of hits that make any other ability or non-maul weapon you could use instead obsolete.

If it's really meant to be so common, it shouldn't be so powerful (say capped at 2 extra attacks with a harsh enough accuracy penalty that landing the second is unlikely). If it's really meant to be so powerful, it shouldn't be so common - impossible for the player to get, only seen on uber endgame bosses that should be this devastating.

Ideally you could have both - a much-nerfed maul on bears and berserker axes, the original version on an endgame boss. Just don't call the boss's version "Maul," you need a name that better captures what the ability does. Something like "Unstoppable Fury of Doom and Death - Really, You Should Just Start Running."

Derek and I found a bug in the maul code this evening. It's supposed to lower your accuracy by 4 each time you strike but it wasn't working as designed. Next patch will fix it.

Well, even though PAM no longer has Maul to fight against, we will stay strong as any other group like this does. We will find another issue that is similar and claim it is exactly the same situation. The only hard part is finding another issue that starts with M. Maybe Players against Masterquests? Mysteries? Mammals? We will think of something and be back on top of the protesting game.