Torin the Chosen and Jaer the Wind Mage were hunting down the last bastion of Sharee, a chaotic wizard who had, for no clear reason, cast Doomsday:
Each turn 4-20 map squares are withered as per the spell Corruption. The caster's cities and surrounding areas are not affected of course. All enemy cities suffer +5 unrest. Cities exceeding their maximal population will shrink at an additional -200 people/turn
This disrupted my idyllic Life-enchanted demesne! So I summoned forth the Chosen One to
literally save the world, fulfill the prophecy etc. This was my only serious war of the whole run. I was fine hunting spellbooks and leaving the nodes for lesser wizards to fight over, but they disturbed my ant farm...
She eventually reemerged on a remarkable little island in the cold north. 3x3 with a volcano in the center, her craggy outpost, and three ruins. Very strange. I still wonder if one of the ruins was formed midgame, by a failed colony getting overrun - in this case, with sorcery creatures (nagas?). Whatever the history it now was home to 7 very territorial storm giants.
Banishing Sharee went fine (the worlds are saved, woo!) but of course I had to do the post-game content. One ruin only had earth elementals, simple brutes which were a joke at this point to the high-level Torin. The sorcery and undead ones were more interesting. The undead ruin had 5 vampires and 4 wraiths. Both are extremely resilient in melee, stealing life. Torin probably would have been fine, but the vampires had me worried with their special blood-drain.
There's a thing in DND about undead creatures: They often have extremely poor constitution saves. This is usually fine because they're immune to poison and "death" effects, being dead. It can be exploited through a very few spells like disintegrate. Or in this game: being banished by Life-magic. Jaer spoke one Holy Word and the undead were no more.
"They all failed their save?? It's a save at -20%, and their saves ranged from 40% to 60%!"
It's at -50% for undead specifically, and I cast Black Prayer first to lower their resistance. yes, as a Life wizard, this version doesn't prevent Life and Death books from coexisting anymore.
The storm giants may have been watching this, because they used their first turn advantage in classic style: Gank the mage!!! Now, Jaer was almost max-level at this point, and buffed by many wards, but I forgot to include elemental armor or resist elements. It took the full might of their thunderbolts but they did, indeed, gank the mage.
Annoying, but fair.
What's not fair: Torin cast Raise Dead to force Jaer back in his body. Maybe just for one turn: no hit points to speak of, and immune to further healing or raising. Jaer did however get a turn, and also his custom earrings of reduced Spell Save. In other word - Holy Word!
...I dunno, I thought the weird island of epic-level encounters was a nice bonus for ending the insane chaos-wizard
I don't mess with heroes much in this version, but Life magic certainly helps. It also keeps the interesting mundane units useful in the endgame, such as a retinue of paladins. It's pretty sweet having them charge a Great Drake brought to earth by a web spell - and winning!
The game was over many turns ago, the "quit" button even changed to "win", but I was having fun with it. So much loot~
Caster of Magic for Windows, an optimized Master of Magic fan project for sale on GOG.
The spell list is much expanded and improved: seravy.x10.mx/CasterofMagic/CASTERWIN.html
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Topic: How did you last *own*? (Read 1349570 times)