Re: Legends: which status is best and what do they do?

From: griffith@xcf.Berkeley.EDU (Jim "The Big Dweeb" Griffith)

Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1993 21:21:46 +0000

dresnick@athena.mit.edu (David I Resnick) writes:

>1) Are religion status trees good?

Yes and no.  They typically allow for quicker growth, but you can't go as far
with them.  The most powerful statuses are typically non-religious.  However,
you should choose a religious tree if you have a priest, because many of the
more powerful spells have religious status limitations.

>2) What does the Enchanted tree look like?

It's ugly.  Really ugly.  Kind of chartreuse.

>3) What does the character netherworld tree look like?

Oh, it's quite lovely.  Before RTI screwed with it, it looked like
"Netherworld", "Lesser Daemon", "Greater Daemon", "Daemon Lord", "Chaos
Godling".  Now, all bets are off.

>4) Can you lose a status once you find a better one?

Sort of.  Everything MG says says that you can't, but in reality you can.
Statuses have an internal "strength" value (vampyre is stronger than
netherworld, for instance), and you can be afflicted with a stronger status
than what you have.  The strength may just be the INV value.  I haven't tried
this.  But it looks right.  You also supposedly can't cast a Rite spell on a
character with a status, but we've seen at least one case where this isn't
true.

MG has claimed to me in the past that you can special action to drop a status.
I've never tried it.  You can always create an AA spell which removes any one
status.

>5)  What is the best status tree in normal games?  (I dunno if this
>        will apply in the North Island Campaign.

If you want to do serious troop training, then take Minion of Entropy,
Spectre, or Netherworld (in order of preference), and make all of your troop
trainers of the same status.  This way, you get free afflicition, and your
trainers all have a decent PC (and spectre gives +5PC).  And if they're all
of the same type, then you save a *lot* of headaches trying to juggle troop
slots to support training.  I don't have a clue how to get MOE other than to
find a monster and charm him.  None of this applies to NIC, of course.  If
morphing is working correctly, I'd recommend Netherworld.  The higher levels
(starting around Greater Daemon) are really cool and well-rounded.  If
you don't plan on morphing, get Vampyre.  I gave a non-priest secondary in
RTI5 Blessed of Vol, and he morphed to Spirit of Vol (third rung) in the
next two turns, and he's now as good as a primary (except for being a
two-action character, of course).  The religious spells are easier to get if
you start with a decent priest.

In a high-end, non-NIC game, go with Vampyre.  The upper levels are god-like.

Jim

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Griffith  /--OO--\     | Two great powers are on our side: the power of
 ...!ucbvax!scam!griffith  | Love and the power of Arithmetic.  These two are
BEWARE BATS WITHOUT NOSES! | stronger than anything else in the world.

References

Legends: which status is best and what do they do? Also NIC question
dresnick@athena.mit.edu (David I Resnick)
Mon, 08 Mar 1993 20:08:30 +0000