Demoralise

[kusho]

So the enemy healer just spams demoralise from across the map, rendering all my archers useless and resorting to their kitchen knives because they suddenly cant hit an elephants arse from point blank range. And how exactly Demoralise works, from real life perspective? Lifting the kilt & flaunting the goods at your enemy? Hmmm, that healer was a female though...

Seriously, if the idea behind that annoying demoralise chain-spam is to limit archers effectiveness, why not just reduce their base accuracy to start with?

[Atomic]

Having more sense will make your character resistant to the Demoralise effect. If you are already in game, you can try getting a character to Galder Rank 4, the attack action "Odins Favour" gives your party 100% Mental resistance. Which means Demoralise won't work on them.

When it comes to real life comparison, it's basically a psych out. It unnerves the victim.

[Ty Cobb]

It works just like you see. They swing their weapon over their head a few times like a psycho nut and everyone gets scared. Even if the caster is across the map, out of line of sight, and behind a hill. You just need to spam it right back at them so no one can do anything.

You don't want that base accuracy nerf though. Then it will be like Expeditions Conquistador where your best shooter gets a solid 70% chance to hit from 3 hexes away in broad daylight and the best tactic is to run up in the enemies face and use Point Blank shot

[kusho]

@ Ty Cobb
Lol, yep, i had a squad of ruthless point-blnkers back there in Conquistador, noone dared to engage my archers in melee ;)


@ Atomic
Thanks for the reply, yeah, i found the mental resistance shout, but looks like its not even mandatory as my (now properly trained) archers seem to have little trouble shooting down everything that moves (or makes silly gestures in a pathetic attempt to Demoralise us).

So my updated opinion on Archers is ***Ridiculously Overpowered***
But enough whining for today ;)

[Mindeveler]

Demoralize is probably the dumbest skill I've ever seen, both realism- and gameplay-wise.
Ty Cobb here already mentioned some of the reasons, but what I don't get the most is why being scared nerfs ranged accuracy of all things.

When I'm fighting some dangerous boss who can one-shot me, my fear of him will affect anything but my accuracy. My melee attacks will be less frequent because of fear of retaliation, my dodging will be less effective because I'll be too nervous, but If my character has a ranged build, that is the zone of comfort.
Showering a dangerous boss from afar with bullets/arrows/spells is the safest approach to scary enemies and it is exactly what I would do in such situation. It's the only combat style which would still make me feel comfortable.

Clearly with how dangerous archers in this game are, there have to be countermeasures against them, but demoralize is a terrible one.

[sircharleythecat]

Well, it's an all in melee game. Use shield units and polearm units. Also learn to use demoralise yourself. Then have the polearms support the shield units from a second line, and disable the range units of the enemy the same way as they disable your range units in every single encounter. Demoralise is way to overpowered, and your ragne units are ssentially useless until all the enemy units who uses it is destroyed. And they are always way behind the enemy lines. So melee melee melee.