Enemy Bzil are overpowered

[McFrugal]

They have the stats of the strongest of whatever monster type they're using, ALL abilities of whatever types they have equipped, and tend to use the strongest abilities available. So they're hard to kill, do a ton of damage, and you get a variety of Bzil job types in random encounters so they tend to have a versatile moveset overall.

I just try a different map whenever I run into a pack of Bzil, now.

[Conan The Librarian]

McFrugal-

Your instincts are correct that enemy Bzil are in fact powerful. Hence, when it came to the creation / balance of various encounters / patrols, enemy Bzil are weighted differently and will take the place of "more than one monster" in comparison (I don't recall the precise numbers on that).

[Mechalibur]

They usually have at least one elemental weakness which you should capitalize on. Unlike regular monsters, Also, you can usually hurt the high hp ones with poison/bleed, immobilize melee Bzil, or berserk/charm the dangerous ones.

[McFrugal]

Bzil do not take the place of more than one monster. They show up in patrols in the same numbers as other units.
They do have some elemental weaknesses, but those are often not as severe as other monsters of their job class, because those monsters had elemental varieties and the Bzil take some more neutral resistance set instead.

Disabling them is a good idea, but they wear accessories so that doesn't always work.

[Conan The Librarian]

Originally posted by McFrugal:

Bzil do not take the place of more than one monster. They show up in patrols in the same numbers as other units.

My apologies if I wasn't clear in my initial response. To clarify (from one of the encounter designers):

A patrol of "all monsters" could have something like 9 monsters, but if it was all Bzil, it would be more like 7 Bzil.

A patrol of 3 Bzil and 4 humans would be similar to 4 humans and 4 monsters.

One of the differences which can be seen is that unlike human enemies who can have certain levels of class randomization, Bzil have to be hand-made. As a result, sometimes the more "random" human elements can make some human enemies feel weaker.

Since they are strong in general, they're designed to show up later game and meant to pose a little more challenge for players as they progress.

[Mechalibur]

Originally posted by McFrugal:

Bzil do not take the place of more than one monster. They show up in patrols in the same numbers as other units.
They do have some elemental weaknesses, but those are often not as severe as other monsters of their job class, because those monsters had elemental varieties and the Bzil take some more neutral resistance set instead.

Disabling them is a good idea, but they wear accessories so that doesn't always work.

Yes, it makes them tougher than monsters, it absolutely should. Most monsters have few abilities and are pretty easy to defeat. The question is are they stronger than human enemies, and personally I don't think they are.

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Yes, it makes them tougher than monsters, it absolutely should. Most monsters have few abilities and are pretty easy to defeat. The question is are they stronger than human enemies, and personally I don't think they are.

I'd say it depends on your characters.

If you are running five gadgeteers and a undead princess/sorceress, Bzil are very vulnerable, because they usually come with at least one serious elemental weakness.

But if you are playing with characters who are relying on direct weapon damage, Bzil are often harder to defeat, due to high hit points, and often high defense,

I play at +50% enemy stats, so Bzil often make it so that my characters cannot kill their target outright. Not the end of the world, but a noticeable difference.

[McFrugal]

I think they're much stronger than human enemies. They have higher stats and more powerful abilities. They will often take out 75% of a unit's hp with a single target attack, or 50% with an aoe... and Bzil AI seems to be very aggressive to boot. Warmages and Reavers are the only comparable enemy human jobs when it comes to damage output. Most Bzil lack healing abilities but they just use potions instead, which is usually enough to keep you from killing more than one before they're all swarming you and killing units every two turns.
Maybe you'll only face 5 Bzil instead of 6 monsters or humans, I didn't count how many there were last time I saw them. But they'll also likely have a kawa bandit or zotzit helping them so you don't really have the numbers advantage.

[McFrugal]

Hang on, what am I missing here? Why would you want 5 gadgeteers alongside the sorceress? By "undead" you mean blood magic, right? You can give the sorc +mnd and +haste, then I guess you could inflict -res on enemies? Is that really so effective?

[Mechalibur]

I just did a patrol in Zzakander Spires on Very Hard difficulty. The Bzil were probably easier than the human enemies in that fight. The Rakkerjak Bzil was easily taken out with lightning (a lightning locus did about 80% of his HP), The Arpia Bzil was also weak to lightning, but its defenses were so low I just killed it with a sneak attack and a regular attack. The Vangal Bzil was a little annoying with buffing people, but went down pretty quick to Fire. The Tangrel Bzil had high defenses, but did very little damage due to its low attack, so I just put it to sleep when the opportunity came up, but otherwise ignored it.

The human enemies meanwhile were trickier. The assassin used gunner techniques to inflict Enrage, Cripple, and Slow from a distance, and when she got close to people, I had to worry about a 2.8x assassinate attack. The ranger had leech mana and Sniper Shot and ended up killing 2 of my guys. The rogue could do pretty good damage with sneak attack and was annoying with traps, but was probably the least threatening human. The warmage was also deadly with infused edge in terms of raw damage potential, but had total shield from the druid subclass to make it take a few hits to kill him.

Obviously a lot depends on what classes and such enemies have, but in general I've never noticed a trend with Bzil being stronger than human enemies. Hell, I think the all Bzil team in Tournament 2 is the easiest of the fights by far. If they're doing 75% of your max hp with a single attack (other than intentionally hard hitting abilities like Silverhorn which is comparable to Righteous Blade in damage and MP cost), then you probably have an issue with your defenses and human enemies could do just as much if not more.

[McFrugal]

Well I keep running into jobs like Hellhund and Blardger which have very strong abilities.
Humans can have comparably strong attacks but they usually take a while to charge up. I've never really had issues with assassins since if there's no water hazards, Assassinate is their only killing move and they don't use sleep powder too often.

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by McFrugal:

Hang on, what am I missing here? Why would you want 5 gadgeteers alongside the sorceress? By "undead" you mean blood magic, right? You can give the sorc +mnd and +haste, then I guess you could inflict -res on enemies? Is that really so effective?

The reason that you want gadgeteers is that they get better experience from buffing/hasting/healing the princess than they get from anything else, as long as the princess is high level. An undead princess hurts herself when casting, so the gadgeteers get easy experience from a heal. If she were not undead, the gadgeteers get their experience from feeding mana.

So why should the princess be undead? For the first cast. A living princess usually does not cast on her first turn, as she does not have the ~100 mana for a full salvo (quicken + 3 layings)

So if you are facing Bzil, and are worried about them killing characters, as mummified ones can do to lowbies even on the first turn, you are better off with an undead princess.

[Mechalibur]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

I play at +50% enemy stats, so Bzil often make it so that my characters cannot kill their target outright. Not the end of the world, but a noticeable difference.

That makes sense since monsters/Bzil have higher base stats to benefit from +50%, but the game isn't really balanced around +50%. At 0 to low increases, I'd say Bzil are about as tough or slightly weaker than human opponents on average.