Question about assassins

[beorn]

I was surprised to have my wizard killed by an assassin:

The wizard, strength 4, was in a city with a large stack including a Thane of Kilmorph, strength 3 (no promotions affecting strength). The only thing I can figure is that the Thane's "reduced chance to defend stack" attribute came into play here?

Also, both assassins in the enemy stack had been affected by charm the turn before, and I cannot imagine how that effect could have been dispelled considering a) they have only an adept, not a mage, and 2)the other units are still charmed.

 

[Calavente]

for charm I cannot say anything.
regarding the assassination...
well it seems heros and arcane units have a "reduced chance to defend" attribute.
then the assassin checks the "unit with less chance to defend".

so a wizard 4 has less chance to defend than the thane 3 .. and is therefore targeted by the assassin.

 

[Doug Piranha]

Charmed has a 20% chance per turn of wearing off. So I guess those two assassins got lucky with their saving throws.

 

[beorn]

Charmed has a 20% chance per turn of wearing off. So I guess those two assassins got lucky with their saving throws.

Okay, I just want to get the mechanic straight.

Civ #1 casts charm. About 80% of the enemy in range, with no particular magic immunity, are effected.

Civ #2 has their turn, and about 20% of the 80% wears off in time to move on this turn.

Do I have the mechanics of this correct, now?

(I had thought that there was a 20% chance that each unit recovered after that turn.)

 

[vincible]

I believe the assassin will target units with Channeling II in preference to units with Channeling I.

 

[Thrar]

The manual says the Channeling promotions reduce a unit's strength by 25% when choosing the defender for an attack. I'm not sure if that means they're cumulative or not. However, even if not, that gives a mage (strength 4) an effective strength of 3 and might make him the stack defender against an assassin.

 

[Calavente]

I think it is cumulative, giving a -50% strength when evaluating if he would defend the stack :
therefore an apparent strength of 2.
2 being less than 3, the mage is attacked.

Therefore one likes the guardsman promotion

 

[Thrar]

Do you have any reasons for thinking that? The manual also lists the free XP gain for the channeling promotions, at 20/30/40% respectively. These are obviously not cumulative, archmages certainly don't get a 90% chance for free XP each turn.

 

[snarko]

Actually, they do. It's just that the chance is reduced by how much XP you already have. Since a unit has to be level 6 to be promote to archmage that means the chance is already greatly reduced. WB yourself an archmage with 0 XP and see how fast it goes up.

 

[Calavente]

why I say that...
because all cIV work like that.
things are always cumulative:
unless a new promotion "replaces" the older one, the effects stack.
as for chanelling: chanII does not replace ChanI: the unit has in fact both chanI AND chanII : therefore, it stacks.