Part 249: Mechanics - Fucking Stats, How do they Work?

Whoops, I forgot to post this.

Units Stats

Okay, let's do talk about unit statistics.

There are a whole lot of statistics that each unit has. The importance varies pretty widely, but the idea behind most of them are pretty straight forward. Essentially most stats have an opposed statistic or check they are compared against. I'll run down the list of what stuff is really quickly. For reference, 10 is the average in a statistic for a run of the mill human-sized troop.

Hit Points: How much damage a unit can take before they die.
Protection: Opposed by (strength and weapon damage), reduces the damage of hits that land.
Morale: How likely a unit or squad of units is to flee from battle when things turn south. (This is also used in opposition of Awe checks, the special ability that Oreiads and Dexanth's Virtue have)
Magic Resistance: Opposed by penetration, determines the likeliness you are to resist a number of magic spells. (Most notably death-inducing and mind control spells)
Strength: Opposed by protection, it increases the damage your melee attacks do.
Attack Skill: Opposed by defense skill, the likeliness you will hit an opponent with a melee attack.
Defense Skill: Opposed by attack skill, how likely you are to block or dodge an incoming melee attack.
Precision: How accurate you are with bows and spells, the further you are away from an opponent, the more important this becomes. (above 10 precision each point counts as 2 precision)

Encumbrance: This is how much fatigue you generate when you swing a sword, shoot a bow, or cast a spell. Fatigue is really, really important because it basically flat out kills units. Fatigue is related to how often you take critical hits, the higher your fatigue the more likely you are to take one. It makes the protection stat incredibly less effective once you generate a little bit of fatigue. It also decreases your defense and attack skill slightly as units wear out during the process of the battle. If a unit hits 100 fatigue they fall unconscious. This is normally something that only happens to mages, as spells generate fatigue on top of their encumbrance. For what its worth, fatigue reduces by 5 a round when above 100.



Here's that jaguar warrior of mine. It truthfully has fairly average stats all around. There's not much special inherently in it's stats. It has slightly above average attack (remember, my bless is adding +4 to its attack), defense, strength, morale, and HP.

The really important part is that it has a second form. Whenever it dies, it changes into this:



The experience (noted by the yellow star) the unit has is boosting it's attack, defense, and morale by 1. However, there is still a very noticeable increase in stats nearly across the board. The morale goes up by 4, HP by 6, encumbrance goes down to 2, strength up by 2, and attack up by 1. Additionally, they drop their sword and gain three new attacks. Individually the attacks are all fairly weak. However, flaming weapons provides a second attack for each attack I make, therefore I'm getting six attacks off of a single unit in a round. The main drawback of the werejaguars over the jaguar warriors is that they are size 3, which is a very big deal. Being able to fit 3 units in a square instead of 2 can make a serious difference. That being said, they're still incredibly effective units.



Now, let's compare them to Lanka's Palankashas.

The most notable thing right away is that Palashankas have a lot more base health, and they have much higher strength. This means that they can take a good beating, and when they do hit they hit like trucks. The morale is in between jaguar warriors and werejaguars (blessing a unit adds 2 morale, as both my units are), but its definitely high enough to generally not be a problem. Otherwise, their stats really are equally good or better across the board. Of course, to compensate for this fact the palashankas are much more expensive (55 gold vs 25, 17 resources v 4), and can only be recruited from Lanka's capital. That being said, they are both fantastic bless options, though you generally might want different blesses.