Doom changes how the hero deals damage with the attack(s) the weapon affects. All damage is automatically dealt (To Hit is irrelevant, and defense won't block any of it), but it also halves the hero's attack value. They'll always deal exactly half of their attack value (rounded down) straight to the enemy's hp. This halves a hero's potential damage output and makes it reliable damage instead. Speaking for myself, I'd prefer the non-Doom damage if my hero has a high To Hit and a large attack, since that means more damage is applied. If the hero's attack is low or their To Hit is low, then Doom is probably the better deal.

For example, lets say the Hero has 30 attack and +5 To Hit (80%). On average, he'll deal 24 damage to the opponent's defense, with any unblocked damage going to hp. In theory, his attack damage could dip as low as 0 (effectively impossible) or go as high as 30 (possible). Assuming 24 damage is rolled, a Great Wyrm (14 Def in Nature Node) will take about 20 damage (4 damage blocked) per swing. A Phantom Beast outside a Sorcery Node's area of influence would take the full 24 damage and die; inside a node, the 22 damage (assuming full shield blocks) would still kill it. If you can crank that To Hit up to 100%, you're looking at 30 damage every swing that has to be blocked by whatever shields the target can muster, which means that 14 Def Great Wyrm takes 16 damage even if it succeeds on every shield roll.

Add Doom, and the hero always deals exactly 15 damage straight to the target's hp. It will take 3 swings to kill a 45hp Great Wyrm and two swings to kill a 20hp Phantom Beast, inside a node or out.

Compare that to a hero with 10 attack and +0 To Hit. The average damage output is 3, meaning a 7 def unit (avg block 2) will take 1hp from an attack, with a lot of variability possible in actual damage dealt per swing. Doom changes that to 5 damage every time, all the time.

Phantasmal is a different beast entirely. It completely negates the target's Defense unless the target has Illusion Immunity, in which case Phantasmal is negated instead. You still need a good To Hit so your Attack icons translate into Damage.

While we're on the subject, Lightning adds Armor Piercing. This is similar to Phantasmal, except it only halves the target's defense and Illusions Immunity doesn't prevent it from working. Again, you need To Hit to translate Attack into Damage. Also, I learned something new: apparently certain kinds of immunities apply their effect after AP is applied, which explains why Warrax still struggles against Sky Drakes.
Here's a chart if you are curious.

Also, I have a correction to make: Roland, Mortu, and Torin have Magic Immunity, which does a good job at blocking Lightning Breath (avg 13 damage vs avg 15 block). They still have to contend with the follow-up 13 avg damage melee hit though, which requires over 40 shields to completely block with avg defense rolls. They'll still take a beating from a single drake if the drake can initiate, but it isn't quite as bad as I was thinking at first.

Sounds like you did your calculations wrong. How did you arrive at that number?

Demi-God Torin starts with 12 Def. Add +8 from Plate, +4 from Misc item, and +3 from Sword (sacrificing Axe damage to do so!), and you reach 27. Super Agility adds +13 for a running total of 40. Add Holy Armor (+2) and Iron Skin (+5) to reach 47 Def. Chaos Channel some Demon Armor on him for +3 Def to reach 50. High Prayer gives +2 for one battle to reach 52, and that's about the max you can reach without getting into situational bonuses (city walls, Resist Elements, Bless, etc). Torin has the highest base Def among any hero, so it is all downhill from there with regard to raw Defense score.

1. Chaos Channels only adds +2 if you manage to get the Demon Skin.
2. As a bit of a prelude to the next segment, is the +2 defense bonus for Platemail invisible? I can only see an increase of 6 shields on the hero in question.

So how did I arrive at those numbers? Theria (Grand Lord) had the "Plate of Omnipotence" (4200 gold).

+6 defense
Wraithform
Invulnerability (said to be worth +7 defense)
Magic Immunity (+50 defense versus breath attacks)

I don't know if those numbers stack but if added up that plate has got a defense of +63/+56. Theria (Grand Lord) has got a defense of 15. 15+63/56=+78/71 versus breath attacks

Given that you were talking about needing +80 defense I was almost assuming that they had to stack.

That's 21 defense normally to a maximum of 24 defense at Demi-God.

I pulled the +3 from the MoM wiki, when I was checking for numbers.

Quick note: Enchant Item has the exact same functionality as Create Artifact EXCEPT that Enchant Item has limits on the value of item powers that can be applied. Anything Enchant Item can make, Create Artifact can make for the same price. I'm not going to list Enchant Item every time.

It isn't listed in the item description, but equipping a Shield grants the Large Shield ability regardless of whether you buy it or create it yourself (the ability does appear in the hero's list of abilities when the shield is equipped). When creating an item using Create Artifact, Chain comes with an inherent +1 def, and Plate comes with an inherent +2 Def. When you buy the items, those Def bonuses for Chain and Plate are already part of the item stats.

Creating a +1 item yields the following:
+1 Shield -> +1 Def and Large Shield
+1 Chain -> +2 Def
+1 Plate -> +3 Def

So you can make Plate with +8 Def, +4 Move, +6 Res, and an extra ability if you have the spellbooks to allow one. Checking the item stats after creation will show the extra Def for chain and plate.

Those numbers do not stack.
Theria has 15 Def at Grand Lord (Agility already included in that number). The +6 from her armor stacks, yielding 21 Def. That's her standard defense, and yes leveling to Demi-God with that same armor gets her to 24 Def.

Wraithform doesn't help her defense any more, and it hasn't since Commander level. Wraithform grants Weapon Immunity, which makes defense at least 10 against non-magical weapons, but her defense is already higher than that.

Magic Immunity works similarly to Wraithform. Against magic attacks (Lightning Breath counts as a magic attack), it sets Defense to 50 unless the unit already has 50 or better Defense. So when a magic attack hits her, she uses 50 Def against that attack because her normal defense is only 24.

Invulnerability doesn't actually add any defense at all. Instead, each time the unit is hit, two damage is blocked automatically. 7 Def with a 30% success rate (standard block rate) blocks 2 damage on average, which is where that "worth +7 defense" comes from. The equivalence isn't perfect, since +7 defense could block anywhere from 0 to 7 damage, while Invulnerability always blocks exactly 2 damage from each attack, and straight defense would be affected by those very few spells/effects that adjust the percentage chance that a single shield successfully blocks (ex. Lucky gives a +10% chance for each shield to block, so 40% chance instead of the normal 30%) while Invulnerability is not affected. Invulnerability doesn't work against Doom damage, but it does help against Illusion attacks.
Don't get me wrong, invulnerability is good, but it isn't actually +7 Def.

Lets say your Theria assaults a Sorcery Node.
If a Sky Drake hits your Grand Lord Theria, then it will launch a 22 strength Lightning Breath at her before the melee part of the exchange. The Lightning Breath cuts her 21 Def down to 10 (1/2, round down), then Magic Immunity kicks in and sets her Def to 50 for the Breath, and Invulnerability will kick in after the Def roll to block up to 2 damage that slips through her defense. The Drake then follows up with a 22 strength melee attack against Theria's 21 def, and Invulnerability blocks 2 damage that slips through on that attack. (Theria counter attacks during the melee attack portion of this exchange, but we're ignoring her attack for this example). Assuming average attack and def successes, the Drake does 0 damage with the breath (13 dam vs 15 block, -2) and 5 damage with the melee attack (13 dam vs 6 block, -2).

If a Phantom Warrior unit then swings on Theria, those 6 figures each swing with a 5 strength melee attack. Their Illusion attacks mean Theria has 0 def against each of those 6 swings, but Invulnerability will kick in and block up to 2 damage from each of those swings (max 12 damage blocked, assuming each swing does at least two damage). She'd be looking at 6 damage avg (1 dam vs 0 block) without invulnerability, but with it she might not take any. It all depends on how the Phantom Warriors roll for their attacks.

I mentioned the 80 defense to illustrate just how high normal defense has to be in order to fully block damage from the armor piercing Lightning Breath (assuming average rolls on both sides). 20 strength at 60% accuracy yields 12 damage (average). Armor piercing cuts 80 def down to 40, and 40 shields at 30% success rate yields 12 damage blocked (average). I don't think 80 defense is reachable under any circumstances.

I did just check and it seems to pan out in terms of creating a +6 Plate and getting +8 defense.

However, and do correct me if I'm wrong, but using the "cost" of abilities as listed on the wiki 4200 is what it would cost if you were to create the item yourself.

+300 - Inherent cost
+800 - +6 defense
+1200 - Wraithform
+700 - Magic Immunity
+1200 - Invulnerability

4200 - Total

Wouldn't this mean that I'm missing out on +2 defense while paying for the inherent cost?
Is that how "Blur" works and if so does it stack with "(High) Prayer"?
The Sky Drake in question had a full stack of Phantom Beasts as its bodyguard. I had to "Holy Word" them away.

In terms the numbers, that does explain some things but it also feels as though adding defense does very little at the default 30%.

*shrug* I haven't run those numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me. On the bright side, you don't have to spend time or casting skill if you just buy it. On the flip side, making your own items lets you tailor them specifically for the particular hero and situation you're facing (or just make a powerful one that can go to any hero of similar abilities).

I probably should have said that the armors that you buy don't get that extra inherent bonus; the listed stats are the listed stats. After all, there is a +1 Def chain armor, which you are unable to make yourself (you have to give an item at least a +1 enchantment to make it, so the minimum Chain defense is +2).

Blur doesn't affect hit chance or defense chance. It simply adds an extra step between "Calculate Damage Amount" and "Calculate Block Amount", and it gives each point of Damage a 10% chance of missing instead of hitting. Any damage that misses due to Blur doesn't need to be blocked by defense. On average, for every 10 points of damage done, 1 of those points will miss instead due to Blur.

Prayer and High Prayer, on the other hand, DO increase the chance each shield icon will block a point of damage. High Prayer also adds +2 Def to each friendly unit. The effects of these two spells does not stack; if you cast High Prayer in a battle, then the only thing a casting of Prayer will do in that same battle is waste mana. Prayer and High Prayer do stack with Lucky, for a total 50% chance each shield icon will block a point of damage.

Every little bit can help. While all of the above number comparisons are based on averages, keep in mind that each icon represents a die roll to see if it works. High Defense does make a unit harder to hurt because it has more chances to block damage.

This might also be a good time to point out that we've mostly been talking about single figure units (heroes and high tier summons). Multi-figure units have stats listed for each figure in the unit, and when damage is dealt, each new figure gets to apply its full shields against the remaining damage. Kill the first figure in a Klackon Swordsman, and the next figure gets to roll for its full shield total before taking damage.

Additionally, a multi-figure unit makes a separate attack for each figure. That unit of swordsmen with 3 Attack and 6 figures is throwing a total of 18 possible damage points at their target, but the target gets to roll their full shields 6 times (once per each set of 3 Attack).

Is it possible to use ITEMMAKE to give those items their inherent bonus?
So, given that Halflings are the only ones that come standard with Lucky, would it generally be more effective to reduce your opponent's "To Hit" score than to raise your defense's effectiveness?

I don't know. I've never gotten ITEMMAKE to work, and I've never cared enough to try very hard.

That said, I'm not sure why you'd want to buff the stats on the pre-existing items. The items are what they are; if you increase the stats, the price might increase as well. Iirc, the base price for that +1 chain armor is 150 gold, which is the base mana price for making chain armor when you haven't selected any enchantments yet.

That is certainly one way to go about increasing your survivability. However, off-hand I can only think of a few spells that can do that, and all are combat spells so you'd have to cast them each combat. Warp Reality affects all non-Chaos creatures (including yours!), Vertigo affects the enchanted unit's attempts to attack, Invisibility affects all attempts to attack the enchanted unit.

There's also the Counterattack penalty, but that requires multiple creatures attacking the same target.

What are you trying to accomplish? If it is "avoiding damage", then the best way is to not let the enemy hit you. One of the reasons Gunther, Bagthru, Shalla, and Fang are so effective is because breath and thrown weapons strike before the simultaneous melee attacks, so any enemies that die to the thrown/breath don't participate in the melee exchange. Likewise, First Strike lets you deal damage to your target before they can counter attack (unless they have Negate First Strike), which lets Roland and Mortu stomp on enemies and makes most cavalry more dangerous.

Just remember that Breath, Thrown, and First Strike only activate when the unit is attacking, not when they are being attacked.

No it isn't. ITEMMAKE doesn't save the inherent bonus. Probably by design. It's not easy to fix either. You see, instead of saving the powers on the items, it saves their stats. This means that every time you start editing an item, ITEMMAKE has to convert those stats back into powers. As a result, if you were to add code to save the inherent bonus, then the next time such an item was loaded, the total would be treated as the power without the bonus, and on saving the item again the bonus would get re-added. Ad infinitum, or until the maximum stat amount is reached on every item.

In v1.31, you're always losing out on default chain and plate items (when strictly looking at price or cost only, of course).

(For the record, v1.60 works around this by comparing the saved cost against the calculated cost, but that was only worth coding in as part of a built-in default item editor that replaces ITEMMAKE altogether.)

EDIT: Technically, you could use an outside editor (the tweaker can probably do this) to add the bonus to all the items, but then you can't ever open ITEMMAKE again without messing up your items. This is also not the only bug in ITEMMAKE.

Let me first respond to why I asked about ITEMMAKE. I asked about the program since it seems difficult to operate and buggy to boot so I figured that I should ask whether it is worthwhile to mess with it in the first place because I didn't even know if it allowed me to edit the stats. I could have imagined that you can only select +6 defense as an option and that was why the incorrect stats were in the game to begin with.

I cannot create certain items, though. The item that I used as an example would require spellbooks in mutually exclusive domains in 1.31.
Does "Immunity to Illusions" negate that attack penalty given by "Invisibility"?

I'm not sure but my experience seems to have been that counterattacks worked better against Air Elementals than me attacking them.

Is that, referring to v1.60, "Caster of Magic"?

What is the most interesting thing that you can do with ITEMMAKE? As in, is there a compelling reason why one should want to use the program on a regular basis? Furthermore, does your last point mean that I could use the new editor without issue?

Except - and this is sort of trivial, but the thread is "Experience of a New Player" - that one can defend against flying units. In some game versions the game will incorrectly let ranged ground units initiate melee against a flying opponent, causing the ranged unit to be massacred as it can't actually do damage on the attack. Anyway, that's one case where the unit is better off counter-attacking even though it "sort of" could attack.

One more possible fringe case: two weak units with immolation - I don't know in what order the immolation effects are applied, so perhaps there, it's better to be the counter-attacker. Possibly not, it's just a guess.

In my first draft of that post, I mentioned that very bug and then decided "nah, don't confuse the issue with a bug" and rewrote that section. Whoops! XD

Egg on my face aside, I'll stand by my statement with the reasoning "it's a bug; they have ammo left so they should be shooting instead of trying to faux melee and they don't actually get to attack in the apparent exchange so it doesn't count"!

You are correct, and this bug exists in the 1.31 release.

Huh. I'm reading the Master of Magic wiki article on Immolation, and there's some things I didn't know. Apparently it triggers on melee attacks, ranged attacks, and counter attacks, including breath/thrown/gaze attacks, so it can trigger more than once in a particular exchange if the immolating unit has multiple attacks. Immolating bowmen deliver arrow damage and immolation damage when they shoot, as does an immolating Colossus. Apparently all Touch Attacks trigger on those categories, so ranged Cockatrices would be horrifying.

Anyway. Immolation is a rider on those other attacks, so there is no immolation related advantage a counter-attacker can use that an attacker can't use. Gaze attacks trigger for both, but attacker gazes before defender does. First Strike, Breath, and Thrown don't trigger when counter attacking. Melee attacks (and their rider touch attacks) occur simultaneously, so there is no advantage for the defender there either.

No, it's referring to this: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=10633. But it's not fully finished, so try it at your own risk (read the thread for a fix to its one major issue).

I've only ever really used ITEMMAKE once (aside from test cases and experimentation), to redo most of the items in the default database in one go. I then used the resulting items in my games for years. That's how I would expect it to be used.

However, as a new player, there's a good chance that one will find out about more rules down the road, which may suggest editing the items again. For instance, as touched on in the thread before, To Hit is useless in combination with Chaos weapons, as are Phantasmal and Lightning. Yet, there are items with these combination of powers in the default list, and it may not be obvious in a first edit session that there shouldn't be.

You could technically use the editor in v1.31b / v1.60 and then go back to v1.31 with the resulting item set, but the inherent armor bonus of chain and plate needs to be fixed on load, and v1.31 will not do that for you, so nothing would change. But if you happened to like one of those versions, you'd probably never even think about ITEMMAKE again.

That is probably the reason.
I read that is a thing in "Caster of Magic" using blue/green builds.
Wow, that is a lot of different versions. May I ask when you think that the next update is going to be?

Not that I mind testing but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel a bit overwhelmed. I was going to try out all of them and slowly increase the difficulty but I don't know if I have the time. Is there a hex editor that you would recommend?

(I picked up the tweaker, by the way.)

v1.31b is the current version my personal project, which has the goal of fixing v1.31 bugs without changing anything that is not either strictly necessary for that purpose, or is a quality of life improvement. However, even then, I aim to provide in-game options to turn any new things off, and if a problem has more than one reasonable solution, I try to implement as many as I can. I am yet undecided on how to handle AI improvements, but that's fine since I haven't gotten to any serious ones yet. I defer that to the Community Patch for now.

Speaking of which, v1.60 is technically the continuation of the v1.40-v1.50-v1.51-v1.52 series (the jump in version number was requested by Seravy), but in practice it's simply v1.31b ported over to v1.52. If you're already playing the (official) Community Patch, then v1.60 is the version for you. If you aren't, then v1.31b is much closer to what you're used to. v1.31b is also the version I test the most, and the one I play if I ever do.

There is no reason I can think of to play v1.40, v1.50, or v1.52 over the others. v1.51 still has some merit, but only because when preparing the CP for Slitherine, a lot of changes made in v1.40-v1.51 were reversed to get v1.52 closer back to the vanilla game. I haven't gotten around to adding in-game options for all of those changes yet. There's also no reason to play v1.31a or v1.52.03a (the previous versions of my project).

Finally, Caster of Magic is something else entirely. You'll either love it or hate it, but apart from the most basic of rules, it's not comparable to the MoM versions. It's a different design philosophy. If you're interested in CoM, I'd recommend investing in the Windows version instead. v6.08b is more for those who for some reason can't use that, but can still run the DOS v6.08, and is meant to be a port of only the QoL features of v1.31b.

I am currently away from this project. It is only one of three very time-consuming hobbies I have that are constantly competing with one another. A few months ago, MoM landed on the bottom of the list, and is still climbing its way back up. That being said, I do want to recompile v1.60 with all the known issues fixed, and hopefully send it to Slitherine before the remake launches in December. Naturally, that also means recompiling v1.31b. However, v1.31X will never get pushed as an official version - it will always remain a personal project.

Not really, I'm afraid. I use the hex-editor built into RadASM (v2.2.2.0, a rather old code editor I originally got for brushing up on assembly years ago). There was a freeware editor I used to use between the DOS times and this, but I can't even recall its name any more. =/

I use that on a daily basis. I'm extremely thankful to IlSe for not having to write one for myself. :)