The Dreadmare rear attack that turncoats is so frustrating. Does mental resistance help at all. My mook fighter with great resistance seems to get turned so easily ..

Mook get a base +15% which is nice but not against a Dreadmare... Screg is immune because his class is Psionic

So mental resistance does help? I had soul shield up + a fully powered magic screen and almost everytime those sonsa bitches rear he turns.

yes soul shield, Helm of Serenity etc helps but a mare is a powerful caster especially if a level or two above your guys so the only sure guarantee is immue to mind attacks characters ... of course "Sane Mind" which can be cast from items, priest, bishops and psionic classes are worth bringing to the party

The "rear" of mares, along with similar stuff like "consumes your souls" by the souleater
are special abilities of these creatures,
and while there is no precise info about that part of the code,
in game observation strongly suggests that the spcl abilities are more powerful, repectively harder to resist,
e.g. they may generate higher "value of magic attack" than spells usually do,
perhaps similar to a spell from specialist caster with maxed school/realm&powercast skills.

If your character is always affected,
it may indicate that her/his resistance is already so high that it reached the cap and wrapperd around,
perhaps use the 1.261 exe which allows higher values for attributes and magic resistance,
in case find the dld link here: mad-god.webs.com/downloads.htm


However rear works only at thrown range,
so you could stay at long and cast air&water spells and let your ranger shine,
or use the "run til insanity/turncoat vanishes" exploit.

you could cast 'superman' [adds temp levels] as a way to make them less prone to turn against you... imo that party will do ok

As we know, Iron Will is ultimately your defence here and so it follows that characters with higher Piety will resist special attacks more than others. Of course Samurais won't become afraid and Psionics won't be affected at all because of their class abilities, but for everyone else it's down to Piety.

It's not clearly mentioned in the Wiz8 manual, but the description for Iron Will does state that the character will have more chance to resist the mind-altering effects of magical attacks.

I believe Piety doesn't affect your resistance to said attacks at all except for providing Iron Will when the base score is maxed out. Therefore, if you are not going to max out Piety for a character, raising it will be no good against such enemies.

I believe that Psionics are outright immune to mental effects, so having one who is able to cast Sane Mind (which they *are* able to learn) is probably the best way to deal with such attacks.

(By the way, why does insanity work on robots in this game?)

Well there are only androids in the vanilla game,
if you check CF -> lists -> monster list, no creature is classified as robot,
and definition of android does not exclude use of biologic part like nervous system and/or brain.

Ofc when we look at rfs-81 the race description mentions android immunities,
but it is "only" a bunus to resistance which can overflow
if he uses mental resistance bonus item(s) and is protected by maxed mag screen + soul shield.

Regarding influence of "mere" pie on resistance, i.e. without iron will powerskill:
I dont care for pie at all exept for bishops as the higher SPP make a difference,
but dont keep track on their resistance as I usually live from the bonuses that the buffs provide.
Anyhow one could use a save editor and increase PIe to check the effect on resistance in game,
it should instantnly show the updated value, if insecure edit before lvl up, increase pie on lvl up and check.

In my experience, for a Bishop it makes little difference. It appears that the effect of Piety is additive with the effect of spells known, and even if you don't save spell picks, a Bishop will still end up with a large number of spells known, making the effect rather small past the early levels. Also, past a certain point you really don't need more SP, especially since Restore Magic can only restore so many of them per cast, even at Power 6 (the most common power for that paricular non-learnable spell).

Piety makes more sense on a Priest, who starts with a higher score in the stat and can still use their spells to rescue other characters from status ailments.

yes Psionics are immune and thats a very handy thing in the later parts of the game when powerful mind spell casting snakes become an issue for many parties

as for the troopers, I know my Pandemonium spell works on them and one of the possible effects is insanity... also Samurai DO become afraid as another possible effect so it could be their buff only works against the actual spell and not all the effects... I never cast fear or insanity itself

another odd monster is the verious Golems and they sometimes get fear effects from it too

p.s, yes I like Piety at 100 on my Valkyrie | Lords but find it less useful on Bishops... I only ever take Priest as a stepping stone to them so I don't know how they do at high levels?

With respect to Priests:
* The one non-obvious thing is that Priests get poor combat values. A Priest with good STR and DEX will have no trouble hitting the enemy and (weapon permitting) doing good damage, but will struggle to get extra attacks. Priests are as bad as the other pure casters in this department. (I think they should have been given the combat values that are given to Bards and Gadgeteers; this would compensate for their lack of powerful damaging spells and would be more in line with their appearance in early Wizardry games; it would also give them a meaningful advantage over Bishops.) I found myself changing the character's class to Lord on my first playthrough because of this.
* Restoration is very handy; at power 1, it will reliably cure all status ailments that it can cure (most notably including unconsciousness, which has no learnable specific cure); downside is that it uses the same Divine SP that the other healing spells use. (I really wish they hadn't put every HP restoring spell in the same realm; perhaps they should have made Restore Health usable as a level 2 Earth realm spell.)
* Pray for a Miracle is more of an early game ability; once you reach high levels and can just cast the spells you want, this ability is basically obsolete. Also, its behavior is random.

And Noxious Fumes can knock them unconscious, though it will never inflict nausea on them.