What makes Halfling Swordsmen bad against Chaos Spawn

This month marks the 25 year anniversary of Master of Magic.

In the Master of Magic wiki is a damage calculator, and I would like to know why it is correct in this battle.

Halfling swordsmen, ultra elite with bless and holy armor.

vs.

Chaos Spawn

The halfling warriors have 14 resistance, 10 regular, 1 lucky, 3 bless.

And the Chaos Spawn does give some doom damage, but the rest, I would assume, would be blocked by the 14 resistance. But the damage calculator is correct that it gives a lot of damage. Why?

master-of-magic

Best Answer

You are correct that the Resistance is blocking everything but the melee damage (which is so small it's not worth bothering with) and the doom damage.

The problem is that the Chaos Spawn is a very tough target, and all those defensive buffs don't help you kill it, meanwhile, that doom damage is adding up fast.

Chaos Spawn outside any modifiers has Doom Gaze 4 - 4 damage every time it's in melee.

Ultra-Elite Halfling Swordsmen have 2 HP per figure, and 8 figures in the tile: 16HP. They're dead in 4 rounds. Period. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200gp.

Chaos Spawn has 15HP.

Each figure in the Halfling unit expects to deal 2.4 damage in melee, but the Chaos Spawn's defense will be expected to reduce that to 0.8.

Gaze attacks go first.

Round 1: Doom Gaze, 2 halflings die. 6 figures deal 0.8 damage each = 4.8 damage. Round 2: Doom Gaze, 2 halflings die. 4 figures deal 0.8 damage each = 3.2 damage. Round 3: Doom Gaze, 2 halflings die. 2 figures deal 0.8 damage each = 1.6 damage. Round 4: Doom Gaze, halflings wiped out. Chaos Spawn has taken 9.6 of 15 HP.

And that's assuming the Chaos Spawn is just sitting there taking it. Remember damage output is lower on counterattack, so if it's fighting back, the fight's over in two rounds, and it's probably not even half-dead.

The tl;dr here is that Halflings have basically no hit points, and even Ultra-Elite + Lucky their damage output is very poor.