In "Sceptre of Fire", what should I level Rugnur into?

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revolting_peasant
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In "Sceptre of Fire", what should I level Rugnur into?

Post by revolting_peasant »

In The Sceptre of Fire official campaign, the main protagonist leader is Rugnur - initially an L1 Dwarvish Fighter. Now, in this campaign you have access to the Runesmith line of advancements, so whenever a Fighter levels, you need to choose between making it a Steelclad or a Runesmith. On both these paths, the level cap is 3 - Dwarvish Lord vs Dwarvish Runemaster.

My question is: Which one is a better choice for Rugnur? For a non-leader unit, you would make a tally of how many you have of each kind and how many you expect to need in defensive lines or strike forces, and choose sometimes this way and sometimes the other. But for a leader, the considerations are different: On the one hand, he mustn't die, so high HP is important; on the other hand, a leader often stays in his castle and recruits rather than go out and fight, so maybe it's not terrible that his HP is limited; then again on the first hand, a Runemaster is a tempting target for ranged attackers, while a Lord can at least dish out 10 HP of damage back; then again on the other hand, with an Runemaster, you can be much more certain your attacks will land some damage even in unfavorable conditions (only 9% of no damage at all when attacking, at least 49% chance of full damage).

Now, had the Runesmith been able to reach Level 4 and become an Arcanister - this would probably have been the better option: More melee damage than the Lord, less of an HP difference (still significant though - 54 vs 79), that's mitigated further by the better resistance (50%-50%-50% blade-impact-pierce vs 40%-30%-30%).

So, what should be my choice?
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Paulomat4
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Re: In "Sceptre of Fire", what should I level Rugnur into?

Post by Paulomat4 »

The runemaster is much better in my opinion. Impact is a great damage type and the magic special makes sure he puts out more damage on average. the runemaster also has crazy resistances comparable to the dwarvish guard which more than makes up for the missing hp. In my opinion resistances>hit points since healing is fixed number and doesn't scale with hp.
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Elder2
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Re: In "Sceptre of Fire", what should I level Rugnur into?

Post by Elder2 »

So now you can do that? interesting, runemaster of course. Even if it can't advance on arcanister, that would be a bit too much. Btw though him being able to advance on runemaster... seems weird to me really, he was supposed to just be a fighter leading his party.
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revolting_peasant
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Re: In "Sceptre of Fire", what should I level Rugnur into?

Post by revolting_peasant »

Paulomat4 wrote: March 10th, 2018, 3:05 pmThe runemaster is much better in my opinion. Impact is a great damage type and the magic special makes sure he puts out more damage on average.
But that's not a major consideration for a leader. I usually need to keep him out of trouble. Whenever his HP is even close to any sort of danger - he's completely out.
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BTIsaac
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Re: In "Sceptre of Fire", what should I level Rugnur into?

Post by BTIsaac »

You need him levelled up in the later half of the campaign or he might die. The last couple of scenarios mainly involve running away from infinite number of enemies. That said, I recall finishing with him being a steelclad and I'm not even sure why Rugnur exists, except to have someone doing the recruiting while Thursagan is at the front doing most of the work.
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revolting_peasant
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Re: In "Sceptre of Fire", what should I level Rugnur into?

Post by revolting_peasant »

Having recently finished the campaign, I can safely say making him a Steelclad rather than a Runesmith was the right call (at least on Medium difficulty).
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