Nachzehrer Devour Needs Save

[Sir Michael Starr]

There needs to be a roll to see if the Nachzehrer’s Devour skill is successful or not. Right now it’s 100% effective, they can gobble up any brother regardless of how good he is. The fact that they swarm in such huge numbers is bad enough, once a few reach maximum size there goes a good fourth or third of your fighting force.

Right now it’s unbalanced, and an easy way to solve that would be to roll against the target’s Melee Defense. It makes sense (being able to dodge the beast’s gaping mouth) and balances the mechanic more.

[nope100500]

There is no attack roll involved? Can somebody confirm this?

I’ve never seen maxed zehrers because I don’t let them feed, and so far they didn’t start maxed out…

[RusBear]

I saw they miss but i think it was somrthing about famous 5 % chance.

[Mike]

+1, it shouldn’t be a 100/95% chance.

Though personally I think it should have more to do with the equipment a bro is currently holding – hilarious as it may be I find gobbling up my pikemen – weapon pointy end towards the stomach, one would assume – rather unbelievable.

Sir Michael Starr wrote:

Right now it’s unbalanced

Here I disagree as it is relatively simple to prevent it from happening. Here are my tips:

– if there are just a couple Nachs mixed with other undead (usually wieders) , snipe them first before thay can feed. Small ones aren’t very durable. If you can’t snipe them, see below

– if you are fighting Nachs exclusively, control where you kill them – don’t shoot all over the place letting them feed while they advance towards you, either hold your fire or jab each one with single arrow to wound but not to kill (mostly viable at the beginning because later on it’s easy to one-shot them with rangers, but at that point you can massacre them easily anyway). As you kill them in melee perform an orderly advance – simply walk on top of the bodies so they can’t be devoured. Keep your formation!

– they have poor resolve, so if you’re confident in your ranged capability (my go-to band composition is 4 bows and 2 crossbows in the backline, with optional thrown weapons on the frontaline… pretty overwhelming volume of missiles each round) you can try to rout them in a single round, before they can either reach your line or feed on the dead. My preffered method later on when I have both high accuracy and Fearsome

– if you start a battle with huge Nachts already around, focus-fire them with your rangers, preferably bowmen. You can either kill them outrifght or seriously cripple them before they can reach your lines

– if the above fails, spearwall is a great way to keep the gluttons away from your men. Without armor it’s easy to whittle them down. You can also use nets and dogs as both give you more time to perforate them at range

– if they still manage to reach a bro, don’t panic! They need to be standing there for a round undisturbed before they can gobble up your man, and you can disturb them with: stuns (maces), shield bash (bucklers/shields), repel (pitchforks/pikes. probably the only one time when the skill becomes useful), breaking their morale (Fearsome perk comes extra handy here) or moving the bro away (either footwork or shieldwalled retreat). I did not try it myself (never really had to as above works really well) but I’m guessing that taunt could possibly move them away as well.

– last but not least, killing them fast also works ;] Can’t do it if they are fresh but if you followed the above steps they’re likely almost dead as they reach you, so moving a well-armored brother or two out of formation to surround them, coupled with reach weapons from 2nd line can finish them off in a hurry.

Hope it helps!

[mrbunnyban]

I think it’s okay as is. Even fighting packs of 22 nachs including some already partially fed and a few fully fed ones seems interesting to fight as it currently stands, auto-eating mechanic and all. I usually only get one brother eaten every fight, but he’s unhurt when he comes out.

[Wargasm]

There are ways of dealing with them – just so long as it’s not Day 2 and you unassumingly take a 1-skull mission as your second contract and (still with a band of six fighters in cloth/leather, without high attack and defence skills and without high durability or weapon efficiency, and armed only with spears and bludgeons) find yourself up against a greater number of nachzehrers, including a ready-made giant one with auto-swallow ability. Under these circumstances, you may already be wounded and may be reluctant to move into melee with 2-3 of the beasts (who will act before you) so as to prevent them from consuming the corpse you just created (assuming you have any action points left after killing it). You may also be reluctant to hold off on dealing a killing blow with your final action points of the turn, since you may already be wounded and/or wavering and/or lacking the energy to form a protective shieldwall and/or concerned that enduring another round of attacks will leave you without enough energy to keep stabbing away at the giant one with your mighty spear-point (still less knock it out with a club). At this point in the game, arrows usually miss (but if they do hit, it’s bound to be an accidental hit against a blocking one that’s already wounded, and which will now provide the nutrition for another of them to attain auto-swallow ability) and spearwalls are exhausting (or at least would be if they didn’t get breached at the first or second attempt).

Once you have a full squad in decent armour with better stats and helpful perks, it all becomes much more manageable. Certainly, by that point, fighting nachzehrers is much more interesting than fighting ghouls in days of olde, but there does seem to be a bit of “imbalance” in how readily you can (sometimes, at random) become swarmed by their parties (sometimes including giant ones) in the very early days when there’s no way you could hope to deal with them.

[Wargasm]

If the swallow attacks were made non-automatic/95%, maybe they could roll against hit points instead of melee defence – i.e. if the target’s too big, the nachzehrer will choke on it, regurgitate it, and become staggered!

[mrbunnyban]

Mike wrote:

Though personally I think it should have more to do with the equipment a bro is currently holding – hilarious as it may be I find gobbling up my pikemen – weapon pointy end towards the stomach, one would assume – rather unbelievable.

This, so much this lol.

[Wanderer]

I would also add onto the list of ways to deal with them, since Devour takes all of their AP:

Two-handed Hammer Shatters. Just ping-pong them while smashing their face in.

[Author]

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