What is your vote for the most overpowered spell in the game?
 

I'm going with Fear. It only costs 10 mana, it can be cast on a stack of any size (ie it is not restricted to your leadership), and it lasts a whopping 4 rounds at level 3.

As a mage with Higher Magic, you can disable 2 stacks of opponents within the first round, assuming they are lower level than any of your troops. And the spell is cheap enough and lasts long enough that it can easily be maintained.

And, as a bonus side effect, a boss skips his turn to cast spells if all of his remaining troops are feared.

I was considering Evlin, however it's more of a support for Black Knights, with the Black Nights being the overpowered of the two.

Any other suggestions?

Target, or Time Back.

Target: Fear is good, but target lets you keep 4 out of 5 of your units completely out of combat

Time Back: Powerful resurrection effects, that also dispells. Heals any amount, and resets the use of all abilities.

Am I right in thinking Target only draws fire from archer units, or does it affect all units? I haven't really used the spell much.

All units in its level range. And if you haven't used it, I can understand how you would think fear is better :).

Keep in mind however, that a spells duration ticks down at the end of a units turn. THis is important with level 1 target that lasts only a single turn. Casting it on something, then immediately going with that unit will use it right up!

Stone skin. Too easy to reach 95% physical resistance with it.
There're lots of nice spells, but I don't think they're overpowered. Time back comes close though.

Fear hands down. Makes Blind completely worthless.

The most powerful spell is in my opinion the Phantom Spell. Especially useful when doing a no-loss game. It can be used in a lot of ways. I think the game has a pre-Phantom and a post-Phantom phase. The game, especially on impossible, is very hard pre-Phantom and gets to ok and even easy post-Phantom. This is how important I consider the Phantom spell to be.

I would like to include Death Star when playing as a mage. Especially useful when fighting the dragons in their home land. They are nicely lined up at the beginning of the match, so a single Death Star can target all but one of the dragon stacks. With an Int of 50+ each stacks takes 10k or more in damage - doing astral damage it works wonder on black dragons as well:-). After a single Death Star spell, there is only a few remaining dragon stacks left...

Fear works on melee units even if you have units yourself of the same level. If you can surround your low level stack (for instance your level 3 Inquisitors) so that the melee unit can only get to your higher level stacks it will do nothing. I have tested this in KBTL but I guess it is the same in KBAP. I just tried it in KBAP, and it works there as well.

And I agree to what has already been mentioned: Fear, Target, Time Back and Stoneskin are all very powerful spells.

I'd like to put forward Mana Spring, at least for those trying for a no-loss game. Stoneskin isn't good unless you can get 55% physical resistance from other items, so by itself it isn't overpowered. Target is good, but not stellar unless you're comboing it with a turn-back-time or with a high-resistance setup (stoneskin + other resistances for example). Mana spring, all by itself, can transform most victories into no-loss victories.

I second the motion on the Phantom spell; scapegoat unit and damage-dealer in one, a defensive and offensive spell in one complete package.

Eviln gets second place IMO. The most powerful resurrection spell in KBAP, up to 30% of the original stack (though the most powerful resurrection effect still goes to the repair ability of the repair droids, up to 85% of a comparable leadership droid stack, which is further enhanced by yet again the Phantom spell).

How exactly does it do that, if I may ask?

Target lets you put all your casualties in one spot, if any, so you can resurrect.

Saying that stoneskin 'isn't good unless you can get 55% physical resistance' is completely false. A level 3 stoneskin is 40% boost to defense and physical resistance, which will net a massive reduction in a units damage (Even pretty good from non-physical sources).

Mana spring, while a great tool for a few of the harder battles, is just not as required, especially compared to KBTL where it was your best in battle source of mana.

Magic Spring is ok, and potentially provides endless mana for resurrects/spells when you leave a small stack of no-retal enemies (vampires/imps/royal snakes/etc.) alive, but for my warrior game (where rage generation is a non-issue) I didn't find a need to generate endless mana. As such, a fully leveled Mana Accelerator or Calm Rage for boss fights provided me with all my mana needs.

Then again, maybe its just because I used easily resurrectable units in the form of undead and droids.

As such, I still think Phantom is the best since all the classes could abuse it.

I think some of you guys might be misunderstanding the question: It isn't about the most powerful spell, it's the most OVERPOWERED spell.

Phantom and Target I can see. Death Star is strong but not overpowered considering its cost and the fact that you can only cast it once a turn. Yes it does a lot of damage. Fear is overpowered because you can shut down a stack for 4 turns regardless of the size of that stack. With a mage, you can shut down 4 stacks in 2 rounds, effectively allowing you to do whatever you please.

But.. how can something be overpowered if it wasn't worth casting in most of the fights, compared to something that I cast in almost every fight?

If you're playing a Mage, I'd say Phantom. Warrior or Paladin, Fear. The ability of a mage with tier III higher magic to cast a 20 mana Phantom and still cast any regular spell is crazy, especially with summoner 3. All you have to do is max out one creature, ie black knights, with max leadership items, and then Phantom like crazy. Fear is great, but its lack of use vs too many creature types can't compare to the utility of Phantom + Summoner 3 + Higher Magic 3.

You probably play Mage a lot? :)

I play warrior and I don't use fear at all. If I cast fear on one enemy, I only keep one enemy at bay. If I cast Phantom on my Bone Dragons and fly those over to the enemy lines, I practically keep almost all of my enemies at bay, and I get to damage them to boot.

25 mana is not out of reach for a warrior, especially with double rage-generation and mana accelerator/calm rage to convert it to mana.

Like I said, any class could abuse Phantom.

I agree that phantom is still powerful for a war or pal, but with fear lasting 4 turns, you can use it to lock down almost all of a 5 unit low level enemy. At 10 mana, I think it's a much closer call vs the 25 needed for a max phantom for mana-strapped classes. Also, with magic runes being in much shorter supply, it's harder to justify getting summoner 3.

I'm going for stoneskin and phantom. Remove these 2 spells and a lot of tactics would be obliterated.

In my last game I used the Black Knights for the Final part of the game. Resistance went from 52 to 92%, and it boosted defence by 40% which at that time meant around 30 points to defence when mastery was on max.
That means a whopping 92% damage reduction from most physical enemies. An attack on a Black knight with 52% resistance which normally does 1000 dmg will only do 80 dmg on a black knight with Stoneskin on. The two hardest bosses in the game becomes very very easy even without evlin.

Baal is easy on impossible mode = overpowered spell. (and unit)

Phantom should be nerfed for the next game, so that unit skills won't be allowed for the summoned unit. It would still be a good spell for the extra tank and dmg output. OR the mana cost should be greatly increased.
Summoning paladins, green and bone dragons, inqusitors, dryads, demonologists etc for their skills makes it overpowered imo.

I play warrior on Impossible difficulty, and I could definitely say Phantom at 25 mana is definitely more cost effective than Fear at 10 mana. Phantom lasts 3 turns, and you could use the last turn more effectively by just doing a "wait" command. Like I mentioned before, a warrior can only cast one spell, so you could only cast Fear on one enemy at a time. That means on turn 1 you've only locked down one enemy; the rest makes a bee-line for your troops, and that is if you are LUCKY enough to have most/all of your enemies as melee types that have low speed. Turn 2 has only 2 enemies locked down; by this turn, movement 3 melee enemies have reached your troops. That means that they have a chance of causing casualties to your army, making you spend more mana to bring back lost troops.

Fear has 3 disadvantages:
1) It is level dependent, and enemies could still attack equal or lower level units in your army.
2) It doesn't damage the enemies.
3) It controls only one stack of enemies. As you've probably noticed in the later part of the game, you sometimes fight enemies that are distributed into 7+ stacks.

Summoner 3 is nice, but not necessary. If you Phantom tough units the enemies would not be able to even finish off your Phantom, and it would most likely disappear due to the spell's expiry and not due to death. Remember, warrior has double the base leadership gain of a mage.

And before you say that warrior is a mana-strapped class, please first try playing warrior, with a focus on mana accelerator (and calm rage for boss fights), and prepare to be pleasantly surprised. :)

But words are sometimes cheap, so attached is a screenshot of a sample battle of a warrior using Phantom. First turn of the battle here, can you tell me how many enemies are looking to attack and damage my "real" army? :) This enemy type also shows a 4th disadvantage of fear; the enemies I usually want to cast Fear on are range units. But Fear doesn't work on Necromancers (undead), the only ranged unit on the enemy's side.

Um, you do realize that a lot of this is army dependant right? I mean, an army of level 5 units gets a whole lot more out of fear than one with level 3's in it.

Also, lets not compare how well a spell works against an opposing army of only melee units, since a LOT of spells will lock that particular guy down. Also take into account class.

Phantom's strength is based on two things: The leadership of the stack, and the intelligence of the hero. Since warriors have twice the leadership (roughly) of mages, their phantoms (without summoning) are twice the size, before intelligence is considered. Mage has to get a lot of int and other skills to get anywhere near what the warrior gets out of this spell.

Fear on the other hand is a control spell that will lock down a unit from attacking for most of the game. For a smaller army, this can often be more important than doing more damage. It also prevents a hero from casting, if his only stacks are feared. Also, don't compare a single phantom to a single fear, but rather a pair of fears, since a mage can cast it twice. They are both good spells to be sure.

Just because a spell worked great in one particular run-through doesn't mean it is 'overpowered' in all of them, since army makeup, items, and class changes between them.

First game with mage (no-loss), using paladins in a full army, stoneskin+target made it easy, because I also had +20% physical resistance. I was using phantom instead of resurrect.
Second game with warrior (no-buy), mostly vampires, no physical resistance item, but stone skin still halves damage, and that's all it needed.
Third game with paladin (level 1-2), swordsman + cave spiders with stone skin. Also, using dryads + marauders + phantom for infinite money.

Fear is nice too, but it just doesn't compare to stone skin, or phantom for that matter. Slow and Trap are just as nice, but they're all situational.

Another mage player. :) Sorry, I'm not trying to bash the mage class at all, it's just that I was just commenting on what Harush mentioned, that Fear was better than Phantom for Paladin/Warrior due to mana issues.

Your comment about the level of the army is listed as one of the disadvantages that I listed for Fear. I understand your point, all spell strategies involve parallel army planning, it's just that I find Phantom has less restrictions than Fear.

You talk about locking down enemies with Fear, and I guess for a mage Fear might be better; I really don't know, I don't play mage. But as I've shown in my previous screenshot, I could "lock down" enemies with Phantom as well. I could actually lock down more of them, especially if they are melee. I could spam Phantom every round for a warrior since the Phantoms do battle and generate rage, which is converted to mana via mana accelerator.

It really does depend on your army and hero. If you are a mage, Phantom is not nearly as strong since, starting early mid-game, your phantom does not have a chance of surviving even one round while Fear will still lock stacks down for four regardless of how big those stacks are.

For the fighter types, it won't be nearly as good since your phantoms CAN survive a lot of punishment and you can only cast 1 Fear per round.

I think we can all agree that both spells are very useful. And so is target, stoneskin, time back, haste (lvl 3), magic spring, and I also love slow, specially early game.

Now I wonder what would be the most useless spell? I am personally very disappointed with all damage spells, but that' s probably because I havent played mage yet (finished with paladin, now using warrior).

Thats a very good point. With mana accelerator and enormous rage generation warriors never have an issue with casting these 25 mana phantoms each round. Not lategame anyway. Phantom makes fear become obsolete.

I very often used the 2xfear in round 1 and 2 with my mage, and the spell was also offently used in my warrior game as well (Since phantom IS too expensive early game).
I just don't think either spell is overpowered, since none of them was urgenly "needed" in most of the battles.
More often did I cast oily mist+Fire Rain midgame and lategame it turned to Geyser lvl2+Geyserlvl3/Death Star.
The warrior mixed fear with other dissables like slow and trap

When fear isn't a favored spell mid- and lategame it's just not overpowered. It's good but not too good. Phantom was one of the the main reasons of succes in my Paladin + 4 other stack lineup in the warrior game. As mentioned, removing the abilities on phantoms would balance it a bit.

Stone Skin however.... imo it's by far THE best spell AND overpowered too. Nothing comes close, but then again... it's only my oppinion

Dmg spells are for the mage. I remember playing an impossible mage game on KBTL and I rarely used dmg spells.

In KBAP you are going to love dmg spells. With Transmute, buffed concentration and the Mana Accelerator you can easily use 60-70 mana on round 1 and 2, and still manage to have plenty of mana for the rest of the battle.

I'm voting Call of Nature. Except you can use those to get an evlin.. Hmm. Lightning never comes close to Geyser bus cost nearly as much.

So, I think there is a big difference here. I have played through the game many times, less than a third of which have been as a mage. You have ... never played as a mage at all? I don't really think you can use your own inexperience as somehow adding weight to your opinion. Sorry if that comes off as rough, but as someone who prefers warrior or Paladin, this pejorative comment followed by your admission of limited experience ticks me off.

Also, if you FEAR a stack, it prevents the enemy from casting a spell on the turn of that stack (even if they have someone to attack). This is 'locked down'. Unless you are phantoming dryads, ogres, or something else that can somehow negate a stacks turn, you are not 'locking it down'. I have used phantom a lot, especially as a warrior. I have used fear a lot, especially as a mage. I have used target and timeback and stone skin all a lot, as ANY class. Therefore I think of them as more universally better spells.

Want to try?
Check out this:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...204#post150204
It is an example of using the Armageddon spell against Moro, and it works very well :-)

My apologies for the comment, in hindsight it is quite offensive, especially directed at a player who plays and finishes the game multiple times using different classes. No need to apologize for your reactive statement, albeit admittedly a bit rough, is warranted in this case.

Going back to the topic at hand, I guess the reason why I think Phantom is the most overpowered spell is because of it's flexibility due to the fact that it doesn't have restrictions. Fear doesn't affect droids/undead/level 5 units. Target doesn't affect level 5 units. Mana Spring/Stone Skin/Turn Back Time are reactionary spells, focused on saving a single stack (though I understand how this could be powerful for single-stack strategies).

If I cast Phantom on a high-movement, high-initiative stack and land that Phantom stack in the front of enemy lines then there is no need for Target, almost all enemies would focus aggro on it, especially when you land it in front of the enemy range attackers. No need for Stone Skin or Turn Back Time since your real army would remain relatively intact. It tops Fear in that it deals damage and generates rage as well.

As for my "experience", in fairness, I do play in what I think are the most challenging parameters; for the KB series, I only play it with the goals of impossible difficulty/no-loss/fast time/high level. I played Paladin in KBTL:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...t=4864&page=12

In KBAP I have yet to finish my warrior game due to a stupid "quest"-related mistake:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...t=11137&page=4

But you are right, I guess I don't play as much as most players in this forum. I tend to play a game only once, and only play it multiple times if it poses a new challenge, and if I have the time. So take my 2-cents with a grain of salt.

It is definately difficult to to pin down the most important scenarios. My experience with no-loss games, is that the real point where you have to push spell selection and item selection to the limit is against Hero's, and against the final three big bosses. I'm fairly certain that you can do this with a warrior via a few different routes, and depending on the route, you will value different spells.

For instance, if you are going to make Droids your primary aggressor's, then phantom is both offensive and resurrection, which is a good combination. My play style is to use Dragons when I can, and I get a lot more out of timeback and Target in such scenario. 42 mana to remove all casualties from the first two turns is fast and efficient for that. I could also phantom a dragon stack for a second dragon stack, but as a purely aggressive move, it doesn't represent an answer against the biggest problems the army has: Big bad spells, 'halve', poison, dispel.

Black Knight-solo stack strategy doesn't really care about losses, as long as it can keep mana up, and keep replenishing with Eviln. Phantom probably isn't really worth it here, due to its mana cost, and the defensive nature of the build.

Anyhow, I think we've said all that needs saying on that regards. If we were to put up a 'best 5' spells, I'm sure most people would really only quibble on the top one or two:

1. Time Back
2. Target
3. Stone Skin
4. Phantom
5. Fear

Maybe people who actually use damage spells can weigh in on which are the truly good ones, but I really couldn't comment here.

My vote goes to Black Hole spell, 3300-5500 Astral Damage 60 mana (38int). In the battle vs Uchkuk his army vs me lvl54 mage normal was "invincible", round 1 boom he had 1/5 of his army left with 1 spell i was like "OMG" Overpowered much.

Finished off the rest in the same round lol and done it couple more times for other late game battles like those damned Black dragons.. toast :D

Playing as a mage that uses damage spells, Geysir is the spell of choice!

First I use some utility spell (or trap/fire arrow for the medals) then just let loose with geysir, doing 5-7k dmg to 8 stacks. If i remember right, my int is around 40.

I still havent found the death star spell which people say are good:>

I also had some fun with oily mist + phoenix first round, but the phoenix is abit fragile at later stages..
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Ford Model F History

Actually, I take that back!

First I found death star, which was awesome, then I found Black Hole, which just trumphed everything!

Instant 12k dmg on first turn on everything made the endgame easy as pie:P

Think I had around 60 int!

edit: have to mention that is also works on black dragons, which is part of the reason it became easymode:>
Doesnt work on gremlin towers though, but geysir took care of that easily enough..
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If we're still talking powerful, then I think Phantom wins above all others just due to its universal appeal. Fear has limits (plenty of monsters immune to mind spells) and seems more built around tactics whereas Phantom has something for everyone no matter what their strategy.

Overpowered, I don't think you can really make an argument that any spell is overpowered. Timeback is cost prohibitive and situational. Fear has a nice shutdown but it's also situational, limited and dependent on a high level army. Phantom comes pretty close given all of its positives with no apparent drawbacks...including moderate mana cost.

For damage, and I'm no pro mage, but I think:
1) Firestorm
2) Geyser
3) The rest

Haven't given Black Hole a shot but I think it will probably be the winner. I put Firestorm ahead because it has synergies with items and other spells and there are plenty of monsters that have a weakness to it. Igniting an enemy also adds damage and it's cheap. I haven't run the numbers but I'm guessing damage/mana spent has it coming out on top generally speaking and only scales up as you add weaknesses, items, medals, after-effects, etc. Black Hole will win the day though because there are plenty of ways to keep a high mana pool thus mitigating its high cost.