: Probably because dispersal dreams are hard, expensive and
: time consuming to create.
I'm sure they are; on the other hand, Alric's been rebuilding his army for sixty years. You might expect him to have spent some time making a few dozen dreams.
: Also, the Fallen Lords don't strike me as being very
: dumb. Obviously they're going to expect to be attacked
: by dispersal dreams at some time or another, and
: prepare accordingly. Say the Watcher has 100,000
: thrall. He can divide them into platoons of twenty,
: with each platoon spaced 10 meters apart, far enough
: so that only one platoon could be hit by a dispersal
: dream. So even if he's attacked he only loses 20
: thrall, and there's plenty more where they came from.
: This seems to be how the enemy acts in the game. The
: Dark very seldom attack en masse, but very often
: attack piecemeal.
This is quite true, although I think it's probably done more for gameplay considerations (like memory and difficulty) than to illustrate Fallen psychology. And the spacing thing is a good idea. But there are times when we know the Dark forces are compressed, as when that army of a thousand Thrall marched out of the Baron's Keep. And most of the Avatara, like Mazzarin, die in enormous battles where their armies are simply overwhelmed by oceans of undead. Faced with such hopeless odds, wouldn't it be better to destroy your own army along with the enemy, rather than fight hand-to-hand, die anyway, and be reanimated to work for the Dark?
I'm just being contrary. Your response, and Saradin's, are thoughtful and doubtless at least partially correct (whatever "correct" means for a fantasy game). I just felt that posing whatever arguments I could would be a little more valuable than saying, "Good suggestion. Probably right. Next!"
Oh, and according to the "Myth That Never Was" article, Shades were originally intended to have a magic-canceling
"anti-glow." Even if the Fallen Lords can't stop a Dispersal Dream once it starts, maybe they can stop an Avatara from casting it in the first place.
--SiliconDream
