BTB: Wrath of the Great Eagle

This spell seems kind of ridiculous. Strength eight hits against henchmen. Does it work against things that don't gain experience? Tchar must really hate warhounds.

4 Wrath of the Great Eagle Difficulty 9
The Seer calls Tchar to punish the ignorant and stupid for their delusion
Choose one enemy model within 12”. The model is hit with a Strength equal to the difference
of the Seer’s Experience points and the model’s Experience (to a maximum of 10). Armour
saves are taken as normal. If the victim has more Experience points than the Seer, the latter is
hit instead.

It is a powerful spell but lacks versatility. More often than not, early in a campaign a S8 hit will have an identical effect to a S5 hit, which sounds significantly less impressive. Sure, the spell does excel in picking off henchmen (especially stuff like ogres) and even recently promoted heroes, but later in a campaign when a single hero can take on waves of henchmen, your "ridiculous" spell is just that: ridiculously useless against the enemy's only real threat. When you're facing a rampaging vampire, you'll find bringing along a bow will help you more than that eagle's wrath.

The majority of the time I'd rather have a spell like warpfire (or even summon squirrels). Much easier to cast, and I frequently get multiple injury rolls with each, something "Wrath" will never produce.

Great analysis, Identity. I know there are some things in the BTB supplement that are unconventional and seem overpowered (like the Silent Threat's ability to kill a leader instantly) but you need to carefully think them over. Identity is right: Against S3 a S1000 hit is the same as S5. Does that seem overpowered? The spell is useless against enemy Heros most of the time. Don't be too impressed by the potential but consider it's actual applications and the situations where it is useful and you'll see it's not as strong as one might think at first sight.

My question, is the armor save modified by the strength of the attack? Actually the question extends to every damage dealing spell...

Most spells say either no armor save or armor save taken as normal, but what does it mean by normal:

a) take it without modifiers

b) take it with modifiers

"Taken as normal" means that you factor in modifiers.

Identity wrote:

"Taken as normal" means that you factor in modifiers.

Yep.