Ok, I'm two years late for this thread, but I use a SOK army, and I used it for a lot of time with the first ediion rules too. In the first edistion, Blessing of the Goddess was a spell in which description was clearly specified thart unlivings and viridian lords could not be affected by. I think that a wrong trascription of this rule generated some misunderstood. This is how I play it: only on a sok mini, not viridians nor unlivings.
Anyway, in the old edition it was a spell for free (army point cost = 0!!!), and I use it very few now.
Coming back to the question about the spear of Llyr, I always used it on multi-wounded models making it bounce to the next if it generates a wound. This does not mean that I consider an intelligent use of the spell to target heroes with; since the right spell for multi-wounded models is surely "savage roots", which is residual with no decreasing in the damage.
With the right combo, it can be very cool to use: I was able to kill a soulflayer by crushing it to the ground with a "gust of wind", giving it the first wound for the fall, then a "savage roots" brought it away two ather wounds, and the charge of a monarch before it was able to rise up gave the coup de grace. Those are satisfactions!
By the way, the only thing I regret to the sok magic is the absolute lack of template spells. There is no area effect in all the army. And this is very sad considering that area effect are a sure hit towards which the very high def is useless. Personally, that's my problem in paying against other armyes: in CC I'm ok, they hit me very seldom, but with a template effect I can loose a full wb in a single shot, as the soulfalyer did to a wb of 4 berserkers + leader with a single blow of his fire breath. I think this is the only point of unbalance. In my opinion, under a certain armor value, the def modifier should be added when making armor rolls against area effects.
Otherwise, they shoul be rolled to hit when done, as any other attack, because a sure hit with a damage of 10 or more on pieces with armour 12 is equivalent to a sure death for that unit. And if you spent more than 250 army points to place them on the battlefield, it's not that correct.
