Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

JackOfAll · Feb 16, 2018

BoneyM said:
You could, but if you roll even a little bit badly it will end in utter disaster. You'd be effectively deliberately inducing miscasts in the hopes of getting better at not doing so.

Fair enough, though I was thinking more in terms of practicing it with Petty/Lesser magic, where miscasts are much more manageable.

BoneyM said:
I don't understand what you're asking here. Yes, direct manipulation of Ulgu is possible. That's how Mathilde casts spells.

The 'blessed hands' are not a spell - it is direct manipulation of Ulgu to infuse the weapom. It is, to put it in d&d terms, a spell like ability. I was thinking about abilities simillar to that. For example intimidation trick where at some point of conversation Mathilde wants to intimidate someone and makes area around her darken, Gandalf style.

BoneyM said:
No. The Warhammer universe doesn't have magical items just waiting for someone to find them. They're either already owned by someone who will go to incredibly violent lengths to prevent anyone from taking it from them, or if they're not owned it's for a damn good reason.

Fair enough.

Just to explain - I was thinking more in terms of items not being recognized as magical. With poor literacy level, superstitions and general level of desperation and naivety, plenty of useless junk is being sold as magical. All those "cure all"-s, all those 'magical swords', 'dragon claws' and dried mermaid fins that does wonders for man virility. Plenty of junk, with something occasionaly slipping through. Trick is to recognize it when it happens.

Well, that as well as what You pointed. More often than not if something magical is being sold, it is wrong kind of magical. Those things are best found fast for entirely different reason.

BoneyM said:
In general, I don't think you've quite grasped Warhammer magic. This isn't the sort of low-stakes setting where wizards light their pipes with magic just because they can. <...>

It has been few years, so maybe I am mistaken, but as far as I remember, in RP game miscasts were strongly dependant on used level or power. Petty magic was essentially safe(-ish), while lesser magic miscasts were essentially manageable. You had to have a hell of a bad luck for anything really bad to happen to You - even ten lesser magic miscasts made during training would not be a serious threat to caster as long as one didn't try to be stupid and recovered before casting any more magic. It was when You went up with power level that miscasts were becoming deadly.

Could You give Your view as to how it works in the quest? In terms of differences when compared to RP? By Your comment, I assume that miscasts in general are more dangerous, regardless of power level - which is counterbalanced by fact that skilled wizard can cast simple spells with very little chance of mistake. It is correct?

Klaus Wulfenback · Feb 16, 2018

DiceOfStupidity said:
Just to explain - I was thinking more in terms of items not being recognized as magical. With poor literacy level, superstitions and general level of desperation and naivety, plenty of useless junk is being sold as magical. All those "cure all"-s, all those 'magical swords', 'dragon claws' and dried mermaid fins that does wonders for man virility. Plenty of junk, with something occasionaly slipping through. Trick is to recognize it when it happens.

The problem with that is that in WHF the "magic sword" is corrupted the "dragon craw" is cursed to the warp and back and the "dried mermaid" fin is actually warpstone powder guarantied to give you a genuine third eye. The non junk is either non cursed and therefore guarded by something nasty or cursed and sitting tantalizingly in the open.

chocolote12 · Feb 16, 2018

DiceOfStupidity said:
The 'blessed hands' are not a spell - it is direct manipulation of Ulgu to infuse the weapom. It is, to put it in d&d terms, a spell like ability. I was thinking about abilities simillar to that. For example intimidation trick where at some point of conversation Mathilde wants to intimidate someone and makes area around her darken, Gandalf style.

All spells are direct manipulations of Ulgu that are just called spells when they do a certain thing. Think less "shapes versus specifically letters" and more "kicks versus specifically a roundhouse kick". One is meaningless until suddenly it's not, and the other is all different variations of body movements but some variations have names.

veekie · Feb 16, 2018

Alliterate said:
How about moving the blessing to the Watch commander? Yes, writing the memoirs is cool, but a good Watch commander is going to be a compounding investment, given they'll be effectively taking initiative without us.

Also, probably worth a write-in sub-line about what types of intelligence we'll be selling. 'Nothing that in our or Julias judgement compromises Stirlands, The Elector Counts, the Empires or our interests' might be broad enough, but we'll probably have to be more specific.

One of the main reasons I put the blessing on the scribing is because last turn some players rejected interacting with Asarnil without the Blessing.
I'm not moving it and losing a third of my current voters...

DiceOfStupidity said:
The 'blessed hands' are not a spell - it is direct manipulation of Ulgu to infuse the weapom. It is, to put it in d&d terms, a spell like ability. I was thinking about abilities simillar to that. For example intimidation trick where at some point of conversation Mathilde wants to intimidate someone and makes area around her darken, Gandalf style.

All spells are the same thing actually.
They're just codified and formalized in a "I know this particular move works and is unlikely to kill me" sense.

And the sort of shadows darken when you get pissed have two routes.
-We have the fear spell, which if mastered might give a fear aura without formally casting it.
-If I'm not mistaken one of the Ulgu arcane marks is to cause this sort of thing.

Seventeen · Feb 16, 2018

I only just noticed both of the leading plans have Information Broker as their InfoNet actions. I could have sworn they had Attache Paperwork, or at least @veekie's did. Fuck that. We're running a state security agency here, show some professionalism. Looks like I'm going to have to vote for my own doomed-to-lose plan.

[ ] Plan Professional Wizard-Spy
-[ ][Intel] Attaché Paperwork: The Intelligence Attachés are your biggest expense by far - see if you can have them paid for by the Army of Stirland instead.
-[ ][Personal] Seek out a new leader for the Watch.
--[ ] Ranald's Blessing
-[ ][Personal] Bound Spells: Though the corrosive Dhar made them high-maintenance, the design of the bound spells in the castle's infiltrators has fascinating possibilities. The memories had faded but you've managed to refresh them. Try to adapt it for use with Ulgu.

Another good thing about having so few action slots is it makes plans really easy to name.

veekie · Feb 16, 2018

Seventeen said:
I only just noticed both of the leading plans have Information Broker as their InfoNet actions. I could have sworn they had Attache Paperwork, or at least @veekie's did. Fuck that. We're running a state security agency here, show some professionalism. Looks like I'm going to have to vote for my own doomed-to-lose plan.

There were specific and significant opposition against putting the biggest drain on our budget onto another councillor's budget potentially resulting in Gustav getting pissed off and Van Hal forced to mediate between his favorite spymaster or having a sulking Marshal during a war.

Boney · Feb 16, 2018

DiceOfStupidity said:
The 'blessed hands' are not a spell - it is direct manipulation of Ulgu to infuse the weapom. It is, to put it in d&d terms, a spell like ability.

As others have said, it's a distinction without meaning. A 'spell' is just a specific and codified way of manipulating Ulgu.

DiceOfStupidity said:
Just to explain - I was thinking more in terms of items not being recognized as magical. With poor literacy level, superstitions and general level of desperation and naivety, plenty of useless junk is being sold as magical. All those "cure all"-s, all those 'magical swords', 'dragon claws' and dried mermaid fins that does wonders for man virility. Plenty of junk, with something occasionaly slipping through. Trick is to recognize it when it happens.

Not really. Magic is feared. It's been less than two centuries since the time when anyone capable of wielding magic in the Empire was burned at the stake. The trinkets being sold are supposedly religious in nature, not magical.

DiceOfStupidity said:
Well, that as well as what You pointed. More often than not if something magical is being sold, it is wrong kind of magical. Those things are best found fast for entirely different reason.

That's why the Empire has Witch Hunters.

DiceOfStupidity said:
It has been few years, so maybe I am mistaken, but as far as I remember, in RP game miscasts were strongly dependant on used level or power. Petty magic was essentially safe(-ish), while lesser magic miscasts were essentially manageable. You had to have a hell of a bad luck for anything really bad to happen to You - even ten lesser magic miscasts made during training would not be a serious threat to caster as long as one didn't try to be stupid and recovered before casting any more magic. It was when You went up with power level that miscasts were becoming deadly.

Could You give Your view as to how it works in the quest? In terms of differences when compared to RP? By Your comment, I assume that miscasts in general are more dangerous, regardless of power level - which is counterbalanced by fact that skilled wizard can cast simple spells with very little chance of mistake. It is correct?

To use magic, a wizard channels the raw magical energies through themselves and out again in the form of a spell. A miscast is when that process is interrupted and the energies are no longer under the wizard's control while still in the wizard's body. There is absolutely no such thing as a 'manageable' miscast, only miscasts where you get lucky. And there's no real way to mitigate this. You could minimize the chance of miscasts by only ever using spells far below your level of ability, but that will cause your level of magical ability to suffer. You could only ever cast spells under ideal conditions when there's nothing distracting you, but the times you need magic most is usually the least ideal conditions to cast it. You're a wizard; there's a significant chance your life will end because one day you reach for your magic and it goes terribly wrong. The time to worry about that was during character creation, when there were all sorts of classes that weren't wizard.

Additionally, I would urge in the strongest possible terms that anyone that wants to engage with this quest should stop assuming that anything will work based on the rules of WHFRP. I have read WHFRP books for lore and spells, but I have spent no time whatsoever learning how the rules of it work.

Seventeen · Feb 16, 2018

veekie said:
There were specific and significant opposition against putting the biggest drain on our budget onto another councillor's budget potentially resulting in Gustav getting pissed off and Van Hal forced to mediate between his favorite spymaster or having a sulking Marshal during a war.

That's still better than Information Broker. Still, you've reminded me that Attache Paperwork wasn't even my first choice there.

[X] Plan How To Spell Wizard
-[X][Intel] Special Branch: Pull some financial trickery to get the information network classified as part of the Watch, so that their costs are covered by the Stirlandian treasury.
-[X][Personal] Letters Home: You might be able to wring more information out of your Master, or you might just be able to get news, information and guidance in general from the Grey Order.
-[X][Personal] Bound Spells: Though the corrosive Dhar made them high-maintenance, the design of the bound spells in the castle's infiltrators has fascinating possibilities. The memories had faded but you've managed to refresh them. Try to adapt it for use with Ulgu.
--[X] Ranald's Blessing

Now is the best time to get the infonet on the Watch's books, since the Purge means we've got less oversight. And if Van Hal and Wilhelmina are upset about it when the Purge is over, we've still got a bunch of options to expand our money-making operations with the Watch to cover the costs.

Edit: Screw it, I'm not going to get votes anyway, so why keep the Watch leader action? I've been wanting to take Letters Home since the first turn I was present for, but the urgency of other actions and the vagueness of its description means nobody else has ever chosen it.

veekie · Feb 16, 2018

The Special Branch option's drawback is it's REALLY easy to find stuff about our network, since if they're on the payroll you can compromise Steward Clerk or a Watch Officer and get info on how many people we're paying in a given direction.

That it dumps the expense on Stirland is a relatively minor factor which might slide through due to the Gong Farmers offset.

Kairos123 · Feb 16, 2018

Seventeen said:
Fuck that. We're running a state security agency here, show some professionalism.

Why do you have a problem being an information broker? From what I can tell we aren't selling state secrets or anything of real relevance. On top of that, I didn't see any implication that we couldn't stop once we started.

Personally, I'm only voting for it to defray costs until we can get the Gong Farmers and saltpeter stuff going.

Seventeen · Feb 16, 2018

veekie said:
The Special Branch option's drawback is it's REALLY easy to find stuff about our network, since if they're on the payroll you can compromise Steward Clerk or a Watch Officer and get info on how many people we're paying in a given direction.

That it dumps the expense on Stirland is a relatively minor factor which might slide through due to the Gong Farmers offset.

That's ridiculous. They'd be paid, as they always were, through Julia. The money's just coming from the Watch's budget. If they can be found out afterwards, they can be found out now.

Kairos123 said:
Why do you have a problem being an information broker? From what I can tell we aren't selling state secrets or anything of real relevance. On top of that, I didn't see any implication that we couldn't stop once we started.

You really think people will vote to reduce an income stream of any kind? The only reason we stopped embezzling was because we were running out of discretionary funds.

Pyran · Feb 16, 2018

BoneyM said:
As others have said, it's a distinction without meaning. A 'spell' is just a specific and codified way of manipulating Ulgu.

Not really. Magic is feared. It's been less than two centuries since the time when anyone capable of wielding magic in the Empire was burned at the stake. The trinkets being sold are supposedly religious in nature, not magical.

That's why the Empire has Witch Hunters.

To use magic, a wizard channels the raw magical energies through themselves and out again in the form of a spell. A miscast is when that process is interrupted and the energies are no longer under the wizard's control while still in the wizard's body. There is absolutely no such thing as a 'manageable' miscast, only miscasts where you get lucky. And there's no real way to mitigate this. You could minimize the chance of miscasts by only ever using spells far below your level of ability, but that will cause your level of magical ability to suffer. You could only ever cast spells under ideal conditions when there's nothing distracting you, but the times you need magic most is usually the least ideal conditions to cast it. You're a wizard; there's a significant chance your life will end because one day you reach for your magic and it goes terribly wrong. The time to worry about that was during character creation, when there were all sorts of classes that weren't wizard.

Additionally, I would urge in the strongest possible terms that anyone that wants to engage with this quest should stop assuming that anything will work based on the rules of WHFRP. I have read WHFRP books for lore and spells, but I have spent no time whatsoever learning how the rules of it work.

You say that the time to worry about the issues of miscasting was in character creation, but we had no reason to consider it as that big a deal. I don't remember you mentioning it and it is apparently not that bad in the whfpg rules. You did mention the problems a person capable of getting a grey wizard assigned in our position could cause us but that was about it. I just have a minor issue with saying that we should have picked something else in character creation if we didn't want to deal with something we had no way of knowing would happen. I don't have an issue with miscasting being more dangerous in itself.

Boney · Feb 16, 2018

Pyran said:
You say that the time to worry about the issues of miscasting was in character creation, but we had no reason to consider it as that big a deal. I don't remember you mentioning it and it is apparently not that bad in the whfpg rules. You did mention the problems a person capable of getting a grey wizard assigned in our position could cause us but that was about it. I just have a minor issue with saying that we should have picked something else in character creation if we didn't want to deal with something we had no way of knowing would happen. I don't have an issue with miscasting being more dangerous in itself.

This isn't something I've invented. Magic being dangerous is bone-deep in the Warhammer universe - it is literally the raw energies of chaos washing into the world from the poles.

And as to 'not that bad in the whfpg rules', I've looked at the miscast table in it, and every single spell with more energy behind it than a cantrip has a non-zero chance of causing your instant death.

Katahiraga · Feb 16, 2018

[X] Plan The Front Don't Need Us Yet

Derpmind · Feb 16, 2018

[X] Plan The Front Don't Need Us Yet

Pyran · Feb 16, 2018

BoneyM said:
This isn't something I've invented. Magic being dangerous is bone-deep in the Warhammer universe - it is literally the raw energies of chaos washing into the world from the poles.

And as to 'not that bad in the whfpg rules', I've looked at the miscast table in it, and every single spell with more energy behind it than a cantrip has a non-zero chance of causing your instant death.

Sorry, I was just going off of what DiceofStupidity said earlier, I should have looked it up myself.

King Arthur · Feb 16, 2018

veekie said:
There were specific and significant opposition against putting the biggest drain on our budget onto another councillor's budget potentially resulting in Gustav getting pissed off and Van Hal forced to mediate between his favorite spymaster or having a sulking Marshal during a war.

We might get away with it if we threw Ranalds Chosen on that option?

Seventeen · Feb 16, 2018

King Arthur said:
We might get away with it if we threw Ranalds Chosen on that option?

Ranald's Blessing can't be used on organisational actions.

chocolote12 · Feb 17, 2018

Seventeen said:
Ranald's Blessing can't be used on organisational actions.

Unless it'd be logical for Ranald to bless that organization; thieves guild actions, for example, whenever we get around to that.

veekie · Feb 17, 2018

Seventeen said:
You really think people will vote to reduce an income stream of any kind? The only reason we stopped embezzling was because we were running out of discretionary funds.

There are degrees of exposure, but 95% of the intel we gather are useless gossip FYI.
Useless gossip which are valuable to lesser nobles for political jockeying, and to merchants for predicting market trends.
This is a bandaid for until we can spare the time to figure out the EIC so that we can drip market info to it for money while aware of the consequences(as opposed to doing it immediately, because Julia doesn't know shit all about trade, and we don't know how it works yet)

Also we stopped embezzling after we were ennobled and got our own income stream, leaving us with a positive balance even without the embezzlement.

LockedMind · Feb 17, 2018

BoneyM said:
This isn't something I've invented. Magic being dangerous is bone-deep in the Warhammer universe - it is literally the raw energies of chaos washing into the world from the poles.

And as to 'not that bad in the whfpg rules', I've looked at the miscast table in it, and every single spell with more energy behind it than a cantrip has a non-zero chance of causing your instant death.

Well, I don't know how things are done in 3rd edition, but in second it is really hard to outright die from chaos manifestation itself. There are 3 tables - minor, major and catastrophic. Doubles land you on first (possibly twice with enough dice), triples on second and quadruples on third.

Death is 20% on catastrophic manifestation table (well, 10% death and 10% "GM chooses", which may or may not be death), but to roll on that table you either need to roll quadruples on 4d10 (if you even have four dice and choose to roll all four, which is only required for the most powerful spells), which is 0.1% chance. You can also roll triples (3.7%) and escalate (with 5% chance) from the second table (for a total of 0.185%) or roll doubles (2.8%*2+43%) and escalate twice (0.25%) from the first table (for a total of 0.1215%). Thus total chance to land on the catastrophic table is 0.4065% and you only die in 1/5 of these (~0.08%). It is roughly 1 in 1250 spells, which is pretty scary, but it is only if you have awesome magical might of wizard lord and pour all of it in every spell you cast. Typical journeyman has only 2 dice of magic and thus only (10%*5%*5%*20%=0,005%) chance of death per cast (1 in 20000 spells).

I'm not saying that miscasts aren't dangerous - major table (the 2nd one) has "possessed by daemons for 1 minute", for example, and catastrophic is full of shitty things (like losing consciousness mid-battle or summoning hostile daemons), but outright death is very rare. Honestly, apprentice insanity is bigger problem (any time you roll all 1s on your casting you have to roll WP, on failure gain 1 insanity point. Apprentices only have 1 dice to roll and thus have 10% (chance of 1)*60-70% (chance of failure with typical mage's willpower) = 6-7% chance of gaining insanity point per casting).

Edit: minor typo correction

Guile · Feb 17, 2018

LockedMind said:
Well, I don't know how things are done in 3rd edition, but in second it is really hard to outright die from chaos manifestation itself. There are 3 tables - minor, major and catastrophic. Doubles land you on first (possibly twice with enough dice), triples on second and quadruples on third.

Death is 20% on catastrophic manifestation table (well, 10% death and 10% "GM chooses", which may or may not be death), but to roll on that table you either need to roll quadruples on 4d10 (if you even have four dice and choose to roll all four, which is only required for the most powerful spells), which is 0.1% chance. You can also roll triples (3.7%) and escalate (with 5% chance) from the first table (for a total of 0.185%) or roll doubles (2.8%*2+43%) and escalate twice (0.25%) from the first table (for a total of 0.1215%). Thus total chance to land on the catastrophic table is 0.4065% and you only die in 1/5 of these (~0.08%). It is roughly 1 in 1250 spells, which is pretty scary, but it is only if you have awesome magical might of wizard lord and pour all of it in every spell you cast. Typical journeyman has only 2 dice of magic and thus only (10%*5%*5%*20%=0,005%) chance of death per cast (1 in 20000 spells).

I'm not saying that miscasts aren't dangerous - major table (the 2nd one) has "possessed by daemons for 1 minute", for example, and catastrophic is full of shitty things (like losing consciousness mid-battle or summoning hostile daemons), but outright death is very rare. Honestly, apprentice insanity is bigger problem (any time you roll all 1s on your casting you have to roll WP, on failure gain 1 insanity point. Apprentices only have 1 dice to roll and thus have 10% (chance of 1)*60-70% (chance of failure with typical mage's willpower) = 6-7% chance of gaining insanity point per casting).

You may have noticed BoneyM said 'non-zero' chance?

LockedMind · Feb 17, 2018

Guile said:
You may have noticed BoneyM said 'non-zero' chance?

Yes, I did. I also noticed that it was a part of greater discussion and was used as evidence of dangers of miscasts in WFRP relative to GM's own system. I felt that using "non-zero chance of death" as an argument in that case was (unintentional) misrepresentation when in reality that chance is 1 in 20000. These observations led me to writing my post where I tried to clarify the issue with some numbers.

veekie · Feb 17, 2018

Its actually significant when you consider casual magic use over the span of a year however.

You significantly change the numbers when you roll the risk even once a day every year.

Omegahugger · Feb 17, 2018

LockedMind said:
I felt that using "non-zero chance of death" as an argument in that case was (unintentional) misrepresentation when in reality that chance is 1 in 20000.

Wait, you felt that using non-zero chance was misrepresenting when in reality the chance was not zero?

I am confused here.

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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