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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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As far as "Spells which we should learn next" discussion goes, Cloak Activity, Invisibility and literally all of Fiendishly Complex spells are an incredible choice.
 
Mathilde is currently at Magic 7, which is the bare minimum to start learning Battle Magic, but I imagine there's a decent chance she'll go up more before she has the opportunity to learn some. Won't make it reliable, but probably will make it less unreliable. There are also other possibilities for extending Mathilde's powers, such as working on enchanting. Imagine if her revolver were enchanted with Silence and Cloak Activity, so that only the person shot could notice they'd been shot for a while. Or, even nastier, Mockery of Death.

Or, get lenses that allow darkvision. Especially if they allow seeing through her own Pall of Darkness.

Also, did a reread of the last update, and I think we found something else that Kragg the Grim approves of! Ork shamans getting countermagic'd.
BoneyM said:
Scattered across the battlefield, five wizards wince and one Runelord smiles. The magnitude of how badly the shaman has fumbled shines like a second sun for those with the senses to see, and reality itself shudders in protest as chaos takes possession of the energies it birthed. The orc screams as the energies implode inwards, forming a singularity of rebellious energies in the center of his undoubtedly minuscule brain, and every muscle in his body locks as alien energies rampage through orcish nerves.
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Admiral Skippy said:
It just leads to somewhat hilarious results when a trained magister in their thirties is less dangerous than some dude with a pistol.
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Wait, what? You don't need Battle Magic to be super dangerous. Mathilde can (and does) slaughter her way through mooks without too much danger, which "some dude with a pistol" would struggle with. She does all this with nothing but the spells accessible to journeymen.
Battle Magic are single spells that can devastate entire squads or instantly kill giant monsters. Using them on the tabletop always has a chance of failure, but it quite good. An experienced Journeyman is definitely not a mook - it just isn't the kind of "one-man army unit" that a tabletop Battle Wizard is.
 
I actually think that people are making an entirely reasonable case about the risks of Battle Magic, but I also have an idea for how we might be able to circumvent some of those risks if we make it a major project. This is just a general observation about magic in Warhammer, so I hope it might help even though I'm behind on stuff.

I'll probably post it in my next post, if people would find it interesting.

NavySeel said:
Considering what we're able to do without knowing battle magic it would have to be pretty insane in terms of power.

What part are you at just out of curiosity?
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It can be pretty insane!

I'm at the part where we've just realised that our Chaplain dude is pushing an explicitly Sigmarite agenda to the detriment of the spiritual health of the army.

TalonofAnathrax said:
Wait, what? You don't need Battle Magic to be super dangerous. Mathilde can (and does) slaughter her way through mooks without too much danger, which "some dude with a pistol" would struggle with. She does all this with nothing but the spells accessible to journeymen.
Battle Magic are single spells that can devastate entire squads or instantly kill giant monsters. Using them on the tabletop always has a chance of failure, but it quite good. An experienced Journeyman is definitely not a mook - it just isn't the kind of "one-man army unit" that a tabletop Battle Wizard is.
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I'm talking more specifically about WHFRP and the approach it takes, where a pistol is a pretty high-tier piece of equipment and does way more damage than the magical missile spell that most Journeyman Wizards can cast at character creation. @BoneyM appears to have gone with a more mixed approach, whilst still taking bits from the roleplaying books where it's useful or adds depth, which I think makes sense.

To be clear, I think this makes sense from the perspective of a game designer trying to include Colour Wizards in the main game, and reconciling their depiction in the main source material with the requirements of that. It also doesn't help that our textual references for understanding the Colleges of Magic are pretty limited, so to some extent it's necessary to just make a bunch of stuff up if you want the depth required for a roleplaying game. A lot of the roleplaying material is actually pretty cool!
 
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Admiral Skippy said:
I'm talking more specifically about WHFRP and the approach it takes, where a pistol is a pretty high-tier piece of equipment and does way more damage than the magical missile spell that most Journeyman Wizards can cast. @BoneyM appears to have gone with a more mixed approach, whilst still taking bits from the roleplaying books where it's useful, which I think makes sense.

To be clear, I think this makes sense from the perspective of a game designer trying to include Colour Wizards in the main game, and reconciling their depiction in the main source material with the requirements of that. It also doesn't help that our textual references for understanding the Colleges of Magic are pretty limited, so to some extent it's necessary to just make a bunch of stuff up.
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I agree with you that pistols are awesome (and BoneyM does too, and so does Mathilde - she attacks with pistols and swords, not shadow daggers!)
However basically every mage has access to spells that greatly increase versatility, options or survivability. That's why I count them as so amazing. Minions, stealth, pyrokinesis, healing... All these things are great!
Basically you can use magic to set up fights in which you have a significant advantage. Actually attacking with magic is rarely a great choice, unless you have a wind that's specifically build for it (FIRE!!!)

Now from a worldbuilding perspective, having them be Journeymen is indeed weird. At the very least you think they'd be issued a bodyguard or something. Or maybe most magelings die young anyway, so they send them to wander to winnow out the chaff before spending more resources on people who will inevitably fail and be eaten by brain-demons anyway?

EDIT : And I am interested in your theory. Please post it whenever.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
At the very least you think they'd be issued a bodyguard or something. Or maybe most magelings die young anyway, so they send them to wander to winnow out the chaff before spending more resources on people who will inevitably fail and be eaten by brain-demons anyway?
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I think this may be closer to the case. People able to become mages are rare, but not that rare. Most villages away from civilization will have a hedge witch and the trials to advance in level in the colleges are noted to be rather lethal and very demanding.

Then you have Norsca, which seems to vomit out sorcerers on demand despite a far smaller population and a potentially higher chance to turn into chaos spawn with every spell.

So, people with the potential are certainly out there. The colleges are there to train as many as they can or put down/handle the ones that can't cut the discipline.

My head canon on human mage potentials:

General population of the Empire: Mage potential: normal person, 1:10,000 (This gets you the odd hedge witch every few villages)
Mage potential to reach Wizard Lord: Mage population, 1:100

So your typical Wizard Lord is a one in a million individual, which is in keeping with how every college only has a handful. But every college also has hundreds of mages of different levels wandering around. Heck, when Mathilde was taking her classes for magister, she mentioned herself that there were hundreds of practitioners in the Gray Wizard college alone.

So yeah, with that being the case, the colleges can afford their Journeymen mages having a 25-50% attrition rate just due to the number of students they have and that the survivors will be much more likely to make Magister or potentially Wizard Lord/Battle Mage one day.


AN: Kinda rambling, also just my impression. Not sure how close to actual canon it comes.
 
The big problem with magic on the tabletop isn't the magic itself per se, it's the other wizards. Seriously, other than the Dreaded Thirteenth, most spells are perfectly safe to cast. It's making them not be dispelled that's the trick.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
Now from a worldbuilding perspective, having them be Journeymen is indeed weird. At the very least you think they'd be issued a bodyguard or something. Or maybe most magelings die young anyway, so they send them to wander to winnow out the chaff before spending more resources on people who will inevitably fail and be eaten by brain-demons anyway?
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I don't think the whole journeymen idea is that weird. The whole point is that you prove yourself without the material support of the colleges or someone looking over your shoulder. Most journeymen will probably spend their time with Imperial institutions or other friendly groups in a support capacity. They also will not be sent out until their master thinks they are ready. I think that Mathilde was a bit of a special case where events forced our master's hand, otherwise, Mathilde would have had a bit more time before heading out.
 
The list of things Kragg the Grim approves of
  1. Runes
  2. Making Runes
  3. Rediscovering Runes
  4. Metal
  5. Putting Runes on Metal
  6. Anvil of DOOM
  7. Making Runes on an Anvil of DOOM
  8. Putting Runes on Metal on an Anvil of DOOM
  9. Orks Dying
  10. Orks Miscasting
  11. Orks Miscasting because of Runes
  12. Orks Miscasting because of Runes on Metal
  13. Orks Dying because of Orks Miscasting
  14. Orks Dying because of Orks Miscasting because of Runes
  15. Orks Dying because of Orks Miscasting because of Runes on Metal
  16. Orks Dying because of Orks Miscasting because of Runes on Anvil of Doom
  17. Orks Dying
  18. Goblins Dying
  19. Orks and Goblins Dying in Creative ways
  20. Orks and Goblins Dying in Creative ways via Runes
  21. Reclaiming Lost Holds
  22. Reclaiming Lost Holds while Killings Orks
  23. Reclaiming Lost Holds with Lost Rune Knowledge
  24. Reclaiming Lost Holds with Lost Rune Knowledge while Killing Orks
  25. Avenging Grudges
  26. Avenging Grudges with Runes
  27. Avenging Grudges by killing Orks
  28. Avenging Grudges by killing Orks with Runes
  29. Replace all instances of Orks with Skaven in this List and Reread
 
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Alratan said:
Well, there's a limited set of battle magic that can be cast by battle wizards 'safely'. It's those spells that can be cast with a single magic die on the tabletop, as then there's no chance of miscast. Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma is an example, as it has a casting value of 5+, meaning that Level 4 wizards can auto-cast it. Even a level 1 battle wizard can cast it risk free half the time.
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Can't miscast, but can't be auto-cast. On the tabletop any casting roll with 2 or less total on the dice fails.
 
Esbern and Seija did not bother to wash the blood of battle from themselves before tending to wounded mounts. Seija's magics make her uniquely suited to this, but what Esbern lacks in spells he makes for in his bond with the beasts, keeping them calm and cooperative as more mundane assistance is applied. From their reports, their contribution to the battle itself was minimal as the greenskin lines broke before they reached them. While they had build up more than enough goodwill to ride double with the Knights, they hadn't much experience with pursuing a routing target, and between them their spear and arrows accounted for only a handful of the enemy.

Panoramia is deep in lively debate with a chaotic crowd of miners and halflings around an excavation that is apparently hoped will eventually reach groundwater. Progress is slow due to the necessity of avoiding any preexisting tunnels or caverns, but what a dwarf considers to be slow digging and what you would consider it is very different, as already the shaft descends far below the point where the bottom can be seen. Debate at the surface is apparently based on the level of precaution that would be required to guarantee the purity of the water, with the dwarves advocating for boiling, the halflings championing some sort of sand filtration method, and Panoramia taking it all in with fascination. You manage to snag her attention for a moment or two, and she tells you that her time spent with the Rangers was apparently an incredible success, with the black lotus causing havoc in the battle above as wounded greenskins turned on their allies in poison-induced madness. Between this and her spells causing thorned plants to rampage far above, they were able to match the rout at ground level with one above.

Maximilian is celebrating with the human forces, who apparently also claim credit for the victory in the ramshackle catwalks above. You refrain from commenting and allow them to tell you of their archery duels where mundane arrows of Stirlandian archers were joined by silver arrows formed of Chamon. You smile, and nod, and move on to where Johann observes and occasionally assists (in the 'pass me that spanner' kind of way) in the maintenance of the siege engines, and are once more able to hold your tongue as you hear of how the volleys of stones and bolts raked the foes above the army and forced them into a retreat.
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Hmm, looks like our choices were good. Esbern and Seija were only less successful because another section of the battlefield was too successful.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
EDIT : And I am interested in your theory. Please post it whenever.
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Okay, so in essence, people have identified a very salient point. Battle Magic is dangerous.

First and foremost, it is incredibly dangerous to our enemies. Under its sheer force, brave companies of soldiers can be reduced to so much ash, flights of arrows redirected or rotted in mid air, the keenest steel armour turned to rust, and more hideous things besides. It is a primal and devastating power, and those that wield it are truly terrifying beings when in their element. Armies may crumble under the might of battle magic. But magic in Warhammer is also inherently dangerous to its users, and Battle Magic most of all.

As a brief refresher, magic in Warhammer draws from the Winds of Magic, a primal force of raw Chaos ultimately emanating from rifts to the Realms of Chaos at the poles. The whole practice of magic is about forcing this raw chaos to obey a set of ordered formulae, usually a spell or enchantment, by utilising incredibly specific language sheer will to force it into a shape with no room or error. Magic inherently does not want to obey your stupid rules, because chaos dislikes order, and will fight you the whole way. The splitting of magic into eight Colours with somewhat predisposed characters is the one thing which makes this even remotely possible for human wizards.

The other is the language that Imperial-trained wizards use for their spellcasting, Linguae Praestantia, which was taught to the first Imperial wizards by Teclis of Ulthuan. It is essentially a dumbed-down version of the Asur's own magical language, Anoqeyån. This language itself a devolved version of that heard spoken by the High Elves when they met the Old Ones. The key factor in each of these languages is their immense complexity and specificity. Almost any thing, state, or process can be codified specifically, and this means one can construct watertight magical formulae without ambiguities, which are as dangerous in spell-casting as ambiguities in nuclear safety systems.

One could liken this to a computer program, which will not run correctly or may develop bugs if one has left ambiguities in the code. Except even CSS does not cause demonic snakes to try to eat your face when you mistakenly left a recursion error in one line of code.

To wield Battle Magic, then, is to to try to channel and then constrain immense quantities of raw magic into a specific form, under battlefield conditions. The practitioner must do this in within a short time frame, and potentially whilst people are trying to kill or interfere with them, increasing the chances of making a mistake. Furthermore, the magic itself wants them to make a mistake, and will search out any weak link or loopholes in their casting. Thus unless they are very experienced, or the spell itself is exceedingly simple and straightforward, this can lead to problems.

But there is a partial solution to this problem which is well-established in the the source material.* These are call Bound Spells.

Bound Spells are spells contained within a specially enchanted item which contains all of the formulae necessary to contain and craft the magic for a very specific spell. They may even take care of the channelling, as well, and perhaps even contain a power source. They are immensely potent and valuable artefacts, because at a low end, we are talking about things like a ring which can cast fireball, reliably and relatively safely, whenever a specific word is spoken, even if the user is not necessarily a wizard. To return to our computer analogy, a bound spell in an artefact would be like a USB stick with an executable program all ready loaded and ready to go. Plug and play.

However, it seems to me that there is not a binary distinction here. It should be possible, in principle, to create magical foci and "crib sheets" which vastly reduce the mental strain on the practitioner*, by containing much of the necessary formuale for a single Battle Magic spell. We could also build in safeguards and extra reinforcement and reservoirs for challenging large amounts of magic, in one artefact or perhaps several artefacts. This would not cast the spell for us, but greatly aid a practitioner in casting a given spell safely and easily, with the drawback that we would need these items.

For a wizard like Mathilde, who does not want to spend her entire life on battlefields as living magical artillery, but is a gifted enchanter with time and resources, this seems like a good option*.

Just as one example of where we might go with this, one of the players remarked to me earlier that we have gained a wolf pup from Ranald as our familiar. There are apparently a lot of options for using familiars as a magical foci. Imagine if we invested several years of work on this, building our connection with our familiar and deepening the enchantments on it. Imagine a fully grown wolf familiar, wreathed in magical shadow like smoke. Imagine our night-black wolf companion transforming at a single word from Mathilde, into a gigantic Steed of Shadows, a great Black Dog out of nightmare.


*(Other than having a divine patron do a lot of the "computation" for you, which Priests and some other kinds of spellcasters do.)
*(If one is familiar with how magical foci work in the Dresden Files, one may be intuitively familiar what I mean here.)
*(Actually, it seems to me like something along these lines would be a good option for most Wizards in the middle of their careers who are not "front line" Battle Wizards but would like to be able to cast a single Battle Magic spell when "called up" for active battlefield duty. This interpretation could go some way to reconciling tabletop and roleplaying canon, but I digress.)
 
Dark as Silver said:
Something like a Ring of Brimstone? :p
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I am still reading up through the Quest, so will beg your indulgence, but quite possibly!

There are a lot of directions one could go with something like this, and it's a deep topic. Personally I was thinking of the Ruby Ring of Ruin, but there are a lot of artefacts along those lines knocking around, so much so that it's one of the more archetypal ones. Who doesn't like fireballs?
 
Before we ever muck around with Battle Magic spells, we must finish learning the basic colored ones, as that gets us roughly to Lv 3 wizard in power/skill. It's highly useful, simple and straightforward, and shouldn't take long either.

Shows restraint, too, and asking to learn battle spells when you are a single step from "master battle wizard" is much more likely to fly instead of doing it as soon as we could theoretically manage it.

Anyway, Libris Mortis will likely give something there as well. Gotta read it.

We should finish getting good at enchanting, especially making something that allows us to see through magical darkness, update our robes to our new, much higher magic score (the spell is currently 4+ while the robes were made at 5+), and see if we can magically silence our pistol (maybe even buy that funky Dwarven handcannon), and get a proppah choppah.

I'm hoping all the slicing and dicing will get us to Advanced Greatswords, too.

And then we might look into Battle Spells, but Snake Juice research probably fits in better.
 
My current prediction for the snake juice is that once properly researched and practiced with, it'll be usable as a source of magic. For a single spell, we'll have artificially favorable Wind (of a sort).
Actually using High Magic spells sounds amazing, but also sounds incredibly difficult. We'd have to pump our Magic trait, research it, and even then we'd probably struggle to do much. It takes elves centuries to make it work after all, and they have excellent teachers.
 
I imagine it's not a cheat code to High Magic, but I suspect it may be possible to use it to safely enchant effects 'Outside' our Wind by using the Liber Mortis as a reference tool and combining it with our enchanting skills, by way of using our Ulgu to siphon out the magic and then guide it in a desired shape.
 
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