Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
[X] Plan close friends
-[x] Recruit Panoramia
-[x] Recruit Maximilian

[X] Avatar: You're growing worryingly familiar with being used as a conduit by deities. ???
[X] Assassin: Combat is easiest when the other person doesn't realize they're in it. +2 Intrigue, +40 bonus against unaware targets.
hers.

[X] Take an active hand in the EIC

[ ] Windreader > Windsage

I really want Windsage, however we're going to be spending the next arc as Court Wizard so by the end of it we are almost garuanteed to get it again.

This is not the case with Avatar, which is likely to be a one time opportunity and a mystery box.

Assassin is insanely powerful by the way. Even a conservative reading means we are at least at a +40 when sneaking up on someone, shanking them and then not being noticed by anyone else.
Mystery boxes are not guaranteed top tier stuff. And given our job, Windsage is much more time sensitive as far as use than Assassin.
 
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[X] Leave the EIC alone
[X] Plan Ambers and a Gold
[X] Magical Duellist: Anyone unwise enough to try to cast spells you don't want them to will quickly regret it. +2 Learning, +10 bonus to dispelling and inducing miscasts.
[X] Windreader > Windsage: Your magical senses see more than your normal ones. +2 Learning, even more able to see and understand emotion and magical effects in others.
[X] Keep it around in case you ever want to study non-Ulgu enchantments.
 
I think Max will get along much better after he watches us drag Johann all over the Karak for a few months.
Why do you think we're going to be able to drag Johann around? Like we're of equal rank and if we make enough of a deal about it our Court Wizardness might get him to obey us but he's still his own person who will tell us to fuck off if we mess with him too hard.
 
Does anyone know what all the various Wizard plans are? I want to get everyone, but I want to prioritize Johann and then Maximilian and then Panoramia. I gave a brief look, and this is what I think the relevant plan names are, but I'm not sure.

[X] Plan recruit everyone!
[X] Plan Fields of Gold
[X] Plan all but the ambers

[X] Take an active hand in the EIC

[X] Avatar: You're growing worryingly familiar with being used as a conduit by deities. ???

[X] Windreader > Windsage: Your magical senses see more than your normal ones. +2 Learning, even more able to see and understand emotion and magical effects in others.

[X] Donate it to whoever ends up leading the Undumgi.

Gah the Wizard votes are a mess because none of them have a default plan name so everybody had to come up with their own plan and it's impossible to guess from the start which plan to vote for to get what you want.

i.e. Let's say somebody reads the update, decides he wants Panoramia and Johann, manages to notice "Plan Votes only" and then votes. How is he going to vote? He doesn't know what the standing plans are. So he has to come up with it himself, and he might come up with "Get 2 Wizards" (or "Plan 2 Wizards", which is an already-existing plan but he doesn't know that, because it's a common-enough word choice that anybody might pick it). Which means he might either add to the number of plans laying around, or he might accidentally vote for Panoramia and Maximilian because that's what "Plan 2 wizards" is but he doesn't know that.

And then you're stuck tallying up a dozen plan names, multiple of which might be redundant.

This thing needs to be organized differently. I don't quite know how it should be, but it ought to be.

The rules laid down for the vote -- as well as the fact that there are no given default plan names -- means that everybody makes their own plan and...

Crap, just realized another thing. Since there might be multiple plans named for getting 3 or 4 (i.e. all) Wizard choices, I am incentivized to approval vote for all of them for my approval voting... But by doing so, that makes the vote counter mess up. Because then, when you start to have to combine all the "get these 2/3 particular guys" votes, you can't even straight add them because a single voter's name might be in multiple plans.


This feels like this is going to wind up with survival-of-the-most-obvious/most-common-denominator--plan-name or the least complicated. Not with the most popular or what people actually want to pick.

... Actually, just had a thought @BoneyM. It feels like the most natural way to solve this, would be if the Wizard topic were arranged thus. If you had two categories/sections to vote on:

*How many Wizards do you want? The number of Wizards you want to get; vote for a number.
*Who those Wizards are. Vote for a name or names.

That way, people could just vote for a simple [] 0 Wizards [] 1 Wizard [] 2 Wizards [] 3 Wizards [] 4 Wizards section... And then a section that listed [] Panoramia [] Johan etcetcetc. They vote for a number, and then they vote for all the names they want.

That way, the most popular outcomes are... The number of wizards people want, and who those wizards are. It's simple and straightforward and it does not require somebody to hunt through the entire thread to find out what the related plans are. It also lets people easily and grasp which numbers are winning and thus communicate and debate it in the thread.
 
[X] Windreader > Windsage: Your magical senses see more than your normal ones. +2 Learning, even more able to see and understand emotion and magical effects in others.
[X] Magical Duellist: Anyone unwise enough to try to cast spells you don't want them to will quickly regret it. +2 Learning, +10 bonus to dispelling and inducing miscasts.
[X] Bureaucrat + Practical > Warrior of Paperwork: Scholarship is just a specific form of paperwork. You can live with it. Combines the two traits, +2 Learning, remove penalty to writing papers yourself.
[X] Practical > Collaborator: Though you still prefer fieldwork to paperwork, you've found that as long as someone else is doing the actual writing, you're capable of producing some amazing papers. +2 Learning, +20 bonus to dictating papers.
[X] Infiltrator: Nobody seems to guard anything well enough to keep you out. +2 Intrigue, +10 bonus to infiltration.
[X] Disdain for Sigmar > Polytheist: Your bitterness towards Sigmar has softened with time and distance. You're still not thrilled with him, but as long as his followers are coexisting with those of other Gods, you can deal with it. +1 Piety, removes anti-Sigmarite penalty except when dealing with Sigmarite supremacists and monotheists.

[X] Plan 2 wizards
 
New Trait:
[ ] Infiltrator: Nobody seems to guard anything well enough to keep you out. +2 Intrigue, +10 bonus to infiltration.
[ ] Scout: Sometimes the best weapon is knowing where everything is. +2 Intrigue, +20 to infiltrating all but the highest-security areas.
[ ] Assassin: Combat is easiest when the other person doesn't realize they're in it. +2 Intrigue, +40 bonus against unaware targets.
[ ] Avatar: You're growing worryingly familiar with being used as a conduit by deities. ???
[ ] Polyglot: Your time with the Dwarves has revealed that you have an ear for languages, and learn new languages much faster.
[ ] Marksman: Blackpowder is a wonderful thing. +2 Martial, +10 to attacks with blackpowder weapons.
[ ] Collegiate: They say managing Wizards is like herding cats. Herding cats isn't actually that difficult. Can manage three other wizards per action spent.
[ ] Magical Duellist: Anyone unwise enough to try to cast spells you don't want them to will quickly regret it. +2 Learning, +10 bonus to dispelling and inducing miscasts.

Changed Traits:
[ ] Wolf Familiar > Winter Wolf Familiar: Turns out Wolf is a late bloomer. Wolf will grow large enough to ride upon.
[ ] Brave > Daredevil: Runic protection, magical protection, magical healing... why are people scared of combat again? +2 Martial, immune to fear/terror effects.
[ ] Blooded > Campaigner: You've seen more than your share of battles. +2 Martial, +10 bonus to fighting alongside others.
[ ] Bureaucrat + Practical > Warrior of Paperwork: Scholarship is just a specific form of paperwork. You can live with it. Combines the two traits, +2 Learning, remove penalty to writing papers yourself.
[ ] Practical > Collaborator: Though you still prefer fieldwork to paperwork, you've found that as long as someone else is doing the actual writing, you're capable of producing some amazing papers. +2 Learning, +20 bonus to dictating papers.
[ ] Practical > Hands On: Wait, you can just get other people to do the paperwork? Why didn't I think of this sooner? +1 Diplomacy, +1 Stewardship, +1 Martial, +1 Intrigue, -1 Learning, +10 bonus to insights developed 'in the field' (as opposed to careful laboratory study).
[ ] Windreader > Windsage: Your magical senses see more than your normal ones. +2 Learning, even more able to see and understand emotion and magical effects in others.
[ ] Disdain for Sigmar > Polytheist: Your bitterness towards Sigmar has softened with time and distance. You're still not thrilled with him, but as long as his followers are coexisting with those of other Gods, you can deal with it. +1 Piety, removes anti-Sigmarite penalty except when dealing with Sigmarite supremacists and monotheists.
Finally getting around to going through the traits. This thread just moves too fast. I post something and it takes me half an hour to catch up to the post I already made. I guess I'll have to be a bit more brief with these. I think I'll go through and group them by theme to make things quicker.

First up we have the Sneaking and Fighting block. You might also call it the Cunning Brutality/Brutal Cunning block. Not a lot of these are going to be relevant to Mathilde in her position as Court Wizard. A regular infiltration/assassination-specialist Grey Wizard would love Infiltrator and Assassin, or for more Ranger-themed sudden death Scout and Marksman combined with an enchancted longarm would be great. But Mathilde is neither of those. And she's not a battlefield commander either, so Campaigner isn't worth it. Daredevil, meanwhile, gives a good mechanical effect but a pretty bad narrative one. I'm also including Magical Duelist in this block of options, since that trait has come from poking at enemy spellcasters on the battlefield, namely the Big 'eadButt himself just recently and the crappy necromancers of the Sylvania campaign. Of all of these, the only ones that I can see being particularly relevant in her new role are Infiltrator and Magical Duelist. Infiltrator because occasionally she's going to need to get up close to investigate Skaven or Goblin flavours of magic bullshit, and Magical Duelist since she's the Karak's first responder for that stuff.

[X] Infiltrator: Nobody seems to guard anything well enough to keep you out. +2 Intrigue, +10 bonus to infiltration.
[X] Magical Duellist: Anyone unwise enough to try to cast spells you don't want them to will quickly regret it. +2 Learning, +10 bonus to dispelling and inducing miscasts.

Next we've got the Academia block. A surprising number of these traits are about writing papers, which seemed like a much smaller part of the arc. Maybe it's just that there's more directions to take that stuff compared to sneaking in and killing guys. We've got Collaborator, Hands On, and Warrior of Paperwork as evolutions of Practical focusing on different aspects, but I'm not too worried about taking any of them because we're already pretty good at collecting College Favour and despite the name, Warrior of Paperwork probably isn't going to give us the ability to create spells that kill people with paper cuts. Collegiate, meanwhile, is the choice that's probably closest to the 'natural' focus of the Court Wizard position. I think it'd also be helpful to have if we end up with enough wizards coming down to the Karak that it's worth starting up a Branch College. Also in this block is Polyglot, which would be a nice-to-have because of the location and likely trade focus of the humans of the Karak, but is far from necessary for basically anything. It would be nice to get a look at some more of da Miragliano's works in the original Tilean, but that's more for personal interest rather than the needs of the job.

[X] Collegiate: They say managing Wizards is like herding cats. Herding cats isn't actually that difficult. Can manage three other wizards per action spent.

Finally, a few miscellaneous options. Avatar is very popular, but I just don't like it. White Wolf Familiar isn't as great as some people have thought for combat, but it would mean he'd be able to keep up with Mathilde on overland travel with a little bit of effort. Plus a big fluffy cloud to sleep on never goes amiss. Windsage is an improvement to what is already probably Mathilde's most important trait, and it's close to the trait-embodiment of the Court Wizard mission statement of "Keep an eye on the weird stuff". Lastly, Polytheist isn't just nice to have because it mitigates her Sigmar hate a little, but because damn there's a lot of gods in this Karak and she's going to have to deal with people who worship those gods.

[X] Wolf Familiar > Winter Wolf Familiar: Turns out Wolf is a late bloomer. Wolf will grow large enough to ride upon.
[X] Windreader > Windsage: Your magical senses see more than your normal ones. +2 Learning, even more able to see and understand emotion and magical effects in others.
[X] Disdain for Sigmar > Polytheist: Your bitterness towards Sigmar has softened with time and distance. You're still not thrilled with him, but as long as his followers are coexisting with those of other Gods, you can deal with it. +1 Piety, removes anti-Sigmarite penalty except when dealing with Sigmarite supremacists and monotheists.
 
[X] Take an active hand in the EIC

[X] Windreader > Windsage
[X] Avatar
[X] Plan recruit everyone!
[X] Donate it to whoever ends up leading the Undumgi.
[X] Plan Fields of Gold
 
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Why do you think we're going to be able to drag Johann around? Like we're of equal rank and if we make enough of a deal about it our Court Wizardness might get him to obey us but he's still his own person who will tell us to fuck off if we mess with him too hard.
Because given what we'll be paying him, any Journeyman worth his salt will sign up. Isn't that right, Journeyman Johann? *Meaningful look*
 

Okay, I was asking for that. Literally.

But what I was meaning to figure out was, besides all the magical favors our familiar will get us. What does a wolf-sized wolf bring to the table? Will he fight with us? Can we send him to do errands in our name? Boney said that this will be the last time Winter Wolf will be available, even more than Avatar so I'm kind of tempted to get a huge-sized wolf so we can ride it.

Oh! Do we get extra fighting power when fighting mounted on a giant wolf?
 
[X] Windreader > Windsage: Your magical senses see more than your normal ones. +2 Learning, even more able to see and understand emotion and magical effects in others.

[X] Magical Duellist: Anyone unwise enough to try to cast spells you don't want them to will quickly regret it. +2 Learning, +10 bonus to dispelling and inducing miscasts.

[X] Take an active hand in the EIC

[X] Donate it to whoever ends up leading the Undumgi.

[X] Plan Fields of Gold
-[x] Recruit Maximilian
-[X] Recruit Johann

I am in favor of ramping up the Belligerent Sexual Tension between Mathilde and Johann and then wiping the charming, self-assured smirk off his face by grabbing him by the collar and shoving our tongue down his throat.
I want Johann for even just the off chance of this happening, because it's absolutely hilarious.
 
... Actually, just had a thought @BoneyM. It feels like the most natural way to solve this, would be if the Wizard topic were arranged thus. If you had two categories/sections to vote on:

*How many Wizards do you want? The number of Wizards you want to get; vote for a number.
*Who those Wizards are. Vote for a name or names.

That way, people could just vote for a simple [] 0 Wizards [] 1 Wizard [] 2 Wizards [] 3 Wizards [] 4 Wizards section... And then a section that listed [] Panoramia [] Johan etcetcetc. They vote for a number, and then they vote for all the names they want.

That way, the most popular outcomes are... The number of wizards people want, and who those wizards are. It's simple and straightforward and it does not require somebody to hunt through the entire thread to find out what the related plans are. It also lets people easily and grasp which numbers are winning and thus communicate and debate it in the thread.

This'd probably be the better way to go about it, but with 130 votes already logged I'm not going to change how it works now. Anyway, the vote tally shows the existing combinations.
 
[ ] Disdain for Sigmar > Polytheist

I'll stop having disdain for Sigmar when he and his followers stop being so shit.

[X] Take an active hand in the EIC

Yeah, losing one action per turn is wince worthy but the economic support from the EIC in this early stage of the Karak's life could be enormously helpful if we coordinate with the Steward. Being highly visible also stops people from getting any bright ideas.

Windsage is certainly valuable, but +2 Martial and +40 to assassinating people is ridonkulous. What even is that, a 2/3rds chance we crit on every assassinate roll?

[x] Assassin: Combat is easiest when the other person doesn't realize they're in it. +2 Intrigue, +40 bonus against unaware targets.

That and a 15+ favour weapon makes anybody we target get about one trillion percent fucked.

-

[x] Magical Duellist: Anyone unwise enough to try to cast spells you don't want them to will quickly regret it. +2 Learning, +10 bonus to dispelling and inducing miscasts.

Engrave Fear (Mathilde) into the heart of every orc shaman. Would also be helpful as and when the Grey Seers decide to get clever. Course, I'm not gonna be mad if Windsage or Avatar win either.

[X] Plan Fields of Gold
-[x] Recruit Maximilian
-[X] Recruit Johann

Bully Johan all day.
 
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Because given what we'll be paying him, any Journeyman worth his salt will sign up. Isn't that right, Journeyman Johann? *Meaningful look*
Not really since there are several possible reasons why he could refuse to be our subordinate and if it's such an issue he could always disappear for a month and claim he became a magister in that time or outright reveal his true rank.
 
Also Abelhelm proved sufficiently that as long as your war is successful you'd make quite a lot of profit off repossessed land and assets. He got the Hunter's Hills and that gold mine left for Roswita.

She's apparently been keeping the gold mine quiet, but if you look at the people flocking to the newly important city...she's definitely using it.

And now for the newer analysis...
Wait, I thought that someone just said that the only thing that could have made Roswita's economic descisions sensible would have been finding a goldmine, not that she literally had a goldmine. But people keep saying she has a literal goldmine, so can someone give me a cite?
 
Wait, I thought that someone just said that the only thing that could have made Roswita's economic descisions sensible would have been finding a goldmine, not that she literally had a goldmine. But people keep saying she has a literal goldmine, so can someone give me a cite?
It's the one stumbled upon examining the aftermath of the town hall bombardment.
 
Wait, I thought that someone just said that the only thing that could have made Roswita's economic descisions sensible would have been finding a goldmine, not that she literally had a goldmine. But people keep saying she has a literal goldmine, so can someone give me a cite?
iirc during our attack on the town we found some newly minted gold showing the vampire countess must of had a nearby source that she was taking advantage of though we never personally investigated it ourself.
 
i.e. Let's say somebody reads the update, decides he wants Panoramia and Johann, manages to notice "Plan Votes only" and then votes. How is he going to vote? He doesn't know what the standing plans are. So he has to come up with it himself, and he might come up with "Get 2 Wizards" (or "Plan 2 Wizards", which is an already-existing plan but he doesn't know that, because it's a common-enough word choice that anybody might pick it). Which means he might either add to the number of plans laying around, or he might accidentally vote for Panoramia and Maximilian because that's what "Plan 2 wizards" is but he doesn't know that.
You can just open up the vote tally and browse for a minute to find the plan you want. Voters are hardly idiots, they can certainly manage to perform that task with ease.
 
But what I was meaning to figure out was, besides all the magical favors our familiar will get us. What does a wolf-sized wolf bring to the table? Will he fight with us? Can we send him to do errands in our name? Boney said that this will be the last time Winter Wolf will be available, even more than Avatar so I'm kind of tempted to get a huge-sized wolf so we can ride it.
Wolf-sized wolves are nice because they can fit all the places that wolves can fit, which is most places. If we get the right familiar abilities Wolf will become fully intelligent, able to psychically communicate to us, and able to speak with our voice. That would be pretty great since it would let Mathilde basically leave him back in a control room somewhere, narrating her actions while she infiltrates and murders her way through the enemy so that the command staff get live reports on what's going on from Solid Shadow's codec Mathilde's pet wolf.
 
[X] Plan Amber and Jade
-[X] Recruit Esbern and Seija
-[X] Recruit Panoramia

The goldies are probably going to stay, and I think we're gonna have lots of issues investing enough AP to handle all of these people.

[X] Take an active hand in the EIC
One action per turn will be spent keeping in touch with the EIC, allowing you to more directly control it and, if you wish, helping it branch out towards Karak Eight Peaks.

An ounce of prevention and all that.

[X] Avatar: You're growing worryingly familiar with being used as a conduit by deities. ???
[X] Wolf Familiar > Winter Wolf Familiar: Turns out Wolf is a late bloomer. Wolf will grow large enough to ride upon.

I'm cool with hating Sigmar. The two above are the ones that probably aren't going to be available ever again.

[X] Keep it around in case you ever want to study non-Ulgu enchantments.

Study material. Love it.
 
I really do not like the trait Avatar. Being an Avatar trades free will for power. Power is not a concern here. We will get more power and I really don't like trading our ability to make choice just for power.

There is also the fact that the trait makes it clear of the pluralism. It's not becoming an Avatar of Ranald. It's becoming an Avatar of anything that wants to but in. Even Sigmar. Ewww.

The only deity we have been an Avatar of so far is Mork. So please don't think that poor Mathilde will get to choose who holds her strings at any given possession attempt.
 
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