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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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NotteBoy97 said:
For those who are saying that getting all 4 wizards is an amazing idea I would point out that the two actions that takes plus the EIC one which seems locked in by now would leave us with only 3 personal actions left out of 6 not counting overwork. This combined with as an advisor we're expected to put 2-4 actions doing what our boss tells us basically leaves us with no free time to do personal stuff since I really doubt we can justify just sending minions to do our actual job to do other things when we were hired to be the Magical Troubleshooter due to our personal skills.
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We absolutely can justify sending minions to do our actual job because they are, you know, the minions that we're supposed to use to do that job. As Court Wizard, we direct other wizards to accomplish Belegar's will much as the Head Ranger directs other rangers to accomplish Belegar's will; expecting us to personally take action to do everything he wants would be silly. That's what minions are for.

With 2 wizards we should expect our actions to look something like this:
1: EIC
2: Minion Management -> Solve Belegar's Problems x4
3: Solve Belegar's Problems Personally
4: Solve Belegar's Problems Personally
5: Do Whatever We Want
6: Do Whatever We Want

With 4 wizards we should expect our actions to look something like this:
1: EIC
2: Minion Management -> Solve Belegar's Problems x4
3: Minion Management -> Solve Belegar's Problems x2, Do Whatever Mathilde Wants x2
4: Solve Belegar's Problems Personally
5: Do Whatever We Want
6: Do Whatever We Want

I believe the above to be a fairly reasonable expectation for how our standard turns are going to look. Minions have 2-4 action slots devoted to their orders; this assumes the minimum on the part of our minions. With 2 wizards we are able to throw 6 actions at solving Belegar's problems and have 2 left for our own business, while with 4 wizards we are able to not only throw 7 actions at solving his problems, we are also able to increase the Whatever We Want actions from 2 to 4 by using our authority to direct our minions to expend their effort to whatever tasks we desire (perhaps, for example, writing up papers on our behalf).

This is the wonder and majesty of delegating responsibilities and having large amounts of manpower to throw at your problems: A lot more gets done.
 
Neshuakadal said:
So you want to get a trait to help with one maybe two rolls? If that is the case we could just do more prep work and get the same result. Having a great relationship with Ranald seems like the best bet to eventually succeed with such research and we have that. If you are afraid of the first few attempts than preparing a proper grounding room seems like it would accomplish the same thing without getting a very questionable trait.
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Hmm.. fair point. Changing.

[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] Take an active hand in the EIC

[X] Plan 2 wizards
 
Wakin' up for the purposes of voting, along with my thonks (Since I'm not sure I'll have time once I wake up for reals).

[X] Plan Role Model for the Younglings
[X] Take an active hand in the EIC
[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.
[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] Bureaucrat + Practical > Warrior of Paperwork
[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] Donate it to whoever ends up leading the Undumgi.

You ask me 'Why Collegate? Why get all the journeymanlings?"

Because, friends of the internet, Karak Eight Peaks is a gigantic fucking place, and unlike Stirland, our shadowhorse cheat can only go so far. Our ability to take actions is limited as a result. Johann? Technically, he could have had a spot here--if at any point he had given us a heads up and said "Yeah, I've got work to do here, you help me get what I want done and I'll cooperate."

He never did, he tried giving a Grey Wizard the mushroom treatment.

So, he doesn't get access to our fancy tower and facilities until he apologizes, simple as that.

More importantly, we're not going to just be stuck with the ones we have here. We're liable to have a great many Journeymanlings and the likes coming down the pipeline, and the opportunity to cherrypick the best of them to delegate work to in exchange for being able to use the facilities we're going to set up is a heck of a thing to do. We give them experience, we get to farm College Rep by way of being a prime place for Journeymanlings to conduct their actual journeys--and more importantly, we effectively unlock a bunch of extra actions through the mystical power of delegation. Which means that much more of our remaining AP is going to be spent on things we want to do as opposed to things we have to do (Being able to avoid the 'Do your job' AP expense in perpetuity by largely being able to delegate the day to day stuff to our journeymanlings isn't going to happen, but we probably will be able to reduce it down to 1/2 AP a turn to feel comfortable that we're contributing, leaving the other half of our AP free).

To facilitate this, I consider the Collegiate trait to be extremely high priority. Three for the price of 2 expands up to 2 AP for 6 Journeymanlings, which lets us have our pick of any newcomers, for a 'Second' Delegation AP. This also means we can bring in a large number of perspectives in by way of representatives of the other Colleges, which means we're much more likely to have people who have good insights on the papers we're writing, especially after big campaigns. As this is one of the most reliable ways of developing College Favor, this is a quite strong pick. Doubly so as it'll be like putting rocket boosters on our aspiration to Wizard Lord by the age of 35. It's one thing to have someone who's--on paper--an excellent agent with a good sense of dramatic timing. It's another thing entirely to have someone who is that and also a proven leader of other wizards, literally the definition of Wizard Lord.

And given how it's been implied that "Herding wizards is like herding cats", and part of the reason we got this trait in the first place probably boils down to making good use of our journeymanlings over the campaign, it'd likely be hard to acquire later, especially if we don't actually act as a leader of wizards (Which is a harder proposition now that we don't have the "Literally a war zone" club to wave around).

In regards to the EIC--we just got a rather stern warning--narratively--about the likelyhood of this going pear shaped. Taking a firm hand in matters is kind of our responsibility--we created this monster, it's our duty to see to it that it serves the Empire instead of merely itself.

The other options are more gut feelings about what would be nice to be honest. I'd like to get rid of the Sigmar malus because there's probably going to be a lot of stupid sigmarite peasants swarming in with more faith than sense, and not feeding into their prejudices would probably be good for our overall campaign. Windsage is pretty obviously a ferociously powerful trait, and Warrior of Paperwork honestly amuses the hell out of me.

Plus, it's a heck of a lot more likely to produce those coveted "Thrilling" quality papers. Heck, the Anvil of Doom might have qualified if Practical wasn't dragging us down. Mathilde taking her streak of romanticism and adventure novels and applying it to academia? Classic.

Anyway, that's my feelings on the whole matter, back to bed!
 
Neshuakadal said:
Did Mathilde have fun when she cried over how Gork was betraying her?
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What is this sentence even supposed to mean? When did this happen? Mathilde 'crying'? When did Gork 'betray' us? All I remember is Gork empowering us to do something we were already planning to do and then when we realized this, we looted him for his divine power.

I understand dramatizing an event, but this reads more like a sensational news article.
 
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[X] Take an active hand in the EIC
[X] Donate it to whoever ends up leading the Undumgi.
[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] Plan recruit everyone!
[X] Plan Fields of Gold
 
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Quest said:
What the hell is this sentence even supposed to mean? When did this happen? Mathilde 'crying'? When did Gork 'betray' us? All I remember is Gork empowering us to do something we were already planning to do and then when we realized this, we looted him for his divine power.

I understand dramatizing an event, but this reads more like a sensational news article.
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BoneyM said:
Warboss would be an accurate title of the final Black Orc, you somehow know as you stand behind him, his prayers uninterrupted. But a more accurate title would be Prophet. 'Oo do you fink you are?! you... think? No. You're shouting it, tears streaming down your face. Sure, we 'ave a good scrap when there's nuthin' betta ta do, but dat doesn't mean we ain't bruvvas! You're not sure if the words are directed at the Orc before you or at the God his prayers are addressed to.
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Here is the passage about Mathilde crying over Gork betrayal. The point is that being an avatar means you loose who you are.
 
picklepikkl said:
Speaking for myself: I would not want Johan as a subordinate. He has his own agenda, has on multiple times demonstrated willingness to conceal that agenda from his fellow wizard, and may in fact be senior to us. This is a disaster waiting to happen; we would basically immediately need to commit to using our personal actions to investigate him, because we can't trust him to play straight with us. Pan is much easier to wrangle, she can still help out the farmers, and she looks up to us.

(Metaphorically. Unless we're, like, on a stepladder. And count the hat.)
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Why recruit her at all, if we'd be setting her to doing the job she'd be doing anyway? Keep the Ambers if that's the case.
On both a character and a practical level, I feel like Pan as a choice blows Johan out of the water. He's still going to be around poking his nose into all sorts of things, sure, and that might result in problems that we'd have to solve, same as if he were our subordinate, but the difference will be that we didn't put him on Belegar's payroll.
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If we're that worried about Johan, we should probably be investigating him anyway. What are we even concerned about, though? He's after skaventech, not dwarftech. Worst case, he goes into the Underdark and doesn't come out.
 
Guile said:
If we're that worried about Johan, we should probably be investigating him anyway. What are we even concerned about, though? He's after skaventech, not dwarftech. Worst case, he goes into the Underdark and doesn't come out.
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No, the worst case in descending order of awfulness:
  1. He gets over ambitious and blows himself up as well as whatever is in the vicinity
  2. He gets corrupted by Warpstone and we have an insane magister on our hands damaging our efforts to make magic acceptable to the dwarfs
 
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DragonParadox said:
No, the worst case in ascending order of awfulness:
  1. He gets over ambitious and blows himself up as well as whatever is in the vicinity
  2. He gets corrupted by Warpstone and we have an insane magister on our hands damaging our efforts to make magic acceptable to the dwarfs
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I suppose that's true.

But then, that's true of everyone, except us for #2.
 
Neshuakadal said:
Here is the passage about Mathilde crying over Gork betrayal.
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My bad then, I somewhat mistook what you were going for. But it was really Mork crying not Mathilde. You seem to be misunderstanding the trait by saying it will cause that to happen more. You want to make sure that never happens again? Take avatar. It lets us resist possession. That's about the only actual thing we know about it that is confirmed by GM.
 
Andres110 said:
Didn't the Ulricans recently accept a bunch of help from two Beast wizards?
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Wizards whose beast magic is to support their mounts to fight harder. Somewhat different from a corona of fire
Andres110 said:
Rarity is Unique. We're getting this now because Wolf is still a puppy and so could theoretically still grow up large. After a turn or two, he won't be a puppy any more, and his species will be solidly locked in as a common wolf rather than a winter wolf.
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Ah...thats fine too. I don't want our familiar anywhere near battle, and being small helps there
Andres110 said:
If it helped with diplomacy I reckon it would grant extra Diplomacy, but it doesn't.
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It aided us with infiltration in the prior step by letting us see in the dark.
With diplomacy it won't help to change minds, but it WOULD help you see how they feel about topics and change strategy to fit.

Nickan said:
Ah, pity. I was essentially hoping to cheese out the possession of a small lighter equivalent. Appreciate the prompt response.
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We know a solar forge spell. We have a lighter.
Guile said:
I don't think we can just assume we can trade in our journeymanlings for newer, better models, no.
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Uh...journeymen graduate eventually. Theycd leave then. Might come back as magister if they like the working environment though
NotteBoy97 said:
For those who are saying that getting all 4 wizards is an amazing idea I would point out that the two actions that takes plus the EIC one which seems locked in by now would leave us with only 3 personal actions left out of 6 not counting overwork. This combined with as an advisor we're expected to put 2-4 actions doing what our boss tells us basically leaves us with no free time to do personal stuff since I really doubt we can justify just sending minions to do our actual job to do other things when we were hired to be the Magical Troubleshooter due to our personal skills.
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2 actions per turn on our job = 2 actions telling Journeymanlings to do it.
We'd need to spend one action every so often of course, but thats the point of being an advisor? To get an organization to do it for you. If Belegar ordered a hundred runehammers you wouldn't see the advisor making them all himself
 
Guile said:
I suppose that's true.

But then, that's true of everyone, except us for #2.
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Technically true, but he is at much larger risk to explode everything and contaminate it with warpstone. Magic is unsafe, but reverse-engineering skaventech is much more so.
 
If Mathilde had come swooping in on a giant bat or something she would have had a tougher time of it.
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Yes..ahem swooping is bad
sorry I can't resist

Onto the options, hoo boy all the shinies! WHy can't I have them all.
[X] Plan 2 wizards

The Ambers have their own thing, and Johann in dire need of Mathilde's SUSPICIOUS WITHERING GLARE

[X] Take an active hand in the EIC
Do I want a spy, trade and other misc functions rolled into one? Oh yes.

[X] Infiltrator:
Flat +10 bonus to all seems good, especially since Mathilde is pretty good enough by herself.

[X] Scout:
The bonus is more situational but I guess we're going to use this a lot more?

[] Assassin:
This will make surprise greatsword to the face much more easier but much more situational.

[ ] Avatar:
Eh, being Avatar of Ranald is nice and all but I'm not seeing any Ranald (or not just him) in this traits and more like us placing big glowy shadowy magical beacon that says "ADORABLE STEALTHY MURDERY PUPPET! 10 Favors for Admission!"

[ ] Polyglot:
This is kinda an awesome trait but too bad we're getting this options with lots of other shinies

[ ] Marksman:
If we decided to take sniper great/magicstaffsword sure.

[X] Collegiate:
Not terribly useful now but could be later down when we feel the need to hire/recruit more wizards.

[X] Magical Duellist:
I like inducing horrible horrible miscast to our enemies

[X] Wolf Familiar > Winter Wolf Familiar:
:o adorable big woofer!!!! I want this, I know a lot of people don't want it but I want him.

[ ] Brave > Daredevil:
This could be useful but not now I think, since we've taken Learning position and all.

[ ] Blooded > Campaigner:
See above

[] Bureaucrat + Practical > Warrior of Paperwork:
Well uh, this could be good I guess but the effects are for papers and I think while harvesting College Favors is good it's just too specific?

[ ] Practical > Collaborator
[ ] Practical > Hands On
Same as above.

[X] Windreader > Windsage:
This however seems like a huge upgrade to our previous trait and I'd like to see this more.

[ ] Disdain for Sigmar > Polytheist:
Not yet I think, there's a reason for this I suppose but I feel that this will be stronger if we see some Sigmarites aid us/the dwarves, instead we see no one from them so ehhh.

[X] Donate it to whoever ends up leading the Undumgi.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Why are people voting for avatar? I don't see the benefit.
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It's nearly unique and commemorates a monumental event that is unlikely to be repeated. We know that it helps us resist another divine possession and it's unlikely to be negative because a dwarven soul expert critted his roll to see if the event left any negative effects on us. Some also speculate that it will help us with our divine magic research and others also believe that it will be an amazing trait because of the events surrounding it.
 
[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] Plan 2 wizards
-[X] Recruit Panoramia
-[X] Recruit Maximilian
 
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[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] Infiltrator: Nobody seems to guard anything well enough to keep you out. +2 Intrigue, +10 bonus to infiltration.

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

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



My personal preferences are rather simple. Learning gives us a straight bonus to casting spells, and eventually I'll like to be capable of casting Battle Spells with relative safety and consistency.

Infiltration and assassination was the reason why we got 35 dwarf favor from this campaign, and these two traits offer frankly humongous bonuses to it.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Oct 4, 2019 at 1:51 AM, finished with 560 posts and 172 votes.
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I expect Avatar to be immensely helpful in an extremely narrow set of events which we will somehow blunder into anyway.
 
Was it mentioned if the ??? of Avatar will be revealed if we choose it? Basically it's revealed once we select it.

Or will it remain ??? until we trigger the conditions to reveal it? Basically we get no bonus until we manage to stumble upon whatever causes it to have effects.
 
Just so everyone can keep track, here is what Boney said on the matter of Avatar.

BoneyM said:
It would make you more able to try to resist being possessed by a Chaos God. Though that's not really a problem that most people will have in their lifetime.
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BoneyM said:
Being used to Godly possession would imply that you're able to do more than just go along with it. That's all you're getting. ??? means the vagueness is deliberate, not 'keep asking'.
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