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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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[X] [RIDER] Mounted Wraiths
[X] [RIDER] Great Cat Knight
[X] [RIDER] Wee little Baby Mammoth
[X] [RIDER] Spider
[X] [RIDER] A man who could look like a depiction of Ranald, though there's a lot of ambiguity about it due to the smoke drifitng around him partially obscuring his face at all times, in a knight costume, wielding swords, riding a horse-sized housecat.
 
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Alratan said:
Why risk making [the effect of scaring horses] worse?
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Because you can control whether your summons are adjacent to friendly cavalry, and it's a huge advantage against unfriendly cavalry.

Edit: to expand a bit on that, a teleporting wizard who can summon horse-spooking gribblies out of thin air is a fantastic way to have a one-wizard flanking maneuver with drastically outsized impact.
 
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Alratan said:
I fear we're going to loose out on the vast majority of the utility of the Apparition by making it something that can only be used as a beatstick on the battlefield and as a temporary meat shield in truly desperate scenarios.

There are so many clever things a Grey Wizard can do to leverage a more subtle looking Rider I fear we'll never get to do.
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Calling it 'the vast majority of the utility' seems a bit off when no one even brought up the possibility until we already caught an Apparition.

'Beatstick and temporary meat shield' is what people voted for, if we wanted something more subtle or clever we should have gotten a Whispering Darkness.
 
[X] [RIDER] Mounted Wraiths
[X] [RIDER] Knight
-[X] Conventional Empire (Mathilde's Heraldry)
[X] [RIDER] The Dämmerlichtreiter
[X] [SEVIROSCOPE] Visual
 
[X] [SEVIROSCOPE] Visual

[X] [RIDER] Spider
[X] [RIDER] Mounted Wraiths
[X] [RIDER] Mist-shrouded Grey Wizard on a Shadowsteed
[X] [RIDER] Knight
-[X] Conventional Empire (Mathilde's Heraldry)
[X] [RIDER] Knight
-[X] Conventional Empire
 
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Alratan said:
I fear we're going to loose out on the vast majority of the utility of the Apparition by making it something that can only be used as a beatstick on the battlefield and as a temporary meat shield in truly desperate scenarios.

There are so many clever things a Grey Wizard can do to leverage a more subtle looking Rider I fear we'll never get to do.
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A grey wizard wanting to do something subtle should not be looking to Battle Magics to accomplish their goals. And for decoy purposes, whether you are looking at a duplicate of mathilde or suddenly looking at a pissed-off murder beast, you certainly won't be looking for Mathilde at that moment either way.
 
Glau said:
If 'you' is singular, sure. If we are in a swarm situation, then no.
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Then we've peeled off part of the pursuit in the process at least, assuming they have perfectly effective combat communication rather than just yelling while they fight

It'd probably be faster to just disperse the Rider than to reorganize your force while stuck in.
Boney said:
My "I do not summon Hexwraiths" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
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Pretty much :V

If you don't want questions about summoning undead looking things then maybe summong something that doesn't look undead...otherwise questions would be asked and the answers would only satisfy some but not all of them, even if they don't feel up to pressing the matter..
Talon TigerDino said:
A grey wizard wanting to do something subtle should not be looking to Battle Magics to accomplish their goals. And for decoy purposes, whether you are looking at a duplicate of mathilde or suddenly looking at a pissed-off murder beast, you certainly won't be looking for Mathilde at that moment either way.
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From what we know it need not be Battle Magic at all.
The Ghur version is what, Moderately Complicated?
 
[X] [SEVIROSCOPE] Visual

[X] [RIDER] Mounted Wraiths

[X] [RIDER] Knight
-[X] Conventional Empire

[X] [RIDER] Knight
-[X] Demigryph Knight

[X] [RIDER] Great Cat Knight
 
WorldSlayer said:
Because giant leaping cats are better against single targets.

While the martial ability is same for the horse and the cat (or other critter) it was mentioned that horses are better against groups and critters are better against single targets.

While I do agree that the monster is going to be more shocking to horses, this fact also goes both ways (also more shocking against enemy horses). However, for a trained warhammer warhorse it's probably unlikely on average to truly shock them anyway.
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Mathidle is already amazingly lethal against single targets thanks to having a cannon sword and a dragon breath nuke. Is a giant leaping cat going to hit harder than Kragg's masterwork?

I think it's larger formations and mobs of enemies who can wear her down who are the greater threat. Her equipment is much les swell optimised to deal with them.

GrimTheMad said:
Calling it 'the vast majority of the utility' seems a bit off when no one even brought up the possibility until we already caught an Apparition.

'Beatstick and temporary meat shield' is what people voted for, if we wanted something more subtle or clever we should have gotten a Whispering Darkness.
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We hadn't the opportunity to make a sold clone offered to us then.

You're treating this as an either-or. A Mathilde shaped rider is just as good a beatstick and near shield as the other options, but can also be very useful in a wide range of other scenarios.

Arguably; it's a better beatstick and meat shield, as it can be deployed more easily and with less collateral in a city or around civilians than the more supernatural or monstrous options, where it could easily spark a riot or stampede.

Basically; a Mathilde rider is a near free option.

Fayhem said:
Because you can control whether your summons are adjacent to friendly cavalry, and it's a huge advantage against unfriendly cavalry.

Edit: to expand a bit on that, a teleporting wizard who can summon horse-spooking gribblies out of thin air is a fantastic way to have a one-wizard flanking maneuver with drastically outsized impact.
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If we regularly fought enemies that had horses that might care; it might be. Unfortunately neither Bretonnian nor Chaos steeds are likely to care, and other species don't use horses. The only people likely to be affected are our allies.
 
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On my phone so voting'd be a bit of a pain right now, but with it being pointed out that Mathilde using her masteries is immediately recognisably different from a doppelganger aping them, I'm much less fussed about that option, though I wouldn't be unhappy if it won.

Boney said:
One of them did. Auditory is actually the most common form of Windsight for Light Wizard.
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Kind of ironic, for the Wind of Light.

Glau said:
Visual doesn't get 3d or changes over time. Plus I think the dwarves would like this one a lot more.
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I'm pretty sure it does? It does it in slices, like an MRI, and then you combine those slices to form the 3d image.

Auditory would also struggle with changes over time I think, if you're trying to do the 3D mapping.

Boney said:
Symbols of dedication to a God aren't just an aesthetic. Throwing a rune of dedication to a God that is the complete conceptual opposite of what your spell is trying to do could perhaps go poorly.
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I'm suddenly much less enthused about all of the fake Ranald knight options being discussed.

picklepikkl said:
So, anyone who knows what's up will go "that's not a Hexwraith." As for the people who don't know what's up who see it, if they are on the other side, them believing something false about the Apparition is good, actually. If they are on our side and go "is that a fucking Hexwraith", then the only way that's an actual problem is if they don't know Mathilde's bona fides ahead of time and confuse her for a Necromancer and try to gank her, which seems unlikely to me? Someone who knows she's a Grey Wizard Lord summoning something that looks like a Hexwraith is going to file it under "Wizards are terrifying and maybe in league with the powers of darkness but at least she's on our side," same with a lot of the other horrible Battle Magic spells in existence (such as almost anything the Amethysts do).

Like, I keep trying to come up with situations where someone untrained reaches the wrong conclusion and causes problems for us and they are all very contrived.
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Maybe not serious issues, but there are plenty of people in positions of power that won't have an encyclopedic knowledge of exactly what a Hexwraith looks like who might be somewhat offput. And while Mathilde can explain that no, it's not a Hexwraith, honest, it's the sort of thing that puts a damper on introductions. Especially introductions in the field, or with people who are distrustful of magic.

It's not a huge deal, but it seems like pointlessly borrowing trouble for no tactical gain.

Actually, for negative tactical gain. One of the advantages of the Rider is that non-magical weapons are going to go through it IIRC, which is unexpected on a generic knight but completely expected for a spooky ghost.
 
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[X] [RIDER] Mist-shrouded Grey Wizard on a Shadowsteed

Based on my current understanding, this has some of the best utility. Mathilde kicks the most ass in two scenarios:
1: Chump checking an enemy force's cohesion and morale
2: Picking off high value targets

But in between those two things is a valley of "There are very concerning elite combatants to deal with, but also a well composed army that refuses to be shaken free from their dastardly tarpitting of us". A supernatural cavalry charge gives us a more physical means of disrupting an enemy force to make room for Mathilde to either double down with some ulgu fuckery, or pick a fight with that guy in the shiny hat everyone's worried about.


[X] [RIDER] Great Cat Knight
[X] [RIDER] Spider

These are also cool.


[no.] [RIDER] Mounted Wraiths

The gold college was so worried about the optics of apparition use that they made us swear to never reveal that we got the secret from them.

Collegiate wizards struggle to delineate apparitions from demons at the best of times.

There are people who will use something looking bad as ammunition in bad faith, draining political capital that could otherwise be further legitimizing wizards, the hedgewise, and mannfred who we hope to take the throne as a magister.

Mathilde has a lot of skeletons in her closet that would see her put to the sword and burned, and this would needlessly draw attention to us, and effort/credibility from us on something we honestly do not have to.


And Mathilde called it a bad idea.

It's a bad idea.

Let's please not do mounted wraiths.
 
[X] [RIDER] Knight
-[X] Conventional Empire (Mathilde's Heraldry)

[X] [RIDER] Knight
-[X] Conventional Empire (Mathilde's Heraldry w/Wolf mount)

[X] [RIDER] Misty Wraith on top of a Giant Wolf

[X] [RIDER] Mounted Wraiths

I'm not super enthused about giant cats because with her general kit and especially her Sword Mastery Mathilde is already excellent at dueling powerful single targets. I voted for Red Rider to fill a hole in our toolkit, and horses and wolves just seem to do that better.
 
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Talon TigerDino said:
A grey wizard wanting to do something subtle should not be looking to Battle Magics to accomplish their goals. And for decoy purposes, whether you are looking at a duplicate of mathilde or suddenly looking at a pissed-off murder beast, you certainly won't be looking for Mathilde at that moment either way.
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The thing is; for Mathilde this won't be battle magic. We've had confirmation that the summoning spell for it could be made to work with the Staff of Mistery, so it's at worst Fiendishly complex, so Mathilde can cast it relatively routinely with her Magic score.
 
[X] [RIDER] Mounted Wraiths
[X] [RIDER] Mist-shrouded Grey Wizard on a Shadowsteed
[X] [RIDER] Misty Wraith on top of a Giant Wolf
[X] [RIDER] Wee little Baby Mammoth

anything but the cat

[X] [SEVIROSCOPE] Auditory

I'd rather not go for the bland visual let be weird and do audtiorty instead
 
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My hopes for what a Great Cat Knight might look like:
Wait, wrong image.

There we go.
 
Alratan said:
The thing is; for Mathilde this won't be battle magic. We've had confirmation that the summoning spell for it could be made to work with the Staff of Mistery, so it's at worst Fiendishly complex, so Mathilde can cast it relatively routinely with her Magic score.
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If you mean this:

Boney said:
Yes. The most basic way to manage that would be to have the fog act as a shortcut for the Apparition to be deployed from, and return to, Mathilde's soul. If that works out, then it would work with any kind of Apparition.
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Then that was about a theoretical entirely new spell that would need to be built from scratch, rather than being able to piggyback off the Gehenna's Golden Hounds techniques. Mathilde will be creating a basic 'deploy critter from me with instructions' spell as part of this process that will not be mist-themed and may or may not be Battle Magic.
 
I'm voting for anything not Mathilde first, then I'll vote for anything not cuddly looking.

Mathilde is gauch, number 1. Second, the spell will be miscast. I expect we will eventually, and others definitely will. When it's miscast, do you want the miscaster looking like a person who accidently let a monster off a leash, or the person who set his friend on you? Because if people think we are in complete control, and they attack a friendly, that adds up to treason. And in the heat of battle, someone might do something stupid and try to kill the miscaster for treason. More, there will be stories told about this blaming the apparation. This goes double for a witch hunter with a grudge to bear.

It's not a huge issue for the golds if there are stories about that time the golden hounds got loose and started killing everyone. It's not good, but it's not "we need to kill all the golds" level of bad. Do we want stories about that time a bunch of summoned grey wizards brutalized the front lines of the Imperial Army? Because that's how you destroy a reputation.

Make them monstrous. Don't make them friendly knights, definitely don't make them look like grey wizards, and most definitely don't make them us.

At the very least, there aren't real knights on great cats. So it's not inherently bad. The Hexwraiths are better, IMO.
 
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Alratan said:
If we regularly fought enemies that had horses that might care; it might be. Unfortunately neither Bretonnian nor Chaos steeds are likely to care, and other species don't use horses. The only people likely to be affected are our allies.
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IIRC the Kurgan use horses (extensively/near universally in fact, being steppe nomads), and while the actual Chaos Warrior steeds probably dgaf I suspect the great majority of their horses are pretty close to baseline. I'm also skeptical that Bretonnian horses would be universally or even primarily unaffected.

There's also the fact that IIRC one of the primary utilities for the horse-form is that it's better at breaking infantry lines. But if friendly cavalry is a factor, then you already have a numerically-superior force that can break lines (and as has been noted the base Red Rider isn't particularly horse-friendly anyway, given the general aura of eldritch doom). And for a Grey Wizard on their own who is capable of using Battle Magic, breaking enemy lines is a complete non-issue, since teleportation is a universal ability for Grey Battle Wizards (on the tabletop anyway, but probably also in-quest since it's so comparatively simple it only kinda-sorta counts as Battle Magic in the first place). Want to be through an infantry line? Teleport there and hit them from behind.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
On my phone so voting'd be a bit of a pain right now, but with it being pointed out that Mathilde using her masteries is immediately recognisably different from a doppelganger aping them, I'm much less fussed about that option, though I wouldn't be unhappy if it won.
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I have to go back to the question of how anyone she wants to deceive would know the details of how Mathilde's masteries and spells work to know how longe they last and precisely what they do?

This has been blown up, but unless there's something I'm missing it's a completely non-issue.

Mathilde's enemies do not have an internet connection and the ability to read the Spellbook post to learn these details, which is basically what they'd need.

Actually, they'd need more than that. They'd need to know details we don't even know such as the precise duration or triggers that might end a spell or deactivate a mastery.
Boney said:
Then that was about a theoretical entirely new spell that would need to be built from scratch, rather than being able to piggyback off the Gehenna's Golden Hounds techniques. Mathilde will be creating a basic 'deploy critter from me with instructions' spell as part of this process that will not be mist-themed and may or may not be Battle Magic.
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Is that basic summon happening for free this turn, or would it require another AP next turn anyway?
 
[X] [RIDER] Great Cat Knight
[X] [SEVIROSCOPE] Visual
[X] [RIDER] Knight
-[X] Conventional Empire (Mathilde's Heraldry)
[X] [RIDER] The Dämmerlichtreiter
 
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