Handmaidens don't target Hysh, though, they target Azyr and Chamon, and fortune + transmutation spells. I don't know that they teleport either, more that they originate in doorways/windows (I assume liminal places? but maybe not a liminal realm).
Actualy thats wrong, lets look back at that clusterfuck :
First we the problem was that we rolled a 1 for getting out, but them got a 72 in positioning
Them a good fighting roll
Them another very good fighting roll but another one to getting away.
Lost the fight but still okay roll, them a 3 on figuring how to get away.
Them we again win the fight roll and finaly figure how to get away
I was responding to the text of the post, as I didn't arrive at the conversation until the argument got far enough from the intent behind the argument that said intent was no longer apparent. My intended point was that wizards tend to cast spells in combat, so messing up in combat could plausibly take the form of a miscast.
Yes, otherwise we would have already hung our wizard hat and asked Kragg to teach us runesmithing, and never would have tried to go inside that sunk boat. We don't have tame horses, only the firm delusion we do. And we keep jumping in the rodeo time and time again.
Oh, to be sure, a lot of people will choose to stay at their lower ranks, being content with where they are, but if we peg the rates of that happening to be roughly similar, we wouldn't have a disparity in the ratios of the different ranks. Also:
I mean, the Gold College has the notes that have explicitly allowed us to go out and bind another Apparition. This falls firmly under "don't poke why the College spell list is static" for Doylist reasons.
One of Mathilde's main motivations as a character is to "chage the world we live in." She's very much willing to risk her life going into the Chaos Wastes to find a lost Karak, or to fight an entire Chaos camp to save Ljiljana, or to go into a sunken monitor to rescue the dwarves there from drowning. (Her Brave trait has been doing serious work from day 1.) But what she's historically been hesitant to do is take deadly risks when learning magic. Learning more powerful spells isn't worth risking her life to her. That's not to say she's not highly motivated to become a better mage - she very much is. She learned the Miasma the minute she realized her staff would make it safer for her. But she's always been extremely cautious when learning magic and I do not want to change that.
First and foremost I would like to see citation for battle wizards having a lifespan of years. And while we are at it a citation for primary cause of said short lifespan being miscasts rather then enemy action.
I don't really like taking the thread's decisions, translating them to Mathilde's characterisation, and then making decisions based on that characterisation. It feels like locking ourselves down to whatever we've done in the past.
Off topic, but I like thinking that if Mathilde ever ends up in the same situation again, the orcs being down 15 points (and Mathilde up 2) would make things much more in her favor.
I'm really happy with how those decisions worked out in the past, and I think making similar decisions will likely keep giving us results I'll be happy with in the future.
Sure, but then why them vs any other apparition? That's what I'm stuck on here. What's so special about handmaidens? Again, Black Essence is anti-necromancy, and whispering darkness is anti necromancy + anti-chaos + fog. Not attacking here, just trying to figure it out. Because the explanation given didn't fit the facts available. (It's cool is totally a legitimate answer).
The most important difference is that now Mathilde has invisibility, so she is way more likely to be able to run before they notice her.
This suggests that Bodyguard Trio or Lance would be the sheep tornado meme
