Mercenary Mage Quest: Asur Dogs of War in Warhammer Fantasy
- Thread starter Blackout
- Start date
- Fantasy
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
I do think getting a fear/terror spell could synergize well with our traits and abilities. Look at say Morathi, she manages to use her magic in order to enhance her beauty in battle to pretty devastating effects, to the point her enemies are at times just unwilling or unable to strike her due to being so awestruck when looking at her. While we probably won't be reaching Morathi's level of effect we could do the same with Fear spells and our Chracian blood trait both in combat and in non combat situations in which we roll for intimidation. Notice for example how during the way to the count's camp we had to roll for how intimidating the Beastmen and Greenskins found us to see if we get attacked on route, and unlike with using magic to enhance our appearance while leaning on the Averlonian Blood trait, intimidation spells don't carry the stigma of being deceptive the way Glamours do.
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- Location
- California
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Earthwall (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
Four spells is an extremely hefty AP cost that I don't think we can afford given all the other things we want to do in our next downtime.
-[X] Earthwall (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
Four spells is an extremely hefty AP cost that I don't think we can afford given all the other things we want to do in our next downtime.
While true, this is the sort of thing which works best on people we already don't have too many issues with. I'm worried about things like Chaos Champions popping up, who are the sort where fear effects are going to do very little. Overfocusing on being able to clear out chaff could leave holes in our repertoire for dealing with them if we devote too much AP to it.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Getting one spell hardly seems like overfocusing, and who says Chaos champions can't be intimidated? And again, consider how useful even just this spell might end up being outside of combat as well. It's a useful branch of spells which synergizes well with our traits, and which we can get a start on on the cheap if we take Beasts Cower right now compared to if we try to recreate it out of scratch by ourself. We've already had in the past Diplomacy rolls we only squeaked by due to the intimidation factor of Chracian Blood:
And even if intimidation only works against chaff, we could use that as well. Us and the Swordmasters took a fair bit of penalties from being surrounded and outnumbered at times in Jaarpen.
It's also immediately useful for the current campaign in that we could probably use it effectively against the Goblins, Beastmen and Wolf cavalry the count's forces will be fighting.
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Sadly, the humans largely haven't bothered doing either of those things despite being here for weeks already, and what little they have done is rather shite. They are an undependable lot, those humans.
Sir that is a wall of dirt roughly the size of a full grown white rhinoceros with about 4 times the mass, it can cover plenty more than one individual except for in the loosest of formations. Or if you're an ogre, I guess.
Bonus application of Earthwall is that it comes to the perfect height to serve as a chin rest for our 7 ft tall freak of an elf.
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Stoke the Flames
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Earthwall
Now you might be wondering why I want Stoke the Flames when we have a bunch of ways to light things on fire. The answer is simple; this upgrades all the fires we set into bigger angrier fires. I just want to burn down a Norscan settlement with a Tier 2 spell used in the right place at the right time.
@BlackOut54321 how many fires can this hit at once, anyways?
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Boodlesnoop
Never entirely sure what I'm doing
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Earthwall (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
Lets talk to a griffon.
-[X] Earthwall (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
Lets talk to a griffon.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
I just want to note that learning a tier 2 spell by ourself also means, minimally, spending 3 actions and 105 GC in doing so, so we should have an eye to the question of whether a spell is useful enough we may want to try to learn it at some point by ourself. In that regard I do think there's an adequate case to be made that at some point we'd want to learn intimidation spells given their utility both off and on combat as well as their synergy with our own traits making them more powerful. If it is the case that we'd want to learn intimidation spells at some point, then not taking Cowering Beasts now will be a net loss in both AP and money later compared to getting it now.
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Stoke the Flames
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Stoke the Flames
-[X] Beast Tongue
[x] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
- [x] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
- [x] Earthwall
- [x] Beast Tongue
- [x] Clear Sky
- [x] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
- [x] Earthwall
- [x] Beast Tongue
- [x] Clear Sky
- Location
- Pittsburgh PA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Earthwall (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Earthwall (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
- Location
- Washington
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] The Ox Stands (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Earthwall
-[X] The Ox Stands (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Earthwall
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Beast Tongue
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Also here's a description by Blackout of how Fanriel using an intimidation spell:
From the sound of it there are occasions, like fighting Norscans, in which our intimidation rolls will not only benefit from Chracian Blood, but also from the intimidating reputation that elven mages have, so a potential additional synergy there with getting the Cowering Beasts.
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Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Current tally:
Adding an additional approval vote:
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Earthwall
-[X] Beast Tongue
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Earthwall
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Clear Sky
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Earthwall (Advance)
-[X] Cowering Beasts
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Clear Sky
Since while I prefer to have the Cowering Beasts as our advanced spell I feel that what spells we get as our spell selection ultimately matters a lot more.
Adding an additional approval vote:
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Earthwall
-[X] Beast Tongue
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Earthwall
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Clear Sky
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Earthwall (Advance)
-[X] Cowering Beasts
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Clear Sky
Since while I prefer to have the Cowering Beasts as our advanced spell I feel that what spells we get as our spell selection ultimately matters a lot more.
Come on guys, any spells we get, we get in written form. That's super handy for tossing them at any magical hires we get later. Also embiggening fire on the cheap is a really handy follow-up to anything involving Aqshy. Embrace the flames!
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Earthwall
-[X] Beast Tongue
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Earthwall
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Clear Sky
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Earthwall (Advance)
-[X] Cowering Beasts
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Clear Sky
[X] Yes, you wish to buy spells from the Middenheimers.
-[X] Cowering Beasts (Advance)
-[X] Stoke the Flames
-[X] Beast Tongue
-[X] Earthwall
There. Clear Sky is probably the spell I less care about among the four, so I could live with getting Stoke the Flames instead. Any chance I could convince you to approval vote for Earthwall, Cowering Beasts, Beast Tongue and Clear Sky so that getting Earthwall and Beast Tongue alone will no longer be ahead?
- Location
- California
It's true that it is only one spell, but I'm looking at it in context of there being a ton of plans which are asking for four spells when many of them are lower level, and thus limited in how useful they'll ultimately be at the end of the day.
I suppose my question is this. What does our next downtime look like in a scenario where we've bargained for four spells? What do you envision spending the remaining four actions on with us already heavily committed to that?
Personally, I think we'd have to drop several priorities, all of which have more long term application than these spells.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
If we learn three spells then spending four actions on trying to learn CGAE and one action on getting a familiar. If we learn four spells then spending three actions on trying to finish Inspiration and one on getting a familiar. I'm okay with delaying additional recruitment to the next downtime since our warchest was going to be pretty lean for holding a recruitment drive anyway.
- Location
- California
So 8/8 actions on mage stuff?
Our warchest is admittedly not the greatest for more recruitment, but getting more recruits is how we get bigger contracts offering more money. And spending huge sums of cash each turn on mage stuff isn't exactly conducive to building up a warchest either. I worry that by doing something like that we'd find ourselves growing more starved for cash over time, not less.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Getting CGAE will allow us to take bigger contracts, because it gives us access to BM. The Prophet was alone with 2 ogres and was on the same level as mercenary companies hundred of men strong. We are already a major threat on the battlefield, casing BM will make us try relevant on that scale.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
"Mage stuff" meaning getting the ability to instantly create field fortifications, getting a supernatural aura of intimidation, obtaining an elite magical scout, being able to protect allied gunpowder weapons from the weather etc,etc
"Mage stuff" is a pretty broad category of things.
Depends. Expansion is one way to get higher pay, but so is just doing a good enough job in the previous job that people will get the impression we're worth it even if we demand more. If we go recruiting this round then the most we'll be able to get is something like twenty unbloodied, and even that is because while their upkeep fee is two thirds that of veterans their recruitment fee is only a quarter. That would be beneficial, but not so drastic a difference in the Lightfangs abilities that I couldn't bear to wait for the next downtime where we'll also have more savings with which to get better/more recruits.
And the "mage stuff" isn't going to be costing us that much money in this context. AFAIK being the guy's chemistry teacher isn't going to cost us any cash.
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