It'll be a little moot once we have CGAE down, though.
Mercenary Mage Quest: Asur Dogs of War in Warhammer Fantasy
- Thread starter Blackout
- Start date
- Fantasy
It'll be a little moot once we have CGAE down, though.
Or could be used to make flames on an opponent's body even worse so that they're completely engulfed
Flaming arrows are not unreliable. Even basic human non-magical medieval chemistry can make hellish fire arrows. The idea that fire arrows are unreliable, like many things, comes from Hollywood doing trashy shit because being true to life is either dangerous or "too expensive".
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNCU4WndtYk
Take note that Smoldering Gift is more like a Frag Grenade than an Incendiary Bomb. It can blow stuff up but it's not that great at causing a fire.
- Location
- Washington
Eh. Fanriel probably won't want to personally use it herself at that point, but it's also a spell that's originally supposed to be "earthbound magic" tier. It could absolutely just get taught to whoever's halfway decent at magic within the archers themselves and still be useful. Hell, we could probably literally teach it still in earthbound form to a human within any human archer regiments we might get.
Fair enough - checked my go-to book on archery (Mike Loades' War Bows, which I would thoroughly recommend - very good general overview) and turned out that I was entirely misremembering a passage, so thank you for the correction! In any case, I don't think there's any disagreement on the tactical effects of the spell.
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- Location
- California
It'd absolutely be useful if we could use it repeatedly to prepare for battle, but it isn't that much easier to cast than the lesser wind elemental spells--which are also very useful to cast in preparation for a battle. Its utility compared to nothing is good, but I'm less convinced by its utility compared to what we already have.
Elementals in general are shit for battlefield prepping and aren't effective beyond their immediate time and location. And since we're mercenaries and assorted open battles are a thing we can reasonably expect, prep is something we can expect to get a lot of use out of if we have the tools.
Something like the village assault earlier would benefit more from Elementals. But if we were defending that same village, some quick earthworks could reasonably be expected to be a better choice when paired with a little bit of tactical analysis.
Plus, while it's a bit menial, selling our services as a construction aid is a commonly available and (depending on scale) very lucrative possibility.
I'll also just admit that I wish to shamelessly steal from the Romans the idea of making a quick fortification wherever we sleep. Just faster and better, because Elves.
Blackout
Fed By Comments
- Location
- Who knows?
Fire arrows work in this quest because they work in Warhammer Fantasy.
You and me both. There's so much to write and so little time.
Gandalf really lets himself go that bad huh?
Hopefully Herman won't bite the dust too early.
Boodlesnoop
Never entirely sure what I'm doing
I wish to give sad grampa a hug.
Edit: His health plan is NOT great, please send help.
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- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[] Plan: Rain Clouds
-[] Clear Sky
-[] Dampward
I think that Beast Tounge is one that Fanriel can figure out easily enough.
-[] Clear Sky
-[] Dampward
I think that Beast Tounge is one that Fanriel can figure out easily enough.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Beast Tongue is a T2 spell. As we've recently seen with Inspiration those have a learning DC of 200 and a still unknown Magic DC. Conservatively this would mean that learning a T2 spell like Beast Tongue, or any of the other spells on this list, by ourselves would take us three actions and cost us 105 GC in supplies.
If there's any spell on that list that we deem worthy enough of trying to study it by ourself then we're honestly much better off just trying to learn it right now.
That's the thing though. We know from the bonus we got to learning from CGAE from knowing how to conjure lesser elementals that knowing a similar spell like the Beast Cowers would make learning other Intimidation spells easier, and Intimidation spells scale at least all the way to tier 4 and battle magic such as Aspect of the Dread Knight. Furthermore it's a spell that's also immediately useful and that we'll get a bonus to its application, as we've been told by Blqckout that us having Chracian Blood means we get a bonus to intimidation spells, and we're going to be fighting Beastmen and Greenskins, the latter of which also frenquently use wolves as mounts.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, I definitely agree with this. I'm not 100% on which spells we should grab, but this remains correct.
Earthwall and Beast Tongue look like the best options, with Beast Tongue being nearly mandatory if we want to quickly bond with a powerful and sentient familiar (Griffon/Pegasus/etc.), and Earthwall being worthwhile to funnel enemy engagements in our favor, completely brick enemy charges, or even help build settlements/pre-battle fortifications.
Other options have a much lower RoI, and don't provide enough utility relative to the multiple mandatory actions of time investment required to learn them. Fanriel is and always will be primarily a utility caster- if we want to get/be a better wizard, we need to entice an elven mage (any elven mage, they'd all be better than Fanriel) to work for and help teach us- not spend the next several hundred years attempting to become one while running a mercenary group on the side.
Other options have a much lower RoI, and don't provide enough utility relative to the multiple mandatory actions of time investment required to learn them. Fanriel is and always will be primarily a utility caster- if we want to get/be a better wizard, we need to entice an elven mage (any elven mage, they'd all be better than Fanriel) to work for and help teach us- not spend the next several hundred years attempting to become one while running a mercenary group on the side.
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Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Honestly, and no offense, but this seems like a terrible plan. Leaving aside that learning five spells here means a not inconsiderable action investment in teaching the guy chemistry, we already have a backlog of two things we can write papers on which we haven't yet. We don't lack for subjects to write papers right on right now so much as we lack for high quality ones that will wow the tower, and judging by how much disdain Fanriel herself views elementalism is it isn't likely to be that high quality paper, to the point we'd be better off just using those actions to write the papers on the subjects we do have available right now.
Added to that is spending our slots right now on spells like Breath Fire and Rock Blast just seems like kind of a waste. We know Aethyric Bolt, we just bought a gun so we can save ourself the need of using low level blasto magic, it seems a waste to spend then multiple action slots on blasto magics like that.
Dampward is a spell that I might have considered if it wasn't that the only armies that make frequent use of gunpowder where we operate are the Empire, Dwarfs and to a much lesser extent Kislev, which are not exactly going to be our most common enemies. Chaos and Greenskins in contrast make little to no use of it.
Seconding this. Magic Missile spells in general are only good when casting is a free action or you have a 'screw that guy over there' nuke that can be precisely aimed- and unlike the tabletop, we don't get to cast our Wizard Level in spells before each and every action, nor do generals conveniently wait until their turn to move out of the way of fireballs or other offensive spells.
And like Imperious says, those particular magic missile spells are also weaker than Fanriel casting gun.
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Imperious
Without the sun of my life
I am willing to stand by how we should learn the Beast Cowers right now. It is a spell that would be of immediate utility in the current campaign, is a spell we can use as a ladder to learn more powerful battle magic version of the same and that we get a bonus when using it due to our traits per the GM:
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If beastmen count, I can see the argument. Otherwise, it's at least a 2 AP drain that provides no utility against any relevant enemy force. Even if the spell applies to charging enemy cavalry, they'd find an earthen wall 2 meters high and 1 thick in front of them to be a whole lot spookier.
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K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Yeah, it's incredibly versatile. Unlike all our other spells, it doesn't need constant efforts from us to keep its effect, which mean we can spam it before a fight to prepare the field in our advantage. For example, building walls around our camp or in front of vulnerable troops.
Depending on the speed of casting, it could also be used during a fight to block an enemy charge at us.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
My issue with Earthen Wall is that if we want Earthen Walls as fortifications we can just have our troops set them up mundanely? Why do we need magic for that? Using it in battle might be of more use, but honestly it still doesn't seem worth it.
Clear skies seems like the far superior environment shaping spell in contrast. We can have our troops set up earthen walls for us, we can't have stop the rain or the storm for us.
The Beast Cowers works to intimidate anything according to its description, its just especially effective against beasts, and as said, we have traits that would make it especially effective against non beasts anyway.
Clear skies seems like the far superior environment shaping spell in contrast. We can have our troops set up earthen walls for us, we can't have stop the rain or the storm for us.
The Beast Cowers works to intimidate anything according to its description, its just especially effective against beasts, and as said, we have traits that would make it especially effective against non beasts anyway.
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If causing fear is all we want, then there are other spells that do the same and arguably do it better. And I already made a case for why it's probably not as helpful on this particular campaign as the description suggests.
It was explicitly mentioned that AB has a different form and function than BR/RB. You were quoted directly in that statement. And the pistol fills the same niche that AB does (we got it primarily because it's not a spell), which means that BR/RB still cover some distinct holes that both AB and the pistol leave wide open. Which also doesn't touch on the general utility of a mid-tier AoE fire spell, which while its primary purpose is burning enemies can also be used for other things AB can't.
So no, there is no scenario where having Breathe Fire is a waste. Maybe a bit obsolescent in the extremely specific moment where the only thing you want is to snipe a single heavily armored target, but not a waste.
Right this very instant, Finreir (I think that's his name) is arguing with the Elves that humans need more respect. It was in an earlier update.
The more papers we publish about the potential uses of human knowledge (and more importantly, how these can serve High Elf interests), the more ammunition he and his supporters get to assist the Empire and Kislev when the great war kicks off. Which, even if that's just one other mage turning the canon three into four, is a significant boon to the people hiring us in general, which increases our chances of survival, and increases the chances of all of them making it back home again.
And if you can present a feasible plan for when and where we will get the chance for another exchange like this, I'll be happy to consider paring it down. Until then, 5 actions for a single turn is a notable but not a huge imposition on us when we're still a tiny merc company.
Dampward is an AoE anti-fire defense in addition to anti-gunpowder, and also has potential as a debuff in Fanriel's hands - high humidity is hard on those who have to breathe. Although it's not been tested, I can also see it as being an anti-gas attack, cast it when spores or poison mist are used to bind water to them and make them spread less.
There are a lot of useful details you're not addressing in your argument.
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Because making a 2 m (6.5 ft) tall, 3 m (10 ft) wide, and 1 m (3 ft) thick wall of Earth takes a lot more time to do with shovels than with a spell. Also it could serve as a starting point to more grandiose battlefield setup spells.
Finally it can fuck up simpler enemy fortifications that are anchored in packed earth. Y'know, the sorts that the more clever beastmen herd and ork warbands might use.
What's really interesting though is that we will get these spells in written form. @Blackout , does that mean we can hold onto these purchased spells indefinitely rather than try to learn them all in one go?
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