Regarding dedicating heir actions to smelters, if we spent 4 heir actions, that's enough to make a full set of Master runed equipment for the Hearthguard. We also could also do material research which is very action efficient when it comes to research. Personally, I think the best use of heir actions is making Master runed equipment for the Hearthguard at least until it can kill chimaera level enemies without fatalities. What is everyone's priorities for heir actions?
I'm not familiar with Warhammer fantasy lore. Based on what I read in the quest, I got the impression that anything that could survive a couple of rounds with Snorri would be even worse for the Hearthguard then the chimera. Could you please tell me when I'm missing that would make us want the Hearthguard close to any opponent Snorri is fighting before they get a ton of Master runed equipment?
Okay so to preface something since you wanted to know about forum etiquette and stuff; please don't break up people's posts like this. It is hard to read and harder to respond to. Please, just quote much larger sections and respond without pulling everything apart in the future.
That said! For my prioritization of the Heir actions I think Materials Science research and Adamant Smelters, and then helping us on Khazagar. Making equips for the Hearthguard isn't even on the table in my mind. I do not want her too, because that's stuff I want to dedicate Snorri's actions too. I have specific runes in mind as well, including the banner form of the Master Rune of Mountiansouled (which we would make by Compressing the Mountainsouled Combo and then Understanding the resulting Master Rune into a Banner Rune). She could help on this, that is true! That might be fun to do, but I don't want her actually building the things primarily.
Put another way, I have specific build ideas in mind that I require the work of Snorri and not Karstah. I will get into those specific build ideas in a minute.
Shifting slightly to your desire to make them Master Rune equipment and raising them above the point of 'fighting chimaera without fatalities'. The problem with using that as a framework is that it is too discrete and misses context, that context being that in the actual rolls for the prior battle we had 9 wins and 0 losses and 0 ties. They
still took casualties because that is a narrative tool Soulcake uses to display the difficulty of the opponents we just fought. I believe it is possible to get the Hearthguard to a point where they take very few or no casualties against enemies like that, but it will take time to equip them and it will never be a certain thing. Regardless, the actual problem is that their Combat Bonus is low and they have no Special Rules - to use one prominent example, having the Regeneration special rule like Snorri would help them immensely.
Moving on to the related point about giving them Storm Immunity and having them fight in the Ash Storm with Snorri. The first reason is that the Banner I have in mind to give them the ability to fight in the Storm is going to give them a
lot of power narratively, and shoot up their mechanical Combat Bonus and give them the Regeneration, Unbreakable Morale, make them Tireless and immune to fatigue, potentially give them Unbreakable Armor, and the stone/steelskin to survive in the storm. All of these are special rules though Regeneration is the mainly important one. While the Banner lets them fight in the storm, it will also still boost them up significantly while they are fighting in it, such that enemies on Snorri's problem are less of an issue. It also boosts them up significantly while fighting outside of it.
Furthermore, one of the things I think will happen though Soul has not confirmed this is that once the Hearthguard join with Snorri they will stop rolling and their assistance will be rendered as a large bonus on Snorri's sheet. In which case preventing their casualties becomes mainly an issue of Snorri winning combat rolls. Or another way to look at it that's more about narrative; once they can join their lord and assist him then he can focus on the enemy and kill it while his Hearthguard are harry his enemy. In such a situation the enemy cannot lash out at the Hearthguard without opening holes for Snorri to exploit.
This is the Banner I have in mind.
Kazakflega Rilundal, Battle Standard of the Shining Keepers
Hanging from a pole of Pure Gromril meant to slot into the backplate of a dwarf's armor or to be held in one hand while the other cuts down your enemies, this two tailed banner is made from a backing of Dragonhide and metal wire woven atop it. One tail of the banner depicts the Hearthguard in battle with their Lord, fighting all the monsters of the Far North and worse. The other tail depicts the Hearthguard and their Lord helping the dawi build homes, aid the sick and injured, and providing comfort in dark times. Capping the banner pole is the skull of a once mighty Greedy Troll which has been completely encased in a layer of Adamant. Upon its forehead rests the Master Rune, while in each eye socket sits the other Runes inscribed upon this creation. Together the three runes burn away darkness and create an aura of illumination upon all beneath the banner.
Master Rune of Mountainsouled (T4 Ancient Greedy Troll Heart), Rune of Ironskin (Adamant), Rune of Breathing (T3 Magma Wyrm's Lung)
"A silvery legion, each given flesh as durable as Gronti and incredible strength to match, able to recover from hideous injury and fight on without fear or harm in the foulest of noxious pits or most terrible of storms."
The second reason I want them fighting with Snorri is that the group fighting alongside Snorri would be cool! It provides a great background for scenes and stories for Soul to write.
The last reason is that they swore to fight alongside and protect their lord - they haven't been doing that because Snorri is weird, but fighting and thus risking their lives to protect their oathholder is what they swore so from a roleplay perspective we should respect the desire that made them swear oaths so serious and equip them so that they can stand beside him. The Banner is the first step. After that comes the rest of their equipment slots: two hand slots for the Champion, 1 armor slot for the Champion, two more Banner slots for the Hearthguard, and four War Machine slots. With the Banner I think they will be safer to engage with and assist Snorri - and its impossible to really get them to a situation where they have no fatalities ever.
Before your post, I was assuming every future smelter would be made of adamant. Based on what you said about 5 smelters taking 24 turns, I'm not sure that's the case. Is there a reason to pass up the 50% increase in speed without any extra actions?
In terms of making the smelters out of Adamant, I frankly hadn't thought of doing that when I wrote up my post. The idea has been out there for a long while but *shrug*. Didn't remember while writing that bit, and I don't really have an opinion on making them out of Adamant beyond "making a Smelter out of Adamant should not interfere with making the Dragon's body on turn 54".
If we ramp up production, are there any plans to experiment with compressing the adamant maker combo? I bet the adamant maker combo would be a lot faster than what we have now even if we don't place it on an adamant furnace. Maybe the siphon runes would improve speed.
Thanks for the information. I'm guessing the narrative reason for why Snorri won't gradually produce individual protective equipment is because it wouldn't be doing things right if he trickles them out over a century or two.
On the point of compressing Adamant Maker, I don't have any plans to compress the Adamant Maker combo for more production of Adamant any time soon. I figure either progressing down Rune Metal will do that for us or it will become a necessary step of progressing Rune Metal, in which case we can do it then. I believe we have asked Soul about siphoning helping with the smelter and it not helping much on the scale the Smelter operates at, though that might have only been on the Discord (you can find a link to that in Soulcake's signature).
On trickling out personal equipment, he won't make it out of adamant over a century because it spends a fixed resource and Soulcake has framed the quest such that he won't spend that stuff without telling us or giving us the option to start doing that. In terms of large things besides the Hearthguard to spend the Adamant on, really it just comes down to Megaprojects that we think up.
One of those is that at the moment the thread is planning to make a Gronti with Adamant components after we finish Khazagar, to act as the capstone to Khazagar. I want to make a Dragon Gronti with a skeleton of Adamatn that is forty five meters long, so the size of an old Star Dragon (Also called an Emperor Dragon), and three times the size of a Bloodthirster to use as a superheavy Titan scale combatant. It's body will take 48 bars and we currently have 46. To build all of its equipment after the body will take a further 33 bars for a total of 81 bars spent for the whole thing.
And I think that spending our Adamant will probably come from similar mega-scale projects. We haven't thought of any at the moment. As an offhanded and rhetorical suggestion, one could be the building of Adamant Monoliths to supplement the Waystone network once we get good enough to make more. But that's pie in the sky future stuff right now and I'm taking it very seriously.
Regarding the argument it'll probably provide a deed, I believe deeds by themselves aren't worth striving to achieve. I believe that both gromil chainmail and the Fimir campaign was worth doing without a deed because of the inherent value for both. I think that if we get a deed it should be because what we decided to do is valuable enough to do is worth doing without a deed. I think if we only try to get deeds regardless of cost, that sounds like how the Burudin changed from being great because of the members to the members are great for being part of it. I'm also not confident that the deed would be particularly useful. After all our last deed of a +10 doesn't seem very useful to me and I don't think we got much benefit from the gromil chainmail deed. Instead I'd rather put resources towards things that we know need it like the retainers who nearly got slaughtered by the chimera.
On the Elitekiller and Citybreaker traits, a straightforward +10 to Snorri in duels is mostly meh yes, because in his fights Special Rules matter way more. However, the -10 from Citybreaker is
big, because in straight Army vs Army battle mechanics where Special Rules don't really come into play because the scale is too large then the raw numbers matter much more. Imposing a constant -10 to enemies means that any enemy we face is knocked down one fifth of a Combat Tier, and is statistically very significant.
All that said I do agree that seeking it out specifically and only for the deed is meh.
It sounds like the problem you're talking about is if you want to write from the perspective of a commander, it has to be a commander of a large group because we would never send any small group. Is that right?
It's good to know that we're mostly done with searching for more Waystone. I got the impression that would be a lot more time consuming. If we found all the Waystones, I agree that Waywarding each turn would be fulfilling the responsibility.
I think what you're saying is that Soulcake will look at our capabilities and assign enough work to make us prioritize. If that's the case I think our disagreement is unless he says otherwise, I assume that the difficulty level is predetermined regardless of whether or not the Hearthguard is expanded or not. Did he say anything?
It sounds like you're saying that runesmiths are the only people who matter when it comes to the university's impact and even if we somehow managed to get standing 10 with every hold, ancestor cults and all royalty, that would be irrelevant. Intuitively, I would assume that royalty could ask their runesmiths to back off because they're their ruler. Based on your statement, I'm getting the impression of guilds get a lot more autonomy then I assumed.
I got the impression that it wasn't that his generally high reputation meant the university would be fine even at maxinum radicalness. Instead I thought an university with low level of maximum would have a cushion from reputation, but Snorri leveraged his reputation to go more radical than he could otherwise. I think an equally skilled and wealthy master runesmith who lacks his reputation wouldn't be able to build the super radical options like the full library. I think he also would have less than 4 4 MAXIMUMs.
I'm guessing the reason that you feel comfortable replacing colony support with war support without worrying about something popping up is that we probably won't have two wars back to back. My concern is that if we're doing that, is there also going to be room to do Hearthguard cross training before the next war. I personally would like to get that completed before more fatalities happen assuming the university doesn't interfere with that.
I guess I need to internalize the autonomy of the runesmith's guild more because I see eldest Runelord of the North who is a member of two highly prestigious organization and assume he's responsible for the region. In hindsight, if he really was responsible for more than his hold, we would be seeing Snorri actions for the region outside of the occasional commission or campaign.
Sorry I was unclear, I was never questioning the long-term benefit. I was concerned about what might happen to the minor population centers until the long-term.
I definitely agree that we don't need to account for running out of favor for a while. I was concerned about what might happen in 10 to 15 turns.
Regarding what you said about slack, that makes sense. I think our disagreement is that my personal view is that spending a retainer action to save a Snorri or heir action is always a good deal, so the retainers should be expanded so we never need to worry about being unable to make it. The only exception in my mind is if there are meta concerns like your's with omakes. I think your view is that we'll almost always be able to make the trade so the diminishing returns means we're better off with eventually a deed from adamant equipment and the current status of omakes since the mechanics can't be fixed. Am I understanding your opinion correctly?
I was thinking about what you said regarding the Rune of Siphoning and I'm wondering why we would want to equip them with it? Is it confirmed that we can use it to buff other runes?
The issue about writing the Hearthguard is not because we never send small groups, that's not something we actually control. I was being very literal there; if I was writing a scene about some section of the Hearthguard's personnel and I wanted to be detailed and give them actual characterization, I have to come up with names of the members that appear in the scene and give them quirks and such. I have to describe them doing things and responding to other characters and following orders. If they expand in numbers then there comes a choice I must face: either I stick with a small cadre of consistent characters who I write stories about and ignore the rest of the Hearthguard or I write about a small cadre of characters commanding diffuse squads of nameless elder dwarves. And I bluntly hate this choice,
and I hate both options of it too.
At the moment if I gave it time and effort, I could write about different sections within the Hearthguard and have meaningful characterization and cycle through their membership in a semi-reasonable time. It'd be a lot of effort, but the
point is that it is doable. It stops being doable if they expand.
In such a situation, where I cannot give them the attention and characterization they deserve, which making them bigger prevents me from doing, then I will end up
having no interest in writing about them. And I'd rather have a situation I am actually interested in writing about, rather than one I am not.
I'm not super worried about the difficulty level of the requests we put the Hearthguard on too be honest. I am much much more concerned about the number of requests, and so yes, I think that if we expand the Hearthguard he will expand the list of Requests they could work on in order to force us to prioritize. Because that's how you make engaging choices possible in a questing format, you have to force some level of prioritization so that there are actual decisions being made and discussions to have about those decisions. From an in-universe perspective, the bigger they expand the more heads and eyes they have looking for problems and so the more they feel comfortable attempting.
Also looping back a sec Runesmiths, and especially Runelords who have social statuses effectively equal to most Kings, are very autonomous indeed. Hell, even the Guild of Runesmiths does not have a great deal of hold over any single Master Runesmith. Extremely independent lot. That said getting to 10 Standing in every hold, ancestor cult, and all royalty in the Far North is not irrelevant to Khazagar. It is definitely relevant; it is however not something I am
concerned about. There will be a reaction, but I currently think it will be largely befuddlement or positive. If new information changes that I figure we can work on solutions with the Retainers.
Snorri's generally high reputation with the
Runesmiths is one of the reasons he could go as far as he could with the University, is my thinking. The Kings and such did not have much say one way or the other. If you go back and look over those updates, he was mostly worrying about the Guild's reaction and not his king's or the kings of the other Holds in the Far North. And when he brought the idea to Gloin, Gloin's worry was about pulling the Hold into a spat within the Guild of Runesmiths. This shows that Kings and such are pretty hands off, and so I think you might have been conflating these two issues of the public standing and the Runesmith standing.
Like, just to be clear, the public reputation and standing with the folks in the Far North is relevant to Khazagar, I 100% believe this. But I am not concerned about their reaction right now, based on the information I have. On the other hand I agree that the Runesmith reputation we have with Snorri is what let us go as far as we did.
On the cross-training concern I think its the case that it won't take retainer actions and just happen in the background like Snorri's book reading does. I could be wrong in which case we'll need to plan around it, but in the immediate I'm not worrying about it because there's a reasonable alternative and we won't know until we see the main turn post.
I definitely agree that we don't need to account for running out of favor for a while. I was concerned about what might happen in 10 to 15 turns.
Regarding what you said about slack, that makes sense. I think our disagreement is that my personal view is that spending a retainer action to save a Snorri or heir action is always a good deal, so the retainers should be expanded so we never need to worry about being unable to make it. The only exception in my mind is if there are meta concerns like your's with omakes. I think your view is that we'll almost always be able to make the trade so the diminishing returns means we're better off with eventually a deed from adamant equipment and the current status of omakes since the mechanics can't be fixed. Am I understanding your opinion correctly?
I was thinking about what you said regarding the Rune of Siphoning and I'm wondering why we would want to equip them with it? Is it confirmed that we can use it to buff other runes?
I think you understand me correctly. Becaues I want to add more detail, the Adamant equipment thing from my perspective is one the sheer cool factor/aesthetics, and two as a way to increase their overall mechanical stat numbers once we fill up their equipment and warmachine slots. Both because Adamant is an incredibly durable material and good for weapons and armor, and because of its 50% rune boost.
Yeah! The Rune of Siphoning buffs other runes in its area of effect. If you go look in the Rune List informational you will see a bit about it where it talks about how Siphoning helps runes in its area recharge faster. This is very useful to Runesmiths and other users of runes, because a lot of Cast effects inflict a cooldown while the rune recharges. Brynna for example in the last battle was getting stymied because her score was about even with the Fimir, and this was represented by her recharge and cooldown rate being slow to keep up. Siphoning is a rune she would find a lot of use out of narratively.
So the point of giving the Hearthguard such Siphoning equipment is so that all the runes on their equipment recharge faster, as well as the runes on any equipment of the dwarves they may be rescuing or assisting in battle. I kind of see it as a story telling element as well: "Wherever the Hearthguard travel, runes are stronger in their wake."
