The Winds and the Mage
- Thread starter barty
- Start date
- Pronouns
- He/Him
A 26 is bad, but probably not 'can't learn further' or 'injures themself' bad. Seems likely to be a simple failure to progress.
It is not really 26 for those purposes. We are very bad at it -4 total, but have a very good teacher +30. It depends in the Shadow mage cares enough about whatever he has going on with our master to keep going
While that is correct in real life, here in quest there was no mechanical penalty listed.
Also, it appears that the dice agree with me in that our noodliness is our undoing.
I think the rolls would have been the same if we took a gun. in fact, in that case we would have gotten a total of 16- which is really bad.
Gun doesn't have noodle arms penalty, so it'd be a 26, but that's only if you hold that the dice would roll a 6 no matter what.
The result of the vote didn't affect the dice you know. So it wouldn't have mattered. And of you assume that the noodle Arms malus is for learning the Weapon and not for actual combat- well than the staff is even more superior as the final bonus with it is the same as the rifle but it has a lot of advantages over it.
I'm not assuming anything, for as per the QM:
As for the staff being superior to the gun at the end, I disagree. It has, "lesser damages" on top of explicitly suffering from our noodle arms penalty. The gun, meanwhile, suffers from neither, only being bothered by reload times.
Also precog sniping is cool, dang it, and easily covered up as mundane sniping when you need it to be.
- Location
- FR
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In the end, the long gun is an offensive weapon you'll use to strike first, while the staff is a defensive weapon you'll use to save your life. Different use cases, and it's the voter's job to determine what's the more important one at this stage of the quest.
That's fair, but the staff also had the advantage of a cool teacher with mysterious history with our master. That's why I voted for the staff, even though I also voted for the rifle on practical grounds
Yeah that's the main point. The gun is better for an alpha strike. That's not our build. We are squishy mages. That will be our main skillset. The staff has great parry and it will save our lives vs melee enemies. At range, we have spells, which will eventually be better with the gun. And if damage spells don't work, we have a good deal of control spells too.
We are also much better at Diplomacy than anything else. The staff works well with that- it's a subtle weapon that can be taken everywhere, raises little suspicion and can generally be disguised as a mage's instrument or just a walking stick. The gun on the other hand is a weapon of war. It draws attention, and its not something you carry on the street. It's a choice that works only for war and only if we strike first. Neither are what we need from a weapon
We are also much better at Diplomacy than anything else. The staff works well with that- it's a subtle weapon that can be taken everywhere, raises little suspicion and can generally be disguised as a mage's instrument or just a walking stick. The gun on the other hand is a weapon of war. It draws attention, and its not something you carry on the street. It's a choice that works only for war and only if we strike first. Neither are what we need from a weapon
Last edited:
Adrian XXIV
Average User, from Poland
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Did Casandora's "build" ("oblivious" Cathayan + Celestial Wizard) means that one of possible "endgames", is becoming Cathayan Astromancer?
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
AN-n additional problem with the gun is that once we fired a shot, it's just a big lump of metal until we reload it. If we're ambushed in any kind of close quarter, our attackers will have crossed the distance well before we can fire again.
Adrian XXIV
Average User, from Poland
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Our small, noodly-armed MC will suck in CQC regardless of her weapon, and gun has one advantage over staff:
When people will get shot at, by "someone in the air", they may think that shooter is flying through mechanical means (like that one Dogs-of-War Band, that uses mechanical wings), rather than literally flying via magic (specifically, Wings of Fate spell)
This "confusion" might mean that enemy will not deploy their "anti-magic measures" (due to not expecting "shooter" to be using it)
Also, having and using a gun doesn't mean that Casandora can't blast enemy with lightning anyway (she just can't use gun as conduit for her magic)
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Yeah, but magic to blast people from afar will make the gun redundant. And sucking in cqc is an even bigger reason to try mitigating the problem instead of adding a lack of cqc weapon to our small arms.
Not if you skywalk up to where they can't reach you they can't.
- Location
- Goose Land
I'll note that one can't Dispel or Counterspell a gun, generally speaking.
Also going Magic Railgun, while a very significant and lengthy project, explicitly isn't impossible, meaning we could eventually get the best of both worlds of "Supernaturally Massive Amounts Of Damage" and "Can't Really Dispel Or Counterspell A Bullet", but that's quite a ways away.
A focuson Staff work and removing the noodle arms is for the best.
Skywalk is very very short, only enought to run a bit. Unless we are near something tall that won't help. And even if we are that might not be enough if the opponents can climb faster then we can reload.
And being bad at CQC is a great reason to choose the staff-its great at parrying and defending, helping us survive the inevitable CQC till we can cast or run. A gun will only help us take someone with us.
Also remember we also take a malus to our martial from noodle arms, so we will never be as good at any kind of fighting without removing it. A gun doesn't actually circumvents that
Adrian XXIV
Average User, from Poland
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My idea for Casandora's "future build", is to combine gun-wielding, Wings of Fate spell (which gives wings that allow caster to fly) and Mystical part of Celestial Magic (future-prediction), to turn her into essentially "Turbo-Sniper"
Last edited:
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Not if we're inside. And skywalk doesn't last for very long, so there's no time to target and shoot.
Personally, I think the magic railgun is a long shot (pun intended) and don't care much for it.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I am not sold on Casandora having a railgun. Or it being notably better than hitting people with lightning bolts even if she did.
I'm not against looking into it at some point, but basing her whole build around it? No way.
I'm not against looking into it at some point, but basing her whole build around it? No way.
- Location
- Goose Land
I respect your opinion.
I personally think Magic Guns Are Cool, and that we are uniquely situated to eventually innovate a really neat Magic Gun, but I also acknowledge that this is a cooperative forum game, and that not everyone is as interested in the subject as I am.
If Divided Loyalties taught me nothing else, people sometimes just aren't interested in even looking at the options for Fancy Warhammer Fantasy Guns, let alone buying them, and nothing I do will change that.
As I understand the IRL mechanics involved, a personal scale railgun within the capacity I am imagining in my head would have a longer range than a lightning bolt, would not be dispelable or counterspellable, would ignore Anti-Magic defenses, and might have increased penetration compared to a lightning bolt, either in terms of armor piercing, multi-target in a line striking, or both.
Hypothetically with a massive amount of budget and a whole lot of research, we could then create a warmachine sized rail/coilgun, at which point it should be able to reasonably attempt to snipe dragons out of the sky or shoot holes into Karak Walls, but I would expect us to have the resources and research of a Lord Magister by the point in time we begin to even start to get together the funding to properly investigate upscaling the idea from personal scale usage.
I can't comment on whether or not such an investment would constitute "basing her entire build around it", because honestly this all sounds like stuff that, on completion and actualization, could be worth earning her Magistership or solidly mark her record positively in regards to Lord Magistership, in terms of innovative research at the very least, so I cannot say that if we sufficiently investigated and researched electromagnetic forces to the degree that creating an Electromagnetic rail launcher wouldn't be an immediate and immense risk to Cass's life, that it would not constitute a major aspect of her build, especially in context of having an Elementalist Master teaching us.
So I can't make any sort of argument or discussion on your second point beyond "That is a fair opinion to have. Good day."