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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Codex said:
Karitamen doesn't cast spells unless he really needs to. He's a warrior first and a necromancer second. He fights with his swords and disdains using magic in battle unless he has to, reserving magic for outside battle.

Remember our fight against Alkharad? Imagine that, but on steroids. Karitamen makes Alkharad look like a joke, because Karitamen is far more specced towards combat than a Necrarch is.
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Weren't WHRP doods weaker than WH tabletop doods on average? Like, "battle magic is not a thing, don't even bother giving stats to Damsels, we are dealing with random weak-ass adventures"? I may be wrong because all I know about it is through the osmosis of reading every single post in this thread (all 10000 pages), and they may have given me the wrong impression, but if he is going by those stats, certain hax aside, he could be very manageable for Mathilde regardless.
 
DragonParadox said:
Tomb Kings are a lot more powerful in death then they were in life, they are also broadly speaking more evil, since you know undead mockeries of life, bereft of all its pleasures and filled with nothing but hate and pride.
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There was a Tomb King who remembered how it felt to love someone, and who gave to an imperial scholar the cure to safe his wife. Most Tomb Kings weren't particularly good in life, and maybe undead worsen things for some or most of them. Nonetheless, saying there are only filled with hate and pride is wrong.
 
storryeater said:
Weren't WHRP doods weaker than WH tabletop doods on average? Like, "battle magic is not a thing, don't even bother giving stats to Damsels, we are dealing with random weak-ass adventures"? I may be wrong because all I know about it is through the osmosis of reading every single post in this thread (all 10000 pages), and they may have given me the wrong impression, but if he is going by those stats, certain hax aside, he could be very manageable for Mathilde regardless.
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He is supposed to be taken down by a party of adventurers, rather than a single person, and his stats are pretty absurd despite that. You have the ability to choose to negotiate with him instead of fighting him directly, because doing so might well cause you to die. Only the strongest of adventurers have a chance against him.

Also, it should be noted that to justify how these adventurers can beat him, they give you plenty of excuses. For one, he is "greatly weakened by chaos" and sealed inside a single room by two layers of security. One by the Goddess of Magic Asaph and one by a Chaos Artifact. You can also search the room he's in to find a convenient magical artifact that does this:

"Whenever the Dagger of Bound Souls inflicts at least 1 Wound, the victim immediately loses an additional 5 Wounds. Each round, until he succeeds on a Challenging (–10%) Toughness Test, he takes 1 additional Wound.

In addition, this weapon can pierce any kind of magical protection. Targets that gain additional armour points or any other kind of protection against weapons do not get these defences against attacks made with this dagger. Those slain by the dagger have their spirits bound within their corpses, and if the target of a reanimate spell, they rise as greater forms of Undead, as determined by the GM."

It seems obvious to me what you have to do to kill him, and it's not get into a straight fight with him.
 
storryeater said:
Weren't WHRP doods weaker than WH tabletop doods on average? Like, "battle magic is not a thing, don't even bother giving stats to Damsels, we are dealing with random weak-ass adventures"? I may be wrong because all I know about it is through the osmosis of reading every single post in this thread (all 10000 pages), and they may have given me the wrong impression, but if he is going by those stats, certain hax aside, he could be very manageable for Mathilde regardless.
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Yes and no, because they do stat up a rune fang as the type of equipment it might be feasible to get hold of, specifically the drakwold one iirc. They also have Rune smiths as playable characters. The removal of battle wizards I think was more an attempt to stop one character dominating campaigns entirely.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
Yes and no, because they do stat up a rune fang as the type of equipment it might be feasible to get hold of, specifically the drakwold one iirc. They also have Rune smiths as playable characters. The removal of battle wizards I think was more an attempt to stop one character dominating campaigns entirely.
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This is what the book says:

"In WFRP, becoming a Battle Wizard for the Empire is far beyond the reach of the typical character. They are capable of wielding incredible power and command great respect in the Empire. And so, there is no Battle Wizard career. Should you wish to develop a Battle Wizard career and spell list, feel free, but realise that the life of these characters are exceptionally short and unpleasant."

It should be noted that Lord Magisters are a playable career in WFRP, which seems to imply that WFRP is saying that Lord Magister is below Battle Wizard. Boney isn't operating under that assumption, Lord Magisters are above Battle Wizards. But Battle Wizards not being available is probably because it wouldn't make for a good adventurer career. You're kept locked up in the Colleges until you get summoned into a battlefield and tend to live a short and unpleasant life. Not exactly the best situation for an RP game unless you're all playing Battle Wizards, and even then it would be heavily limited.
 
The game always kind of confused me in that aspect, because it never let you play as damsels or battlewizards because "they are too powerful for the system", but in one of the chaos books there are statblocks for greater demons and chaos dragons, which implies that battlewizards are significantly stronger than greater demons.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
The game always kind of confused me in that aspect, because it never let you play as damsels or battlewizards because "they are too powerful for the system", but in one of the chaos books there are statblocks for greater demons and chaos dragons, which implies that battlewizards are significantly stronger than greater demons.
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To be fair, they give you the statblocks and tell you not to use them directly unless you want to kill your players. They give you guidelines on how to use them as final bosses of an adventure and methods of defeating them without a straight fight.

Also, what I've come to realise in my time reading all these WFRP books is that the writer involved in the book greatly alters the experience. One book might entirely disagree with another book on how the setting should be run and the experience and feeling you get from reading the book can greatly vary based on the writer. Consistency is not what they're looking for apparently. They just let their writers do whatever.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
AU Mathilde is clearly a Pol Sci graduate with an interest in philosophy and classics who got her start as an analyst for an intelligence agency, but likes to pretend she's James Bond, or some other Hollywood spy, hence the martial arts and firearms training. Later, she accompanied her commander Van Hel on a few field ops, one of which went wrong and resulted her being reassigned to a dead end career track under an allied general in an active war zone with a bunch of other misfits; her successes there allowed her to be promoted and assigned her own department,

Wait, this stopped being a coffee shop AU and became a spy thriller AU. Man, I am not very good at this.
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On the contrary, you're doing excellent and should continue.
 
It's 11:30 PM and I'm pretty tired. I'm thinking of going to sleep as I continue reading Barony of the Damned, it's a pretty interesting book with lots of neat plot hooks. I come across a certain passage skimming through what I'm going to be reading tomorrow when I'm more wide awake. I rub my eyes and look again, making sure what I'm reading is real:

"Many a peasant has returned wide-eyed after a long evening's swamping, babbling about the silhouette of an immense pig glimpsed on the horizon or the thunderous snorting of a titanic pig that can only be the Grand Sow herself. And it is true that, in the black of night, the Grand Sow might appear in the world of men. It is not certain whether the Grand Sow is a force for good or for evil, and an outsider would be advised not to ask for a definitive answer on the matter because few things get a group of peasants more worked up than conflicting theories on the Grand Sow. More mysterious still is her relationship with other pigs of legend, such as the infamous Black Pig of the Woods. Some insist that the Sow is an avowed enemy of the Black Pig, while others claim she is his mate or they are somehow two faces of the same entity. Mousillon has a complex cycle of pig-related legends, and the Grand Sow is at the heart of them all, wandering Mousillon for good or ill."

The Grand Sow has stats. I checked her stats and she has: Charm +10%, Command +20%, Common Knowledge (Bretonnia) +10%, Hypnotism, +20%, Speak Language (Breton), Ventriloquism as skills. She also has the Hedge Magic, Dealmaker, Etiquitte and Resistance to Chaos Talents.

...

I'm going to sleep, then reading this again when I wake up to see if I'm hallucinating.
 
Codex said:
To be fair, they give you the statblocks and tell you not to use them directly unless you want to kill your players. They give you guidelines on how to use them as final bosses of an adventure and methods of defeating them without a straight fight.

Also, what I've come to realise in my time reading all these WFRP books is that the writer involved in the book greatly alters the experience. One book might entirely disagree with another book on how the setting should be run and the experience and feeling you get from reading the book can greatly vary based on the writer. Consistency is not what they're looking for apparently. They just let their writers do whatever.
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Never mind one book disagreeing with another I'm pretty sure Night's Dark Masters can't agree with itself.

'Don't play vampires, they are al inhuman monsters and not balanced anyway,' says one chapter

'Here is how you make vampire PC,' says another with a broad wink :V
 
DragonParadox said:
Never mind one book disagreeing with another I'm pretty sure Night's Dark Masters can't agree with itself.

'Don't play vampires, they are al inhuman monsters and not balanced anyway,' says one chapter

'Here is how you make vampire PC,' says another with a broad wink :V
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Pretty sure it's the same train of thought as my parents telling me not to drink but to call them if I did anyway.:V
 
DragonParadox said:
Tomb Kings are a lot more powerful in death then they were in life, they are also broadly speaking more evil, since you know undead mockeries of life, bereft of all its pleasures and filled with nothing but hate and pride.
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Are they actually more powerful, though? Storm of Magic has Lore of Nehekhara spell that fluff-wise returns Tomb Kings units to the power level they had in their golden age (i.e. when they were living) and crunch-wise it's something like +1 to all stats to mooks, +2 to heroes and +3 to Lords.
 
LockedMind said:
Are they actually more powerful, though? Storm of Magic has Lore of Nehekhara spell that fluff-wise returns Tomb Kings units to the power level they had in their golden age (i.e. when they were living) and crunch-wise it's something like +1 to all stats to mooks, +2 to heroes and +3 to Lords.
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Return of the Golden Age. Increases Weapon Skill, Strength and Initiative. +3 For Tomb Kings and Princes, +2 For Tomb Guard, Necropolis Knights and any other character and +1 to literally every other TK unit.
 
I woke up and got right back to reading more about Mousillon. The book is fascinating. Not only is the Grand Sow an actual thing that gets stats and a whole section, but there's this too:

"Spuc carries a dark and terrible secret, and he does not want the temptation of telling any of the other villagers. Spuc's secret is that Imperatrice sometimes talks to him. When he is alone, he hears the powerful, growling voice of the pig in his head. It tells him to do things, monstrous things, and though so far he has resisted, Spuc dreads the day when his will breaks and he snatches up a gutting knife to go on a killing spree. Spuc is convinced Imperatrice is, in fact, the legendary Black Pig of the Woods, a malevolent porcine force that roams Mousillon at night and compels innocent peasants to perform acts of wickedness. Imperatrice is the Black Pig, or perhaps an avatar of this supernatural beast, and has dire plans for both villages that somehow involve Spuc."

What the hell is up with Mousillon and pig related mystical creatures? And can we get the Grand Sow involved in the Waystone project? I'd love to pick her brains on the waystones of Bretonnia and its history.
 
Pigs were a lot more intimidating in mythology when the average person had personal experience with pigs larger than they are and had at least heard stories of wild boar, and Warhammer has the problem of wild boars often being a great deal fiercer for having Orc-bred Warboars or Beastman Tuskgors in their ancestry.
 
Boney said:
Pigs were a lot more intimidating in mythology when the average person had personal experience with pigs larger than they are and had at least heard stories of wild boar, and Warhammer has the problem of wild boars often being a great deal fiercer for having Orc-bred Warboars or Beastman Tuskgors in their ancestry.
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After thinking about it, I understand the myths. It just seems to me like the Grand Sow is an actual creature that exists rather than just a myth. And she can speak and is incredibly knowledgable and likable on top of that (Fellowship of 64%, her highest stats).

Honestly, it's still probably not the weirdest thing in Warhammer. In fact, it simply inspires intrigue in me. I want to know more about this pig.
 
DragonParadox said:
Tomb Kings are a lot more powerful in death then they were in life, they are also broadly speaking more evil, since you know undead mockeries of life, bereft of all its pleasures and filled with nothing but hate and pride.
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Codex said:
Not... exactly. Karitamen is evil, but he is not filled with nothing but hate and pride. He is capable of a wide range of emotions and dispositions, and can even be a likable person who wouldn't do evil shit for the sake of evil. The Mortuary Cult had rituals that didn't directly invoke Dhar, so the Tomb Kings are not nearly as bad as your average Vampire or undead.

That being said, Nehekharan society was brutal and had many evil aspects to it. Karitamen is very similar to who he was in life, but who he was in life was a tyrant, so that didn't change. He's just more patient than he used to be, that's the biggest difference.

You can acknowledge that someone's evil while also recognising that there's more to them than that. That doesn't mean he's a good guy or deserving of trust, but he is capable of love. He still likes Tetrahon and holds love towards his late wife and children and will get mad at you for disturbing their graves and killing his friend.
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The statement that Tomb Kings are stronger in death is another thing that's wrong. There's a Cataclysm Spell that massively buffs Tomb Kings units and its fluff is that it makes those units as strong as they were when they were alive.
 
Codex said:
After thinking about it, I understand the myths. It just seems to me like the Grand Sow is an actual creature that exists rather than just a myth. And she can speak and is incredibly knowledgable and likable on top of that (Fellowship of 64%, her highest stats).

Honestly, it's still probably not the weirdest thing in Warhammer. In fact, it simply inspires intrigue in me. I want to know more about this pig.
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Yeah, I did the thing where I said half the idea in my head instead of in the post. The rest of that thought was 'and that resulted in a bunch of pigs in myth and legend upon which the Grand Sow and the Black Pig are probably based, but without that context they look bizarre and silly to modern people who are generally more used to Babe and Charlotte's Web'. Without doing a bunch of research I'd guess that the Black Pig might be based on the one Heracles wrassled as one of his Twelve Labours and the Grand Sow on the Gaulish pig-god.
 
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If I were to guess what these pigs are I'd say they are something like they fey, only er... porcine instead of tree based.

A fey when you come right down to it is a warp spirit born of the emotions of simple life (so it cannot make gods) invested into a material vessel, in the case of a dryad that is living wood and in the case of the treemen it is dead wood.

So then the great pigs good and bad are kind of like the fey and kind of like a daemonhost which would explain the magic and resistance to mutation, they are already possessed by another power than the Dark Gods.
 
Codex said:
After thinking about it, I understand the myths. It just seems to me like the Grand Sow is an actual creature that exists rather than just a myth. And she can speak and is incredibly knowledgable and likable on top of that (Fellowship of 64%, her highest stats).
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Prince Piggalo probably had similarly high fellowship
 
Andres110 said:
I mean with our new great library I think we could get some Bretonnian books on pigs. If nothing else it's fun to imagine people taking a look through her library and finding a book of pigs of all things, and a Bretonnian one at that.
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I think we might just find it in a book about mythical creatures of different places or some sort of bestiary.

This does make me think:

@Boney is there a standard Bestiary category? Like I'm not asking for a mechanical bonus for every single roll relating to the absurdly huge range of beasts and creatures in Warhammer, but does Mathilde have a book similar to the "Old World Bestiary" that contains a catalogue of beasts "faire and foule" wandering the Old World? Just for narrative purposes. I don't want to look for exploits to give us bonuses on a range that's a bit too wide.
 
Codex said:
@Boney is there a standard Bestiary category? Like I'm not asking for a mechanical bonus for every single roll relating to the absurdly huge range of beasts and creatures in Warhammer, but does Mathilde have a book similar to the "Old World Bestiary" that contains a catalogue of beasts "faire and foule" wandering the Old World? Just for narrative purposes. I don't want to look for exploits to give us bonuses on a range that's a bit too wide.
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There'd be books roughly equivalent to that under Geography: The Old World and Civilized Realms: The Empire of Man. It won't have the same depth of information that the specific category under Flora and Fauna would give but it would let her know the basics.
 
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