It's even more of an exact reference to the city of Toledo, who made the best swords bar none from the Punic wars all the way up to the early Modern period. (They know some alloy treatments that they did not share with anyone outside of smiths of the city. Guild secretary to make a dwarf proud.)
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
IIRC local ores were also particularily good, contributing greatly to steel quality
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
A fairer comparison would be between an Asur Loremaster more than a swordmaster. I wonder how Mathilde would fare. She still has her bullshit artefacts, but she probably outmuscled where magic is concerned.
Our personal equipment is better than anything modern elves can make because personal equipment is a dwarf specialty and we had ours made by the best dwarf in the business. I had this conversation with the GM ways back when I was making joking comparisons to Teclis' stuff
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Do you remember approximately where it is in the thread?🙃
Codex
Fantasy Addict
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It would be a 50/50. It could turn out like the fight with Alkharad or it could turn out like the fight with Alkharad if Mathilde didn't have the belt to save her life. Depends on the scenario.
Lots of "matches" are greatly situational and determined by the circumstance. Loremasters are also incredibly varied, so there is no one size fits all description to fit them really. If we're talking the Loremaster from the tabletop, that's an abstraction for simplicity. If we're talking about comparing their effectiveness against each other instead of pitting them against each other in combat, then Mathilde is likely to be better in her niche, the Loremaster would be better than her in most other areas and in his own specialty, as to be expected from a master who's spent centuries honing his skills.
An interesting note though, is that there's a very intriguing story in 6th Edition Vampire Counts. In there, an ancient Necrarch who studied under W'Soran is absolutely shocked at the level of development his human necromancer apprentice has achieved in a mere 30 years, with the Necromancer surpassing the Necrarch in magical ability and the Necrarch almost dying in a fight against his apprentice until he used Vampire hacks to cheat his way through the fight. The Necrarch comes to the conclusion that his immortality/long lived nature removed his fear of death and made him complacent, whereas the desperation that comes from being a mortal with a short life made someone very determined to grow powerful.
I think it's a pretty neat way of explaining how humans, despite having much shorter life spans, can catch up to the longer lived races on an individual level.
Here. Context is in the posts above.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
I thought part of it was also that the mindset to cast necromancy good is existential fear of death? That would explain why Elves aren't good at it and why humans can match thousand year old vampire lords. Although it does mean that Skaven would make amazing necromancers, probably it's against their religion or something considering their experiences with Nagash.
Children of the Horned Rat makes a note that the above mentioned god tends to smite Skaven necromancers.
If I remember correctly, it's more like their religion is against necromancy—the Horned Rat hunts down and destroys any Skaven meddling in "forbidden" magics.
I don't think it's ever specified how the Horned Rat does this, only that any necromancer Skaven are usually found disintegrated shortly after their heresy is discovered.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
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- She/Her
I don't think it's just necromancy. Sure fear of death would make you better at Necromancy, but being shorter lived does mean you go really fast in your development, since you have to make the most of your time.
Deathmaster Snikch was not born when the quest started, which means by canon time he's less than 50 years old. Despite that, Snikch has Weapon Skill 8, Initiative 10, Ballistic Skill 6, 6 Attacks and S4 T4. Snikch, statwise, is one of the most powerful combatants in close combat in Warhammer, and he barely breaks 50 years old (he's relatively flimsy on the defence but incredibly agile). Being fair, the Skaven have all kinds of weird stuff going on, but at least for Snikch he's not a magic user, he just practices some ridiculous Cathayan/Nippon martial art that gives him unbelievable speed and agility and has an absurd physique and skill to go along with it.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Skaven elites probably cheat with all kinds of warpstone-infused combat drugs, steroids, and similar.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Kinda like the idea that deathmaster is just that damn good tbh.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
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- She/Her
Yeah but he had to work his way up to the point of being a Skaven elite, and considering the high casualty rates of Skaven and incredibly high birth rate, he's literally one in a million. There had to be a reason they spent resources on him and not others.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Oh, certainly. I'm just saying that his stats are probably artificially inflated a bit- they'd certainly be damn good without whatever enhancements he has, but not quite so ridiculous. He'd probably be down one or two points from WS, BS, I, and A (so maybe something like WS 7, BS 5, I 8, A 4), giving him a statline that's still incredibly good but not quite so much of a murderblender.
Resonant
Procrastinator Supreme
*whistles quietly*
Wow, this was an eerily accurate premonition with Divine AV potentially allowing us to literally steal Sigmar's divine fingerprints. Which now makes me wonder how many other outlandish jokes are in the thread that accidentally became fulfilled? Lol
- Location
- Greece
I think people here are discounting the power of outliers.
Think about it this way, in layman's terms: every group has outliers. Outliers, however, are a percentage, not a flat number. So a bigger group would have a bigger flat number of outliers, as 1% of a million is way bigger than 1% of 100.000. But wait, if there are so many outliers, then there are probably outliers among the outliers. And then, if the group is even bigger, outliers among the outliers among the outliers, and so on.
This is a big reason for why humans often produce legendary champions that can go toe to toe with the elder races, imho, they just outnumber them so much that the 0,00001% is >1 . Skaven and orcs, however, get even more of this outlier fishing due to their absurd birthrates. So they have people who are far, far, far above the average much more often.
Of course, the major difference between humans and orcs/skaven is that human societies are built so as to maximize the percentage of outliers in one way or another (Grail Knights and Damsels in Brettonia, Lord Magisters and the favour spellcasting priests/strong warriors gain in the empire, etc. etc.) while Skaven and orcs actively work to minimize it through backstabbing and dusfunction culling many geniuses who'd have survived in a human society before they reach their full potential. But even so, the power of outliers granted by having big population numbers are not to be underestimated.
... At least, not in a fantasy setting where heroes can get that much more important than the average citizen and where there is no real power cap. There are a lot of other factors to consider in real life, where no man is an island, but in a fantasy setting where men can be islands to an extend, it would most likely work that way.
- Location
- Aotearoa
I found the quote I was thinking about earlier, regarding the rewards of competence and Egrimm's encouragement at Mathildes promotion. So despite my relative ambivalence to the idea, I've concluded that Mathilde would like to try to help Egrimm get out from Alric's shadow if the opportunity presented itself, and well... here is a giftwrapped opportunity where the 'cost' to us is to facilitate spreading knowledge between those who oppose the forces of darkness... Which is pretty much one of Mathildes' core mission statements.
So,
[x] Plan Measured Support
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Ericwinter
Definitely not a Skaven Infiltrator
- Location
- America
Quite a few, as I recall. But wow, I was not expecting that blast from the past.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
That alone shouldn't be enough since it's also against the religion of pretty much all fleshed out Humans (except maybe Strigany and Nagashizari).
I still don't like how that makes the Horned Rat more competent (at this task) than the whole Northern and Southern pantheons of the Empire combined.
So what social actions do you guys think we should do this turn?
I would like to do a Panoramia action, the trouble is I can't think of anything to talk to her about. Apart from that Belegar to see how he is getting along without us and maybe Roswita is she is offered I would really want to see how Silvania is going and if she has made progress on dealing with the fear of wizards.
I would like to do a Panoramia action, the trouble is I can't think of anything to talk to her about. Apart from that Belegar to see how he is getting along without us and maybe Roswita is she is offered I would really want to see how Silvania is going and if she has made progress on dealing with the fear of wizards.
As we probably going to give egrimm his lord Magister title I would love to talk with him about it.
Edit: just going over to him like "how do you do fellow lord Magister." and see how he reacts.
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I'd really like to see the We, on the basis that the We are awesome.
I also second Roswita, because an update on that would be nice.
Finally, it's been a good long while since Kragg got one, and I'm curios what he's got to say about Vlag being back (and Mathilde being a dwarf).
Ohh, and whoever has something to say about the Marienburg situation.
... You think vlag might be ready to receive us or is their trauma still too big? Don't wanna scare the dwarfs...
We already talked to them. They've got runepokers, and at least one willing wizard poker. Not sure anything has changed with them since.