Bonuses are not as important as ap. If we want a damage spell then going for the college ones is much simpler and more efficient then making battle magic on your own...
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
It's not about bonuses to learning it, it's a bonus to every subsequent time she casts it. Including making BM spells safe to use, as long as they're based around mist and etc.
And how long will it take to make the spell? 3 AP, 4? It's hard enough to get niche things on the docket most times. But a continuous expense at this moment? I doubt it would fly.
Also we can't gain new masteries if we just stick with our old ones, branching out might be dangerous but it can be so worth it.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
And learning any of the existing BM mean convincing people to vote to learn to cast something that will always be a risk to use in battle.
It's not a guarantee on either side.
I don't believe we'd need to do that, but I think that creating a mist that the apparitions can use as a support framework to condense out of and cover they can see through and their enemies can't would magnify their lethality and make it much harder for enemies to even temporarily kill or banish them.
This isn't about creating stealth assassins, it's about creating a volume of a battlefield, structure, or cavern network that kills effectively enemies inside it, that our Staff of Mistery applies to, and we get the most bonuses when creating.
For example, we would want Warrior of Fog to apply, as the more spell creation (and other) traits that apply the better. Note this exchange:
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It's much easier to go "he's let's use 1 to try and learn that super damaging bm spell so that we have it in emergencies." Then going "hey let's use 3 AP to maybe get a decent bm damage spell that is easier to cast."
Not just easier to cast, but possible to cast safely. I for one would basically never vote to learn a battle magic spell that's literally playing Russian Roulette whenever we cast.
Particularly when we can buy Battle magic items for existing spells.
It's a much more effective use of AP to create novel spells that fill specific niches and that fit Mathilde's traits.
For example, the spell to create a fogbank with apparitions roaming inside to kill enemies is very useful to Mathilde. She could use it to produce an IFF effect, by making the fog hide allies from the apparitions and guide the apparitions to enemies, it could be used as a way of dropping a persistent effect that acts as area denial while Mathilde makes her escape, and generally acts as a great force multiplier.
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Why is the spell we're making "decent damage" but the already existing spell "super damaging"? I don't think that's a fair comparison. I don't think anyone wants to make a battle magic spell that's worse than the already existing options, just one that suits Mathlide's talents better.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Codex, I feel like the three examples you quoted kinda make my point: there's no real association with any of the elemental or mystical aspects of ulgu, it's just "here's one weird trick to cut someone with the edge of -mumble mumble mumble-" iterated three times into slightly different effects.
It *should* be possible to develop battlemagics that have much larger AoEs and use less wind if we stay closer to the wind's identity and further away from trying to wrap aqshy or chamon in a trench coat.
For example, can you imagine using an overpowered version of mindhole to have one entire army forget a second entire army? They'd have to be out of sight, likely, but you could take a raiding force deep into enemy territory and make it out alive with that spell.
Or fogbanks, as was mentioned. Or something like "when in melee with multiple does and allies, allies will randomly and momentarily appear as enemies and vice versa" as a battle magic version of illusion.
There's a lot more fun and creativity to be had from leaving into what ulgu does well than there is in trying to strip away more layers between 'i cat this' and 'they die'.
It *should* be possible to develop battlemagics that have much larger AoEs and use less wind if we stay closer to the wind's identity and further away from trying to wrap aqshy or chamon in a trench coat.
For example, can you imagine using an overpowered version of mindhole to have one entire army forget a second entire army? They'd have to be out of sight, likely, but you could take a raiding force deep into enemy territory and make it out alive with that spell.
Or fogbanks, as was mentioned. Or something like "when in melee with multiple does and allies, allies will randomly and momentarily appear as enemies and vice versa" as a battle magic version of illusion.
There's a lot more fun and creativity to be had from leaving into what ulgu does well than there is in trying to strip away more layers between 'i cat this' and 'they die'.
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Because we know what damage pit of shades, the pendulum or mindrazor do. We don't know what the yet to exist bm spell we would invent does. I remember from making rite of way that it was not set in stone how good or bad the spell would be.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
The one thing lacking in our tool box is enormous damage all or nothing spell, which Pit of Shades is great for. Penumbral Pendulum doesn't really do that much beyond what our fire flask does i think? It doesn't quite have the same punch as dimensional shear, i imagine, thought that is supposition on my part.
Occam's razor is fun for army fighting, but i don't think its direct use to our standard fare. Idk. I know people fussed around about it because of potential scaling down for enchantment but eh.
This is impossible without secondary effect. You would have to both perform a battlemagic spell that shrouds your army in ulgu and perform this theoretical mindhole. Both sounds pretty difficult.
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Our dragonfire flask does that. We don't need another nuke spell. We need other things.
Our dragonfire flask is not as damaging as a true bm spell, pit of shades is stupidly more powerful.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
It does not, and i stated why.
Fireflask does do enormous damage, but its conventional. Its just a scaled up fireball. There are things that won't care much about it. A dimensional shear that tears you apart as you are pulled into it thought? Far more exotic and final.
Both achieve similar effect against, say, a regiment of normal humans, but i imagine one becomes starkly more effective as you scale up in capabilities and durability of the enemy combatant you wish to nae nae.
There is also the benefit of actually casting from our native wind, as fireflask momentarily debuffs our casting). Not for long, but on scale of fight it can be very dangerous to lose even few seconds.
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- Location
- Chicago
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- She/They
Shouldn't be too hard to hear an army up with stuff that keeps then shrouded in ulgu- big hats so everyone moves in shadows and a nearby powerstone might be enough to make sure the wind is always there.
Or, you know, build off of that- a battle magic spell that wraps a unit in ulgu- and mindholes anyone who sees them as long as it is being channeled.
Go right by guards and patrols, appear out of nowhere on the battlefield.
It does as much damage as we can do without risking our lives in the casting. This is likely to remain true.
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Against some enemies it is. Against others it isn't. Pit of Shades is also a lot better at killing Mathilde than the dragonflask is.
The situations we find ourselves in most danger in are when we're at risk of being swamped by enemies. Something like my proposed monsters in the mist spell would be much better at dealing with that scenario, and is more versatile.
We don't need the perfect tool for every scenario. We need good enough tools that cover the very wide range of scenarios we encounter.
Pit of Shades may do damage in a more esoteric fashion, but you can still dodge it, which is the main way you'd survive a fireball as well. There are a short list of things with fire immunity. There's a very long list of things that can move and react quickly.
And if we want Pit of Shades, we can just buy an item that casts it. We can't do that with a spell we design that is tailored for Mathilde's strengths and weaknesses.
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pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
Obviously, the alternative i suggested is non-enchanted battlemagic. But we already cast battlemagic anyway, so its not like, too out there.
We have no traits that would enable casting of magic with similar exotic damage potential, and i doubt we will acquire any unless we actually dive into exploring the weirder ulgu phenomena firsthand
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Ah yes, the eternal argument of "known variable good, unknown variable bad". Even if we assume that "Mathilde's Death Fog" is less damaging than Pit of Shades, the fact is that if you gather enough Ulgu in one place then no matter what the spell is, a lot of people are going to die, and thanks to our staff one of those people won't be us as long as it is a mist based spell.
As a general rule, Battle Magic is never safe to cast, but the Staff of Mistery's specific rule of "downgrading" the difficulty of spells trumps that, and I don't think it's a good idea to disregard that just because it might be less deadly.
Potentially less deadly, and more complex to make and takes more time. I really don't get the Total Blockade that goes on everytime someone wants to learn the normal bm spell, it's not like Mathilde will cast them every hour just to show how cool she is. Their a tool in our toolkit and this one needs to be handled with care...
This analogy is a bit faulty, it's more like.
Why pick up a grenade that could hurt you too when you can build one in 2 months and be certain it works.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
We did flub a BM spell in the middle of the battle and nothing bad happened. We just had to ground the spell. BM is not low roll instant death. You get at least 2 rolls before you even start miscast rolls and that is still not instantly lethal.
Like sure but I have to ask. We saw bunch of people throw down with BM in the Magister Patriarch thunderdome. What makes us so much lesser that we can't do what they do?
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Exactly, I'm behind you in this. I want to pick up the damn grenade...
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
That was MMM, which is not BM levels of dangerous for Mathilde to cast, thanks to the staff.
I can be convinced to vote for developing Battle Magic, because I'm here for Boney's research and development scenes. Even aside from the benefits that making a spell we have traits for means that it is a spell we have traits for, and therefor can do more with.
But I'm not going to vote to go study already-existing battle magic at the Colleges. I simply don't care. We have better things to do than be battlefield artillery.
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