Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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I feel like it could help, but at the end of the day, I don't think it will be comparable to learning Battle Magic. Like at the end of the day if we want to get better at magic we should do harder magic.
Talking about spells and battle magic. If we knew Steed of Shadows would it be possible to try to 'combine' it with Shadowsteed to try to create a more complex spell than Shadowsteed (though not BM level) that moves faster than regular Shadowsteed while keeping our mastery (that is letting us use it for +10 hours)
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
I'm pretty sure I remember a post saying that we wouldn't get flat +1s from filling out the rest of the spell book.
I'm pretty sure I also remember a post... Somewhere, mentioning that we wouldn't get better at magic unless we kept pushing it to its limits and taking actual risks with it.
The second is much shakier than the first, I'll admit, but let's be honest; would it be good writing if it was any other way?
Magic is a thing of soul and narrative. We've played out 'serious wizard who treats magic with deep caution and shakes their head at foolhardy apprentice types'. It was a great approach and we're tremendously powerful for the risk we put in, but you can't coupon count yourself into a world shaker.
We can sit on our pretty great laurels and spend the rest of our lives actually doing stuff with what we have, and that would be okay. Lady Magister is a great place to top off.
But, if we want them to say that Nagash was the first emanation of Mathilde, we're going to have to put our money where our mouth is on wanting a deeper relationship with Ulgu.
I'm pretty sure I also remember a post... Somewhere, mentioning that we wouldn't get better at magic unless we kept pushing it to its limits and taking actual risks with it.
The second is much shakier than the first, I'll admit, but let's be honest; would it be good writing if it was any other way?
Magic is a thing of soul and narrative. We've played out 'serious wizard who treats magic with deep caution and shakes their head at foolhardy apprentice types'. It was a great approach and we're tremendously powerful for the risk we put in, but you can't coupon count yourself into a world shaker.
We can sit on our pretty great laurels and spend the rest of our lives actually doing stuff with what we have, and that would be okay. Lady Magister is a great place to top off.
But, if we want them to say that Nagash was the first emanation of Mathilde, we're going to have to put our money where our mouth is on wanting a deeper relationship with Ulgu.
If we want to push our stats higher—whether that's magic or stewardship or whatever—then we need to push ourselves beyond our current means.
Merely running the EIC isn't going to increase our stewardship, we're going to have to massively expand or build upon it so we're facing new challenges.
Magic is much the same way—if we continue to coast on our current ability, we'll plateau and stop improving.
How do we do that? Well, battlemagic is the obvious route, with all the risk that implies. Messing with our soul and our marks is less certain, but could be an interesting opening for a new line of research that'll push us to new heights.
Merely running the EIC isn't going to increase our stewardship, we're going to have to massively expand or build upon it so we're facing new challenges.
Magic is much the same way—if we continue to coast on our current ability, we'll plateau and stop improving.
How do we do that? Well, battlemagic is the obvious route, with all the risk that implies. Messing with our soul and our marks is less certain, but could be an interesting opening for a new line of research that'll push us to new heights.
I definitely support working with the effects of our marks. Especially the Mantle of Mist Mark, we don't want gases going into our face when we've got enemies like the Skaven that have very unpleasant gases. I'd be hopeful we'd be able to make that take shape directly for us. Which could be very cool indeed. Really all the Marks have a fair degree of potential cool stuff we can do with them if we can control them well.
Edited in sidenote - speaking of self-improvement actions... the second secret of Dhar practice session. Does that require directly using/manipulating Dhar and so is a breach of the Articles? If not I'm very interested in whether we can unravel/destroy Warpstone with it.
Edited in sidenote - speaking of self-improvement actions... the second secret of Dhar practice session. Does that require directly using/manipulating Dhar and so is a breach of the Articles? If not I'm very interested in whether we can unravel/destroy Warpstone with it.
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Maybe, but if it would "push us to new heights" then said line of research would be at least as dangerous as Battle Magic. Probably even more since we can hire Melkoth to teach us Battle Magic but we wouldn't be able to do the same for a new line of research.
Honestly I just don't think there will be one nice trick/actions that would let us bypass the danger of wielding the massive amounts of Magic that Mathilde needs to get better at handling to increase the Magic stat
Let's just go perform a massive ritual during a storm of magic while tapping a nexus. That'd probably do it!
On another note, the arcane mark actions have mostly been discussed in terms of suppressing their effects that I've seen, and I'm kinda curious if we'd be able to boost them too. Snuff out all the candles nearby, draw in large amounts of mist to cloak us, etc. Sure, those are all probably things we could also make very simple spells for, but it'd be interesting.
On another note, the arcane mark actions have mostly been discussed in terms of suppressing their effects that I've seen, and I'm kinda curious if we'd be able to boost them too. Snuff out all the candles nearby, draw in large amounts of mist to cloak us, etc. Sure, those are all probably things we could also make very simple spells for, but it'd be interesting.
Do we need to get better at handling large amounts of Magic to improve the stat, or would improving fine control significantly also potentially help? a quote from Boney "No. Practicing shaping floating vitae just gets you better at shaping floating vitae. The applications of will required when casting spells are much better at stretching the limits of one's willpower, which is part of where the increases in magic stat from learning new spells comes from." seems to suggest that novel applications of will have the potential to at least help with increasing the magic stat, so looking at different ways of doing something with Ulgu might help.
I know getting a Mark of Ulgu is supposed to improve the stat by +1 as well, which would be the quickest/most ideal way, but that's not really something we have the capacity to control directly.
It does anecdotally seem like suppressing the effects is the most commonly discussed version of the action... but it actually says "attempt to gain control" which obviously suggests that we could fail to do so, potentially leading to less control or even negative impacts from it... but success on the other hand has some tantalizing bits of potential. Our shadow... seems to have a mind of its own? In fact the character sheet listing for that Mark literally says "Your shadow has a mind of its own" if we could learn to communicate with that mind, well that could be another set of eyes watching our back. Or hell... I don't know what kind of stuff a shadow could or couldn't do, but I'm imaging standing near a door and having our shadow (being ya know... two dimensional) sliding under said door and scouting it out, showing/telling us what's on the other side. Which has significant implications for safe infiltration. Heck we have a spell Dread Aspect that's got a Mastery that lets our Shadow actually physically damage things. If we could communicate with it, it'd make that spell all the more effective. And that's just the one Arcane Mark. None of this is a guarantee obviously, but there's certainly a fair amount of potential involved here.
- Pronouns
- He
I expect we could do some neat cantrip level stuff by honing our Marks, yeah. For a direct quote comparison to Regimand:
Turn 23 Results - 2481 - Part 1
Turn 29 Results - 2484
Turn 23 Results - 2481 - Part 1
Turn 29 Results - 2484
- Location
- Earth
There's plenty of things remaining on our magic backlog—arcane mark control, fog based battle magic, apparition binding, windherding, getting our enchanting up to BM level, plus whatever we do with an Ulgu Orb. Our magic score will rise eventually if we keep doing magic, so I'm not worried about our magic score remaining at 9 for a while.
Yes, the Second Secret of Dhar involves manipulating Dhar.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I want to train Mathilde's Arcane Marks because:
- Kargg-senpai told us to shore up our foundation.
- Cython says Marks can be the basis of greater magical ability and even immortality. That won't necessarily happen on its own if we don't work for it, though.
- If we do want to go about taking greater risks with magic, mastering our Marks is an obvious and effective way to reduce the dangers of doing so.
- You don't want to disappoint Kragg, do you?
I genuinely doubt it. For starters if such a safe way was known it would also be known to the Colleges. Instead of having apprentices and journeymen risk miscasting they would go, "hey, use this method who has no actual risk to get better at magic", and that is for low level stuff, not battle magic.
I feel this is especially the case for Arcane Marks considering our Master has actually mastered his smoke beard Arcane Mark and never mentioned it.
- Location
- Somewhere between the stars
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Arcane mark is also like, the trademark of the collages. Perhaps not with mastery like this in mind but Teclis did design the empire's magical school with arcane mark as a defining feature. Remember how the Druchi was shocked over fact we stained our soul with Ulgu. Compared to most of other magical school whom tries to avoid it at all cost, versus Empire's more "work with them". A huge part of our magical tradition lays in arcane mark, and i think we need to master them to properly ascend up the path Teclis layed for the collages.
- Location
- New Hampshire
It was a one word response to someone else stating that, but yes:
Now, indirectly, studying lots of battle magic would probably get us +1 magic, but it would be because we started acting like a Battle Wizard, and acting like a Battle Wizard gets you Arcane Marks from oversucceeeding or miscasting. And the Mark of Ulgu is still there, tempting us to reach into that particular pile of razors.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
I think the one neat trick to bypass the danger of wielding massive amounts of magic is that you shouldn't.
Like, it's like claiming you're best friends with a lion, but you refuse to go into the cage without tons of protective equipment, and you refuse to let it out of its cage without a muzzle. There's no assurance that the lion is going to cooperate just because you think you deserve to have its respect, but instead of training to survive the lion's opinions you've totally removed the lion's feelings on the matter from the equation.
If you want to build a relationship with what's essentially a constantly raging invisible storm, you need to actually endure that storm. You can't say you're the master of the weather if you hide when the tornados touch down. Most people who let magic remember what it truly is get blown away anyways, but you won't ever truly learn to know it -- it won't ever learn to know you -- if you don't let it know itself.
Safety or power. Ulgu is a mindless and malignant deity, and there is no secret 'both'. One must eventually eat their cake.
Like, it's like claiming you're best friends with a lion, but you refuse to go into the cage without tons of protective equipment, and you refuse to let it out of its cage without a muzzle. There's no assurance that the lion is going to cooperate just because you think you deserve to have its respect, but instead of training to survive the lion's opinions you've totally removed the lion's feelings on the matter from the equation.
If you want to build a relationship with what's essentially a constantly raging invisible storm, you need to actually endure that storm. You can't say you're the master of the weather if you hide when the tornados touch down. Most people who let magic remember what it truly is get blown away anyways, but you won't ever truly learn to know it -- it won't ever learn to know you -- if you don't let it know itself.
Safety or power. Ulgu is a mindless and malignant deity, and there is no secret 'both'. One must eventually eat their cake.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
I'm not sure Teclis knew how this was going to turn out. He probably had some theories, he's a genius, but he basically had to have been working blind in terms of how the colleges would eventually work.
I still feel Mathilde would get better at handling massive amounts of Ulgu if, you know, she practiced handling massive amounts of Ulgu.
Talking about familiars... Would it be possible to make our Shadow one?
Personally I prefer Pit of Shades since Mathilde is still vulnerable to getting surrounded and ganked up. And a massive and lethal AoE spell could help with that.
Talking about familiars... Would it be possible to make our Shadow one?
Personally I prefer Pit of Shades since Mathilde is still vulnerable to getting surrounded and ganked up. And a massive and lethal AoE spell could help with that.
- Location
- Denmark
I agree with that, pit of shades and the pendulum would do wonders to our arsenal, besides i think okhams mind razor is one of the most difficult ones to learn, i might be wrong about that though.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
If we want to upgrade our killiness and control over magic, I am much more interested in ways that involve groundbreaking research or things focusing on Mathilde's unique connection with Ulgu, such as Apparition spell development and arcane mark control, than I am in learning Battle Magic spells for which we have zero supporting traits or equipment and that aren't connected to Mathilde's existing themes or interests. Both mechanically and narratively, they just seem like way worse uses of our time.
I know I mentioned fine control as something we could work on, and that aspect of it I understand doubting. But with that said... I'm fairly confident it IS used by the Colleges. I imagine its actually specifically what they have apprentices doing, its basically what the petty magics are. its just they are insufficiently skilled starting out to even do that much with perfect safety. For Mathilde, she can do those safely now, but she likely would be at risk if she worked on inventing new spells. Even at relatively low complexities. Simply due to the novel methods involved, but that same novelty will likely go towards improving her magic stat. Not to suggest that coming up with a single new spell would do it. But coming up with a range of new spells across the petty, lesser, and shadow magic divide might. Its not necessarily safe, would likely take longer, and the spells wouldn't be as potentially potent as battle magic, but it would likely be safer than learning multiple new battle-magic spells which, I believe would be your learning harder magic approach. Which I do agree would likely work and be effective.
I would also like to point out I'm not suggesting we shouldn't learn battle magic. Just that other methods may also work to improve our magic stat, with different trade-offs in time, resources, and safety.
As for the Arcane Marks, I'm not trying to suggest mastering one of them would increase our magic stat. But it seems likely that mastering all of them has the potential to, and even if not could get us some nice traits and potentially improve the stat gains they do give us already.
- Location
- Czech Republic
We are interested in creation of liminal realms, Pit of Shades uses liminal realms.
Learning it would improve our killiness and advance our research.
- Location
- Oklahoma
I don't find the Kragg line of reasoning compelling for a couple of reasons-
One, he never actually said to control our Marks, or anything like it - he just commented on their existence as evidence of Zhuf having betrayed Mathilde in the past.
Two, Kragg knows absolutely nothing about the best way for a human Wizard to progress their magic.