Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Ah. Okay, that makes more sense; I was envisaging it as a 'summon bodyguard' spell in the more traditional sense, not a 'summon crowd control' spell. Gotcha.

Yeah, the point of Bodyguard as a behavior pattern is "it reacts to us being attacked by popping out of our soul and trying to murder whatever did it", not necessarily that it behaves like hiring someone to be a bodyguard beyond that.

Also, while it's true that the Apparition traits largely cover weaknesses, those weaknesses are a big part of why cavalry can't use their strength of "I'm sitting up here with a great big sword" when it's stuck in. For ordinary cavalry, sitting there chopping away is a death sentence; for the Rider, it's a perfectly safe environment.
 
The thing is, battle magic is useful a lot. Casting Melkoth's Miasma is pretty standard for us in battles now, because it's really really useful. We don't roll for it because we have the staff. But for this? Every time we are going to battle, it'll be useful to cast, so I see us casting this a lot. But the staff doesn't apply.
I trust Mathilde to understand the difference between a low level BM spell that is reduced in risk by her staff and other BM. I don't see her casting it in every time we go to battle, if it doesn't reduce the risk of dying or losing something or someone else important to us in that battle. And in that case I'll be glad that we picked up the spell when we had the chance.
 
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The fact that they rider looks a lot like us should make it better at the bodyguard job. Still wish the exact body double vote won.
 
Personally I am very unsure just 1 Rider would be useful the next time we have to fight a Champion of Khorne in melee or something similar.
Last time we fought a Champion of Khorne, we very quickly couldn't cast. So I doubt any number would truly matter. But given we somehow won last time,
I trust Mathilde to understand the difference between a low level BM spell that is reduced in risk by her staff and other BM. I don't see her casting it in every time we go in battle, if it doesn't reduce the risk of dying or losing something or someone else in that battle. And in that case I'll be glad that we picked up the spell when we had the chance.
You are missing that we would have already decided that this spell is useful for more than last gasp attempts and desperate saves by learning/making the spell. She'll use it when it's useful.

Facing a single mook? No need, we can sword them. In a battle and there's a charge? Leading with apparitions is useful, she'd probably do it then unless it's an obvious victory (a charge into peasants, for example). The thing is, those happen a lot. And each cast it'll be a roll or miscast, and that badness stacks up.
 
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Facing a single mook? No need, we can sword them. In a battle and there's a charge? Leading with apparitions is useful, she'd probably do it then unless it's an obvious victory (a charge into peasants, for example). The thing is, those happen a lot. And each cast it'll be a roll or miscast, and that badness stacks up.
So why is having rolls we can fail worse than not rolling and straigh up failing for our long term survival ?
 
My thoughts on battlemagic is that I'd rather have us die miscasting a spell, than die because we were attacked by a greater demon and our only option was to melee it.
I'm pretty much of the opposite opinion, not really on the battlemagic but how I'd rather have Mathilde Die.

Dying to a Miscast, would honestly be an incredibly lame way to end this quest.
 
In a battle and there's a charge? Leading with apparitions is useful, she'd probably do it then unless it's an obvious victory (a charge into peasants, for example). The thing is, those happen a lot. And each cast it'll be a roll or miscast, and that badness stacks up.
So the battle is important enough that Mathilde already decided to risk her live by fighting it. If she wouldn't care about the outcome enough to take some risks, why is she on the battlefield in the first place?

And if the battle is undecided and important enough that Mathilde decides that BM is worth the risk it poses to her personally, instead of doing something else that is in her toolbox? In that case I'm fine with casting it. And I wouldn't discount the reduced risk of dying that is directly caused by successfully casting BM.
 
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So the battle is important enough that Mathilde already decided to risk her live by fighting it. If she wouldn't care about the outcome enough to take some risks, why is she on the battlefield in the first place?

And if the battle is close and important enough that Mathilde decides that BM is worth the risk it poses to her personally, instead of doing something else that is in her toolbox? In that case I'm fine with casting it.

Mathilde is a teleporting, resurrecting wizard who reflects damage at attackers. It takes a lot for a battle to actually risk her life. None of that applies to 'your soul exploded from your own fuck ups' or 'you were dragged into the warp to be the plaything to daemons'.
 
I'm pretty much of the opposite opinion, not really on the battlemagic but how I'd rather have Mathilde Die.

Dying to a Miscast, would honestly be an incredibly lame way to end this quest.

Or to put it another way: Here lies Mathilde Weber, she died being a shoddy wizard.

I would rather she die in battle than that.
And here we go again. "If we pick up Battle Magic we will definitely miscast and said miscast will definitely kill us. "
 
Because it doesn't mean we necessarily fail. Not adding a bonus to a charge doesn't mean we lose the battle. We would instead be doing other stuff as well, from ganking a leader, to Rite of Way with the Mistery staff, to dispelling.
The choice isn't between use BM or do nothing, it's between use BM or do something else. Melkoth's, or the dragonflask, or a fog BM spell.
Remenber, in this situation you are arguing betewen BM or something worse and more risk, otherwise BM wouldn't have been cast as the better option.
 
The Dean and their staff. Trusting, obedient, studious, introverted, the same sort of thing that'd make someone a good fit for a monastery. A very promising trait is wanting to be a Battle Wizard - there are quite a few people that decide that after about a decade as an Apprentice within the College walls, they want to remain within the College walls and dedicate their life to delving as deeply as they can into their Wind, emerging only occasionally to demonstrate their mastery of it in the service of the Empire.
Lol so a big chunk of them are the kind of people that make 'Having to think all the time is so hard. Please just kill me'-posts on social media. Kinda robs them of the Gravitas.
Honestly I would probably also get so anxious about venturing outside after a locked-up youth that I would be tempted by a quiet life with an explosive end.
 
I am not opposed to doing this action again with a different apparition. That is to say, rather than going so hard on the knights by investing two or three actions in them, instead have one knight, one whispering darkness, and maybe some other one if it makes sense.
 
So the battle is important enough that Mathilde already decided to risk her live by fighting it. If she wouldn't care about the outcome enough to take some risks, why is she on the battlefield in the first place?
Because sometimes you don't need to take many risks to win? Like the whole battle of the Caldera was us taking remarkably few risks and winning by being clever. In fact, it's better to win the easy way than the risky way.
And if the battle is close and important enough that Mathilde decides that BM is worth the risk it poses to her personally, instead of doing something else that is in her toolbox? In that case I'm fine with casting it.
See, you are making a false dichtomy between Mathilde not participating in the battle usefully, and casting dangerous battle magic. There's a clear and obvious middle road we can walk, that we have repeatedly walked successfully. Us learning battle magic says to Mathilde: hey, we aren't good enough at deciding the fate of battles, so we need to take a lot more risk. But that's clearly wrong: we consistently have shown that we don't need to take a lot of risk to win, with the Khornate being the big exception.
Remenber, in this situation you are arguing betewen BM or something worse and more risk, otherwise BM wouldn't have been cast as the better option.
No, we aren't arguing between that. Again, this will be used in situations with less risk also! Because battlemagic is useful. See the false dilemma I pointed out above.
 
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And here we go again. "If we pick up Battle Magic we will definitely miscast and said miscast will definitely kill us. "
Oh nice, you completely ignored a massive part of the first sentence of my post.

I really love when people do that.

I was literally responding to someone who said dying of a miscast was a preferable option to dying to an enemy.
 
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