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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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LadySerpentine said:
While I'm in favor of Battle Magic, since Mathilde's characterization is shaped by the thread's decisions for her, I'm not sure to what extent you can avoid doing that unless you're willing to discard her characterization as a factor entirely. And while I trust Boney to be able to, generally speaking, write the options we pick, I feel that doing so would result in a weaker quest, on the whole.
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I suppose I'd say that Mathilde's characterisation on anything that isn't tied down by explicit traits (looking at you, Disdain for Sigmar) is flexible enough - and deliberately so - that at any given point we can vote to do something new and it'll read as an entirely natural decision on Mathilde's part to try something new, or to finally get around to something she just hadn't done yet. If it's actually OOC, it's not offered as an option.

So making the decision to keep doing what we're doing because you think that it's worked out well enough and you don't want to do something new is fine, but characterising it (heh) as sticking to her characterisation is, in my opinion, wrong.
 
LadySerpentine said:
While I'm in favor of Battle Magic, since Mathilde's characterization is shaped by the thread's decisions for her, I'm not sure to what extent you can avoid doing that unless you're willing to discard her characterization as a factor entirely. And while I trust Boney to be able to, generally speaking, write the options we pick, I feel that doing so would result in a weaker quest, on the whole.
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The default list of things on the turn plan update all represent things Mathilde is willing to do. Learning battle magic has always been there since she got access, hell messing with the second secret has always been there.
 
Personally I consider learning battle magic more as rolling the dice, but more in a career sense. Long term battle magic goes one of two ways. You eventually explode, or you get good enough with it such that it's become more reliable for you, via traits. Or in other words, you hope you roll high and get traits before you roll low and explode. (Or you get scared and swear off magic or get killed by some gribbly or whatever).

This is what learning battle magic is to me. It's not just learning the spell, it's then using it enough times until you get traits where you can confidently throw it around like seen in the Supreme Patriarch duels. Starting down this long and dangerous road in the first place is the gamble. Considering the number of battle wizard versus graduated battle wizards a heavy one even taking into account other causes of death, though considering it probably takes decades to complete this road they're hardly dropping like flies from miscasts either.

Now, the argument that not having battle magic is also a gamble has merit. You can either take the risky road of learning battle magic and possibly exploding, or you can take the risky road of not learning battle magic and dying when battle magic could have saved you because you live in Warhammer. These two roads are each dangerous and each have value, and in most people I think are a personal decision for the wizard in question to make.

The thing is, Mathilde is not other wizards and has a third road available for her. She already has what's effectively a battle magic trait in her staff. Taking this into account, I don't see any reason why on earth you would want to start at the beginning of that dangerous race to learn battle magic the normal way, ie learning battle magic you don't have traits and bonuses for, when she can learn mist battle magic in a far safer way already.

Said another way. You can either 1) not race and maybe die, 2) race and die if you lose, or 3) race with a shortcut and die if you lose. Whatever the usual arguments for 1 and 2, the existence of option 3 makes option 2 absurd, in Mathilde's unique case.

We don't (currently) have traits to help Rider battle magic, so I want it as safe as possible. If that changes I would love a trio or lance charge variant, but that's not currently the case. Maybe the Mist apparition will make a good battle magic if we can get the staff to apply? I would be eager to try that now, as AP hell allows.
 
LadySerpentine said:
While I'm in favor of Battle Magic, since Mathilde's characterization is shaped by the thread's decisions for her, I'm not sure to what extent you can avoid doing that unless you're willing to discard her characterization as a factor entirely. And while I trust Boney to be able to, generally speaking, write the options we pick, I feel that doing so would result in a weaker quest, on the whole.
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Mathilde aimed for BM permission for Smoke and Mirrors since she got Magic 7 - she hasn't been anti-BM.

We can at most say that Mathilde has been fairly cautious... though it is equally reasonable to say that she's been in AP hell and couldn't spend a lot of time on BM considering all the other stuff she's had to juggle...

but even then Mathilde has created and codified a BM spell.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
Mathilde aimed for BM permission for Smoke and Mirrors since she got Magic 7 - she hasn't been anti-BM.

We can at most say that Mathilde has been fairly cautious... though it is equally reasonable to say that she's been in AP hell and couldn't spend a lot of time on BM considering all the other stuff she's had to juggle...

but even then Mathilde has created and codified a BM spell.
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All of those were with the staff of mistery buff making them a level easier than they normally are.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
I suppose I'd say that Mathilde's characterisation on anything that isn't tied down by explicit traits (looking at you, Disdain for Sigmar) is flexible enough - and deliberately so - that at any given point we can vote to do something new and it'll read as an entirely natural decision on Mathilde's part to try something new, or to finally get around to something she just hadn't done yet. If it's actually OOC, it's not offered as an option.

So making the decision to keep doing what we're doing because you think that it's worked out well enough and you don't want to do something new is fine, but characterising it (heh) as sticking to her characterisation is, in my opinion, wrong.
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On the other hand, many of her traits were themselves picked by the thread directly, between arcs. So it feels like there's an argument that those traits, at least, are simply doing the same thing. (And for that matter, any traits she gets naturally are generally on account of the thread having consistently voted for her to behave in those ways.)

Mathilde's flexible, sure, but I don't understand the distinction you're drawing or why that makes it wrong to have an opinion on what best supports her existing themes, throughlines, and arcs.

Zero Gravitas said:
Mathilde aimed for BM permission for Smoke and Mirrors since she got Magic 7 - she hasn't been anti-BM.

We can at most say that Mathilde has been fairly cautious... though it is equally reasonable to say that she's been in AP hell and couldn't spend a lot of time on BM considering all the other stuff she's had to juggle...

but even then Mathilde has created and codified a BM spell.
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I don't believe I denied any of that? Again, I'm personally in favor of Battle Magic. But that just means that I disagree with Derpmind on what fits Mathilde best, when what I was arguing against was the notion that the process of deciding stuff based on what one feels fits Mathilde best is inherently flawed.
 
[X] [BEHAVIOUR] Charge
[X] [BEHAVIOUR] Duel
[X] [NUMBER] Trio
[X] [NUMBER] Lance

Not going to lie, I heavily dislike the fact that bodyguard is winning, since I feel that this project was heavily sold by its proponents on the idea that this could fill in the hole in Mathilde's kit that is having some form of offensively used battlemagic that didn't rely on having a handy regiment of our own (and with having a reduced miscast risk by dint of doing the binding, negating the currently eing relitigated 'learning battlemagic is risky' lobby) .

Bodyguard doesn't seem to fit that role at all, and if we are suddenly in danger like that I'd prefer to smoke and mirrors out of there. Mathilde is already a highly mobile master melee combatant with a super sword. Charge, Duel, Ambush, Instincitive all give us new tools. Bodyguard doesn't really do that. It is just one more dude at our side. Maybe I'd find it to be more amazing if Mathilde was terrible in melee, but she isn't. She's really good at it.

It's a small additive to her existing skill/specialty, but it doesn't feel like it would be a major one outside of very niche situations. Wheras the other options all feel like they have a lot more applicability to a number of situations.
 
FallenPears said:
Taking this into account, I don't see any reason why on earth you would want to start at the beginning of that dangerous race to learn battle magic the normal way, ie learning battle magic you don't have traits and bonuses for, when she can learn mist battle magic in a far safer way already.
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That assumes making battle magic spells is at most as dangerous as learning them.

Which I disagree with.
I'd say making new battle magic spells is more dangerous than learning already existing ones.
 
LightLan said:
That assumes making battle magic spells is at most as dangerous as learning them.

Which I disagree with.
I'd say making new battle magic spells is more dangerous than learning already existing ones.
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The Staff of Mistery says "spells that create mists, fogs, vapours and miasmas are one category easier". Fog based battlemagics are explicitly easier than other battlemagics. It would be very strange if that only applied to casting the spell, and not also for creating the spell.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
The Staff of Mistery says "spells that create mists, fogs, vapours and miasmas are one category easier". Fog based battlemagics are explicitly easier than other battlemagics. It would be very strange if that only applied to casting the spell, and not also for creating the spell.
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It's still creating a new spell.

Which is definitely more dangerous than casting or learning a known one.
 
LightLan said:
That assumes making battle magic spells is at most as dangerous as learning them.

Which I disagree with.
I'd say making new battle magic spells is more dangerous than learning already existing ones.
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The reasoning is that a front loaded one time risk in the creation process is better than a long term consistently added risk that exists every time we cast it. As an arbitrary example, let's say we roll ten times in the creation process. If we expect to cast the spell more than 10 times, then the one-time risk is better in the long run. And in the spell creation processes we've seen so far, I believe we've rolled a lot less than 10 times.
 
Again, a potential issue is that using only Mistery Spells is a crutch that inhibits our magic growth. After all, you do not build up muscle by not lifting heavier weights now, do you? While Mistery staff has been making our magical weights easier.
 
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LightLan said:
I'd say making new battle magic spells is more dangerous than learning already existing ones.
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LightLan said:
It's still creating a new spell.

Which is definitely more dangerous than casting or learning a known one.
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Why do you assume this, when we've been explicitly told you can always miscast when learning an existing spell? Why exactly would making a new spell (which may be staff-compatible) be more dangerous than learning an existing one?
 
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I personally feel like bodyguard can do about everything charge can do. If we want the bodyguard to charge someone we just shoot them with our guns.
 
Parabola said:
Why do you assume this, when we've been explicitly told you can always miscast when learning an existing spell? Why exactly is making a new spell (which may be staff-compatible) be more dangerous than learning an existing one?
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Because an existing spell has been learned and cast by others and is known to work, if done correctly.

No such guarantees exist for trying to create a new spell.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Is this an actual thing we need to be worried about?
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It is a hypothesis I have. It might be wrong, but we do know that the only way to improve at magic is to use more and harder magic. Which only using magic discounted by our staff doesn't count as. Unless we learn that mist cataclysm spell, but we need to learn a lot of BMs for that.
 
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fictionfan said:
I personally feel like bodyguard can do about everything charge can do. If we want the bodyguard to charge someone we just shoot them with our guns.
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Even if bullet targeting works like this, we still wont be able to use it to attack something different to what we are attacking like with charge.
 
FallenPears said:
Considering the number of battle wizard versus graduated battle wizards a heavy one even taking into account other causes of death, though considering it probably takes decades to complete this road they're hardly dropping like flies from miscasts either.
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Battle Wizards to 'Graduated' Battle Wizards is the same proportions as Journeymen to Lord Magisters (about 1/25) which are the same respective steps on their career tracks.
 
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