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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Abhorsen said:
There most definitely is. People spend there lives working at being a good Diplomat. We know someone who manipulated the Druchii enough to cause a near civil war. We aren't even the best wizard at fighting on the project (Egrimm's got 1 more martial), why do you think we are somehow the best at this? That's simply arrogant. We aren't. There's definitely better people in the Empire for this, they just aren't here now. At least the argument of "we're the ones here" wasn't just straight up wrong.
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Raw numbers only matter up to a certain point. Johann has more diplomacy than we do, for instance, but that doesn't mean he'd necessarily do better than Mathilde even when rolling the same numbers. For all we know he'd be looked down on more than single-Wind humans do simply because he's blind, or because he has some blocks when it comes to his understanding of Chamon. And he's not a Lord Magister, actually given the trust to speak on behalf of the Empire.

I really get where you're coming from, and I think that if we did have to do it we should really ask Kupfer for guidance, but it'd be silly to claim we couldn't do it period.
 
Mopman43 said:
He has 1 point higher pure martial, I'm pretty sure Mathilde would still destroy him with a fair amount of ease thanks to being a Master with a greatsword. Or at leading a force against the Skaven or Undead, for example. Skills are quite impactful.
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Van Horstmann's Speculum says goodbye to our sword skills. He too has weird abilities and surprises and traits. The protagonist centric ability focus is simply wrong many times over.

Mopman43 said:
I doubt any pure Diplomat would be effective in this context, I think diplomacy with Druchii requires you to be a threat yourself to be effective. There's certainly no pure diplomat with experience or training on dealing with Druchii.
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Literally there's a grey magister who infiltrated Naggarand and fucked around and the druchii found out. Stop with the protagonist centered ability fawning. We are good. We aren't the best at everything. That's one of the reason the quest is so good.
Parabola said:
aw numbers only matter up to a certain point. Johann has more diplomacy than we do, for instance, but that doesn't mean he'd necessarily do better than Mathilde even when rolling the same numbers. For all we know he'd be looked down on more than single-Wind humans do simply because he's blind, or because he has some blocks when it comes to his understanding of Chamon. And he's not a Lord Magister, actually given the trust to speak on behalf of the Empire.

I really get where you're coming from, and I think that if we did have to do it we should really ask Kupfer for guidance, but it'd be silly to claim we couldn't do it period.
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For Egrimm, I suspect he has a fair bit of traits to back it up. He was a problem solver for the Patriarch before hand.

I didn't say we couldn't do it, I said we aren't suited for doing it.

As for the single wind thing, I doubt it. The sorceress admired us for it, in a horrified fashion.
 
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"we're not the best at X, therefore we shouldn't even bother"

Am I the only person who remembers when Mathilde was unqualified to be a spymaster, or to be an advisor to a Dwarf King?

Seriously, can you imagine people making these sorts of arguments during the expedition?

"Mathilde shouldn't become Belegar's Loremaster, not only are there people better suited for it, but she doesn't even have the dwarflore skill. She'll probably fail at the job."
 
If we negotiate with the druchi, I think that the information on incoming druchi attacks is actually the wrong deal to take. The empire suffers very few casualties from those attacks due to its lack of useful coastline. It also doesn't really have the naval power to sustain losses during these conflicts, even if the empire would presumably come out ahead. There's very little actual gain in it for us, unless you plan on selling the information to a more relevant coastal/naval power. The Sorceress' deal - while inherently more risky - is the only one that provides anything actually of use to the empire as a whole.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
"we're not the best at X, therefore we shouldn't even bother"

Am I the only person who remembers when Mathilde was unqualified to be a spymaster, or to be an advisor to a Dwarf King?

Seriously, can you imagine people making these sorts of arguments during the expedition?

"Mathilde shouldn't become Belegar's Loremaster, not only are there people better suited for it, but she doesn't even have the dwarflore skill. She'll probably fail at the job."
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She didn't choose to be spymaster, she was thrown in to sink or swim.

The Dwarf King in question was a radical, reestablishing a Dwarfhold in a Karak that got full of various weird stuff in the meantime; Mathilde was qualified to deal with this, and left the position after the weird stuff ran out.

What some people want to do now is go make questionable dealings with centuries old slavers who are the worst kind of mortal enemies with the Asur, whom we actually have a chance of getting help from because Teclis. We don't NEED to do that, we aren't the only person in the position to do that (unlike the spymaster job where we didn't get a choice*, and the loremaster job where we were the only wizard trusted this much), there is at least one Grey with vastly more personal experience manipulating Druchii and that's not even looking outside our Order!

I just think that going there on our own makes no sense and can only be justified by protagonist centric mindset that Abhorsen is talking about.

*Mathilde didn't, the thread did at character creation
 
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Somic said:
there is at least one Grey with vastly more personal experience manipulating Druchii and that's not even looking outside our Order!
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Kupfer is a) retired, and b) is not an honoured guest of the Eonir. We can not pass the buck to him, unless you plan on recruiting him into web-mat.

Yes, he has a ton of experience in dealing with Druchii. He's not here though. We can't sit around with our thumbs up our ass waiting for the perfect character to turn up and deal with this situation for us.
 
So, for the record, my argument for doing social stuff with the DElves is less about cutting deals with Nagaroth, which is a hard sell in the best of days, more about keeping an eye on what kind of deals they have been cutting with Laurelorn.

The Eonir-Ulrican situation is important, but we know that the emperor is aware of that and presumably has been trying to keep an eye on those developments for the sake of intra-Empire peace, whereas we are in an unique position (and probably want) to keep a finger on the political situation in Tor Lithanel re: the Druuchi.
 
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My argument for not socialing the Delves is simple: if your criterion for social actions is pure "what you want to see," I want to see other stuff more than I want to hang out with them, and if your criterion is "what actions are instrumentally useful for Mathilde to accomplish her goals," I think other stuff is more important than talking to them.

I'm not going to riot if they make it in or anything, I'm not wildly anti the Druchii, I'm just significantly less interested in them than in alternatives and think other options are significantly more valuable to us.

I don't think folks need to have opinions more complicated than that for it to be valid.
 
Somic said:
But we can ask for advice. Not right now, since this is just a social turn, but if we actually wanna properly deal with the Druchii, this is the way to go. (I don't wanna deal with Druchii, but doing this poorly would be even worse than not doing it at all.)
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I'd assume that if we actually do take the negotiation action, that'd be one of the things that happens without us needing to micromanage if it makes sense. Going further and trying to hire him with CF would be involving him directly in the proceedings, assuming he's even available.
 
Somic said:
But we can ask for advice. Not right now, since this is just a social turn, but if we actually wanna properly deal with the Druchii, this is the way to go. (I don't wanna deal with Druchii, but doing this poorly would be even worse than not doing it at all.)
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[*] Receive training: Walther Kupfer, Druchii diplomacy

Is that what you are suggesting we do? That we spend an AP and possibly CF acquiring another diplomacy skill before we approach them?

Because I can't see that ending up in a winning turn plan at all. We don't need to waste time on prerequisite actions. Stop letting perfect be the enemy of action.

We either do it because we think it's interesting and useful, or we don't do it because we think it isn't, but I wish people would stop inventing reasons for why we can not do it. Mathilde has a unique combination of skills, talents, and most importantly, opportunity. We can do it. The only question is whether we should.
 
Hydroplatypus said:
If we negotiate with the druchi, I think that the information on incoming druchi attacks is actually the wrong deal to take. The empire suffers very few casualties from those attacks due to its lack of useful coastline. It also doesn't really have the naval power to sustain losses during these conflicts, even if the empire would presumably come out ahead. There's very little actual gain in it for us, unless you plan on selling the information to a more relevant coastal/naval power. The Sorceress' deal - while inherently more risky - is the only one that provides anything actually of use to the empire as a whole.
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If the empire "doesn't have the naval power to sustain losses during these conflicts" it might as well toss away it's northern fleet completely because These Conflicts Specifically are exactly what the northern fleet exists to fight. The cost/benefit might not end up being all that great but even so, if it looks like that's the case after we try it out we can just... stop paying them for more of that information, to an end result of "somewhat overpaid to save some lives" and if "somewhat overpaid to save some lives and then stopped overpaying" is the most realistic failstate, that's absolutely wonderful.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Kupfer is a) retired
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I'm not sure I'd actually believe this. Mathilde said "Kupfer is retired in all but name" but Mathilde is not alwyas the best informed on the workings of her College. And frankly Kupfer seems like the kind of person to want everyone to think he's retired, so he can do sneaky spy shit somewhere without people thinking about him.

reignonyrparade said:
If the empire "doesn't have the naval power to sustain losses during these conflicts" it might as well toss away it's northern fleet completely because These Conflicts Specifically are exactly what the northern fleet exists to fight. The cost/benefit might not end up being all that great but even so, if it looks like that's the case after we try it out we can just... stop paying them for more of that information, to an end result of "somewhat overpaid to save some lives" and if "somewhat overpaid to save some lives and then stopped overpaying" is the most realistic failstate, that's absolutely wonderful.
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The Imperial Second Fleet exists to prevent Norscan raids across the Sea of Claws, not the Druchii attacking Bretonnia, or Tilea, or the Border Princes. And even then, said fleet barely does anything apart from defend the single town it's based in, because the entire rest of the Empire's coastline is just fishing villages and failed trading towns that "get razed by the Norscans every other decade". The Empire is barely a naval power.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
I'm not sure I'd actually believe this. Mathilde said "Kupfer is retired in all but name" but Mathilde is not alwyas the best informed on the workings of her College. And frankly Kupfer seems like the kind of person to want everyone to think he's retired, so he can do sneaky spy shit somewhere without people thinking about him.
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I think one of the funniest things in the entire quest is how Greys are so dramatic about "retirement". Some of them probably do, at some point, but between Regimand and the members of the Involuntary Retirement Club, who take on the name Grey, I really can't think Kupfer is fully retired.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
The Imperial Second Fleet exists to prevent Norscan raids across the Sea of Claws, not the Druchii attacking Bretonnia, or Tilea, or the Border Princes.
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Okay yes the latter part is true, but also irrelevant because literally nobody is talking about the imperial second fleet doing that. The imperial second fleet will only be actively acting on druchii information for druchii raids on the empire itself as a matter that is basically self-evident. These are not that common but also not nonexistent.

(If the empire is "barely a naval power" to the degree you are declaring, then even if you ARE right, any "unrecoverable" losses are basically still no big deal, because clearly the empire isn't doing anything that matters with that nonexistent naval power anyway. "Wow after fighting that druchii ship, instead of a navy that can't do anything that matters, we have a navy that can't do anything that matters.")
 
Are they still crimes if it's a LM doing them? Matthilde is considered Actual Nobility at this point and lots of things that would be crimes if other people did them are now 'eccentricities'.
 
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