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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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K von Carstein said:
Human wizards are few in numbers, but there's still more of them than Archmages.
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There are several factors we don't know. Relatively few human wizards are Enchanters ableto make moderate complexity enchantments, but making simple enchantment may be a skill that all High Mages* learn over the centuries. There may be more human wizards than High Mages, but there could well be fewer available sufficently competent Enchanters in the College with the fewest of them than the Archmages that between them Ulthuan and Lauelorn can make available.

* Note as well that the Stone Flower doesn't require an archamage, it requires a caster capable of High Magic. All Archmages may know High magic, but there could well be quite a few elven wizards capable of very basic High Magic who aren't (yet) good enough to qualift as archmages.

It's the reverse engineered storage that currently requires archmage level skill, which seems like a different thing.
DragonParadox said:
It is already very impressive to anyone who is not Ulthuan, it has far more functionality compared to the present locally sourced Bretonnian alternative of Nothing Flat (TM). We are not competing with the Golden Age since they can't make Golden Age stones. Also increasing complexity makes it more likely it will blow up with low enough rolls.
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We also want to impress Ulthuan though. And does increasing complexity make it more likely to blow up?
 
Alratan said:
There are several factors we don't know. Relatively few human wizards are Enchanters ableto make moderate complexity enchantments, but making simple enchantment may be a skill that all High Mages* learn over the centuries. There may be more human wizards than High Mages, but there could well be fewer available sufficently competent Enchanters in the College with the fewest of them than the Archmages that between them Ulthuan and Lauelorn can make available.

* Note as well that the Stone Flower doesn't require an archamage, it requires a caster capable of High Magic. All Archmages may know High magic, but there could well be quite a few elven wizards capable of very basic High Magic who aren't (yet) good enough to qualift as archmages.

It's the reverse engineered storage that currently requires archmage level skill, which seems like a different thing.


We also want to impress Ulthuan though. And does increasing complexity make it more likely to blow up?
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The person of ulthuan we want to impress would be impressed if it's another design that he can use as stopgap. Eltharion is not picky about the solutions he's willing to use.
 
Valmond said:
Except all the people who can do flowers, can also do the fasces.
Also, i seriously doubt that the collegiate version requires 8 times more wizard time than the archmage level enchantment.
Them being a less complicated enchantment probably means that they take less time for dedicated craftsman, or might be possibly to make several at one go.
We can only do one, because we can't generally subdivide AP, but that is not ncessarily the case for npc's working in the background.
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The College Fascis is a moderate difficulty enchantment, the Stone Flower is a simple one, so it's the other way around. All else being equal it probably takes longer to make each one of the eight enchantment on the first than the single enchantment on the second.
DragonParadox said:
I don't think we are, at least not next turn. I would rather lower the odds of exploding stone.
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Do we know that higher difficulty enchantments increases the odds of blowing up our demonstrator model though? Boney said it just increased the difficulty of mass production, not of this prototype.

Tobtorp said:
The person of ulthuan we want to impress would be impressed if it's another design that he can use as stopgap. Eltharion is not picky about the solutions he's willing to use.
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Eltharion isn't the only person on Ulthuan who matters. If we're impressive enough we may attract other positive attention that could be helpeful. Making a superior model rather than something inferior feels much more likely to do that.
 
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So, going back a step, by general approach her would be to create a fully featured demonstrator model of Waystone with as few potential weakpoints as possible to show off to our current and potential stakeholders so they can see what's possible and why they should invest or keep investesting. That, to my mind, is what I propose in my near-original plus. It has the best results even if it's hard to make and requires negotiation with river spirits/gods and is hardest for an enemy to exploit.

That can go in particularly important locations. We can then develop a more basic model later after we've impressed our stakeholders now that can be used to fill in gaps in the Waystone network away from rivers, if we wow them now they won't care as much and will be pleased when we bring them an economy model when the costs start sinking in after we deploy a few of the expensive ones.

Edit: I've updated my table for the features.
 
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[X] Plan: Repairing The Network First
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
 
Alratan said:
Do we know that higher difficulty enchantments increases the odds of blowing up our demonstrator model though? Boney said it just increased the difficulty of mass production, not of this prototype.
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I mean we would be putting in new stuff that we have not tested (a dual transition) it seems intuitive that it would increase the odds of failure. For all we know Mathilde could be dead wrong and dual-transition stones do not work at all*. It is not like we have any experience with the things or have seen any examples of them in the past.

*this is an extreme case taken just for the sake of argument, I do not think it is likely.
 
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DragonParadox said:
I mean we would be putting in new stuff that we have not tested (a dual transition) it seems intuitive that it would increase the odds of failure. For all we know Mathilde could be dead wrong and dual-transition stones do not work at all*. It is not like we have any experience with the things or have seen any examples of them in the past.

*this is an extreme case taken just for the sake of argument, I do not think it is likely.
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In isolation I'd agree with you, but Boney has said that the difficulty only applied to mass production, not the prototype.

Otherwise I'd be making arguments based around the viability of some combinations - for example, could the use of dwarven runes in the runic storage option disrupt the Wind enchantments on other parts of the Waystone, as I think we were waned could be an issue with using enchantments and dwarven runes together on things smaller than towers.
 
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Alratan said:
In isolation I'd agree with you, but Boney has said that the difficulty only applied to mass production, not the prototype.

Otherwise I'd be making arguments based around the viability of some combinations - for example, could the use of dwarven runes in the runic storage option disrupt the Wind enchantments on other parts of the Waystone, as I think we were waned could be an issue with using enchantments and dwarven runes together on things smaller than towers.
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I don't think the GM is speaking from a position of omniscience here and in any case I do not think it is reasonable IC to assume that any combination of components will function. I mean if that were the case putting the Gambler on the action would have been pointless and I do not recall very many people being against that part.
 
DragonParadox said:
I don't think the GM is speaking from a position of omniscience here and in any case I do not think it is reasonable IC to assume that any combination of components will function. I mean if that were the case putting the Gambler on the action would have been pointless and I do not recall very many people being against that part.
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We don't know is the problem. this is an important action and we don't know how it works so the gambler goes on it. It might be totally unnecessary but we don't know and don't want to risk it.
 
[X] Plan Building A Better Future
[X] Plan Spend Money Not Effort
[X] Plan Simple and Functional
 
Okay. Say for the sake of argument that a Skaven or Necromancer digs a tunnel directly under a riverbank, and let's posit that gravity is feeling kind that day and it doesn't immediately become a slightly deeper river. They tap into the Dhar. They are now full of Dhar, famously something that it is perfectly okay to be. They use it to... what, exactly? Curse the dirt? Raise any dead bodies that happen to be buried directly beneath the river?

Dhar is horrifically easy to get. You take any Wind, of which there is always some around, and you smack it into any other Wind and you get it. If you're feeling too lazy for that you can go to any one of dozens of places that are just awash with it, or you can wait until Morrslieb pays you a visit. You probably don't perform a hydroengineering feat that Dwarves make look easy but Skavenslaves or Zombies would make look like a way to very quickly lose a lot of Skavenslaves or Zombies.
 
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Necromancers like corrupting Waystones because it turns the surrounding area Dhar-ish, which is great for them.

(Or at least less bad than it is for everyone else)

Pulling from a flowing stream of Dhar doesn't accomplish that.
 
Mopman43 said:
Necromancers like corrupting Waystones because it turns the surrounding area Dhar-ish, which is great for them.

(Or at least less bad than it is for everyone else)

Pulling from a flowing stream of Dhar doesn't accomplish that.
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Ah... if anything it is worse for them than it is for everyone else since it encourages them to go more insane and/or get more mutations, but they are delusional or ignorant of those consequences.
 
I originally proposed these two plans as tools with specific use-cases, rather than end all-be-all waystones. Not seeing much comment on them, I'm just posting them.

[X] Plan: The FEMA Model
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] None
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Jade)

Fire and forget, meant to be dropped in highly tainted areas either due to enemy control, or damage to the network. Ideally, it should be paired with a later model that picks up polluted energies from the waters

[X] Plan The Hinterlander
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [Rune] Carved
-[X] [STORAGE] None
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Hedgewise)

Decided to just go cheap AF with this one. A plan for a waystone that requires maintenance twice over, since it's not much worse than requiring maintenance once, and is meant to be built near river settlements en mass.
 
edit: changed my mind. I think reverse engineering is better. Might add original one back in if it seems reverse engineered isn't leading though.

[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
 
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With Boney's clarification, I don't see a strong reason to prefer the Spirit transmission method, so I withdraw that line of argument, the Jade version simply seems better.

[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
[X] Plan Near-Original+
 
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