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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
Dampeners were an option for Eike at 11, they would be an option for Mandred at 10 if it comes to it, he would still have to take some of the political heat, but it would not be as bad as being forced to train as a wizard if he does not want to.
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Mathilde was very specifically talking about hypothicals, because if Eike was in fact definetly magical then Mathilde would have been legally required to bring her to the colleges to become a wizard.

Boney said:
You look at her a while, and nod. "What if I reconsidered the matter and reached a different conclusion about her ability to use magic, you mean?" She nods. "As an entirely theoretical exercise, in that case I would no longer be bound by the Articles to recruit, report, or destroy her. She would continue on in life with the beguiling light of the Winds dancing just within reach. And if that reconsideration was incorrect, it's very likely that one day she would reach out to those Winds, and from there there's a thousand different ways it could go horribly wrong." You shake your head. "Some that avoid the Colleges seek education outside them, but there aren't many benign teachers left outside the Colleges these days. That leaves grimoires full of traps for the unwary, and Sorcerers and forbidden Cults that would be all too happy to get their hands on a malleable young thing like her, and worst of all, Daemons of every stripe that would fight each other for the chance to whisper temptation into her ear. It's the same reason we don't like putting people in dampeners unless the person is completely against using magic in any circumstances, either because they're completely opposed to it or because they've been traumatized by it."
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This is this bit of my confusion:
Dark as Silver said:
Its at best going to be an open secret among many movers and shakers that Mandred had several years of his education done in the colleges.
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If Mandred decides not to be a Wizard, theres no way to just "reconsider the matter" when every college has had a look and he's had years of training. It would be blatantly illegal. Only Mathilde knew about Eike, but for Mandred too many people know, too many people will know.
 
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I really don't like the Brights for Mandred. I know Boney just went into a diatribe about arcane marks in rulers being perceived as normal, but perception notwithstanding I'd rather not have the ruler of a province with rage issues. Perception withstanding a ruler who's constantly on fire seems like it would be bad for a "Wizards are safe and normal" reputation we might hypothetically build.

Yeah they're the "Martial College," but every College has martial aspects and the Brights don't give him anything other than the Martial aspect. Celestials have future knowledge, Gold and Celestials have relationships with the nobility, Lights have anti chaos stuff as well as a relationship with the cults, Jades have the shunt making Reikland into a breadbasket, Jades and Lights have the best reputation with the common people...

Brights have a relationship with the army, but as artillery. They don't really go for the Indic leader type stuff. Worst of all, it doesn't do anything for his diplomacy, which may be his most important stat going forward.

The drawbacks and opportunity cost far outweigh the benefits, for me.
 
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Dark as Silver said:
Mathilde was very specifically talking about a hypothical child who was like Eike, but not Eike, because if Eike was in fact definetly magical then Mathilde would have been legally required to bring her to the colleges to become a wizard.
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The hypothetical was for not taking her at all and letting her discover her magic naturally with all the risks involved. Sticking Dampeners on people who show up hating their magical talent and then letting them loose (under some supervision) is something the Colleges do regularly even if they do not like being in that position.
 
Prospalz said:
There is slight collision with Rooms of Calam precedent, but there is prolly some logic that explains it.
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The rooms of Calamity are very different from the belt. The Rooms of Calamity ground the magical energies within them to make miscasts less catastrophic. The belt prevents Dhar from affecting you. The former is a safety precaution, but the latter doesn't just make you safer from environmental hazards, it enables all sorts of bad behavior without risk to yourself, which is why it's on much tighter lockdown.

Notably, the belt doesn't, by itself, affect miscasts in any way. What Mathilde did was see that Gretel was miscasting and forcibly seize and smother the Shyish that was raging out of control using her Ulgu, which normally is a recipe for some light Dhar poisoning but in this case was not. But if Mathilde's own magic raged out of control, she'd need her grounding rod to protect her; the belt would do nothing, because miscasts are not inherently Dhar.
 
"If you work hard you can fly and shoot lightning bolts" will never not have takers. It has takers in real life and the texts for that are just as dense and mind numbing as anything somebody imagining a magical education could think up.

It shouldn't be forgotten that the actual stat in WHF2e for being good at magic is Willpower; that's the one representing focus and determination. Learning is just a CK2 thing that it got balled up with to represent our circumstances and technical skill. If the texts are found to be a bit dense that just means it'll take more time to get through them.
 
Heidi has known about Mandred's magic for years and probably has an Intrigue and Diplomacy of 'yes'.

I'm sure she eased him into the idea of being a wizard, and if he were totally opposed this meeting wouldn't have happened.
 
It's worth reemphasizing that Mandred is 10 and that his raw stats do not include any skills or traits. He has, as a ten year old, a good chance of outfighting a twenty-year-old Mathilde before including what is likely one or two weapon skills and maaaybe a trait, and an OK chance of outtalking her.

Having a Learning stat of 7 or Intrigue of 8 or Piety of 10 isn't great, but there is a lot of room here for growth. Unlike Eike, who is passively learning things from us, he will probably receive personalized lessons from whoever decides to teach him, which will almost certainly include directly improving his Learning.

I will second people's suggestions to put him in either the Brights or the Celestials, unless he shows himself to be particularly attuned to any one Wind.
 
DragonParadox said:
The hypothetical was for not taking her at all and letting her discover her magic naturally with all the risks involved. Sticking Dampeners on people who show up hating their magical talent and then letting them loose (under some supervision) is something the Colleges do regularly even if they do not like being in that position.
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Errrrr, and if she was not taken at all...
Boney said:
Eike won't be the first heir to come down with an inconvenient case of magic, and more nobles than many would guess once paid a discreet visit to Altdorf to be fitted with magic-dampening jewellery and trinkets so they could continue on the path their parents had decided for them.
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It wasn't just ignoring the problem, it was "What if we get Eike supperssors and hope that she never uses magic."
So it was speaking to the limitations of suppressors on older children.
I will point out that going to the college and saying "I don't want to be a wizard" wasn't an option we could recommend, but in the interest of moving this forward, I will take it as a given that the social costs of a wizard child are calculated to be more significant than the financial cost of creating the suppressors without them.

Its good to know that the colleges use suppressors regularly. However you do realise that we're circling the things that I don't understand?
Dark as Silver said:
Are the Suppressors we're talking about now different from the ones considered when he was younger, and enchanted so they can't be removed. Are Witch Hunters just generally more trusting of people who leave the colleges than I'd assume? Is this just a special case we're making for an Elector Counts heir and the option wouldn't be available for lower class people?
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So its good to know that this isn't the special case I said in the third question. But if you can answer the first and second without needing to go so circuitously I'd appreciate that. Even better if you can just point me at the boney WoG post you're thinking of that answers all this.
 
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Dark as Silver said:
Errrrr, and if she was not taken at all...

It wasn't just ignoring the problem, it was "What if we get Eike supperssors and hope that she never uses magic."
So it was speaking to the limitations of suppressors on older children.
I will point out that going to the college and saying "I don't want to be a wizard" wasn't an option we could recommend, but in the interest of moving this forward, I will take it as a given that the social costs of a wizard child are calculated to be more significant than the financial cost of creating the suppressors without them.

Its good to know that the colleges use suppressors regularly. However you do realise that we're circling the things that I don't understand?

So its good to know that this isn't the special case I said in the third question. But if you can answer the first and second without needing to go so circuitously I'd appreciate that. Even better if you can just point me at the boney WoG post you're thinking of that answers all this.
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Well we can probably assume and answer for three because Mathilde was pretty sure no one in the empire would have a problem with Eike getting some dampeners as for inequality? Yeah probably you probably do need money for someone to make those dampeners without spending at least a few years in the colleges.
 
chocolote12 said:
"If you work hard you can fly and shoot lightning bolts" will never not have takers. It has takers in real life and the texts for that are just as dense and mind numbing as anything somebody imagining a magical education could think up.

It shouldn't be forgotten that the actual stat in WHF2e for being good at magic is Willpower; that's the one representing focus and determination. Learning is just a CK2 thing that it got balled up with to represent our circumstances and technical skill. If the texts are found to be a bit dense that just means it'll take more time to get through them.
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This.

Hard numbers also don't mean as much with how Boney usually runs things imo, so having low numbers doesn't necessarily mean he's bad at something. Look at Kazador, who has 15 Martial but an extremely high effective modifier from traits. Being a trained Wizard will, at minimum, give a better roll table even if his Learning makes advancing further down that path more difficult.
 
Tobtorp said:
Well we can probably assume and answer for three because Mathilde was pretty sure no one in the empire would have a problem with Eike getting some dampeners as for inequality? Yeah probably you probably do need money for someone to make those dampeners without spending at least a few years in the colleges.
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Dude, if nobody in the empire had a problem with it, then it wouldn't be done secretly...

Three was answered for the entirely separately reason that there can't be enough children of nobility coming through the colleges for it to constitute "regular" or special exception.
 
Dark as Silver said:
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Dude, if nobody in the empire had a problem with it, then it wouldn't be done secretly...

Three was answered for the entirely separately reason that there can't be enough children of nobility coming through the colleges for it to constitute "regular" or special exception.
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It's done secretly so that other people don't know he's a wizard, not that he has dampeners. The dampeners itself aren't a problem it's what they supress that is a problem with many.
 
HavocKeeper said:
This.

Hard numbers also don't mean as much with how Boney usually runs things imo, so having low numbers doesn't necessarily mean he's bad at something. Look at Kazador, who has 15 Martial but an extremely high effective modifier from traits. Being a trained Wizard will, at minimum, give a better roll table even if his Learning makes advancing further down that path more difficult.
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Hard numbers do matter, Kazador just has different hard numbers form a trait which he earned from a lifetime at war. I would love it if Mandred has a secret +20 to add to that 7 learning when casting magic, but I do not think he's that lucky
 
Well, he's got high martial, low learning... likes knights. I'm leaning Hubert style celestial for him.
 
I would like to remind everyone that is a core area of the Grey college and that the others care far less about it. Turning him Grey will be the best spot for nurturing his 'can talk good' side.
 
AsuraAtlas said:
I really don't like the Brights for Mandred. I know Boney just went into a diatribe about arcane marks in rulers being perceived as normal, but perception notwithstanding I'd rather not have the ruler of a province with rage issues. Perception withstanding a ruler who's constantly on fire seems like it would be bad for a "Wizards are safe and normal" reputation we might hypothetically build.

Yeah they're the "Martial College," but every College has martial aspects and the Brights don't give him anything other than the Martial aspect. Celestials have future knowledge, Gold and Celestials have relationships with the nobility, Lights have anti chaos stuff as well as a relationship with the cults, Jades have the shunt making the Reik into a breadbasket, Jades and Lights have the best reputation with the common people...

Brights have a relationship with the army, but as artillery. They don't really go for the Indic leader type stuff. Worst of all, it doesn't do anything for his diplomacy, which may be his most important stat going forward.

The drawbacks and opportunity cost far outweigh the benefits, for me.
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He's prince of Reikland with capital in Altdorf.
 
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