Kornet
Quite possibly a sloth abomination
- Location
- Mother Russia
Gods damn superspy wannabes! Everybody wants to be James Bond, and no one wants to craft his gadgets!
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
The issue is that this goes directly against dwarven psychology. Runesmiths don't collaborate, or share their secrets, even to the detriment of the Dwarves as a whole. The mere offer would be insulting.
Kornet
Quite possibly a sloth abomination
- Location
- Mother Russia
I think most of them do collaborate, and share secrets with worthy apprentices. It's just Kragg has an impossibly high bar on with whom he wishes to share such secrets. He actually wants an apprentice, and has been looking for one for centuries - it's just nobody meets his cut.
So, I guess finding a very junior and unorthodox runesmith is posdible, in theory - but he will be heavily censured by dwarf society for his cooperation with us.
Last edited:
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So, here's the thing.
The Dwarfs have been doing this for more than six thousand years. In the passage where Kragg uses the Anvil of Doom he describes how he knows them even if he is blind to the Winds. He knows their names and their temperaments and what they do. And as a little detail in that internal monologue he notes something about Runesmithing, which is that it strips the Winds of their identities to make them well behaved and identitiless.
There's also another issue in that, how do we convey what we see in a manner that is actually useful when part of the point of the Runesmith's apprenticeship is learning to do what they do by what their anti-magic tells them. They know what they're doing when they're pounding away on an Axe to give it Runes of Cleaving for example because they can feel how their anti-magical natures respond to it and its what they were trained to understand.
To me Mathilde trying to explain what she sees to them is a waste of hers and theirs time, because they already know.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
The interesting thing about magical duelist is that it will help if we really want to push and become the supreme matriarch later on. After all the the position passes on is a wizard duel. So being a magical duelist will definitely help both get us to the position of being able to commit to the challenge, by keeping us alive, and help us win the position.
- Location
- Planet Earth
Considering how many decades Mathilde will have before she's ready to even try for the job I'm certain we'll have had numerous chances to gain that trait, its not like counterspelling is something Mathilde won't be doing in most major events.
My point was that there's a disconnect between the idea that we are supposed to plan vote in order to produce an optimal wizard array (whether even numbered or a multiple of three) when we don't actually know yet whether an even number or a multiple of three is optimal. It therefore seemed to me that we should decide on traits first, then the number of wizards. Voting for the individual names ahead of time would give a ranked list which could matter if people are on the fence between 2 and 4 subordinates.
It doesn't actually matter that much and things will work out eventually no matter how the vote is run.
- Location
- Scotland
[X] Plan Ambers and a Gold
-[X] Recruit Esbern and Seija
-[X] Recruit Maximilian
[X] Take an active hand in the EIC
[X] Avatar: You're growing worryingly familiar with being used as a conduit by deities. ???
[X] Disdain for Sigmar > Polytheist: Your bitterness towards Sigmar has softened with time and distance. You're still not thrilled with him, but as long as his followers are coexisting with those of other Gods, you can deal with it. +1 Piety, removes anti-Sigmarite penalty except when dealing with Sigmarite supremacists and monotheists.
-[X] Recruit Esbern and Seija
-[X] Recruit Maximilian
[X] Take an active hand in the EIC
[X] Avatar: You're growing worryingly familiar with being used as a conduit by deities. ???
[X] Disdain for Sigmar > Polytheist: Your bitterness towards Sigmar has softened with time and distance. You're still not thrilled with him, but as long as his followers are coexisting with those of other Gods, you can deal with it. +1 Piety, removes anti-Sigmarite penalty except when dealing with Sigmarite supremacists and monotheists.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Ohh? What makes you say that? Have we seen a trait appear more than twice in these votes? And if so what would make Avatar different? We can get it from our unique experiences. Will those experiences somehow go away and make us forget about the trail?
The circumstances that made avatar available were the culmination of a thousands year old plot whereas circumstances that made magical duelist available were dispelling really well
The second of those looks more likely than the first.
Mostly by not casting Battle Magic. Battle Magic miscasts are proportionate to their effects.
It does actually. If we took Maxmillian and Johann alone as subordinates....consider trying to make them do anything when they dislike each other so much they endeavored never to be in the same room when they can help it ever since we reached Eight Peaks. Johann didn't even show up for the Free Favor paper discussion, he just mailed in his notes so he didn't have to see Max.
By contrast, either of them work great as part of a larger team.
- Location
- his hidden lair
I mean, Mathilde considers her shadow's actions while storming the watchtower a miscast given her speech to Panoramia and we got lucky during the Drakenhof campaign and had a miscast that merely made monochromatic grass in a radius.
But the stakes are going to get higher given people want to experiment with creating an entirely new Lore and Battlemagic in general is far more risky in that regard. And I doubt we're going to entirely avoid Battlemagic in the long run.
I mean this sort of sets the tone doesn't it? Read the wrong book, wield the wrong piece of loot, I can't think of any specific examples off the cuff but Chaos Sorcerers sicing Daemons to haunt your dreams certainly sounds feasible. This isn't something we can necesarrily rely on being able to outmuscle either considering the scale could go all the way from 'minor' influence to Bel'akor deciding he'd look wearing Mathilde. Do I think Daemonic influences are something we need to necessarily be majorly concerned about at this point? Not really- it's likelier than not that the latter end of the scale is very poorly timed crit fail territory but in a setting like Warhammer it can't particularly hurt.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
That wasn't the statement though. I asked if we have seen any trait appear again. To my knowledge we haven't. Traits may be one time things that are never shown again after Mathilde dismiss them.
"Daemons are shards of a chaos god" does not equal "chaos god is a sum and total of his daemons". Former is well supported by the lore (though not all the lore, as it's often the case with Warhammer), the latter is not, and I was replying to the latter. Compare to "wheels are details of a car" and "a car is sum and total of its wheels".
- Location
- At the end of the world
[X] Plan Ambers and a Gold
-[X] Recruit Esbern and Seija
-[X] Recruit Maximilian
[X] Take an active hand in the EIC
-[X] Recruit Esbern and Seija
-[X] Recruit Maximilian
[X] Take an active hand in the EIC
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Max dislikes Johann. I've never seen any indication that Johann dislikes Max in return.
And it's not like we ever had Julia and the thief guy in a room working together.
Last edited:
Even if that is true, it's more likely that we get traits relevant to dispelling, or to magical duels than traits relevant to divine channeling. What happened in that temple was not once in a lifetime, it was not once in a century, it was once in several millennia.
Kornet
Quite possibly a sloth abomination
- Location
- Mother Russia
We have WOG confirmation that the trait turning Wolf into winter wolf is a one-time offer specifically because he will be grown before we get another set of traits. It very heavily implies that this is unusual for a trait and most of them are not one-time offers.
Otherwise, why explain the reasoning about a particular trait being a one-time offer.
Last edited:
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Someone asked a question about if other traits would appear again. Boney said this.
I'm looking for if there's an example of them coming up again that isn't them being upgraded.
True, in that image the car is more than the sum of its wheels, but expanding the metaphor, if a wall can slow down a whole car, chances are it can stop a stray wheel rolling down the road.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Then why should we get Avatar? Traits help with the situations they are created in. If avatar worthy events are truely as rare as you say it is then avatar will help again in the next millennia.
To me Avatar is a trash level trait. A bottom of the barrel pick that helps in such a narrow set of circumstances that it may never trigger for the rest of the quest. I would like to pick traits that trigger a lot. It's fun to watch the numbers go up for me. Avatar does nothing.
It makes us more resistance to possessions! Oh Boy! Now we can scream longer before we die. Most possessions happen to those looking for a deal with chaos. If it is a forceful possession than Mathilde has no business other than killing the poor sap that got possessed. Avatar encourages bad decision making by letting us be fooled by the idea that we can handle it.
If you are picking up a trait just for some resistance to a rare event than perhaps we should look into avoiding those events.
So what do we plan to be ordering our journeymanlings to do?
We know what they'll do by default (Ambers will do Spiders then leave, Max will do smithing, Johann will do Skaven tech, Jade will do fields).
But what do we plan to have them once we turn them into our henchmen?
We know what they'll do by default (Ambers will do Spiders then leave, Max will do smithing, Johann will do Skaven tech, Jade will do fields).
But what do we plan to have them once we turn them into our henchmen?
That is false equivalence I'd say, just because the circumstances that helped in the creation of a trait are rare does not mean the circumstances of its use will be just as rare. Waagh bane was the result of a crit that was fluffed as several Greenskin mistakes, but it will be useful far outside those narrow circumstances.
[
[ ] Artillery is the King of Battle.
Artillery was not depended upon this battle as a critical element and Mathilde was not playing a significant command role rather than hero role. Belegar did pick up an analogue trait however.
[ ] Dwarves are the greatest ally of humanity.
Humans are helping dwarves this time, not the other way round.
[ ] The Halflings have proven themselves as a worthy neighbour.
Halflings did not prove themselves one way or another this time.
[ ] If such rank amateurs could rival the strength of an entire Province, imagine what a skilled hand could do with Dhar.
[ ] The dead of Sylvania's prehistory deserve an undisturbed rest.
No Dhar wielders or undead this time.
We did face Waagh wielders a lot. So many that we got THAT trait without even a vote!
[ ] Magic used recklessly has catastrophic effects; great care must be taken in it's handling.
This is a variation of the same message as Magical Duelist.
[ ] The best battle is one where the enemy never gets a strike in.
This is a variation on the same message as Infiltrator, Scout and Assassin.
[ ] The best counterspell is, in fact, a blackpowder projectile to the face.
This is basically Marksman.
[ ] The Black Guard of Morr were the most dependable human asset across the entire campaign.
Morrites were not present this time.
[ ] Magic is unreliable, gods are doubly so: always have a mundane solution.
Magic was pretty damn reliable...for us. Just us.
[ ] It's not a great hero who carries the day, but a lot of small men working in concert.
This is effectively a similar benefit to Campaigner.
[ ] The fog of war is a bitch, to all involved.
We already have this trait.
[ ] Expertise matters. And Stirland has precious little of it.
Theres experts for everything here, but they just can't seem to do their specialty often.
[ ] Mathematics is universal.
No serious maths at work this time.
[ ] Complex problems, simple solutions.
No Gordian Knot cutting this time.
[ ] Unity brings Strength, Discord brings Failure.
Unity did bring strength, but Mathilde wasn't involved in those, she was sneaking ahead making things explode.
Now, note that at Drakenhof we spent most of the battle as Commander In Chief, so we got leadery traits. At Eight Peaks we spent most of the battle as Wandering Hero Unit, so we got a lot of traits for personal feats instead.
If you want to get really good at dispels, I'd suggest going Shaman hunting...but for the College duel, I reckon Kragg's belt is as good a counterspell as any heh.
From the Drakenhof traits:
[ ] Artillery is the King of Battle.
Artillery was not depended upon this battle as a critical element and Mathilde was not playing a significant command role rather than hero role. Belegar did pick up an analogue trait however.
[ ] Dwarves are the greatest ally of humanity.
Humans are helping dwarves this time, not the other way round.
[ ] The Halflings have proven themselves as a worthy neighbour.
Halflings did not prove themselves one way or another this time.
[ ] If such rank amateurs could rival the strength of an entire Province, imagine what a skilled hand could do with Dhar.
[ ] The dead of Sylvania's prehistory deserve an undisturbed rest.
No Dhar wielders or undead this time.
We did face Waagh wielders a lot. So many that we got THAT trait without even a vote!
[ ] Magic used recklessly has catastrophic effects; great care must be taken in it's handling.
This is a variation of the same message as Magical Duelist.
[ ] The best battle is one where the enemy never gets a strike in.
This is a variation on the same message as Infiltrator, Scout and Assassin.
[ ] The best counterspell is, in fact, a blackpowder projectile to the face.
This is basically Marksman.
[ ] The Black Guard of Morr were the most dependable human asset across the entire campaign.
Morrites were not present this time.
[ ] Magic is unreliable, gods are doubly so: always have a mundane solution.
Magic was pretty damn reliable...for us. Just us.
[ ] It's not a great hero who carries the day, but a lot of small men working in concert.
This is effectively a similar benefit to Campaigner.
[ ] The fog of war is a bitch, to all involved.
We already have this trait.
[ ] Expertise matters. And Stirland has precious little of it.
Theres experts for everything here, but they just can't seem to do their specialty often.
[ ] Mathematics is universal.
No serious maths at work this time.
[ ] Complex problems, simple solutions.
No Gordian Knot cutting this time.
[ ] Unity brings Strength, Discord brings Failure.
Unity did bring strength, but Mathilde wasn't involved in those, she was sneaking ahead making things explode.
Now, note that at Drakenhof we spent most of the battle as Commander In Chief, so we got leadery traits. At Eight Peaks we spent most of the battle as Wandering Hero Unit, so we got a lot of traits for personal feats instead.
If you want to get really good at dispels, I'd suggest going Shaman hunting...but for the College duel, I reckon Kragg's belt is as good a counterspell as any heh.