Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
Last edited:
Alratan said:
A squad of battle wizards versus a skaven metropolis seems likely to end up with a bunch of dead battle wizards and an intact skaven city.

Battle wizards are big and special as far as the Empire is concerned, but other races have their own versions that have their own advantages, and they also have things like assassins.

An underground warren of tunnels is probably the worst environment for a battle wizard. They're still relatively squishy and can't really serve as magical artillery that well when the enemy can pop out of an unexpected tunnel and hit them with a chemical or biological weapon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And a one-shot Speed of Light artefact is going to be even less useful. Your point is?

If you want to get rid of Eshins in K8P, you need to get rid of Karag Yar underground, a magical gadget on Mat isn't going to help for that. Depending on the inside geography, a squad of Battle wizards might be useful or not, a bunch of Greys might be useful or not, an imperial army might be useful or not. It's a problem to solve and whatever kit of magical gadgets Mat has isn't likely to help that much in the grand scheme of things for solving that problem.

Mat is good at sneaking, scouting and assassinating, outside of her job as a court wizard and magical researcher. She is horrifically useful in certain situations but next to useless in others.

You have an undead infestation? You call the Knights of Morr and the Amethysts, not kit yourself with anti undead shinies.

You have a skaven infestation? You prepare your troops for mass tunnel fighting, not kit yourself with anti rat shinies.

You need to set a diplomatic mission? You hire diplomats for it, not kit yourself with shinies to make you more likeable.

You have an Eshin assassins problem? You set anti assassins defenses and have you VIPs escorted by Hammerers, not kit yourself with Light of Speed artefacts.

You have an Orc problem? You send Mat to headcap the Warboss and send the dorfs to take care of the rest of the chaff.

You need to attack Karag Yar? You send Mathilde to scout and change your force composition to account for the situation underground, not kit her with Speed of Light artefacts and tell her to hunt Eshins.

Mathilde is a hammer but not all problems are nails. Kitting her and upping her stats isn't going to solve all problems. This is an advisor quest, not an adventurer one.
 
Last edited:
[X] DUCKLINGS: Kept together and going into Karagril with the Dwarves.
[X] MAX: Firing from the Citadel.
[X] JOHANN: Joining the siege weapon teams.
[X] MATHILDE: Infiltrate Karagril early, and rampage through enemy lines once battle begins.
[X] MATHILDE: Join the sellswords, who will be going in first.
 
DragonParadox said:
Yes, you went through it and I do not agree, sorcery is safer in lore and we are not running off raw tabletop stats here or else I would be confident Mathilde as she is now could duel Maleketh. Tabletop stats are designed for balance at the expense of lore and narrative.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
SuperSonicSound said:
No you've asserted these conjectures but I don't agree and the Tomb kings earlier edition has the perfect example with its spells that have no chance of miscasting for its liche priests. Yes it's dropped in the only edition that comes later but that's for game balance reasons.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And I assert that both of your positions are equally conjectural. However, BoneyM has asked me to stop so I will.

BoneyM said:
I'd advise saving the absolute declarations about the mechanisms of reality and unreality until Mathilde has at least some of reality's steaming entrails on her research table.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Cathon Grimeye said:
Mathilde is a hammer but not all problems are nails. Kitting her and upping her stats isn't going to solve all problems. This is an advisor quest, not an adventurer one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Mathilde is a scalpel, not a hammer. A cut at the right place and the right time can save lives.

There is nothing wrong with sharpening your scalpel or making it tougher. Some things are harder to cut.
 
Cathon Grimeye said:
And a one-shot Speed of Light artefact is going to be even less useful. Your point is?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

A one use before recharge Speed of Light item is actually very useful for all of these problems. It doesn't let Mathilde solve them single-handedly, but it allows her to be be a greater part of the solution. Sabotage, information gathering, and assassination are almost always going to be helpful, and a Speed of Light item makes the first two safer and the third more likely to succeed.

Mathilde rarely purely advises. That's a misnomer. She's much more of a trouble shooter. When there's potential trouble, she goes out and makes the trouble disappear. Sometimes, like with the We, there's a diplomatic solution. Most of the time, she comes back with heads for the trophy cabinet.

Assassination is particularly useful against many of the enemies of humanity, as they either have figuratively or literally load bearing bosses, so it's much better to whack them outside of battle and watch their armies disintegrate rather than spend blood or treasure facing them on the open field.
 
Last edited:
Lupercal said:
What is the endgame for the voters who are arguing to improve our stats as a priority? This goes for the voters who are mainly interested in just pure research as well. Is it just power for powers sake and knowledge for knowledges sake or is there a purpose to it? I kind of feel that if we as a thread had wanted to do that we should have avoided taking any position in K8P and instead just built a wizard tower here.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What's this, someone inviting me to talk about myself and what I want? Don't mind if I do.

Basically I've got two long term goals (and a strong desire to ride a cool flying mount preferably made of shadowy magic):
  • Become a Wizard Lord
  • Conquer the Eight Peaks
  • Flying Shadow Mount

For each of these there's short term goals that help build up to them in some way.
  • Learn the rest of our Ulgu Spell list
  • Learn Smokes and mirrors
  • Enchant new robes
  • Scout the remaining peaks and their undergrounds
  • Eliminate organized resistance to our conquest of the Eight Peaks
After that there's always a bigger and better goal to reach. If you can successfully assassinate Alkharad then the next challenge on the list might be Zacharias. This is a road that doesn't end until we've out dueled Mazdamundi and assassinated Khaine. More seriously there's a lot of threats to the Empire and if we can become strong enough to help take out some of the bigger ones that would be nice. Not to mention all the research we want to try out which could be useful and interesting.
 
@BoneyM Several related questions:
1) Do the colleges of magic have any info on the possibility of having eight wizards combine their spells to collectively cast high magic?
2) Does Mathilde, or her contacts, know anywhere we could go stab things and have the Protector ping Ulthuan? (Other than Naggaroth.)
3) Is collective high magic something we could reasonably expect wizards to be interested in and thus not need the full 80 Favours to hire them?
 
Angelform said:
@BoneyM Several related questions:
1) Do the colleges of magic have any info on the possibility of having eight wizards combine their spells to collectively cast high magic?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's considered theoretically possible, but it's theorized you would need eight people channelling exactly equal amounts of their Wind, and all eight would need to be mentally compatible with the other seven.

Angelform said:
2) Does Mathilde, or her contacts, know anywhere we could go stab things and have the Protector ping Ulthuan? (Other than Naggaroth.)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Nagg-

Oh. Hmm. The Palace of Slaanesh?

Angelform said:
3) Is collective high magic something we could reasonably expect wizards to be interested in and thus not need the full 80 Favours to hire them?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sign up here to experience eight miscasts at once. Why isn't anyone signing?
 
The other possible use for protector is the 'Selfless' part. We can do something for very selfish reasons, and it would show up as selfless. I'm not sure when this will be a viable plan, but some very sneaky things could be done with this.
 
I think of all the Speed of Light usages, if Mathilde is using it on the defense, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

What its GREAT for is on the offense Speed Of Light + S10 Sword Whap is an opening blow that can reasonably expect to reliably kill whatever it hits, for instance, when you have an assassination option, the target is too hard to kill with a bullet/Shadow Knives and you need to sprint across open ground to hit them with our sword of ultra murder.

THAT is when you pop Speed of Light, flicker in, kill them and flicker out before anyone sees more than a blur.
BoneyM said:
Speed of Light would clash with any other internal buffs when used, to the detriment of all spells involved, and make it harder to cast spells while it's active because the parts of you that normally channel Ulgu are filled with a different Wind. I can't see many scenarios where you punch the 'maximum murderblender' button and then decide to take a time out to cast some spells instead though, and the spell version only lasts a single round - this isn't an 'entire battle' deal.

The same applies to any other buff that improves the internal workings of your body. Mathilde's standard battle spells are Aethyric Armour and Scary Murdershadows, both of which are external.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, never let it be said that the thread is much good at reading comprehension :V

So basically for Wind based magical effects:
-Head/Mind/Soul - Ulgu ONLY. Fully saturated with Ulgu by now, anything Wind based going in WILL interfere.

-Body - Ulgu only while casting, otherwise can temporarily contain other Winds. As Ulgu has few effects affecting the body(I think its just Substance of Shadow), this can be considered an open slot. Presumably if we pick up the Insubstantial Arcane Mark this might be more complicated?

-Personal Space - Anything goes, but we generally have a lot of Ulgu spells around our immediate space already so not a good idea tactically. Mantle of Mist and Shrouded Arcane marks might complicate it, our Unnatural Shadow is flat on the ground and hopefully not interacting much.

-Weapon - Pointy end goes towards enemy, effect moves from pointy end into enemy. As long as you don't try to launch two different effects simultaneously you're clear. And you generally don't mind much for what happens when Winds mix badly inside your enemy.

With Runic and Divine effects standing off to the side.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top