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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Exmorri said:
Not facing the Necrarch meant no such thing, because Mathilde is not the only problem-solver in the world, and there are more ways of solving problems than sword to face.

The long-term effects of the 'College' of Necromancy existing would almost certainly have been less bad than the long-term effects of Naggaroth existing. How much epic gear and favor points do you think you'll need before Mathilde is kitted out to take on Naggaroth?
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It meant exactly that. We were explicitly told that Roswita was rolling to live every turn and Alucard was just using her as target practise. She had no way to get to him and there was absolutely zero help being offered. The question of her death was when not if.

Further, the College of Necromancy was explicitly dangerous enough to summon the entire imperial army. It was specifically called out as a major PR blow towards the colleges and the danger of just one student surviving and continuing the 'college' was enough to mobilize the entirety of the college's Battle Wizards. It would almost certainly be worse than the effects of Naggaroth on the Empire itself. Imagine the the effect the creation of Naggaroth had on the High Elves and apply that to the Empire.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Combat equipment pushes us into danger, not out of it.
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This is Warhammer Fantasy. We are a Grey Wizard. We kill people. We are the designated blade in the night of the Empire. This is a given. It is also a given some of them will manage to fight back or be exceptionally hard to kill. We could, I suppose, play some other quest where Mathilde Webber was not immediately thrown into the deep end at Eagle Castle, but it's not this one. There was and is a definite survival need to perform even our irregular-from-hell tasks as a scout, assassin, and saboteur.
 
Exmorri said:
Not facing the Necrarch meant no such thing, because Mathilde is not the only problem-solver in the world, and there are more ways of solving problems than sword to face.

The long-term effects of the 'College' of Necromancy existing would almost certainly have been less bad than the long-term effects of Naggaroth existing. How much epic gear and favor points do you think you'll need before Mathilde is kitted out to take on Naggaroth?
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The problem there is that not only did nobody know the college was a thing until Mathilde got involved, nobody was even looking into the possibility it being a thing. Without Mathilde, chances are it would have popped out a couple of batches of fully-trained and cooperating Necromancer before anybody found out about it- and while that's not a complete disaster on the scale of (say) an Everchosen showing up, it's still pretty high up the list of 'oh crap' occurences. To say nothing about what the long-term results of a formally codified Necromantic order would be.
 
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So I've been reading Tome of Corruption, which being 2nd Edition RPG is as close as anything to being canon for this quest and I've come across some truly strange mutations. I don't mean stuff like 'congratulations you are now a beastman and have grown six eyes' but like this thing:

Duplication Fear Special Type: Multiple.

Description: A new body tears free from yours, taking with it one-half of your Wounds Characteristic (round down). It is otherwise identical to you in all ways. From this point forward, your double gains its own mutations and may pursue careers of its choosing. You retain control over your double, treating it as a second character. Variations: About 10% of Mutants with Duplication gain a double that wants to kill them. In these cases, the duplicate becomes an NPC for use as the GM desires

It says something when the evil twin ripping itself out of your flesh is the least bizarre instance. What do you do with a non-evil twin who is still you but was nonetheless made by Chaos?
 
Quest said:
It meant exactly that. We were explicitly told that Roswita was rolling to live every turn and Alucard was just using her as target practise. She had no way to get to him and there was absolutely zero help being offered. The question of her death was when not if.
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It seems you missed the bit where sword to face is not the only means of solving problems. The question of Roswita's death was when, not if, assuming Mathilde did nothing about Alabama's raids. Mathilde could have done something other than assault the Black College, e.g. applying her dispel expertise and her Libris Mortis insight to blow up Aladdin's undead scoutbirds so hard they backlash and knock out his remote senses; or studied the problem with her Magesight and her knowledge of undead tactics; or handed the problem off to a different relevant expert once she understood what Albion was doing and how as a result of scouting and investigating; et cetera.

("But we don't know if those would have worked!" beforehand we didn't know it would work to attack Alkaseltzer in his own lair, neither.)
 
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Exmorri said:
Why in the world would you ever be planning to clear out a nest of Blood Dragons in the first place?

If Mathilde weren't kitted out with a small army's worth of epic gear, I'm confident "a nest of Blood Dragons" wouldn't even be considered as something she should be fighting. And there's always bigger fish (for example, Naggaroth) no matter how much epic gear you get, so it's probably best to just stop considering the upper-end-of-next-big-threat to potentially gear against. Unless you really, really want to escalate the cycle illustrated here until Mathilde can take on Naggaroth.


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The issue with this circle, of course, is that it's lacking the bit in the middle. That bit is called 'I want to do cool things'. While fighting a nest of blood dragons is a bit much, of course, power creep is a separate issue that will naturally occur as long as rewarding Mathilde with power for her effort continues to be a thing the quest does (and if they wouldn't mulch us I'd like to fight a bunch of hammy evil knights anyways, because that sounds interesting and hilarious, the issue is only that they would).

Pretty much all of the non-academic cool things we can do are gated behind everybody else involved with them being ridiculously, supernaturally killy. Messing around with elves? While you were playing with small wooden blocks, the dark elves studied the blade. Super spies? Lahmians with supernatural speed. Dating? Lahmians ( :V ). Camping? Beastmen. Gambling? Tzeentchian cultists who think they can cheat. Everywhere you look there's a new vista of horribleness. We don't need to run into it with our face, but not preparing for it just means it prepares for you. Wanting to escalate beyond that is just a matter of desiring more fun.
DragonParadox said:
So I've been reading Tome of Corruption, which being 2nd Edition RPG is as close as anything to being canon for this quest and I've come across some truly strange mutations. I don't mean stuff like 'congratulations you are now a beastman and have grown six eyes' but like this thing:

Duplication Fear Special Type: Multiple.

Description: A new body tears free from yours, taking with it one-half of your Wounds Characteristic (round down). It is otherwise identical to you in all ways. From this point forward, your double gains its own mutations and may pursue careers of its choosing. You retain control over your double, treating it as a second character. Variations: About 10% of Mutants with Duplication gain a double that wants to kill them. In these cases, the duplicate becomes an NPC for use as the GM desires

It says something when the evil twin ripping itself out of your flesh is the least bizarre instance. What do you do with a non-evil twin who is still you but was nonetheless made by Chaos?
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Well, that's... One way to get more AP, I guess?
 
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Alratan said:
The specific problem is that Mathilde is uniquely competent* at scouting the interior of the peaks as under-peaks, and the Rangers can't substitute for this. Even more than that, Dreng effectively wasn't scouting the other peaks for the first year we were here, which is why we still have no idea who or what it actually inside some of them or any idea of what they're doing even when we know what their species/affiliation is, apart from what Mathilde has learned. The only reason we're attacking Karagril this turn is because Mathilde learned about the skaven inter-clan war, which caused Belegar to accelerate the conquest. If we'd not scouted, then he'd have missed the opportunity.

There are some things that only Mathilde seems capable of doing. Gathering grand strategic intelligence on the enemy seems one of them. The Rangers are good at gathering battlefield intelligence, but they're military scouts, not spies, as seem unable to fill the spy role.

* possibly literally uniquely unless someone else has something like the Night Prowler coin face relic.
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In my view, those are opportunities gained as a result of greater understanding. I didn't claim we should do no scouting, just that despite the benefits of monofocusing that the coin mechanics encourage we need to balance what we do. The Aethyric Vitae research is something that Mathilde is uniquely competent to pursue, by virtue of the rarity of the Vitae, our own windseer abilities and access to tower-based aids.
 
Rotekian said:
The problem with that line of argument is that for high elves every cost is too expensive. Losing even one mage is going to have a greater impact on elven wizardry over the next 200 years than the loss of a human wizard. For humans, it is about ensuring that the costs produce a profit because they can afford some losses along the way.

More specifically to elves and transport, they have a strong navy and so do not need to take risks to get to most places they want to go.
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The thing is that they don't need to send high mages. They can send their hobbyists and weekend wizards who are going on campaign as part of their military service anyway. The great majority of elven spellcasters aren't high mages, just the very best of the best.

Magical talent isn't rare amongst the elves the way it is in humans. Some sources suggest it's universal. What's rare is those that dedicate centuries to become a high mage.

Aegon Targaryen said:
Becoming Settra's bride would be difficult and unwise because I doubt even the most fervent supporters of the immortality faction want us to become immortal by being a Tomb Queen
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Settra wouldn't want his bride to be a Tomb Queen. He views being a Tomb King as a failure state of immortality. The liche priests promised that he'd return to life with a perfect living body - and they rather let him down.
 
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The vicious cycle idea has merit but is also to an extent bullshit. Getting better gear does mean the playerbase will be more willing to throw Mathilde into tougher fights, but that doesn't mean that they actually will, for the simple reason that the tougher a fight is, the rarer it is.

Mooks fighting each other is common, while fights between elites are uncommon, and fights between heroes are rare. As heroes get stronger, the time separating the fights between them and equally strong foes grows, it's not as common as mook vs mook fights. That's why you don't get stories of Malekith fighting Karl Franz or Teclis as often as you get stories of an ungor fighting an Empire spearman. Mathilde getting more powerful will mean she fights stronger opponents while retaining an equal playing field, but it also makes fights that are even matches for her rarer.

So yeah, players will be willing to throw Mathilde into bigger fights, but the opportunities for those bigger fights will be rarer than the big fights of now. Ultimately, the most quantitous effect of Mathilde's power level growing is her beating up current-level and lower-level enemies harder.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Or maybe :
1) We would have found another way to do the attack if we had better intrigue
2) Brought up more supplies/troops with a more stewardship focus
3) had more allies with a more diplo focus
and Abelheim would not have died at all.
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While that's possible, you could also argue that if we'd spent more time time on combat training then Abel would be alive, or that seeing as Anton got us a dragon as reinforcements whatever additional troops or plans our stewardship and intrigue might muster wouldn't have changed anything, or that even with better stats we wouldn't have gotten more reinforcements than a Patriach and his battle-wizard cohort. We simply don't know what might have happened in those theoretical maybes.

What we do know for certain is that Drakenhoff would have happened with or without us, and that our combat focus let us stand in the thick of the fighting and produced positive results for us that went beyond simply 'I killed X number of enemies'. And while that certainly doesn't mean combat should be our sole focus, it does help highlight why it's important; battles will happen with or without us, and our combat abilities give us a direct way to alter their outcome beyond 'X more gribblies are dead now'.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Or maybe :
1) We would have found another way to do the attack if we had better intrigue
2) Brought up more supplies/troops with a more stewardship focus
3) had more allies with a more diplo focus
and Abelheim would not have died at all.
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We had troops, we had allies, we had all the artillery that Nuln and Zhufbar could provide. We had a freaking dragon. Everything that we could do in those areas Anton had already done. Besides, the character that we're playing didn't go through those experiences. She went through defending herself against a zombie with only her luck and magical armour saving her life. She went through Drackenhoff and she went through Karak Eight Peaks.

If we didn't want to have some focus on combat, we shouldn't have done those things or had those experiences. I'm certainly not saying we should abandon non-combat roles, but at this point Mathilde is a warrior whether we like it or not. K8P wouldn't even be here if she wasn't.
Exmorri said:
It seems you missed the bit where sword to face is not the only means of solving problems. The question of Roswita's death was when, not if, assuming Mathilde did nothing about Alabama's raids. Mathilde could have done something other than assault the Black College, e.g. applying her dispel expertise and her Libris Mortis insight to blow up Aladdin's undead scoutbirds so hard they backlash and knock out his remote senses; or studied the problem with her Magesight and her knowledge of undead tactics; or handed the problem off to a different relevant expert once she understood what Albion was doing and how as a result of scouting and investigating; et cetera.

("But we don't know if those would have worked!" beforehand we didn't know it would work to attack Alkaseltzer in his own lair, neither.)
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All of this has the corollary that it would have been much less effective without a sword to the face. Much less profitable too. If we weren't as good in combat, everything in the update where we dealt with Arucard would have been the same. We studied his assaults, we slew his scout-birds, studied his personality and investigated his base of operations. It would even have taken the same number of actions.
BoneyM said:
The picture that emerges is clear: Alkharad has been collecting disciples since the earliest successes of the Purge of the Haunted Hills. His primary intention is the projection of power, both in his harrying of Roswita and in his skirmishes with the other Vampires that have emerged of late, but in the process he's turned Teufelheim into a College of Necromancy.

The correct response to this is ride hell for leather for Altdorf and have a quiet but intense word with someone who'll have a quiet but intense word with someone else who'll have a quiet but intense word with the Emperor, and from that point on it's all armies on the march and unleashing the sort of wizards that have made it their life goal to redefine scorched earth. But you've seen first hand how much time it takes to assemble such an army, and how slow that march actually is, and in the time that takes a significant number of the necromancers would surely scatter and become the nightmares of future years. Sometimes a scalpel today is better than a hammer tomorrow. And if the odds turn against you, you could leave and then contact Altdorf.
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However, if we had just stopped there and called on someone else, it would have been a less effective option in every way. Instead, everyone is safe, happy and we are a Hero of the Empire.
 
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I'm not sure if this is rampant fanon, but aren't the liche priest exiles actually really close to completing Elixir of Life 4.0, "it actually works properly this time" edition?
 
There genuinely isn't much more improvement that we can do in terms of upping our killyness we're pretty much at the ceiling, the odd magic item might let us have temporary boosts but Mathilde doesn't have much more up to go, what she has is side ways development.
picklepikkl said:
The Grey College trained us in subtlety, misdirection, and intrigue.

Nevertheless, when you have an astonishingly good Hammer...
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It's worth pointing out but the Grey order are the assassination branch of the colleges of magic.
 
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