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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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chocolote12 said:
Yeah. They're great for understanding things, very good for all that academic stuff, even Mr. Golden Abs, but their skillset not lining up with ours means that we often get jobs that they can't help much with directly. 'Learn more about the We'? Yes. 'Go to Sylvania and hit things until they die'? Not so much.
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I'll point out that bringing Johann along to help in Sylvania to help was explicitly an option. Johann has a great Intrigue score if we could get over our "you have to have subtle focused magic to do subtle stuff" bias. He's at least a good as a non-wizard who is good at intrigue.
 
Glau said:
TBH that's kinda the current trajectory, and I fully believe it possible should the thread vote for it and roll well. But I'll acknowledge your point: there is always a marginal improvement to be had and it really does help preserve Mathilde.

It's just that in my opinion, we are in a place where we can beat almost all of the likely or immediate threats, outside of suprise attacks from assasins. We are rolling over warbosses and big 'uns locally, and are having to go seek out anything more dangerous. Aren't we at the point where we fight the bigger foes infrequently enough to take six months or a year off from improving killiness'?

Killing things is a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. Let's use the space we've bought.
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I'll be honest, I kinda agree with you on this. Honestly, I would love for us to have taken at least a little time to do some research before we went and jumped into the Loremaster role, since it comes with responsibilities and work and less actions; but we didn't, so lets focus on K8P, our duties as Loremaster, and our wizard stuff for a while. We don't need to be much more killy, and TBH we are really starting to run out of ways to do that that I can see that aren't only more murderbot, and even those seem limited. I would support the new sword style, MAYBE, but that's more the research aspect of it that appeals to me; a completely new style would be theoretically very difficult to counter and would boost our effectiveness way up, but also we could merge grey magic into it while we were working on it and that would be another big boost that would also advance my magical-growth goals.

I also agree with you that the 6 hours of the day where we can't shadow the valley is not huge, all things considered. Something to come back to? sure, once we are better equipped to deal with it and have less demands on our actions. It's an interesting research point, but... Essential? If we are facing something that can take K8P enough to get out of our shadow-weapon in that 6-hour time frame and/or do effective amounts of damage in those 6 hours that we (and the dwarves, halflings, Umagi (other human/mountain guards, I dont remember the spelling) and other wizards) can't fix in the other 18, we have bigger problems. Huge problems.

However, I would put forward that you think about the spells thing: we are, after all, a wizard, and we know that learning new spells helps us progress in becoming a better wizard (quantitatively through the boost in our magic stat every so many spells, qualitatively through narratively knowing more things about more spells and more ways/interactions of/with/by Ulgu, and other things Boney might use it for.) In general, more magic = good move, no matter what the actual magic might do. Obviously, focus on useful stuff (invisibility) and finishing learning the stuff we already invested in first. I think we might agree on that bit.

In general, though, I think that your point about all this is a good one. I don't want this to be a kill-kill-kill quest. I've seen enough of those, and though some of them are pretty good (in general, by not being all murder all the time), I don't want this to be one of them. It's not that we are headed too steeply that way, but we do seem to be tilting that way. I was all in favor of finishing the advanced greatsword before the war, but... not entirely in our off time. We've gotten through lots of the stuff that would be easiest and give us a good boost. We are not unkillable, mind you (we saw that clearly), but we are getting up there.

So, more magic, more research, more K8P, less war-focus. I know we are in a war zone, sure, but... it's a slow war.

Also: snek juice! snek juice! snek juice! :p
 
BoneyM said:

And then…………… suddenly just as I Malekith kissed me passionately. Malekith climbed on top of me and we started to make out keenly against a tree. He took of my top and I took of his clothes. I even took of my bra. Then he put his thingie into my you-know-what and we did it for the first time.
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I didn't know Malekith selfcest was a popular topic in Drucchi circles.
 
Shadowatcher said:
I also agree with you that the 6 hours of the day where we can't shadow the valley is not huge, all things considered. Something to come back to? sure, once we are better equipped to deal with it and have less demands on our actions. It's an interesting research point, but... Essential? If we are facing something that can take K8P enough to get out of our shadow-weapon in that 6-hour time frame and/or do effective amounts of damage in those 6 hours that we (and the dwarves, halflings, Umagi (other human/mountain guards, I dont remember the spelling) and other wizards) can't fix in the other 18, we have bigger problems. Huge problems.
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Personally I consider the Burning Shadows tower the most prominent K8P positive action we can take because it is extremely important to preserving the lives of everyone in it.

Not doing everything for it feels like leaving deliberate holes for the sake of time saving and in this context where it is probably the most strategically relevant thing we've done besides pull the Reclamation forces together initially, that feels wrong to do.

We are never going to have less demands on our time, because we keep finding ways to add to our work and its generally not how Boney writes this quest. We always try to get stuff done around the edges, but its constantly a fight over the last flex action point in our pool.
 
Put another way: if you can take an action and make 8 hours of the day even safer for Karak Eight Peaks, if you can do that with just one action... that's a bargain. That's worth it.

Plus, night attacks. Why wouldn't you worry about them? Skaven and Night Goblins love darkness rather than light.
 
Garlak said:
Put another way: if you can take an action and make 8 hours of the day even safer for Karak Eight Peaks, if you can do that with just one action... that's a bargain. That's worth it.

Plus, night attacks. Why wouldn't you worry about them? Skaven and Night Goblins love darkness rather than light.
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Night Goblins in particular since there's frequent references to the Sun paining them.
 
BoneyM said:
The expectation and average for a Councillor is to spend the equivalent of two to four actions per turn on their task. This was a straightforward yardstick at one point, but with things like subordinates, peripheral investigations, and other oddities, it's caused a lot of back-and-forth. Here's a new set of questions to apply.

When considering a course of action, ask yourself the following:

Have you spent at least one action personally and directly involved with the task or project you were given?
Have you spent at least two actions directly or indirectly involved with the task or project you were given? (including half-actions spend overseeing others and tangential study of the topic at hand)
Have you spent at least three actions in ways related to your position, including overseeing subordinates and managing local wizards?

If all three are 'yes', then you'll be fine even if you do flub everything you're trying and your time-sheet does attract investigation. If you've explicitly been given a straightforward or easily outsourced task so you can focus on something else that is considered important but is not directly under the purview of your position, the above considerations do not apply.
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This is excellent to know! Would someone be willing to threadmark it so that rather than bugging the QM they can just be directed to the informational threadmark instead?
 
BungieONI said:
Personally I consider the Burning Shadows tower the most prominent K8P positive action we can take because it is extremely important to preserving the lives of everyone in it.

Not doing everything for it feels like leaving deliberate holes for the sake of time saving and in this context where it is probably the most strategically relevant thing we've done besides pull the Reclamation forces together initially, that feels wrong to do.
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I understand this reasoning, however I admit I simply do not see the threat that could overcome the 6 hour off-time that could not overcome it at any time.

The marginal benefit of investing what would likely be a significant amount of time into patching that 6 hour hole (after all, it was marked as very tricky, and though the College Favors spent probably helped, probably not a absolute ton) when we could be doing other things with those actions seems inefficient to our already crunched actions, at least to me. Ulgu is not the right wind for the job when it comes to this sort of thing. A celestial or fire wizard might help, though.

BungieONI said:
We are never going to have less demands on our time, because we keep finding ways to add to our work and its generally not how Boney writes this quest. We always try to get stuff done around the edges, but its constantly a fight over the last flex action point in our pool.
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True. Though, in many ways, I feel this perhaps supports my other argument, though I will concede poor wording on my part here. Perhaps "less valuable matters on our actions" or "more time to do some housekeeping." I don't know when we'll have time to do it, though I certainly do want to, dont get me wrong; I'm basically all-for more magical shenanigans. Actions are ever-rare, I just simply do not feel that this is the most efficient way for us to spend them.
Mind you, if Belegar orders us to, I will happily cede my point. It's definitely an option I think we should present to him for review, I'm just less in favor of "just doing it."

So, because I have been reading too many US Supreme Court cases for my classes (Constitutional Law wohoo!),

With respect, I dissent
 
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Smartphone said:
This is excellent to know! Would someone be willing to threadmark it so that rather than bugging the QM they can just be directed to the informational threadmark instead?
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It's already in the Collection of Important Information threadmark, because Boney is clever and anticipated this request.

Anyway, I am EXTREMELY SLEEPY but, much like how (Tolkien's) dwarves can become afflicted with dragon fever and crave gold, I am afflicted with NERD FEVER and crave words

that said, since I am an old man (30 years old! Shock, horror), cannot in fact stay up forever, and have already hit the "extremely punchy" phase of sleepiness, I would like to make the following plea regarding the social turn vote, since I may not be awake to agitate for it when the update hits: please let us hang out with Oswald Oswaldson. He is an interesting human and his cat might be an avatar of Ranald. Mostly, I would like to get to know him a bit more as a person, so we as a thread can see if there's, like, something to him that we might want to engage with on an ongoing basis, or if he's just a meme character.
 
Glau said:
It's just that in my opinion, we are in a place where we can beat almost all of the likely or immediate threats, outside of suprise attacks from assasins. We are rolling over warbosses and big 'uns locally, and are having to go seek out anything more dangerous. Aren't we at the point where we fight the bigger foes infrequently enough to take six months or a year off from improving killiness'?
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I think we are at that point actually, but the way I think we should improve our killiness next would take no time at all. Namely, I think we should buy an item bound with either Burning Vengeance or some kind of large area of effect damage spell. If used right, Burning Vengeance could end up pitting to enemy armies against each other, ultimately saving thousands of lives in the ongoing Reclamation. An AoE damage spell on the other hand would greatly enhance Mathilde's ability to do damage to both masses of enemies as well as structures, which let Mathilde have more of an impact overall and would garner her greater glory on the battlefield. (And thus favour.)

Garlak said:
Skaven and Night Goblins love darkness rather than light.
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They also love attacking from underground where the tower is ineffective.
 
Garlak said:
Put another way: if you can take an action and make 8 hours of the day even safer for Karak Eight Peaks, if you can do that with just one action... that's a bargain. That's worth it.

Plus, night attacks. Why wouldn't you worry about them? Skaven and Night Goblins love darkness rather than light.
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A fair point, though I'm going to have to check whether it is 6 or 8 hours (I just want to reply quickly before more input piles up)

Honestly, 1 action to do that? Yeah, sure. Excellent, honestly. But... I am unconvinced that it will take only 1 action. I'm expecting 3-4, maybe 2 if we are lucky. I'll admit to being able to be convinced on this point moreso than the other points I raised in my huge post earlier.

vsh said:
We can invite celestial and bright wizards if need during this action: we have Belegar's backing for this.
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True, but that would likely cost even more College Favor, and still might not help too much with the action case. And we are already negative on College Favor, and IIRC that will eat into our College Rep should we leave it too long. And that is something I really do not want.
 
Shadowatcher said:
True, but that would likely cost even more College Favor, and still might not help too much with the action case. And we are already negative on College Favor, and IIRC that will eat into our College Rep should we leave it too long.
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Up to Magister Lord is on Belegar's bankroll. We spent favor to upgrade a team of a Magister and two Magister Lords with a Patriarch this turn.
 
Shadowatcher said:
The marginal benefit of investing what would likely be a significant amount of time into patching that 6 hour hole (after all, it was marked as very tricky, and though the College Favors spent probably helped, probably not a absolute ton) when we could be doing other things with those actions seems inefficient to our already crunched actions, at least to me. Ulgu is not the right wind for the job when it comes to this sort of thing. A celestial or fire wizard might help, though.
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I mean, I don't think we need magic to do it. "Creating a bright light on short notice," though easier with various forms of magic (though keep in mind that Wind-produced lights and Burning Shadows explicitly do not necessarily get along) is something the Engineers probably have some ideas about. Patching the nighttime hole was only marked as Tricky rather than Very Tricky.
Shadowatcher said:
Mind you, if Belegar orders us to, I will happily cede my point. It's definitely an option I think we should present to him for review, I'm just less in favor of "just doing it."
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I don't think that's likely; I suspect the way Boney will play it is that we will be given an option before the council meeting to say "we're done, give me the next thing" or "no, I'm still working on it." Passing the buck to our boss to make the decision for us is something that's gotten repeatedly shot down; Belegar would be quite justified in saying "look, I'm not qualified to tell you how to prioritize this weird thing you think might be possible, that is literally your job."
Shadowatcher said:
True, but that would likely cost even more College Favor, and still might not help too much with the action case. And we are already negative on College Favor, and IIRC that will eat into our College Rep should we leave it too long. And that is something I really do not want.
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vsh beat me to it, but yeah, we didn't have to spend Favour to grab the other Greys. And notably, we didn't, as a thread, specify that; Mathilde decided to do it. So if it makes sense to hire Celestials or Brights, she'll do it. Boney doesn't make us write-in the "how" for weird stuff, since Mathilde knows more about weird stuff than the thread does.
Shadowatcher said:
A fair point, though I'm going to have to check whether it is 6 or 8 hours (I just want to reply quickly before more input piles up)
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We have a few hours on either side of sunrise and sunset. Let's say 2 hours. On the shortest day of the year, assuming Earth's axial tilt holds on this planet, a city at about this latitude receives 9 hours of sunlight. On the longest, 15. So that's a range of 13-19 hours a day that we have coverage.
 
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