chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
His specialties are punching people and taking their stuff. We are respecting his skills by increasing them.
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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Quest
The Great One
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He's an engineer.His specialties are punching people and taking their stuff. We are respecting his skills by increasing them.
Mathilde: Hey Dwarves, guess what? It's your good friend Mathilde, here to co-opt all the things you thought you hated for your benefit! Giant spiders? Not just for grobi! Rats? Not just for thaggoraki!
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
I don't agree the dwarven mind set doesn't really work this way, every one has room to become more skilled and dwarves are willing to accept literal decades of training time. The odd 6 month period of training here and there is going to be considered skimping almost. Also even in todays more ruthless corporate culture people are still sent on training courses. I suppose the biggest difference is that reality isn't limited to 6 months being the smallest real unit of time in which you can present something as a task for. That said I do want to assist him with his ratlinggun research as he's stalling on that front.
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That stuff gets abstracted away. When we underwent training of similar intensity with Greatswords, it cost us 1AP. When we voted to interact with Rat Prisoner despite physically not being able to be there, QM said "Don't think about it too much" and all it took is 1AP.
What Martial level is "acceptable"? What do you think should be aimed for?
Because honestly, a 15 is considered very good for the vast majority of people. Belegar is only a 20, and he's considered one of the top fighters in the Karak. I think your expectations are a little skewed here.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
I'm saying that if you become High King, you become King of Karaz-a-Karak as well, although I'll note I'm unaware of any Kings of K8P being High King in the past.
Quest
The Great One
- Location
- Everywhere
My thoughts on our subordinates is highly influenced by this quote:
If people want to train up a warrior-mage, maybe they should vote to get an apprentice.
We have a huge backlog that keeps getting bigger. We hired these guys to try and put a dent in that backlog. If we don't want them to work for us, maybe we should fire them and use the action they are currently taking more productively.
If people want to train up a warrior-mage, maybe they should vote to get an apprentice.
We can use him for Court Wizard tasks. We just have to propose projects that a punch wizard can help punch.
There's a fair chance that with Substance of Shadow Mathilde can trivially annihilate the trolls in Karag Wyn by spending her evenings on it for a couple of months, thanks to Substance of Shadow. This isn't assassination. This is walking in while selectively incorporeal and massacring helpless trolls who can do nothing but die.
Look at his character sheet:
Speciality: Fisticuffs
He's a punch wizard.
Apparently twenty is where impressive starts, and twenty five is Heroic. Ten to twenty is the range for regular people, which means that fifteen isn't very good, just good. Belegar is probably one of the top fighters because of a combination of his Duellist skill giving him a significant bonus in one to one combat, not his raw martial score, and because he'll have the best gear. I'd expect many Longbeards, with their century plus of practice, to have an impressive martial score.
We should be looking for him to be impressive.
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- Location
- Norway
I think there's also a fair chance that one of them will have a glowing rock, or a non-troll ally, or the intelligence to use fire, and then Mathilde isn't incorporeal and is alone with a dozen trolls, and we already saw how that sort of thing nearly went very bad with the orcs.
Don't forget that Johann is not simply studying it: he reverse engineers it. Studying skaven is one thing, almost universally approved; reverse engineering it is a next level.
Fortunately, Mathilde has very acute Magesight, so will be able to notice magical glowing rocks, or sapience, or non-trolls and so be able to chose not to engage. She'll almost certainly know invisibility after the coming turn, and so has two layers of defence.
Even if a troll is sapient enough to learn how to make fire if taught, that doesn't mean that there's someone there to teach them, or given them either the tools or fuel. Making fire is very hard to do with your bare hands when you live in a place made of rock and you're pinned inside it by dwarven war machines so can't go outside to get anything that burns.
Also, fire is one of the very few things that can really hurt a troll, so they're rather unlikely to even want to make it.
It requires special permission even to know skaven exist, so it can't be universally approved.
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Quest
The Great One
- Location
- Everywhere
Oh screw this. I'm not arguing against someone memeing at me.
If people want a better action economy then maybe they should use the actions our subordinates give us.
If we're being pedantic, not necessarily; getting your hands on a ratling gun without ever knowing what skaven are is improbable, but not impossible. But anyway my main point is Max's goal is "determine properties" and Johann's is "make your own", and those require different levels of clearance.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
I kind of disagree with you. Johann when under all his spells is a literal battering ram he's harder than Gromril. That said I actually want to put him to work on translating the queekish anatomy book. His spells would be very useful for that when combined with our other anatomy books.
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- Location
- Norway
Unless the rock isn't magical, or the smart one suddenly comes around a corner, or the ally hands a torch to the troll beforehand, or...
It's not so much the specific hypothetical scenario that is the issue, it's the general fact that you seem to have a case of Protagonist Syndrome where you talk like Mathilde is the only one with agency, able to casually and reliably counter any tricks anyone else might have, without knowing what those tricks might be beforehand.
I grant that if Mathilde can cast Substance of Shadow a great many times without slipping up (and Boney has warned us that even mass-casting Aethyric Armor can result in miscasts if cast too repetitively to take advantage of the tirelessness),
and if the trolls are all as one too stupid to figure out a deliberate counter (which is unlikely seeing as they're sitting on Mutation Mountain),
and if nobody else, or random chance, has supplied the trolls with an accidental counter (say, carrying a half-eaten chunk of bioluminescent creature),
and so on,
then Mathilde might be able to solo Troll Mountain.
But trying to solo Troll Mountain is a really dumb and unnecessary idea in the first place!
He got that speciality because we voted to train him in fisticuffs!
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Pretty sure he had it beforehand.
No, it's the reason why we got him the trainner.
Quest
The Great One
- Location
- Everywhere
I don't mind an action training him now and then. But when you start talking multiple turn investments you lose me.
We're spending our own half action for his training. If we're doing that, then what's the point of hiring him?
Like, what benefit do we get if he gets better in punching? We won't get any favor he gains from punching things. His martial hasn't been any use during any raids we've gone to. Why are we spending our action on him when we aren't getting any use out if it?
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- Location
- USA
For next turn I'd say let Johann get a crack at Skryre. He's stuck on the ratling gun atm and he's expressed an interest in Skryre's gas masks. Seeing some other tech and stepping back might help him.
There was also the option help him with it in the Duckling section and Mathilde, while no engineer herself, can leverage her position and rep to get way more resources if needed, on top of her high Learning.
There was also the option help him with it in the Duckling section and Mathilde, while no engineer herself, can leverage her position and rep to get way more resources if needed, on top of her high Learning.
This isn't (simply) meming. His speciality, as given on his character sheet, is punching people. That's what fisticuffs is. Now, maybe BoneyM is joking and his speciality is actually the Engineering sub-discipline of Learning. However, the description of his Learning score:
Learning: 14 - Johann leans heavily on magic to skip right to the discoveries.
Also suggests that he isn't an expert Engineer. It seems like he was assigned the job of recovering warptech because he was sufficiently stealthy and survivable to recover it, and because he could cheat with Breach the Unknown and Tale of Metal, not because he's a particularly talented engineer or magical researcher.
Do you recall what it was before? Was it engineering then?
Why would she need to case Substance of Shadow a great many times? It last forever if the effect isn't broken.
Trolls are by default either barely sapient or non-sapient. We've seen no evidence that these trolls have been mutated to be different. Mathilde is also not an idiot. She is a highly experienced and talented infiltrator. She can use Substance of Shadow to waltz into skaven warrens and steal from and assassinate their leader. Skaven are vastly more competent and security conscious than trolls, and are vastly more likely to have deliberate light sources along with funny phosphorescent rocks or creatures. Even the sapient ones are essentially living in a state of nature with no society, no teachers, no culturally embodied knowledge of tricks or strategies, while Mathilde has been trained by amongst the best of humanity. She's not infallible, but trolls are amongst the least likely to be capable of responding. Particularly as you're assuming they have some way of even perceiving what she's doing to work to counter it, and that something like a piece of bioluminescent creature actually is a fatal problem for the plan. It's just something that raises an encounter from near trivial to trivial, given she can also make herself invisible before attacking in case it seems like it would be a problem.
If you're somewhere pitch black, you'll a light coming before a troll turns around the corner carrying it. That's the same with other light sources, unless someone's given the trolls light switches. Remember that ambient light doesn't break Substance of Shadow, only direct line of sight illumination from a light source.
Mathilde isn't the only one with agency. Other people who are more reliably people can act, which is why just waiting and hoping that no one else does anything with Karag Wyn doesn't strike me as a sensible idea.
This isn't protagonist syndrome. This is a problem that falls right into the middle of the sweet spot of Mathilde's abilities. There are lots of things she can't do.
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chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
From a narrative standpoint it is awfully hubris-y, yes, but while we can determine that it sounds like a bad idea each of the issues on their face is really easy to get around, which is where the perhaps unwarranted confidence comes from.
Mathilde only needs to cast the spell once or twice; it lasts until she's illuminated, so if she's never illuminated she'll have cast it a grand total of once. We can cast it reliably, so there's no chance of miscast from overwhelming odds, like with long-term Aethyric armor.
The Trolls aren't going to form a convention and figure out a counter because they're all animals or cave men hanging out in an ecosystem, and every one that learns about us is going to do so by catching our sword to their head. Remember; us being in total darkness means they're in total darkness too, so they can't just see their friend die from across the cave, they'll only hear some weird noises.
The counterpoint to us being in total darkness; areas of not-total-darkness are visible, as in with our eyes. We don't need magical senses to find them, finding that sort of thing is what humans are naturally good at.
So, again, I agree that if we vote on that sort of thing we're going to have trouble. It'd be way too easy if it all happened according to plan. But it will because of the things we haven't foreseen, not because the issues on their face are insurmountable, which is why the discussion got started. (Of course, a round of scouting is the natural counter to that sort of thing; at least then we'd know why we can't just turn into an intangible supermurderer and clear them out).
No, he had it before.
When he's done training he'll be a sneaky kung fu robot on our payroll, instead of just a sneaky robot. Much better for stealthily punching people and taking their stuff.
Quest
The Great One
- Location
- Everywhere
He wasn't assigned it. It was his own choice the same way researching Queekish or the Aetheryc Vitae is our own choice.
He has been nothing but competent and that was before we knew he was gilded. Hell, the gilding itself isn't something just anyone can do. Assuming he isn't skilled at his own chosen vocation is incredibly disrespectful to him.
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- Location
- Norway
You started this line of discussion with "by spending her evenings on it for a couple of months".
The very rudimentary scouting report we have on Kvinn-Wyr is "huge chunk of wyrdstone near the top that the trolls all fight over who gets to be closest to and slobber over. The winners end up weird", to quote Titus. They are mutated. The only question is how.