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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Pempelune said:
Sure, ideally Mathilde should be able to avoid getting mobbed by large concentrations of enemies but if she fails then she is toast. That's not even hypothetical, we know she would be toast, it has happened before.
When we get some Battle Magic spell that can affect a large number of enemies in the event she is trapped, then yeah, that would be a more attractive proposition. Right now though, it seems exactly like the type of ideas that almost got us killed in the past.
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Only if the enemies are smart. Trolls aren't going to be able to run down an invisible person for example.
 
Pempelune said:
I don't mean taking on the entire mountain slinging Battle Magic all the while. I mean that if every other precautions fail and Mathilde find herself in a sticky situation, she has that option to avoid certain death. That's the minimal condition to make Mathilde's soloing of an entire Troll colony 'safe'.
That said, I very much don't think us soloing an entire mountain is a good idea and I would rather we use our stockpiled favors to get help, mind you.
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To be honest I would rather not have the option, because even casting the stuff to learn has a chance to kill us and we have to cast it with a penalty the first time. That penalty was -20 for the simplest of all battle magics, an edge case that is Smoke and Mirrors.
 
Pempelune said:
IMO, we shouldn't try to solo a large number of enemies until we have, well, an option to deal with large number of enemies. That means Battle Magic.
Sure, ideally Mathilde should be able to avoid getting mobbed by large concentrations of enemies but if she fails then she is toast. That's not even hypothetical, we know she would be toast, it has happened before.
When we get some Battle Magic spell that can affect a large number of enemies in the event she is trapped, then yeah, that would be a more attractive proposition. Right now though, it seems exactly like the type of ideas that almost got us killed in the past.
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This is where I bring up our college favor and our ability to get access to battle magic any time we want.

I'd also point at the fire storm spell people have been hoping to buy for this very purpose alongside the Speed of Light spell for boss battles.
 
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Even if Johann casts Breach the Unknown, he still needs to write reports on what he found so that Mathilde can comprehend his findings. That takes time.

Furthermore, quite a few of our Skaven study subjects are shared resources. If Johann studies one of those on his own time and on his own initiative, then he gets all of the opportunities that they unlock. If we want to have a say in how they are used, or in how further research progresses, or even just college favours from the discoveries, then we need to direct him to do these actions as part of his official job. We don't get to have our cake and eat it too.
 
Pempelune said:
IMO, we shouldn't try to solo a large number of enemies until we have, well, an option to deal with large number of enemies. That means Battle Magic.
Sure, ideally Mathilde should be able to avoid getting mobbed by large concentrations of enemies but if she fails then she is toast. That's not even hypothetical, we know she would be toast, it has happened before.
When we get some Battle Magic spell that can affect a large number of enemies in the event she is trapped, then yeah, that would be a more attractive proposition. Right now though, it seems exactly like the type of ideas that almost got us killed in the past.
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Personally, I'd like to upgear significantly more, so fine. An item of Flame Storm would be very nice to have in a variety of situations. I expressed an interest earlier in seeing whether the newly enthusiastic Kragg who has recently gained a lot of experience into the interoperation of Wind Magic and runes might be able to make something that included the enchantment on the Armour of Tarnus that allowed wizards wearing it to still cast their spells. That might have to wait for Mathilde to find some more unclaimed gromril and save up to 25 favour though.

Specifically, Mathilde has learned how to teleport and will shortly be learning Shroud of Invisibility, which should make such shenanigans much safer. She was also playing false flag games against the orcs, which made things much more dangerous than methodical annihilation. The way that Substance of Shadow should be so effective is also a factor she didn't have in her favour previously.

picklepikkl said:
This isn't how it's worked thus far, and I do not think that was Boney's intent. We should not expect to passively get information about our backlog from our wizards, we should expect them to use their abilities when we assign them to research tasks. The simplest explanation for "why hasn't Mathilde gotten any information about the research topics from Johann's Breach the Unknown" is "because he hasn't cast it."
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Haven't we learned that exactly this was happening with Johann and the Ratling Gun until, presumably, he rolled poorly and ran into a dead end?
 
Say Mathilde can in fact solo the mountain full of trolls 100% risk-free. An assumption I do not particularly care for when considering perfectly mundane examples of their kind, never mind warpstone-mutated ones, but let's go with it.

Why? There's space aplenty already, they act as a neat (if partial) barrier to incursions, troll slayers (duh) have already kinda called dibs and Mathilde has plenty of other things to be doing. Like, y'know, that huge-ass pile of research waiting to be poked. It is a loremaster position, not a martial one. Certainly, when it is full blown war and all hands on deck (like conquering peaks) Mathilde should be up and about, but now?
 
Alratan said:
Haven't we learned that exactly this was happening with Johann and the Ratling Gun until, presumably, he rolled poorly and ran into a dead end?
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We have absolutely no idea about what's going on with the ratling gun besides the fact that he hit a wall because he did it in his own time. Any details are just assumptions on the part of the voters.
 
Exmorri said:
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!
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I can't agree more. I thought that this ridiculous hubris trend got kicked down a bit when Mathilde got nearly done in by a dozen or two of your regular orc boyz.
I was clearly wrong.

Mathilde's a good warrior, but she's not Tyrion or Louen Leoncouer.
And even if she was, it would still be foolhardy in the extreme to challenge a mountain filled with deadly monsters all by herself.
 
Aren't battle mages kept imprisoned in this universe when they aren't being let off the leash? Learning battle magic is obviously not an option.
 
Alratan said:
Haven't we learned that exactly this was happening with Johann and the Ratling Gun until, presumably, he rolled poorly and ran into a dead end?
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If you read my post, I addressed this one sentence later.
picklepikkl said:
I believe we should not expect passive progress on the stuff unless we see tasks phrased as "Allow X to spend his time doing [THING]", indicating that it's something that he is inclined to do anyway, without us assigning it (like Max working on his smithing skills, or Johann's work on the ratling gun).
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Compare the following:
BoneyM said:
[ ] Allow him to spend all his time on his metalworking studies.
[ ] Have Maximilian learn a skill: specify what from who. You may pay for a trainer.
[ ] Have Maximilian learn a spell: specify which.
[ ] Have Maximilian study your Skaven firearms.
[ ] Have Maximilian study your Eshin throwing star.
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BoneyM said:
[ ] Allow Johann to spend all his time investigating the Skaven (Choose: Clan Moulder, Mors, Skryre or Eshin)
[ ] Allow Johann to study the Ratling Gun.
[ ] Have Johann study your Skaven firearms.
[ ] Have Johann study your Eshin throwing star.
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"Allow" vs. "Have" is a meaningful difference. We knew all this time he was working on the ratling gun.
 
Quest said:
Appear to be? On what grounds? Hell, we've offered him Substance of Shadow before when we first attscked clan mors with him. He declined because it'd interfere with his tricks.

Why would he ever spend his own favor on ulgu stealth items? Are you going go order him to?
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Substance of Shadow is certainly an internal spell, as it changes the entire substance of the target with Ulgu. Doppleganger and the like don't seem to alter the target, just cover them with an effect from the outside. It's something only @BoneyM can answer, for certain, but it's certainly plausibel that they're not all internal effects that would, for example, conflict with the Seed of Regrowth.

And as to why he'd spend his favour on stealth items, it's because there are limits to his ability to loot the skaven blind with his natural talents, and Mathilde should be setting a good example about the use and abuse of both magic items and the Lore of Shadows.

Quest said:
I would cite his competence. His skill and plans were never in doubt. You mentioned increasing his diplomacy when he doesn't need that help. He's already a better diplomat.

You question his skill, but he's already had his own plan and clearly investigates technology and uses bombs/incendiaries as a matter of course.

He's our equal. Treat him as such.
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He's Mathilde's equal in rank, but I doubt he knows any battle magic, or owns any items of battle magic, or items of nearly legendary runic artifice. I actually think we haven't seen him with any equipment at all. Magical or otherwise. For all we know, his gas bombs are his Canadian girlfriend, something to convince his Gold Magister friends that he really is into manufactured objects, just like them. (And no, I'm not completely serious about that, but it is amusing that we have a Gold Magister here that is flexing so far from the stereotype - which is partially why I want to encourage it, as in her own way Mathilde is doing the same)

Also, he may be a better diplomat than Mathilde. I've managed people who were better at lots of things than me. That hasn't stopped me encouraging them to get better at those things, or arranging for training to help them do so. Generally you want experts working for you to develop their expertise, not stagnate.

Horium said:
I can't agree more. I thought that this ridiculous hubris trend got kicked down a bit when Mathilde got nearly done in by a dozen or two of your regular orc boyz.
I was clearly wrong.

Mathilde's a good warrior, but she's not Tyrion or Louen Leoncouer.
And even if she was, it would still be foolhardy in the extreme to challenge a mountain filled with deadly monsters all by herself.
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There are specific reasons why a mountain of trolls are almost uniquely vulnerable to Mathilde in a way nearly all other enemies she might face aren't. It's nothing to do with how good a warrior she is. That's almost irrelevant here. It's the combination of Substance of Shadow and her sword against enemies who live in the dark and are notoriously stupid. Now, she will want to scout the mountain first to find out if there's anything problematic before going in, but when/if Belegar pulls the trigger this is a chance of Mathilde to really show off.
 
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Zero Gravitas said:
Didn't the -20 penalty went away after the first casting?
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Yes. DragonParadox said "with a penalty the first time."

(I'm not sure whether we had to cast it while it was still in progress because all battle magic works like that or because Smoke and Mirrors specifically works like that, since Smoke and Mirrors is a weird spell that works as either a spell in itself or a component of another spell, so I wouldn't generalize too much from that experience. Regardless, it was scary and we risked eating a miscast, which we haven't done in a long time. I am not eager to learn more.)
 
So, something I haven't seen discussed: if people want to only spend one action on the tower next turn, are they going for night use or weather control?
 
Do pardon, @BoneyM ,but a quick question. How many peaks can the current forces hold without stretching themselves too thin? Just an estimate in Mathildes opinion.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
So, something I haven't seen discussed: if people want to only spend one action on the tower next turn, are they going for night use or weather control?
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I'm inclined to night use, because it's way better thematically, but I'd have to see the actual action list to see our various options.
Katahiraga said:
Why not use some dwarf favor to buy another belt then give it to the college to analyze?
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Do you want a Grudge declared on you?
 
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