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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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TaliesinSkye said:
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.
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As part of the Supreme Patriarch's efforts to change the lives of Battle Wizards such that they're allowed to actually be more than securely kept living weapons, he has successfully lobbied the Emperor to allow case by case instances of Not-Battle-Wizards to be taught Battle Magic.

During our last Spell Gacha, it was determined that Magister Dame Weber was sufficiently trusted/dangerous enough that she would be approved to learn Battle Magic. She was then added to the "Is Allowed To Learn Battle Magic" list and Regimand taught us Smoke and Mirrors.

Or that's how I understand the politics involved anyway.
 
Alratan said:
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.



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.
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With all due respect, Alratan. You are not a senior encouraging a junior or a colleague to develop thier talent. You are the finance background manager telling his technician "Have you tried turning it on and off?"

You have no idea what Johann's skills and expertise is. You have no idea what his plan to develop it is. All you have is an assumption that you know better.
 
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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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Night Use for me. The solutions that Night Use would provide would also cover instances where the Weather is uncooperative.

Katahiraga said:
Why not use some dwarf favor to buy another belt then give it to the college to analyze?
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Two reasons.

First, Runesmiths don't make the same item twice. They might make similar items, but not the same item.

Second, we are gifted Runed Items with the understanding that we aren't going to try to delve into Dawi Secrets, which Runes are. Basically, the Dwarves have Copyright protections that start with "Don't make me come over there" and end with "You are now our #1 Enemy in all circumstances and we will prioritize your death over everything else."

So if we took one of our Runed Items and brought them to the Colleges to have them analyzed to understand How Runes Work, then the Dwarves would either march on the Capital to kill us or we would become another Magister Grey.
 
Walliseatscheese said:
As part of the Supreme Patriarch's efforts to change the lives of Battle Wizards such that they're allowed to actually be more than securely kept living weapons, he has successfully lobbied the Emperor to allow case by case instances of Not-Battle-Wizards to be taught Battle Magic.

During our last Spell Gacha, it was determined that Magister Dame Weber was sufficiently trusted/dangerous enough that she would be approved to learn Battle Magic. She was then added to the "Is Allowed To Learn Battle Magic" list and Regimand taught us Smoke and Mirrors.

Or that's how I understand the politics involved anyway.
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Not even that. Battle Magic is dangerous and difficult, so only trusted Magisters and Magister Lords are allowed to learn this. In order to expand access to Battle Magic, Battle Mages are taught a rapidly accelerated curriculum that gives them early access to Battle Magic at the cost of driving them nuts. Due to this they're normally kept in the Colleges when they're not on campaign.
 
...I can't believe I'm about to say this...

But if it turns out that there's no clever hack around the action economy, then I would be fine taking the flex action in our plan and using it for a second tower action instead of the Temple to Ranald. I do, in fact, want this tower to be perfect; something that the dwarves can look at and say "This is good work" without having to say "for a human" at the end.

Ranald put His thumb on the scale for us, and honoring that with really good work to capitalize on those loaded dice seems appropriate.
 
Walliseatscheese said:
As part of the Supreme Patriarch's efforts to change the lives of Battle Wizards such that they're allowed to actually be more than securely kept living weapons, he has successfully lobbied the Emperor to allow case by case instances of Not-Battle-Wizards to be taught Battle Magic.

During our last Spell Gacha, it was determined that Magister Dame Weber was sufficiently trusted/dangerous enough that she would be approved to learn Battle Magic. She was then added to the "Is Allowed To Learn Battle Magic" list and Regimand taught us Smoke and Mirrors.

Or that's how I understand the politics involved anyway.
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Arg, I need to catch up on the last few chapters, evidently. Thanks.
 
Quest said:
With all due respect, Alratan. You are not a senior encouraging a junior or a colleague to develop thier talent. You are the finance background manager telling his technician "Have you tried turning it on and off?"

You have no idea what Johann's skills and expertise is. You have no idea what his plan to develop it is. All you have is an assumption that you know better.
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Mathilde is Johann's boss. She is his senior encouraging a junior to develop their skills in a way that she's decided is useful for her enterprise. If she tells him, for example, that he's going on a training course to learn more about diplomacy with dwarves, then it's his job to go on said training course. He can push back and ask her to change her mind if he has good reason to believe he knows what the course would teach, or there's a more valuable use of his time, but that's something he would need to convince her of. The way she told him to get training in punching from a punch cleric last turn is a pretty clear cut demonstration of that. This isn't about encouragement to develop their talents in some abstract sense, it's about having someone being taught job specific skills as one of the parts of their job.

What we know about Johann's skills and expertise is that he uses magic to skip straight to discoveries rather than using mundane intelligence or skill, as that's what his character sheet explicitly tells us. We can only make decisions based on that. We also know that his highest stat is Diplomacy and his second highest stat is Intrigue. That means, for example, that we do have a pretty good idea of Johann's skills and expertise is at a high level, and so, for example, can decide that an approach that leverages what he's good at and minimises what he's bad at, such as maneuvering Gotri to drop some hints based on what Johann has learned magically are likely to be more productive than pushing on the stat that, of the five we know of, he's weakest at, and the description of explicitly criticises his ability:

Johann, Magister of the Gold Order​
​
> Johann's natural glibness sets off every suspicious bone in your body, which is all of them, but you're pretty sure you've got a good read on him.​
< Every time he thinks he's got something by you, it's come back to bite him later. He's accepted that it will be easier for him to be your employee than to be your problem.​
​
Armament: Handgun​
Speciality: Fisticuffs​
Mission: Reverse-engineering Skaven technology​
Diplomacy: 19 - Johann is naturally likeable and gets along with most people.​
Martial: 15 - There might be a point in the future where you'll regret not stopping this here and now.​
Stewardship: 15 - Some might call gilding your body 'ludicrously expensive'. Johann considers it an investment.​
Intrigue: 18 - When most of your body is gold, you learn not to draw attention.​
Piety: ???​
Learning: 14 - Johann leans heavily on magic to skip right to the discoveries.​
Magic: 6 - Johann has a natural gift for elemental Chamon.​
​
Disciple of the Pick: Johann has fallen under the tutelage of an order of Priests of Grungni that seek to emulate not the Ancestor-God, but the pick that the Ancestor-God wielded.​
Gilded: Johann's skin from the neck down is made of gold, as are some of his internal organs.​
Inflexible Magic: While his magic excels at a handful of tasks, some have proven to be completely out of his reach.​
Packmaster: Johann is the proud father of five surprisingly friendly and gentle wolf-rats.​
 
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kingreaper said:
Night will delay its use by a few hours. Weather can delay its use for weeks, or if magic is involved could delay it indefinitely. Unless the dwarven hellfire can burn away clouds.
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It can probably burn away clouds below us, but clouds that are blocking its light source are trickier.
Imugi said:
Maybe we could use the second overwork action next turn.
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We should definitely not give ourself a -10 to all rolls turn after next when there is a motivated skaven prisoner to deal with, that seems like setting ourself up for disaster. Overworking is meant to deal with crises, not be a regular source of extra actions. The real thing we need is for our next proposed Project to be something Max and/or Johann can assist with so we aren't stuck using all our personals.
 
kingreaper said:
Night will delay its use by a few hours. Weather can delay its use for weeks, or if magic is involved could delay it indefinitely. Unless the dwarven hellfire can burn away clouds.
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Even if dwarven hellfire can burn away clouds, due to the scale of mountains and the distance a light source would need to be to cast a shadow with clean edges, you could probably lose access to the tower's magic if there's thick cloud blocking the line between the light source and the mountains.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
If it were that easy, it would have been done automatically, as Belegar is funding the whole thing.
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It would in fact be done automatically if we spend an action on it. One automatic action was spent on initiating tower construction, one was spent on Security, and one was spent on seeing how Runes would help. We then spent 10 Favor on the Grey Patriarch Gacha.

This resulted in a Magister Grey Gacha, a Lord Magister Grey Gacha, a Lord Magister Hero Gacha, a Kragg Gacha, and a Tower Man Gacha. Tower Man from Belegar's and our Favor spending, Kragg from the "How Do Runes Help" action, and the rest from Belegar's Favor spending with the automatic action and our Security Action directing them.

If we spend an action on the Weather, then we'll likely get another couple Gachas from the Lord Magister Hero and below range addressing the idea from Belegar's continued spending, plus Matty's own roll.

notanautomaton said:
Not even that. Battle Magic is dangerous and difficult, so only trusted Magisters and Magister Lords are allowed to learn this. In order to expand access to Battle Magic, Battle Mages are taught a rapidly accelerated curriculum that gives them early access to Battle Magic at the cost of driving them nuts. Due to this they're normally kept in the Colleges when they're not on campaign.
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I thought Battle Mages came first and then recent politics openned up Battle Magic to members in Great Standing?
 
Briefvoice said:
He's done!
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Where in the update does it say he's finished?

What we know of regular dwarven tuition from witnessing Max's apprenticeship suggests that they take a lot longer than six months. Even Mathilde spent a year training with Gunnars, and she started with basic Greatswords completed and partial progress in Advanced Greatsword. I think Johann was pretty much starting off at the enthusiastic amateur stage from the previous versions of his character sheet.
 
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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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And even then: Skulls for faces, people falling asleep if you visit them in the afternoon, smoke beards, your best friends forgetting what you look like... None of those are even worst case scenarios. Big magic fucks you up in Warhammer. You use it when those consequences would be an acceptable price. Getting our Abhorash cosplay does not have such value.
 
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