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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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TotallyNotEvil said:
How isn't it clear I'm talking about Hysh?

It heals, it blasts, it crowd-controls, and now people are shoe-horning in spatial manipulation and geomancy.
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Also anti-chaos/demon

Personally, I'm fine (well, not fine, fine, tolerating with ease fits better) with everything you listed and the anti-chaos in one package. Except for the geomancy.

That does strike me as silly.

Edit: I feel you should add "is at or is above average to the other winds" before your blasting part - don't all winds have a blasting component?
 
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TotallyNotEvil said:
Tbh, that just sounds like paper-thin justification to have one wind do Literally Everything.
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It really is, but Hysh being the Sue wind at least has the probably-more-pronounced-in-this-quest drawback of needing at least three of your buddies around to pull up enough to actually do anything (unless you're an emperor dragon).
TotallyNotEvil said:
How isn't it clear I'm talking about Hysh?

It heals, it blasts, it crowd-controls, and now people are shoe-horning in spatial manipulation and geomancy.
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Don't forget the spells that decouple you from the time stream and stuff.

However, before Boney disallowed it, there was a spell on the Grey list that let you retroactively make your death an illusion, and there's a storm of magic spell that lets you send illusions back in time to retroactively decide the layout of the landscape, so it's not like Ulgu should have fallen behind its silliness.
 
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MooseHowl said:
I'm probably confusing Warhammer Trolls with some other media's version, anyway. Something where 'shooting them' as a strategy is always prefaced by 'don't bother'.
Or maybe I'm thinking of rock trolls or warpstone trolls or something.
There's too many freaking types of trolls.
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you might be thinking of total war: Warhammer. they are given unlimited Regan so poke is pointless if your not killing unit models.

in theory; in practice, they run away if you sneeze on them. (but I already did that rant so i'll stop here)
 
Exmorri said:
:eyebrow: You complain about excuses for Hysh doing "Literally Everything", I point out that Ulgu does more things, and you think Ulgu generally stays within its wheelhouse? I don't think that's how wheelhouses work.
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Because your argument was pretty weak, considering disguising is a subset of hiding, crowd-crontrol from confusion and, again, hiding, and spacial stuff has been its one differential.

Whatever blasting it has is pretty weak. On the standard list, only lackluster Shadow Knives.

It's shit at blasting, it's shit at flying, it straight up can't heal. It's great at hiding and confusing.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
Because your argument was pretty weak, considering disguising is a subset of hiding, crowd-crontrol from confusion and, again, hiding, and spacial stuff has been its one differential.

Whatever blasting it has is pretty weak. On the standard list, only lackluster Shadow Knives.
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Disguising is not a subset of hiding, I didn't say confusion, and how the hell did you forget Burning Shadows?
 
Exmorri said:
Disguising is not a subset of hiding, I didn't say confusion, and how the hell did you forget Burning Shadows?
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Burning Shadows is extraordinarily useful in a tiny subset of situations, and how is disguise not a subset of hiding? You are hiding your apperance.

Point is, there's nothing Hysh doesn't seem only capable of, but capable of excelling at, maybe besides hiding. But like the Sue Wind it is, it trumps all other hiding spells, no save, because reasons.

The winds are all versatile, but they have very clearly felt limitations. Hysh's limitations seem to be "not great at hiding", and that's about it.

Bottonline, I could live with a lot of it, but "stone manipulation" through Hysh is just bullshit.

And I'm glad it hasn't showed up.
 
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Ulgu does actually have healing spells in canon. Not great ones, but they do exist, leveraging the illusion aspect to fake healing someone so well that reality is fooled.

IIRC, Boney said that a bunch of the spells from certain supplements "hadn't been invented yet"*? So be on the lookout for some other contributing member of the College to add that to our repertoire sometime.

*Which is, btw, a fantastic approach, since it means Mathilde isn't the only member of the entire order who can contribute by inventing spells.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
Burning Shadows is extraordinarily useful in a tiny subset of situations, and how is disguise not a subset of hiding? You are hiding your apperance.

Point is, there's nothing Hysh doesn't seem only capable of, but capable of excelling at, maybe besides hiding. But like the Sue Wind it is, it trumps all other hiding spells, no save, because reasons.
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Now I'm starting to feel you're playing semantic games to lump Ulgu's many capabilities under fewer labels so you can count the labels instead of the capabilities.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
you might be thinking of total war: Warhammer. they are given unlimited Regan so poke is pointless if your not killing unit models.

in theory; in practice, they run away if you sneeze on them. (but I already did that rant so i'll stop here)
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Unmodded TW:W actually has a limit on how much each unit can heal per battle, so pole is useful.

With trolls specifically, they have really low armor in that game, so shooting them is actually really easy.
 
Heh. Y'know, complaining that Hysh has a bunch of abilities that seem random and barely connected seems like a very in-character complaint for the Grey College to have.

(To which, of course, the White College replies that it makes perfect sense from the right perspective and it's the Grey College that has an infuriatingly scattered approach, since what does water suspended in the air have to do with shadows anyway, and how come you guys get a horse, that's the Lore of Beast's thing. :V)
 
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TotallyNotEvil said:
Burning Shadows is extraordinarily useful in a tiny subset of situations, and how is disguise not a subset of hiding? You are hiding your apperance.

Point is, there's nothing Hysh doesn't seem only capable of, but capable of excelling at, maybe besides hiding. But like the Sue Wind it is, it trumps all other hiding spells, no save, because reasons.

The winds are all versatile, but they have very clearly felt limitations. Hysh's limitations seem to be "not great at hiding", and that's about it.

Bottonline, I could live with a lot of it, but "stone manipulation" through Hysh is just bullshit.

And I'm glad it hasn't showed up.
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The real issue is that Hysh is perceived as getting all its spells, but we get to look at the actual quest-Canon spell list for Ulgu and it's been cut down a lot.

Like, we wouldn't be having this conversation if Confound Foe was a thing. Confound Foe is ridiculous. Confound Foe is quite possibly casual time travel. You can cast Confound Foe even if you are dead. One questions if the foe being confounded is your mortal opponent or mortality itself.

I really want Confound Foe.
 
Exmorri said:
Now I'm starting to feel you're playing semantic games to lump Ulgu's many capabilities under fewer labels so you can count the labels instead of the capabilities.
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In my opinion, the Spellbook for Ulgu is the most well-designed one, as it does all that you expect of it to do and scales nicely.

I've never felt Ulgu does more than what's reasonably expected of it.

Now look at the Hysh spellbook:

Relatively Simple
Cleansing Glow: Cleans touched item, unspoils spoiled food or drink.
Dazzling Brightness: Dazzles creatures in a small area.
Clarity: Reduces mental penalties a touched character is suffering
Radiant Gaze: Shoots eye lasers.
Shimmering Cloak: Reduces damage taken from nonmagical missiles. You cannot hide while shimmering.
Radiant Weapon: Touched weapon emits light, counts as magical, deals extra damage to Daemons for several minutes.

Utility, crowd-control, theraphy, blasting, defensive and offensive buffs.

Moderately Complicated
Healing of Hysh: Heals the injuries of a touched creature.
Illuminate the Edifice: Lights up the interior of a touched structure for several hours. Size of targetable structure increases with Magic.
Light of Purity: Cast this as you light a fire. As long as that fire burns, its light protects against disease.
Banish: Attempts to banish a nearby daemon back to the Realm of Chaos, or exorcise a possessed creature.
Radiant Sentinel: A ball of light floats around you and can parry for you.
Ill-bane: Cures poison or alleviates disease for several nearby creatures.
Inspiration: Large bonus to a Knowledge test. Long casting time.
The Power of Truth: Touched creature becomes much more charismatic, but only while speaking honestly.

Healing, utility, more healing, straight up SoL against Daemons, defensive buffs, more healing, skill buff, skill buff.

Fiendishly Complex
Eyes of Truth: You see through all illusions, invisibility, concealment, darkness and disguises nearby, severely cramping the Grey Order's style. Causes the eyes to literally glow, lasts less than a minute.
Light's Demand: Holds in place all Chaos creatures caught in a cone of light for several rounds. This spell is particularly hard to resist.
Blinding Light: Blinds creatures in a large area.
Daemonbane: Attempts to banish all daemons in a large area back to the Realm of Chaos.
Boon of Hysh: Cures and purifies touched creature of all injury, disease, poison and malady.
Pillar of Radiance: A massive column of burning light deals damage and may blind targets in a large area. This powerful spell disturbs the Aethyr such that all wizards for miles can sense it being cast, and the Hierophants frown on using it against anything but daemons.

True Seeing, incredible anti-chaos crowd control, incredible general crowd-control, mass SoL, super healing, massive blast with built-in crowd-control.

It looks like a DND wizard's spellbook.

But I can live with that.

And then folks start on a super-weird tangent of "X-ray vision", geomancy, spatial manipulation and whatever the fuck else. Not only that, but taking that for granted.

So far, it hasn't been more bullshit than a supremely good all-rounder that the spell list is, and I'm glad for that.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
Heh. Y'know, complaining that Hysh has a bunch of abilities that seem random and barely connected seems like a very in-character complaint for the Grey College to have.

(To which, of course, the White College replies that it makes perfect sense from the right perspective and it's the Grey College that has an infuriatingly scattered approach, since what does water suspended in the air have to do with shadows anyway, and how come you guys get a horse, that's the Lore of Life's thing. :V)
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Well I can see that it maybe should be Lore of Life's thing, but Lore of Beasts is the one where you can actually turn into a horse :smile:
 
SurpriseMe said:
Unmodded TW:W actually has a limit on how much each unit can heal per battle, so pole is useful.

With trolls specifically, they have really low armor in that game, so shooting them is actually really easy.
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Don't they also break super easily or something?
Like, it can sometimes be vaguely annoying when they run away and come back almost fully healed, but usually it means you can just focus them down a bit and then ignore them while you finish the rest of the battle, since afterwards a unit of trolls isn't gonna do much on its own anyway.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
And then folks start on a super-weird tangent of "X-ray vision", geomancy, spatial manipulation and whatever the fuck else.
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Hysh does have those associations when it comes to a few battle magic or storm of magic spells out there, as well as when it comes to stuff like the canonical way the College of Light is hidden. That means that when we're considering what the potential powers of a Emperor Dragon that uses Hysh are, we have to take it into account.

I assure you, if we ran into an Emperor Dragon using Ulgu, I would not expect it to be bound by the spell list known to the colleges, and would instead be on the lookout for retroactive time re-writing mindfucks - since that's what the outer limits of Ulgu shown in lore can do.
 
Actually, that's a really really good point.

Horse. I mean I can see it, but the horse spell is absolutely a conceptual stretch.

Valid, 'cuz warp, of course, but I do agree that the horse spell needs to be noted.

Edit: It's some of those Azer spells I look at weirdly. I mean... Polishing lenses? Really?
----
Edit edit: Mathilde could well have unmet several Uglu Emperor Dragons in the past.

YOU CAN'T PROVE THE UNIVERSE DIDN'T FORGET IT HAPPENED!
 
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BeepSmile said:
Actually, that's a really really good point.

Horse. I mean I can see it, but the horse spell is absolutely a conceptual stretch.

Valid, 'cuz warp, of course, but I do agree that the horse spell needs to be noted.

Edit: It's some of those Azer spells I look at weirdly. I mean... Polishing lenses? Really?
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It's been commented a few times that Lore of Heavens looks like it was designed with an expectation of working with astrological/celestial rituals of some sort, like the Body Gilded ritual for the Lore of Metal, and then the celestial rituals got cut in development leaving a bunch of spells for boosting an activity that's been mostly reduced to fluff. AFAIK this is speculative, but it would explain a lot.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Hysh does have those associations when it comes to a few battle magic or storm of magic spells out there, as well as when it comes to stuff like the canonical way the College of Light is hidden. That means that when we're considering what the potential powers of a Emperor Dragon that uses Hysh are, we have to take it into account.

I assure you, if we ran into an Emperor Dragon using Ulgu, I would not expect it to be bound by the spell list known to the colleges, and would instead be on the lookout for retroactive time re-writing mindfucks - since that's what the outer limits of Ulgu shown in lore can do.
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Maybe that's why no one can find ulgu dragons. They are all happily living when the world was better suited for them and just refuse to leave that point in time.
 
The thing about Ulgu doing things outside of its wheelhouse - burning shadows, shadowsteed, etc. - is that they're generally weaker imitations of other schools, which is exactly what I'd expect from the school of Deceit. Ridiculous mountain shenanigans aside, Burning Shadows is usually a knock-off Ashqy spell cast at a higher difficulty than the equivalent ashqy spell might. That makes sense.

chocolote12 said:
Like, we wouldn't be having this conversation if Confound Foe was a thing. Confound Foe is ridiculous. Confound Foe is quite possibly casual time travel. You can cast Confound Foe even if you are dead. One questions if the foe being confounded is your mortal opponent or mortality itself.

I really want Confound Foe.
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If we get a trait for exfiltration, or getting out of bad situations, it's not impossible we could invent this as some sort of Battle Magic you have to cast beforehand. Hell, maybe someone else can take the spell, Master it as canon Confound Foe and release it to one-up us.
 
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