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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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chocolote12 said:
We can't right now, but the golds already have a spell for it.

A Magic Item in the shape of a gun that casts enchant object on things placed in its receptacle, in this case bullets, sounds perfectly in line with the description of the effect; it would make bullets supernaturally better at performing their intended purpose.

We'd have to shell out for favors, or pay for Max to learn enchanting up to that level (we know he'd have loved to forge our sword for us if we gave him the credit for making it, and making a magical gun is pretty much the only area he could compete with while there are Runelords around), but I don't see any technical issues with it. (If anything, it'd be a good start for specialty ammunition; the spell works conceptually, like circlets making diplomacy better even though they're just a piece of headwear, so I'd bet that a silver bullet would get better in an entirely different way than, say, a bullet with someone's name on it.)

Plus, if Max learned high level enchanting his capabilities would expand massively, so in the process of getting the Maximal Rifle we'd also get a lot of options for other cool things and equipment.
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I don't really think you've dealt with the main concerns, which is that having a successful enchantment to enchant something else is suspected to require a soul stuffed info the thing going the enchanting. Also, that every step without hands on it is a place for the plotter to ditch his part in, and an enchantment that makes more enchantment is not the sort of secret too I want to give him.

Plus, honestly, conceptual magic is there most boring and shonen kind of magic. It's like someone took sympathetic magic and decided they wanted similar, but don't bother with the second actual object and make it way more munchkin able.
 
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Glau said:
I don't really think you've dealt with the main concerns, which is that having a successful enchantment to enchanement something else is suspected to require should stuffed info the thing going the enchanting.
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My brain is skidding off of this sentence like a dog with socks on polished wood. Could you rephrase it?

'Enchant Item' Doesn't actually make other objects enchanted objects, if that makes sense. Let's call temporary things buffs. A real item that makes real items is forbidden; it's a no go, because if it can make real items it can be changed to make evil items fairly simply, and then you've got a big pile of the evil items sitting around.

A real item that buffs another object temporarily is fine, because that's just one object casting a spell on another; our robes do that when they cast aethyric armor on us. It's just the casting tool is the gun, and the target is the ammunition, and instead of a spell to make the target tougher it's a spell to make the target a better bullet, that's all. +1 Defense vs +1 Attack.
 
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chocolote12 said:
My brain is skidding off of this sentence like a dog with socks on polished wood. Could you rephrase it?

'Enchant Item' Doesn't actually make other objects enchanted objects, if that makes sense. Let's call temporary things buffs. A real item that makes real items is forbidden; it's a no go, because if it can make real items it can be changed to make evil items fairly simply, and then you've got a big pile of the evil items sitting around.

A real item that buffs another object temporarily is fine, because that's just one object casting a spell on another; our robes do that when they cast aethyric armor on us. It's just the casting tool is the gun, and the target is the ammunition, and instead of a spell to make the target tougher it's a spell to make the target a better bullet, that's all. +1 Defense vs +1 Attack.
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Sorry, autocorrect. Should read more cleanly now.

And with your casting tool formulation, I don't know what the difference is from just casting on the bullets, like we've seen.
 
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Glau said:
I don't know what the difference is from just casting on the bullets, like we've seen.
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The spell is called 'Enchant Object'. Enchant Object is better than blessed weapon; it is fiendishly complex, but improves the function of the object, rather than just making it count as magical (although it probably does that too). However, it is not part of our lore (it is a gold spell, and we are a grey).

We cannot enchant the bullets with anything directly, because they are very small and will be hard to enchant (in the sense that we make them a magical item that can cast another spell, not merely buffing them), and because recovering bullets sounds really dumb. We want a magic item of that spell that can cast it on as many bullets as we want (in the long run) in order to get more oomph from them (blessed weapon does not do this, it only lets bullets shoot ghosts). However, that means carrying another big tool around infused with Chamon. I suggested that we just combine the two equipment slots into one by making the gun the magic item that casts the spell on the bullets.
 
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I thought Boney said that it was possible to make an enchantment that would enchant other items, just that it would be extremely complex, and when it went wrong would attract the wrong sort of attention.

Anyways speaking of enchanting projects, I know turning our shadow knives mastery into sword would be useless for us, but it sounds like a good gift for the future emperor, an easily concealed sword.
 
SoHowAreYou said:
I thought Boney said that it was possible to make an enchantment that would enchant other items, just that it would be extremely complex, and when it went wrong would attract the wrong sort of attention.
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He did say something like that:
BoneyM said:
Magic that can imbue magic is not quite forbidden, but does come with a lot of very serious warnings. The slightest mistake can cause a lot of domino disasters and it does tend to attract the attention of they-who-plot of the Four.
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As for why it's easier to rune up a crossbow than a gun: a crossbow is, fundamentally, a machine. This sounds dumb, but what I mean is that a crossbow works by generating mechanical advantage, storing potential energy in a string, and then translating that potential energy into kinetic energy directly: you release the string, it flies forward, it transfers its energy to the bolt, and the bolt goes zipping along. A firearm, on the other hand, is basically a container in which an explosion happens: you put powder and shot into a chamber, set the powder on fire, and then the powder explodes and sends the bullet flying. The gun itself isn't actually doing much work beyond containing and shaping the force of the explosion. So it makes sense to me that dwarf runes, which seem to work really well at altering physical properties like strength and speed (cf. Kragg's Master Rune), have less to work with when it comes to enhancing the properties of a firearm. You could probably rune up a firearm so that the metal is stronger than it ought to be for its thickness, allowing for a stronger powder charge and higher muzzle velocity for the weight of the gun, but that's a little less dramatic than what melee or even crossbow runes are capable of.

EDIT: It has been pointed out to me by @Andres110 that the exact same runes work on both ballistae and on cannon; both mechanical and gunpowder siege weapons benefit from the same set of runes, it's only infantry firearms that are weird. That kind of kills my theory, so in conclusion, I've got nothing.
 
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Don't quite me on this because I don't remember the exact post I think I saw it in, but I think Enchant Item might affect the person wearing or using the item just as much or more in order to achieve how it functions. So for a crown or circlet for example, it might possibly result in the person wearing it getting a bit of Chamon running through his mind, because the item is meant to make him smarter or more charismatic or better at statecraft or the like. For a gun that's probably not an issue, but...

The other issue is the same as that of those who dream of being able to work out how to include our Mastery in our Aethyric Armor enchant on our robes, thereby making us permanently immune to fatigue... ... when our enchanted robes only have 1 casting in them. Recharges with dusk or dawn. But only holds 1 charge. So Mathilde still has to cast Aethyric Armor herself a lot. Sure, better Enchanting skill and stronger Magic could probably change that a bit, but still.

A hypothetical gun with Enchant Item on it would probably only be able to cast it a few times, before needing to be recharged. Still want to cast that Enchant Item on individual bullets? You'd probably get more bang for your buck -- literally -- if you had the enchantment cast itself on the gun rather than individual bullets, because the gun will be enchanted for as long as the enchantment lasts, while if you're enchanting individual bullets well you're enchanting individual bullets. They fire only once. A gun can fire multiple times.

So you're probably better off putting the magic on a sniper rifle, or a cannon, or a ballista.

Though I suspect that there is no way to... damn, how do I word it... "eyeball it"? It means that you are stuck with, basically, having to go "Get good enough at Enchanting, and see if this new paradigm you have in mind is possible." You can't put it together like an IKEA or a puzzle. Maybe magic item crafters usually just try to make "a magic item", rather than trying to get clever with individual spells, when it comes to the sort of thing you're talking about. Individual spells are probably better suited for direct effects and implementation; for when you want something simple and obvious, like "a healing item" (like the seed or candle we got) or "a ring with fireball in it." So, basically, you end up with things like "a sword which is really sharp" or "sword which can erupt into flames" rather than trying to finagle an individual and specific spell into it, you know?
WinterLantern said:
Soo i was working on something else, and i accidentally made what looked like a slayer through mage-sight fighting some beast. Here ya's go

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It looks like something that belongs in an ancient cave painting. Something... old. Old and stylized, or simplified. Something that suggests through shapes and colors. It's cool. Though while the Slayer is very visible, what he's fighting isn't so, I can't quite tell what's on the right side.
 
In short, if we want to empower a ranged weapon, we'd have an easier time to just have an automatic crossbow than a handgun, unless we want to go down that one slope with the Skaven for warpstone gunpower

Edit: Actually, the one thing we could do is to enchant a heavy caliber gun to be more durable and have less recoil.
Edit 2: Possibly making it silent as well.
Edit 3: Now I'm kind of excited over the idea of a handgun reinforced with runes for extra durability and to compensate for recoil, enchanted to be silent, and loading rifle cartridges.
 
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Enchant Item probably should get the Burning Shadows speech.
People who learn about it briefly get very excited, and then disappointed.
Enchant Item is more like transforming an item into a more platonically ideal version of itself than "this is now a magic item".

Anyway major challenges on magic guns and bullets:
-Enchantments can be damaged. A gun is effectively generating a controlled explosion. The best enchanted gun is simply a more durable gun, which means it fires reliably and doesn't get damaged. Adding more is substantially more complex work. Bullets deform when fired, which is not good for making the bullet do anything reliably because damaged magic reacts unpredictably.

-Single use enchantments require the ongoing time and effort of an enchanter to maintain a supply of. The more potent the enchantment the more expensive and the harder it is to get a long term commitment out of an enchanter. Practically nobody capable of Moderately Complicated enchantments are likely to repetitively make one enchantment over and over.

-Enchantments which produce more enchantments are notoriously easy to corrupt, as a single point of failure which can fail undetectably. Putting a sufficiently skilled enchanter on maintenance duty goes back to the single use time problem.

If you want to invest into single use enchantments I'd personally recommend grenade-like enchantments, which are well up Ulgu's alley for non-spellcasters to use...if you can get past the Single Use AP problem.
 
All this talk of making a magic gun, and all i'm thinking is, could we not just acquire a rechargeable fireball wand from the college?
Like, sure, i am all in on getting a rifle and enchanting it, not for magic bullets, but for accuracy and/or silence.
Mainly because i feel that we are good enough with the weapons we have, and at this point we would be better served by increasing our toolit, instead of getting better with the ones we have.
Though i would not be opposed to trained our current weapons if/when we have access to special teachers who could realisticly push us our proficiency up without major time investment.
 
Hm. Enchantments that enchant things are obviously unlikely to get approved, but would something along the lines of parallel enchantment be plausible? i.e. Instead of a wizard enchanting one individual bullet after another, some sort of tool and/or process would be used so that that one wizard enchants a case of X bullets with the same enchantment.

I imagine that this would be more difficult than enchanting X bullets with the equivalent effect in serial (so it would be limited to less complicated magics probably) but take much less time, and would be less vulnerable to the Plotter because the point of failure is still that wizard enchanting something so presumably they would act as quality control.
 
veekie said:
Enchant Item is more like transforming an item into a more platonically ideal version of itself than "this is now a magic item".
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Well, except the platonic ideal of a fancy piece of jewelry should be prettier jewelry, not getting better at talking to people. There's obviously some fancy stuff going on.

If the gun would break the enchantment by exploding often, we can just move the equipment back one remove and get the spell as a casting rod or something. Buffed bullets wouldn't need to worry about being disrupted, because the buff would already be in effect when it hits the other thing.

Would it cause the gun to be invincible and shoot laser beams? Of course not. But I imagine the spell to make things generally better wouldn't make it a conceptually better mantle piece (probably :V ).
 
chocolote12 said:
If the gun would break the enchantment by exploding often, we can just move the equipment back one remove and get the spell as a casting rod or something. Buffed bullets wouldn't need to worry about being disrupted, because the buff would already be in effect when it hits the other thing.
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A repeatable item of Enchant Item has been specifically rejected by Boney:
spiritualatheist said:
@BoneyM, would getting an item of Enchant Item from the college be okay? It seems like it could give us a small bonus to basically everything.
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BoneyM said:
You could get a specific item permanently enchanted that way, but no, you can't have a wand of +5% to everything.
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Honestly, I'd be fine with putting this on a gun or bullet case. I would like to point out that this is not enchanting via enchanted object, but rather it is casting a spell on an object via an enchanted object.
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Lesser Magic
Magic 1 required to learn, Magic 2 to cast reliably.

M / Blessed Weapon: For the next hour, the weapon this is cast upon will count as magical for the purposes of damaging creatures resistant to mundane weapons, such as ghosts.
Mastery - Blessed Hands: You instinctively channel Ulgu along any weapon you wield. Any weapon held by you counts as Magical.
- the mastery does not effect the ammunition of wielded ranged weapons, but the ammo can be blessed manually.
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I mean, it's zero use to Mathilde if she has time to prepare her shot by removing and holding the ammo and putting it back in, but a gun with this would be useful if she is surprised, and for whatever reason can't shadow daggers + teleport.

Ok. Niche of niche uses, I admit.

I just think it might be nice to give one each to Anton and Wilhelmina. :)
Except... AP :/
 
this might be just because I'm not from a country where guns are a religion. a but this enchanted gun/bullet thing is just not interesting to me.

1) it seems kind of game-breaking... like, it could kill the fun of combat.

2) bullets would be super expensive

3) ... and like the level of detail we would need to enchant the gun means we would need to invest in getting the smith-} gunsmith skill chain.

4) and.. well... comparted to AV or the secrets of the divine or even dhar.. 'better gun' is kind of flat as a story goes.

then again, I'm Irish, I don't really have 'Gun thing' to begin with.
 
I can't help but feel like in any case where "repeatedly making one enchantment over and over" crops up as a suggestion, the idea runs into the fact that if they had the time and people to do this... the Colleges would probably prefer to apply that to making staffs instead. Or Grounding Rods. Especially so when it comes to something like enchanting individual bullets instead.

Like... maybe there's a Gold Wizard out there who's really big on Engineering and really loves Guns and mechanisms and so on. And he takes the time to craft specialty ammunition for his prototypes and masterwork devices. But this would be a special case; it would be more like finding a person who fits into such an archetype. And even in their case, they'd probably just have special ammo for themselves or a few party members only. Or if they're attached to an army -- or garrison -- with a special cannon, for which they'd be crafting or blessing cannonballs for. Though this is individual work and special cases, essentially... Really, we see this sort of thing with Adela. And you can see that it's a whole thing with her. Part of what she does, part of how she uses her magic.

But when it comes to "What single item, and made repeatedly, would make the most impact? What would the Colleges always want more of? If you could quasi-industrialize enchanting, what would you go for first?" the answer is probably going to default to staffs that give +1 Magic or Dispel Scrolls or Grounding Rods or something.

Also... if I were choosing which enchanted item to figure out from the ground up for Mathilde's sake... I'd probably go for the Ward Save talisman or the staff first. Mathilde doesn't actually even use guns that terribly much. She isn't all that amazing with them, either. Not compared to swordcraft or spellcraft.
 
Woohoo, I'm back! And just in time for the finale! I can't wait to see us finish sweeping out the Karak. And find out what effects that crown is having on Belebro.
 
Oh. I completely forgot. I honestly was expecting a bit more cackling on Mathilde's part when she used the Tower. And the Battle of the Citadel went a lot better than I expected.

Oh well, this is still a relevant clip... (well the first half is) and I've been sitting on it for what feel like forever now.

 
Jyn Ryvia said:
1) it seems kind of game-breaking... like, it could kill the fun of combat.

2) bullets would be super expensive

3) ... and like the level of detail we would need to enchant the gun means we would need to invest in getting the smith-} gunsmith skill chain.

4) and.. well... comparted to AV or the secrets of the divine or even dhar.. 'better gun' is kind of flat as a story goes.
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All the things you're describing would be an issue, except for three of them not mattering in the context of what we'd be wanting to use them for, which is, well assassination. You don't fight people in an assassination, you want them to die; After a certain point you don't get paid to kill enemy leaders, you pay so that it's possible to kill them; And 'Spend multiple turns worth of AP learning to create and use the ultimate assassin's tool' is kind of going to take a while no matter what form it takes.

I'm in total agreement about us having a lot more interesting things to do, though. Intrigue is our fourth highest stat for a reason, and I'd really rather actually get to publish cool things and research neat inventions rather than vote to kill more people (although we might need to do a lot of stabbing and shooting in the Elfventure). Assassination is typically a means to an end, not a goal of ours in and of itself.
 
If we want to enchant a pistol and not worry about misfires/explosions, just put the enchantment-bits on the handle, leaving the cylinder and barrel out of it. Or, get a set of "decorative" bits that aren't structural, but do extend down the barrel, if needed.

BeepSmile said:
I just think it might be nice to give one each to Anton and Wilhelmina.
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Would be Yet Another Thing adding to AP hell, but yeah, that would be a nice present. Maybe when Anton finally finds True Wuv, as a wedding present?
chocolote12 said:
Assassination is typically a means to an end, not a goal of ours in and of itself.
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True. The goal is headpats. And, eventually, being able to complete our trifecta of "the best kind of good news." :V :ninja:
 
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