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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Jyn Ryvia said:
[ ] Karak: Windherder
It's said the High Elves can achieve miracles by using the Winds in parallel. You'll have to make do with using them in series, having other people handle the other Winds, and making sure they keep a safe distance from each other. But cultivating this ability expands the possibilities exactly eightfold.
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The description literally says that we'll have to have other people handle the other Winds. I don't see how the other wizards will have to have necessary skills was misrepresented in anyway. It gives us the insight needed to have multiple winds working together, it doesn't give us the insight needed to actually use another wind.
 
There are a couple ways I could see the mega miscast working out in practice: ( I looked up some old 2nd edition miscast tables EDIT Tzeench curse- so i might ave been referencing the wrong thing here.)
1: roll a bunch of times on the least miscast table. (lots of work, probably no. With dozens of miscasts almost certain to get a major or catastrophic miscast.)
2: the small miscasts combine to form one larger/greater miscast. (possible, degrees of miscast based on a role for how much the miscasts resonate? Do you wanna make a warp rift.. 🎶 )
3: after a few moments of confusion or terror the target is in the middle of a considerable amount of dhar. (most likely outcome narrativly. Guaranteed to give someone a scare, gets censure for making a ton of dhar on purpose)
 
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Miscasts don't work like that anyway. A Miscast is the Winds of Magic (that is, little bits of the Warp) getting free reign to do what they want and access to a Wizard's soul to make it happen in reality. Miscasts are clearly distinct from spell failures, which are what you get when a magic item fails or when a missile spell (e.g. Shadow Daggers) is counterspelled in flight. This is why Miscasts alone are able to induce Arcane Marks and why non-Wizard witnesses to Miscasts never acquire Marks; the Mark is the Wind taking over a bit of the Wizard Soul that it's using to do what it wants while it has its freedom. The important thing here is that a Miscast isn't something that can happen "at range" - it's fundamentally something that happens inside the soul of the caster. It also means that you can't really "spam" Miscasts; think of it more as "Being in a state of Miscasting" (having a Wind using your soul and its spellcasting ability to do what it wants) rather than there being a discrete "Miscast" event.
 
I kinda feel if we want a murder mist battle magic spell, something like a mist that just vanishing things would fit. Something vanishing into mist never to be seen again feels pretty ulgu.
 
Prospalz said:
One probably really shouldn't dismiss Cloudkill; Magic 9 Mistery-buffed acid fog pretty much is "no save, die in horrible pain" against vast majority of living targets, and slow-moving undead.

Pit of Shadows or the like might be better if you want that Hierotitan or Dragon to vanish, but anything below that is going to get fucked up by corrosive mists just fine.
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I quite agree.
 
me.me.here said:
So I couldn't help but notice that people were talking about trying to develop our own form of 'save or die' type battle magic, only the justifications as to how we might do so were pretty tortured (the best of them being along the lines of 'shoehorn the word mist in and hope it triggers a staff bonus').

Naturally, I had a terrifying thought on how we might plausibly go about doing so. Namely, weaponizing miscasts.

Hear me out, it's not actually as crazy as it sounds - our Fog Path spell is built upon the concept of a spell casting another spell at a distance, and we know that the single best miscast mitigation approach is to generate/increase distance between you and the miscasting spell (hence why grounding rods and such are so popular).

So we already have a theoretical framework for being able to cast a spell that would induce a miscast at a targeted location rather than right next to us - we also know of at least one experienced Grey Wizard with strong insight and/or traits on the matter (Regimand and his deliberate miscasting as a feint) that could help give advice. This would basically end up producing results vaguely like counterspelling/dispelling enemy casters would (not super dangerous to us in most cases), only we'd be able to use it even if our prospective target was unaware of us or otherwise not casting magic at the moment.

We'd probably want something other than our Skywalk macro for this (being able to cast something hundreds of times a second is probably not something we'd want to optimize for, miscasts are dangerous enough when you aren't rolling a bajillion times on the table of bad stuff), but the general idea of using a sort of 'spooky action at a distance' spell to induce a miscast near something is surprisingly plausible and pretty darn close to being a save or die spell.

I bet if we scrounged up another brass orb and studied it we could probably figure out a way to bias the miscast chance towards 'portal to the chaos/shadow realm', at which point we'd have a discount pit of shades, only with better understanding of the spell due to having developed it from first principles.
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It works right up until it miscasts a bunch of daemons into existence or creates a hole in reality. Also, it might end up creating Dhar, and heaps of it, due to battle magic levels of magic being cast.
 
picklepikkl said:
Breath of Fire is a solid effect to build on, but I feel we'd want Battle Magic levels of killiness if we're investing in a killiness item. Luckily, the Brights are really good at LEGO-ing effects together.
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Oh, didn't realize it was an Aqshy spell already. Well scaling that up shouldn't be too complex its just tossing a fuckton of fire in a given direction. More Aqshy go in, more fire come out.

Cython: "You don't suppose she decided to imitate a dragon after seeing me at work did she?"
 
Wait why are people acting like its a surprise that the other wizard has to do enchanting to make multi spell enchanted items withvwindherder that was obvious from the start? As long as they dont also need windherder whilst mathilde is there thats good enough and what i expected.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
Wait why are people acting like its a surprise that the other wizard has to do enchanting to make multi spell enchanted items withvwindherder that was obvious from the start? As long as they dont also need windherder whilst mathilde is there thats good enough and what i expected.
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What I personally expected was mostly like:
-Basics - Be narratively better at using Ulgu to interact with familiar Winds. Better at dispelling, able to do things like grab a Shyish Journeyman's miscast, better at understanding what they're trying to do even when its not Ulgu.

-Intermediate - Able to coordinate planning out a multi-wind effect in an enchantment working with other wizards. Currently we only have Adela for that however, and we hadn't had much along those ideas yet, compounding Aqshy morale spells with Ulgu morale spells on a banner enchantment might be neat when we have the time to poke with it(it affects enemies, so if it does accidentally produce Dhar where the effect intersects...well, too bad for enemies?). We need more flavors of enchanters to make this work however, and the bigger the enchanted object the easier for now.

-Advanced - Able to Tongs effects wholesale from another Wind, given a source of the Wind(since obviously you can't generate it yourself). Or maybe devise a hybrid Lore, but thats going to need to wade through quite a few risks along the way for gains that are potentially in the realm of neat thought experiments.

Gotta WORK for it.
 
If we're going to get a powerful enchanted item, wouldn't Light Magic be the best fit for our current circumstances? We are going into the Chaos Wastes, and Light Magic is more effective against daemons.

It might not be the strictly optimal move from a long-term perspective, but if that extra edge against Chaos forces saves our lives at Karak Dum, then it really doesn't matter.
 
Horologer said:
If we're going to get a powerful enchanted item, wouldn't Light Magic be the best fit for our current circumstances? We are going into the Chaos Wastes, and Light Magic is more effective against daemons.

It might not be the strictly optimal move from a long-term perspective, but if that extra edge against Chaos forces saves our lives at Karak Dum, then it really doesn't matter.
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Either

Shem's Burning Gaze (10 favors): You fire several rays of searing light at the target squad.

or

Banishment (10 favors): Ray of purest light smites target squad. Supernatural protection works poorly against it and it is significantly stronger in the Hysh-rich environment.

would be good candidates.
 
An idea for a spell that would disappear a daemon back to the Realm of Chaos. Based off of Smoke and Mirrors for the disappearing aspect, surround the targeted creature with a cloud of smoke, concentrate a tiny amount of Ulgu within to create a pinprick in reality and using the daemon's inherent connection to the Realm of Chaos, disappear.
It would basically be Ulgu's version of Hysh's Banish, Vanish.
Thought up just for the wordplay of Vanish and Banish.
 
Horologer said:
If we're going to get a powerful enchanted item, wouldn't Light Magic be the best fit for our current circumstances? We are going into the Chaos Wastes, and Light Magic is more effective against daemons.

It might not be the strictly optimal move from a long-term perspective, but if that extra edge against Chaos forces saves our lives at Karak Dum, then it really doesn't matter.
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Issue here is that Bright College in particular has better enchanters. So sure, we could get a Banishment that would be great against demons, or we could get a much more powerful item overall that will likely be just as good against demons, but better against everything else. And we're more likely to encounter Chaos Dwarves and Chaos Warriors than demons

Also, Banishment works better where Hysh is strong, and it's probably not going to be anywhere we go
 
Light Magic items were discussed and fell behind due to several factors:
-The most likely massed threats were entirely human or mutant nomads. They aren't especially effective on human cultists of the Powers.
-Hysh works best with Choirs, and we don't have any.
-Half the Daemons it works best on are spellcasters, and as such can dispel the item. One of the remainder is antimagic.
-Hysh is a little more likely than Aqshy to disrupt Ulgu we're drawing upon. Not usually a big deal, but its there.
 
Imugi said:
An idea for a spell that would disappear a daemon back to the Realm of Chaos. Based off of Smoke and Mirrors for the disappearing aspect, surround the targeted creature with a cloud of smoke, concentrate a tiny amount of Ulgu within to create a pinprick in reality and using the daemon's inherent connection to the Realm of Chaos, disappear.
It would basically be Ulgu's version of Hysh's Banish, Vanish.
Thought up just for the wordplay of Vanish and Banish.
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Creating a pinprick in reality near a daemon sounds like it has a 50-50 chance of making the daemon stronger instead, as more Chaos flows in. 🤔
 
Oooh. Spell Idea. @BoneyM could this work?

Ranald's Tithe - Disarm spell. Creates a fog within which reality is weakened in the direction of the god of thieves allowing him to claim the arms, armors and valuables of those inside the fog.
 
Quest said:
Oooh. Spell Idea. @BoneyM could this work?

Ranald's Tithe - Disarm spell. Creates a fog within which reality is weakened in the direction of the god of thieves allowing him to claim the arms, armors and valuables of those who fall into the mist.
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A Priest of Ranald might be able to, but it's definitely outside the jurisdiction of the Colleges. Also weakening reality is the sort of thing the Colleges frown upon. There's only one reality and nobody wants to be on the hook for replacing it.
 
BoneyM said:
A Priest of Ranald might be able to, but it's definitely outside the jurisdiction of the Colleges. Also weakening reality is the sort of thing the Colleges frown upon. There's only one reality and nobody wants to be on the hook for replacing it.
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Chaos Sorcerers do it all the time, and while that is certainly no endorsement, it is still a strong evidence that reality is rather sturdy and eventually snaps back no matter what mortal mages do to let Chaos in.

(Disclaimer: This does not apply next to a giant warpstone-meteor like the in Pit in Mordheim)
 
Artemis1992 said:
Chaos Sorcerers do it all the time, and while that is certainly no endorsement, it is still a strong evidence that reality is rather sturdy and eventually snaps back no matter what mortal mages do to let Chaos in.

(Disclaimer: This does not apply next to a giant warpstone-meteor like the in Pit in Mordheim)
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The Chaos Wastes are evidence that if you mess up reality enough it doesn't snap back.
 
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