If we're altering compulsion spells, Sleep is also petty, and makes them far more vulnerable on a battlefield level. The touch range is an issue, but the Fog Path spell involves tendrils of Ulgu reaching out on a programmatic basis to just poke everything with it, so we could probably use the same general framework to create a cloud that pokes everybody with the Sleep spell.
Come to think of it, 'Cloud of Ulgu that chaincasts a Petty or Lesser spell' is a pretty broad framework. Like, we could do a lot with that.
Edit: For instance, 'Cloud of Ulgu that casts Blessed Weapon' could let a unit fight ghosts? 'Cloud of Ulgu that casts Sounds' could combine with our Warrior of Fog spell to make noises like there's an army moving around in the mists? Imagine using that at night, where they can't see anything anyway.
I mean if you're talking about the stories of spells thing our current path-creating spell almost seems to draw on the common experience that countless people have had where they're going through a thick fogbank and they can't see their own feet, can't tell whether they're about to trip in a pothole/break a wagon axle/have their horse step in something and trip and go lame, or whether the road is perfectly fine. Then it sort of twists that in favor of the road/path being perfectly alright.
This seems useful for the steam wagons we're working with, and the need to avoid enemy forces we're operating off of.
It also would not surprise me if we could create a version of the spell that trips every person, lames every horse and breaks every axle in the fogbank.
I suppose in other cases clouds of Ulgu that create signs of troops that are not there would fit pretty well with ordinary people's experience of types of uncertainty.
But like, if we wanted a spell that would cast bless weapon we should abandon the purely cloud/fog aesthetic, instead make a spell that creates a foggy/shadowed imitation of the entrance to a temple, but one that people can't really see or maybe even tell what type of temple it is, then as they cross the threshold of it their weapons are mass blessed.
And I think a sleep spell would honestly pair better with some sort of Ulgu mass imitating a 'coming of night' style aesthetic, and would be sort of out of our trait range anyway.
I guess I'm just asking because it feels like a 'what if we cast a spell to make them dead' thing. It's the goal, but if each spell is basically a little story then it's like asking 'what if we have a story where we win'?
I apologize if that sounds like I'm being short or anything. I wouldn't mind having a spell like that. I guess it's just because it doesn't use the little 'mind, 'shadow', 'fog' (and sometimes 'daemons') building blocks anywhere, so it doesn't seem like something Ulgu could decide to do.
I'd half agree.
I've also got some mostly disconnected thoughts this line of discussion has raised.
Can the Mystifying Miasma make horses trip and lame themselves?
What about a fog that simply creates lucky encounters/moments of perception or lack of perception for soldiers in it, how well would that work? How well would it keep track of friendly soldiers?
Nah, I get where you're coming from. Like I said, I was thinking more about intangibility abuse in general rather than in specifics. Though on that topic...
Very nasty idea: a spell that makes all air in its AoE intangible. Mathilde made a comment back when she was adventuring with Johann that she had to learn not to make herself intangible to air when using substance of shadow, so I can certainly see that being at least theoretically possible, and the effect of making all air that enters the spell radius intangible would be devastating. First everybody in the AoE of the spell gets caught in a vacuum chamber, then you get wind currents pulling everything around that towards the spell as all surrounding air rushes in to the 'vacuum' and gets made intangible itself, and then finally when you cancel the spell all the air become tangible again and you get a huge pressure bomb from the massive amount of air suddenly reappearing in such a (relatively) small space.
And before it gets asked, no, despite justifying it I don't think this would be a spell we could get or make. It's a fun idea, nothing more.
I dunno, but it is pretty awesome. It does seem outside of out current traits.
There must be an Ulgu battle wizard with the traits to develop such a thing though.
And it sorta? Fits with some of the common perceptions of air, for example in medieval times people commonly disbelieved that air has substance, and there are a bunch of recorded cases of people being wierded out by the revelation whenever a sailor told them that sails wouldn't work without air being a substance.
Play off that uncertainty for the spell. But yeah, not something we've got the ability to develop.
