Given that there were three separate factions with Greater Daemon-equivalents each, and that's just what made it out to the surface, I suspect that much of the Chaos forces inside came down with a nasty case of fratricide.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Oh hey everyone, look who picked up a new trait.
Yay everyone, yay! Horstmann grows more powerful!
Yay everyone, yay! Horstmann grows more powerful!
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SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Sure but there's a more than a 20% chance the average battle mage explodes whilst making that attempt tbh, so It doesn't feel like the risk/reward is there. Keep in mind the equivalent performance in the TT is something you can do completely risk free, and we're getting a double whammy of its safer for us and more powerful. that +20 is with the staff bonus. Other shadow battle mages get less performance from the spell and have much worse risk.
I don't think it's actually a good trade for any 'normal' battle mage to use the spell.
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- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
I don't like powergaming. It's coarse and rough and irritating. And it gets everywhere.
Thank you, thank you. Haven't been banned yet, so I'm here all week folks!
There is a part of me the is deeply enjoying my belief on how the 'Horstmann thing' is going to play out:
The two possible states of "Horstmann" in the quest that we players are going to be dealing with are: "Is somehow confirmed to be chaos cultist" and "May or may not be a cultist"
I genuinely believe that if he is not a cultist, that we will never get 100% confirmation of that fact....
Well, maybe after quest end BoneyM might tell us, but I'd not assume that he will. So with that in mind, I am specturaly chill about him. Mathilde has no reason to doubt him, if he is a cultist, he is going to be extra careful around a Lord Magister Grey, and he has already been fooling the other college that focuses on intrigue.
As a player, I have the same approach to the possibility that he is a cultist that I do to the possibility that the earth might be hit with a gamma ray burst in the next few billion years.
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Redoing a massive ritual that lasted for hundreds of years after a backlash is going to be really hard, and there is no army of daemons around.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
One note for the post-mortem: I think that, in hindsight, we absolutely made the right choice about whether and where to hold them.
Thanks, Ranald.
Slowing them down and sending a warning would have failed, possibly catastrophically, as a result of the Dawimonettes not needing to contend with Daemonic Instability. Fortifying the Karak entrance would have resulted in us taking the entire tri-Chaos clusterfuck on the chin. Holding a more distant point seems to have been the best option available to us, and thankfully the dice for "which factions went where" worked out.
Thanks, Ranald.
- Location
- Argentina
A slightly worrying thing about the fact taht there was a three-way fight is that some had the theory that there was a siege inside Vlag, and that's why the Karak flicked in and out to swat us, but couldn't commit all the forces.
The problem now is that the siege could have been between the forces of the four, and not between chaos and regular dawi survivors.
The problem now is that the siege could have been between the forces of the four, and not between chaos and regular dawi survivors.
- Location
- Aotearoa
Yeah. Much luck all round, in making what became the only right location decision, and boxcars.
We took damaging though predictable losses and were teetering on calamity (if the Pink-on-Red Slayer fight went just a little more lopsided, the hints are that we lose the fortifications, Ulricans and probably Rangers while they're still stunned). This was with the Vlag materialisation and Daemonic behaviour being as favourable to us as possible (two 6's).
So, yeah. Maybe we didn't get the peak moment of personal glory.
But we won, when it could easily have gone very, very badly for the Expedition here.
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The key difference is that one is being cast on a group while the other is being cast on an area - "a fog allies can see through but enemies can't" needs to be large enough to cover the entire battlefield and effect everybody at once, while "people in this group can't be counted" only needs to cover members of that group and possibly however many people are looking at them at once.
This means that the second option is at least theoretically much easier to scale then the first, so for large campaigns where there might be multiple fronts you can get similar effects by easily/cheaply casting the spell on a small group and sending them out to skirmish with scouts on the opposing side - whereas the first one would need to be cast extremely widely (which is very power intensive) to cover multiple fronts.
IMO the second option is easier to scale down to the point of potentially not being a battle magic - which means codifying it and teaching it to others would be that much more valuable.
Based on the experiences of the Battle Wizards in Sylvania, I have to say the bolded is vastly overstating the dangers. There's a decent danger of miscast, but there are multiple ways of mitigating the consequences of a miscast.
- Location
- UK
Quest ends and Boney sets up the sequel with one of the Hysh bandlings as protagonist, and we proceed with several more years of trying to figure out if Horstmann is a Chaos Cultist in a combination of Boney flexing and taking vengeance upon us.
Would be even better if Hyshbandduckling is a Chaos Cultist.
Our Slayers did crit-fail against their crit-success.
WhiteNights
Notorious Phoneposter
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Aotearoa
not sure what point you're making? I'm referring to Boney highlighting the difference between a barely-crit, and a 'high crit' by 20+ or so, and how bad the latter would have been.
Our Slayers all dying was well within the expected outcomes of the (first, any) fight anyway, as that's their goal.
- Location
- Utrecht
I really don't think that's a problem. Before, any survivors would have been fighting Demons on their home ground, as well as fallen dwarfs... in an environment where their defences could have collapsed at any moment due to the nature of the Aethyr.
Back in reality, after a few days it's likely that their lives got a lot easier due to the demons vanishing and physics starting to work again.
Unless the Demons were sandbagging all along, playing with their food to make more dwarfs fall, and once the Hold rematerialized, they give a last push to kill those that haven't fallen.
But that's assuming that there are any survivors at all.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
I don't believe that's the case you can mitigate the miscasts yes but they have a dramatically larger chance of miscasting MMM than we do. Mathilde had a 22% chance of miscasting. Mathilde casting generic battle magic that doesn't have a staff difficulty decrease would have a 72% chance of miscasting, if anything I'm dramatically underestimating the chance of them dying each cast. The narrative doesn't seem to reflect the mechanics we're operating under or quite simply all of the battle mages are being given access to much better training to cast BM spells than we've been given thus far which is quite possible.
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- Location
- Argentina
Yeah, I was assuming there were survivors by how the defenders were positioned.
Now, there is another explanation besides "survivors"
- Location
- Aotearoa
This is all very appropriate. The thread, and Mathilde, were fighting the Tempter after all.
Mathilde with visions of perfect success, adulation and draconic head pats.
I suspect- expect- this is the case, given the specific College infrastructure built up around them.
Boney said the elevated difficulty roll was for the first casting in battle, it wouldn't always be a 50 by default. Seems reasonable to guess 'real' BM has a similar elevated first-time-cast difficulty that gets easier with practise.
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Egrimm van Horstmann, Hero of the Empire and Dwarfs and Kislev indeed.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
The Dawimonettes also meant that they had probably willing sacrifices on hand to extend the lifespan of the actual daemonic contingent.
It's possible that being on site would mean that the enemy contingent would be operating under a heavy post magic quake malus. But then again so could the mages we brought.
The other thing that likely broke in our favor is that their efforts to suck in surrounding magic to sustain the effect probably had a serious impact on their overall lifespan once manifested.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hopefully our next teleport surprise attack will be more successful.
I mean, the Karak is technically the actual Waystone. This is more an entry point in the power supply.
We did up her mental defenses. Had a class on resisting Chaos and everything.
I mean, the Karak is technically the actual Waystone. This is more an entry point in the power supply.
Yep and yep on both counts.
And maybe Deathfang too, yes. Though as a named character, we could probably just use the Seed on him. On the other hand, the Seed wouldn't purge possible Daemonic poisons which is the point and reason behind using the Candle so... yeah.
Maybe Asarnil already has something for stuff like this. Offering the Candle might still be helpful to them though. Especially if what they have is limited in number or a bit costly.
... And I'd forgotten about the Knights of Taal's Fury. They didn't show up at all, which meant they must have been fully occupied with the Daemon cavalry. Which could mean they took very bad casualties (especially as the dice rolls were noted to be "very swingy") and could use some healing.
You're saying that any miscast is "explode". That is very much not the case. If the DC to avoid permanent consequences from a miscast is 50, and her Grounding Rod gives a +10 on that roll, Mathilde has a ~12% chance of permanent effects from a miscast. And while her Learning score is higher than most, dedicated Battle Wizards almost certainly have dedicated training (and therefore traits) which assist in both casting Battle Magic and dealing with miscasts. So, yes, Battle Wizards, as has been noted in-quest, spend years to decades in specialized training on how to handle Battle Magic. Mathilde has had none of that.
- Location
- Germany
The chance was for the first time we cast the spell under battlefield-conditions, every future one won't take a roll for us. And would propably take a much easier for other Battle Mages without the Staff.
King Arthur
The Once and Future King
Huh, here's a weird question.
Can we create a spell that does roughly the opposite, and instead of removing penalty to travel increases the penalty to travel?
Throw that in front of a fort and also cast MMM and the enemy will basically be traveling in slow motion.
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