Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Alliterate said:
So, what's likely to happen with the pikes, which they seemingly haven't used in millennia?
Are we gonna see Dwarven Hoplite Phalanxes? :V

Or (heretically?) chop em down to spears or shortswords?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well depending on how they are sized, and hear me out on this, we do have about 500 Demigryph Knights. So if they are the right size....well I would say that they would add a lot of punch to an already heavy hammer of a unit.
 
Three foot halflings with fifteen foot pikes... :D

Pikes made a comeback in the 15th and 16th century, mixed in with crossbows and halberds (the Swiss) or arquebuses (the Spanish), providing cover while the ranged troops reloaded.

Time for a tactical revolution?
 
notanautomaton said:
We have it in the Battle Magic lore attribute, allowing a free teleport with every spell. However, there is no way to teleport without casting a different spell first, which is kind of whack.

Similarly, Ghyran needs to either cast a different spell first or use full Battle Magic to heal.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yea unfortunately 2E kind of screwed up a little with the magic lores, Light magic has a dedicated healing spell for instance.
 
notanautomaton said:
We have it in the Battle Magic lore attribute, allowing a free teleport with every spell. However, there is no way to teleport without casting a different spell first, which is kind of whack.

Similarly, Ghyran needs to either cast a different spell first or use full Battle Magic to heal.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, Realms of Sorcery are full of holes. It's not the most quality part of WH. Or most balanced. (I.e.: mindhole, one of easiest spells of Ulgu allows You to permamently erase months and years of memories, without touching target, without it being aware of spell, and without possibility to ever retrieving those memories). But Boney tend to take things as stated - and fluff-wise lack of spells that should be there may be explainable with fact that colleges are still young. We can always hope it will change in time. We'll see.
 
When the Quest started 4e wasn't out and 3e was widely derided so I stuck with 2e, warts and all. If I started over now I'd make different decisions, but you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

At some point I'll be going through 4th and deciding which spells are 'new discoveries' that the Grey College is going to start making widely available.

Edit: Oh, and voting closed, writing has begun.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, a pike block phalanx can get a hell of a lot done, but generally requires greater agility and aggression than dwarfs are usually capable of to make it work.

Halflings...

Well, these are Dwarf sized pikes for one thing, so they'll be managable, and halflings have the agility to make it work...

Christ, are we going to see the Swiss Halfling Pikemen? The lunatics who could take on all comers by stabbing them in the face en masse at the first sign of trouble?
 
I'm not seeing a "stand and fight" strategy, very nice pikes or not, working well for halflings. There's no getting around the fact that they are three feet tall and, unlike dwarves, don't make up for it with being nearly as wide and stocky.

Now, using dwarf-sized pikes as lances for monstrous cavalry, on the other hand, should go fabulously well.

Even the dismounted knights would make fantastic use of it. High skill, Strenght and heavy armor.
 
Last edited:
BoneyM said:
At some point I'll be going through 4th and deciding which spells are 'new discoveries' that the Grey College is going to start making widely available.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not much new in it at this point. Main rulebook includes only limited number of spells (8 for Ulgu), and none of them is new. It's mostly Realms of Sorcery revamped into more balanced form (i.e.: Mindhole turns into much more limited Mindslip). Only new thing at this point is introduction of Hedgecraft and Witch magic (druids-lite and self-taught mages).

Magic will have its own book. But as far as I know, it's not there yet.

Edit: one Ulgu spell is new. Shadowstep which allows to teleport WP yards.
 
Last edited:
As Titus Muggins attested when Mathilde spoke to him during the long march, the problem with having a homeland is that eventually you have to stand and fight, whether it's physiologically appropriate for you or not. There's an argument to be made as to whether it's better to magnify a strength or try to shore up a weakness, but the Dwarves are much more likely to end up giving the arms to those that are sticking around for the long haul.

DiceOfStupidity said:
Not much new in it at this point. Main rulebook includes only limited number of spells (8 for Ulgu), and none of them is new. It's mostly Realms of Sorcery revamped into more balanced form (i.e.: Mindhole turns into much more limited Mindslip). Only new thing at this point is introduction of Hedgecraft and Witch magic (druids-lite and self-taught mages).

Magic will have its own book. But as far as I know, it's not there yet.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That was my impression too. Realms of Sorcery might not be balanced, but I like the flavour of each given Wind having something that is just bonkers broken. It makes magic feel properly terrifying.
 
Oh yeah @BoneyM does our Lore Attribute require a Battle Magic spell to trigger?

I assume that, if we learned it, we could just take a normal amount of time to use it, rather than weave it into another spell?
 
I'll give it proper thought once you learn it, but my thoughts at the moment is that you'd be able to use it to just teleport, as well as optionally teleporting whenever you cast a spell of Battle Magic or Fiendishly Complex. Range will probably be limited to about a hundred yards or so, and though you won't technically need line of sight it'd be a really good idea to have it to avoid breaking physics by trying to occupy the same space as something else.
 
Last edited:
BoneyM said:
I'll give it proper thought once you learn it, but my thoughts at the moment is that you'd be able to use it to just teleport, as well as optionally teleporting whenever you cast a spell of Battle Magic or Fiendishly Complex. Range will probably be limited to about a hundred yards or so, and though you won't technically need line of sight it'd be a really good idea to have it to avoid breaking physics by trying to occupy the same space as something else.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I am now imagining a Mathilde with a magical greatsword using that to essentially jump around the battlefield lopping off the heads of anyone who looks to be important.
 
BoneyM said:
but you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Did you just reference yourself or is this an expression you use often?
Because Van Hal said this exact thing to Gustav when he grumbled about I think the army not having enough cavalry. This must have been just before the first forays into Sylvania.

Anyway, that tickled me in a good way.
 
DiceOfStupidity said:
Not much new in it at this point. Main rulebook includes only limited number of spells (8 for Ulgu), and none of them is new. It's mostly Realms of Sorcery revamped into more balanced form (i.e.: Mindhole turns into much more limited Mindslip). Only new thing at this point is introduction of Hedgecraft and Witch magic (druids-lite and self-taught mages).

Magic will have its own book. But as far as I know, it's not there yet.

Edit: one Ulgu spell is new. Shadowstep which allows to teleport WP yards.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's also got an expanded list of what it calls Arcane Spells, which are Lesser Magics but limited to wizards and unavailable to priests. For example, there's Aethyric Arms which gives you a weapon, Flight which lets you fly, and Teleport which lets you teleport.

It's also got more Petty Spells, which again are limited to wizards. Rather than being taught by the colleges, they're actually the tricks that an untrained wizard picks up before they get lynched or sent to the colleges. After their tutelage is done, wizards are never supposed to use them again, though it's noted that most do anyway. Such spells include Drain which damages a creature and heals you, Protection from Rain which keeps you dry even when it's raining, and Bearings which tells you where magic is coming from and where North is.
 
BoneyM said:
That was my impression too. Realms of Sorcery might not be balanced, but I like the flavour of each given Wind having something that is just bonkers broken. It makes magic feel properly terrifying.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I always felt that WBF magic didn't really need to be balanced in the same way that magic in other systems did, just because of the way it can always blow up in your face.

Not that Realms didn't need fixing, just that instead of getting rid of the crazy stuff, the crazy stuff should just be given really bad effects if you nat 1 and top of the random effects. that way it will always be a bit of a risk.
 
Alectai said:
Yeah, a pike block phalanx can get a hell of a lot done, but generally requires greater agility and aggression than dwarfs are usually capable of to make it work.

Halflings...

Well, these are Dwarf sized pikes for one thing, so they'll be managable, and halflings have the agility to make it work...

Christ, are we going to see the Swiss Halfling Pikemen? The lunatics who could take on all comers by stabbing them in the face en masse at the first sign of trouble?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I imagine the halflings who settle here will have a more military tradition and the will be in the mountains so I could see them going down that route.
 
So, what I think is going on with the Fear spells is that it's tapping into "fear of the unknown" while Aqshy's 'burning skull' spell is More Fire with a bit of sculpting to make a skull, which is scary because, well, lots of fire is scary (see; running into a burning house). Ulgu is tapping into the sort of fear of the unknown you get with monsters under the bed. When the light was on you knew there wasn't anything under there, but as night falls your certainty wanes.
 
In WFRP 4e, all Lore of Shadow spells that deal damage ignore non-magical armour. Is that the same here?
 
Except for Burning Shadows, yes. But that's due to the individual properties of the spells rather than being a property of Shadow Magic.
 
Andres110 said:
In WFRP 4e, all Lore of Shadow spells that deal damage ignore non-magical armour. Is that the same here?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Should be, yeah, except maybe burning shadows (the shadow we're touching might not count as being continuous with the shadows under their armor or something). They don't seem to be doing anything to people that non-magical armor could protect them from.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top