[WHF] The Broken Mirror - A Divided Loyalties Peggy Sue
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Plot armour is an entirely OOC thing, and in this case it'll return practically immediately because - well, I feel kinda bad.
Enchanting Battle Magic is currently either more dangerous than casting battle magic - roughly equivalent to your first cast of a given battle magic - or takes two AP. That's just my thinking on how it should work - but as it hasn't come up it's open to change.
But Mathilde cannot yet do Battle Magic Enchantment. She needs either more practice or some training. The Cauldron was good practise however, as was participating in the Eye of Gazul, so she's getting close.
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My mental image is roughly this:
They're bent over normally, because they can move on all fours (their arms are elongated and they're digitigrade with their legs, knuckle-walking for hands, when on all fours) but they can still stand straight.
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- Utrecht
well, that one probably has the same mobility as an ape, so pretty good. The posture from the models is so incredibly bad: they would have terrible mobility unless moving on all fours, and even then... with a twisted spine their shoulders would be extremely restricted in range of motion.My mental image is roughly this:
They're bent over normally, because they can move on all fours (their arms are elongated and they're digitigrade with their legs, knuckle-walking for hands, when on all fours) but they can still stand straight.
I wouldn't. I'd expect that a human hero would beat a non-hero vampire more than half the time, but wouldn't be able to do so without significant risk, they'd be in serious danger of dying - particularly because a vampire can recover from damage that would cause a human hero to bleed out and die unless they received magical healing in short order afterwards.
Is getting a tutor for battle magic enchanting something Melkoth can help us organise?
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Yes. Battle magic as a whole is his sphere - so interacting with battle magic enchanters is definitely in there.
Useful to know.
I wonder if he might also be able to set us up with a tutor for making Powerstones. They seem like the kind of thing that battle mages might make greater use of than normal wizards.
Enchanting with battle magic also seems like something where arrays of powerstones might come in handy.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
I'm very tempted by the idea of asking for our great sword to be enchanted with Mindrazor. It's the closest we'll get to getting our cannon sword back with out dwarf rep.
I'd prefer not to enchant an existing greatsword. A lot of the value of Mindrazor is that it doesn't enhance an existing weapon, it creates a new quasi-real one for the target of the spell. That would seem to have much more of the functionality of Branahule. For example, let's say we enchanted a circlet or glove with the spell. We could wear that wherever we went; allowing us to create the sword on demand without having to smuggle it in.
Depending on how it works and how the trigger for activating the item works, the quasi-real nature of the weapon it makes may mean that it can do some of the other tricks that Branahule could. For example, controlling its degree of reality so it can pass through some objects but not others. Or, as I suggested before, making a pair of Mindrazors, one for Mathilde and one for her Shadow to wield.
I think we're better of spending the AP to get trained to make our own Mindrazor rather than commissioning one. I suspect we'll get a better outcome that way.
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Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
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[X] [Retcon] No
[X] [Behaviour] Case-by-case - would have taken a vote in all of those cases if the previous vote wasn't explicit about how to respond to such a situation.
Dragon Paradox said it rather well here. If Mathilde and Wolf are both making it, I'd rather chalk it up to an IC brain failure to recognize how much less well-equipped we actually are for high-stakes combat (if that wasn't guaranteed, I'd want a retcon no question). But in future, calling a vote would absolutely be the way to go IMO. Picklepikkl has also spoken very articulately as to when and why they'd expect a vote to be called, and you can basically add a "yeah, that" from me to the bottom of every post they've made about it.
As someone who did read the discussion up to this point, some of the feedback did feel like it was suffering from some The Internet Can't See Your Face type overaggression. Hopefully not mine! I do usually try to watch myself for that. But if so, then my apologies.
Regarding the complaints I've made about the Seed, I want to try to be more clear about why specifically that bothers me, since I think so far I might have come off a bit as just complaining because it's not quite what I wanted. And that's not it, or at least I don't feel as if it is. The reason that this specific drawback for the Seed bothers me is that it is fundamentally no longer usable in a manner analogous to the original spell. Variance or limitations in strength, recharge rate, recharge conditions or methods, all of that makes sense to me to an extent. The original DL-canon Seed in fact actually was limited compared to the base spell - it had a range of Touch instead of a range of 24" on the tabletop (that's twice pistol range, for reference), and was exclusively a single-target heal whereas the BM version can theoretically heal or revive multiple people at a go, even if it's not the charged-up Throne of Vines version.
But by limiting the range and to an extent limiting the strength, what you've got is a more limited version of the combat healing spell the enchantment is based on. By extending the time to effect, what you've got is a combat spell turned into a non-combat enchantment. Particularly when that time is extended by as much as happened; assuming a 10-second round as in WFRP 2e, increasing the cast time/time to effect from one round to one minute is an ~600% increase if I'm mathing right. And actually combat spells in WFRP usually don't even take the whole round to cast; they're more like a half-action most of the time IIRC (I don't have my copy of the book handy at the moment or I'd double-check). It's arguably a bit apples-to-oranges to be fair since Regrowth is actually from the TT, but if there's an in-universe definition of how much time passes in a TT round I haven't seen or don't remember it, so I went with the closest option I had. And given the things you can do in a TT round I don't think "10 seconds" is wildly unreasonable, especially since the spell actually happens in just the Casting phase and doesn't require your wizard to not move or anything.
Like, imagine commissioning a Wand of Fireball, and the item you get given takes a full minute to produce a fireball from the wand after you trigger it. Is that really delivering what you ordered? If it doesn't produce a fireball as powerful as a real Bright Wizard could cast, or that is otherwise more limited than at least the higher end of the original spell, that's not necessarily unexpected from an enchantment. But if you order an enchantment based on a combat spell and you get an enchantment that isn't really viable for use in combat, that's changing the nature of what you're getting, not just the strength. Does that make sense?
[X] [Behaviour] Case-by-case - would have taken a vote in all of those cases if the previous vote wasn't explicit about how to respond to such a situation.
Dragon Paradox said it rather well here. If Mathilde and Wolf are both making it, I'd rather chalk it up to an IC brain failure to recognize how much less well-equipped we actually are for high-stakes combat (if that wasn't guaranteed, I'd want a retcon no question). But in future, calling a vote would absolutely be the way to go IMO. Picklepikkl has also spoken very articulately as to when and why they'd expect a vote to be called, and you can basically add a "yeah, that" from me to the bottom of every post they've made about it.
As someone who did read the discussion up to this point, some of the feedback did feel like it was suffering from some The Internet Can't See Your Face type overaggression. Hopefully not mine! I do usually try to watch myself for that. But if so, then my apologies.
What? Yes it did. We've used it for in-combat healing in DL canon on multiple occasions.
Regarding the complaints I've made about the Seed, I want to try to be more clear about why specifically that bothers me, since I think so far I might have come off a bit as just complaining because it's not quite what I wanted. And that's not it, or at least I don't feel as if it is. The reason that this specific drawback for the Seed bothers me is that it is fundamentally no longer usable in a manner analogous to the original spell. Variance or limitations in strength, recharge rate, recharge conditions or methods, all of that makes sense to me to an extent. The original DL-canon Seed in fact actually was limited compared to the base spell - it had a range of Touch instead of a range of 24" on the tabletop (that's twice pistol range, for reference), and was exclusively a single-target heal whereas the BM version can theoretically heal or revive multiple people at a go, even if it's not the charged-up Throne of Vines version.
But by limiting the range and to an extent limiting the strength, what you've got is a more limited version of the combat healing spell the enchantment is based on. By extending the time to effect, what you've got is a combat spell turned into a non-combat enchantment. Particularly when that time is extended by as much as happened; assuming a 10-second round as in WFRP 2e, increasing the cast time/time to effect from one round to one minute is an ~600% increase if I'm mathing right. And actually combat spells in WFRP usually don't even take the whole round to cast; they're more like a half-action most of the time IIRC (I don't have my copy of the book handy at the moment or I'd double-check). It's arguably a bit apples-to-oranges to be fair since Regrowth is actually from the TT, but if there's an in-universe definition of how much time passes in a TT round I haven't seen or don't remember it, so I went with the closest option I had. And given the things you can do in a TT round I don't think "10 seconds" is wildly unreasonable, especially since the spell actually happens in just the Casting phase and doesn't require your wizard to not move or anything.
Like, imagine commissioning a Wand of Fireball, and the item you get given takes a full minute to produce a fireball from the wand after you trigger it. Is that really delivering what you ordered? If it doesn't produce a fireball as powerful as a real Bright Wizard could cast, or that is otherwise more limited than at least the higher end of the original spell, that's not necessarily unexpected from an enchantment. But if you order an enchantment based on a combat spell and you get an enchantment that isn't really viable for use in combat, that's changing the nature of what you're getting, not just the strength. Does that make sense?
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It does make sense - but to me it's very much a matter of what you're asking for. The original seed of regrowth was specifically asked for because the voters wanted to be able to bring back injured or dead allies (and/or self) after a combat. The in-combat usage immediacy was a bonus but not the original goal.
I took the vote for what to get this time around as having the same overall intent as the original one - and for the that intent the seed you got is perfectly fit, while a hypothetical seed with only one charge that works exactly like the Battle Magic spell wouldn't be.
To use your hypothetical: If you asked for "a wand of fireball so I can blast down fortifications or use it to start combats" I would consider a one-minute trigger perfectly reasonable as a quirk.
EDIT: To be clear, one of the biggest uses of the seed is one that's literally impossible in the tabletop - the triggered healing of the caster. That part of the request means you're going significantly beyond the battle-magic spell in one area. Without that bit the in-combat usage that you really want still wouldn't be possible.
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Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
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Interesting. I can't offhand think of a single time we've actually used the Seed in DL-canon to heal allies after a fight, though. Even with training the Ducklings, IIRC - we said we'd use it on them if necessary before we sent them in to attack, but it was never actually necessary. We wanted to use it on poor Gotrek of course, but that didn't pan out for unrelated reasons. While Mathilde has used it to heal herself mid-combat encounter repeatedly, on at least one notable occasion (Alkharad) surviving the encounter solely because she was able to do so.
More fundamentally, I never read the original thread discussion of buying the Seed in DL, because I only caught up later. I doubt I'm the only one that's true for. I just read how it actually got used in the thread, and when we voted to buy it again I thought we were voting to buy something that would be useful in the same way that the Seed had been useful before. It was, in all honesty, a nasty shock when we got something that wasn't.
In general, I do think it's legitimate to shape the range or type of acceptable quirks around voters' intent - but if that's going to be the case, I'd like there to be a requirement to actually put the intent in the vote. E.g., if a vote is for:
[*] [College] Bright: Fire Ball - 3 CF
-[*] We want an item to blast down fortifications or start combats from stealth
Then I'd agree that a minute's casting time isn't entirely unreasonable. But if the vote is just for:
[*] [College] Bright: Fire Ball - 3 CF
Then getting an item that isn't usable in the same general manner as Fire Ball would feel rather more like a bait and switch IMO. And I mean that regardless of whatever thread discussion there may or may not have been; not everybody wants to read all the thread discussion before voting, and IMO any vote options should be legible for anybody who just reads the updates and then votes, or who doesn't want to catch up on 100% of the thread chatter every time.
Also, and this part might just be a me thing, excessive quirkiness in "standard" enchantments can be a bit wearing. I mean, it made sense to me when the Dragon Flask in DL had a significant quirk to it - taking a 5 CF spell and scaling it up to 20 CF is quite the readjustment, and that's a lot of magic to push into one item. I'm not averse to a degree of quirkiness in enchantments generally, but if it's just a "standard" enchantment of an existing spell at the normal CF cost I would personally prefer it if any quirkiness is relatively minimal and low-impact. 12 CF is also a pretty fair-sized chunk of magic to push into an item to be fair, so a higher degree of (potential) quirkiness in a Battle Magic enchantment like the Seed makes more sense too. I guess the upshot here is I'd prefer it if the chances and the potential severity of quirkiness scaled with the amount of magic (abstracted as CF cost, probably) put into the item rather than being an equal risk for any enchantment we might commission. And if any item below Battle Magic levels was relatively "reliable," as it were. Of course, we've only commissioned the one BM item thus far, but just in terms of thinking forward.
AFAIK, the only reason you can't use the spell to heal the wizard casting it in the tabletop is just because it can't be used to heal characters or the mounts of characters (other mounts are fine though) and wizards all count as characters, which is pretty blatantly a game balance restriction that has no in-universe rationale. Because it's not like "character" in the TT sense is even really a conceptual category in-universe, much less one that would plausibly make magic fundamentally work differently. And if that restriction was enforced, it would also make literally the only valid uses of the Seed in both DL-canon and Mirror-canon illegal (i.e., for healing on named characters). The auto-trigger after death is definitely a value-add that's unique to the enchantment though, that's true. Though in terms of the current iteration of the Seed, even with the stealthier form of activation, the slow cast time also gives enemies six times as long to make their spot check or just start interacting with Mathilde's corpse for unrelated reasons (e.g., looting... or eating, relevantly) which would presumably help a lot with spotting anything spooky happening.
I'm not trying to push for a retcon of the Seed we got this time, but I will absolutely be voting to return it and ask for a version that's meant to do what I thought I was voting for the first time at the earliest opportunity. And I hope that my feedback on item enchantments was, I dunno, useful at least?
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Battle Magic tier items are the only ones that get quirks when commissioned - other than the whole thing of charging methods and even there, the charging methods for things below battle-magic tend to be easy, like "exist at dawn and dusk" for Ulgu, "put it near a fire" for Aqshy or "leave it in sunlight" for Hysh.
That's something I'll do going forward. In fact, given the way Battle Magic Enchanted Items as a thing seem to be evolving I'd say that (as with runic items in DL) the purpose should be primary, with the spell being used mostly as a "well, it's roughly X difficulty for that wind" to work out how much CF to spend.
That was the bit I meant - wasn't thinking about the inability to target heroes because... yeah. I mean, it could probably be represented by you targeting a unit of soldiers and not being able to specifically pick out an individual, but that'd be a bit pointless to make a rule.
Definitely. It's crystalized that treating Battle Magic enchantments as "say what spell you want" isn't the right way to go - this seed had the exact same problem as the Dragon Flask in DL, it got a downside that some felt was fine and others felt destroyed the purpose because different people had different ideas of what they were voting for.
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- New Brunswick, NJ
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Yeah; Alkharad was the most memorable time, but literally the first outing the Seed ever had was to heal ourself mid-battle:
The other times we've used it onscreen were mid-Alkharad, after the orcs cut and run in our Karagril adventure where we nearly died, and when we were intimidating Qrech. So that's two mid-fight usages, one post-fight usage, and one purely narrative use; we've never used it to heal someone else.
I'm in the same boat of "wasn't around when we bought it the first time, was just thinking in terms of recreating the item we already had." But I was also one of the people saying that we probably wouldn't be able to get exactly the item we originally had, because magic item creation is almost always extremely individualized and prone to attendant quirks in DL-WHF. So, you know, c'est la quest. If the option to return it and fish for one that suits our purposes better is available, though, I'm definitely down.
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You almost certainly can't get the exact item, but if you specify certain facets those facets can be assured, in exchange for more chance of weakness in other areas.
For instance you could guarantee the stay-upright effect, with auto-trigger, and the ability to heal an ally - but specifying that much means a lower number of charges baseline and a strong chance of a negative quirk in another area (for instance - extremely difficult recharge or being visible on your body [while still planted into it, and destroyed if removed by force]).
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Thinking on it - given how enchanting works when Mathilde is doing it, it's clearly possible for an enchanter to put extra effort and extra resources into their work, so I'm happy to extend the "scale with added CF" to other realms than Aqshy. Another change I may make when it comes time for purchase-vote again.
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I do not think we should try to get another seed of rebirth type item.
Part of the charm of the quest to me is how Mathilde tries to get the same outcome despite different circumstances.
Pushing too hard to get equipment that works in the same way is a step too far. I'd rather adapt our actions to what the dice give us than keep rolling the dice until we get the outcome we want.
If we make a Mindrazor item (whether its a sword or a bracelet), we won't have to depend on meeting Kragg and having enough DF at the moment when Belegar is rewarding people for his victory.
Not to mention Kragg might have different ideas this time. Or he might not be available.
And so on
Part of the charm of the quest to me is how Mathilde tries to get the same outcome despite different circumstances.
Pushing too hard to get equipment that works in the same way is a step too far. I'd rather adapt our actions to what the dice give us than keep rolling the dice until we get the outcome we want.
If we make a Mindrazor item (whether its a sword or a bracelet), we won't have to depend on meeting Kragg and having enough DF at the moment when Belegar is rewarding people for his victory.
Not to mention Kragg might have different ideas this time. Or he might not be available.
And so on
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
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To an extent I agree, but we could really, really, really use viable in-combat healing. And currently our stock of CF is both comparatively plentiful and also our most easily-renewable resource, at least until we run out of papers to rewrite. I would actually be in favor of sending the Seed back, and then after covering the CF hit for requesting a do-over actually putting some extra CF into it per the QM's recent note about making enchantment effects scaleable to CF invested (to at least an extent). There are a lot of things where variation in reaching the same point is fine, but healing is an absolutely critical benefit to a character, and Regrowth is tough to beat. And not irrelevantly, it's also the one most directly connected to whether the quest is able to continue, since dead protagonists will tend to put rather a crimp in most quests.
A sword of Mindrazor is a very interesting idea, but it's one I'd rather Mathilde make herself. Spending CF for enchantments based on spells from our spellbook, when we're a talented enchanter to boot, just feels like a waste. If we want an interim "fuck you" magic sword, I'd rather plop down 3 CF for a Flaming Greatsword of Rhuin from the Brights. That's also one that could presumably benefit from socking a little extra CF into it, if we felt like it.
In fact, hm. We kept the Wind-Herder trait from DL. So AFAIK nothing says that rather than being just an interim weapon, the Flaming Greatsword of Rhuin could just be the foundational level of a Flaming Mindrazor of Rhuin. We could destroy our enemies both body and mind. It's redundant with our Kragg Sword in DL, but that could be a fucking awesome weapon for us to make a project out of this go-round. And it makes me feel better about the idea of "overspending" on it now if we can upgrade it to also incorporate Mindrazor later.
Uh, QM, is that viable? It makes sense in my head, but that's not strictly speaking a guarantee.
We should also invest in making some proper enchanted robes soon so we aren't reliant on casting Aethyric Armor every minute or whatever. We should probably relearn some more spells first though, since at least in the RP it scales off your Magic characteristic. When we do, we could give Windherder a trial run and get a Gold to contribute Guard of Steel. It's a Relatively Simple spell, so combining that with a Lesser spell cast with Ulgu is basically the easiest milk run we can get (especially since Golds are famous for being good enchanters themselves). And it doesn't overlap with any other spell effects so it won't create Dhar inside our body.
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I agree that we should be the ones doing the enchantment on the sword, but realistically we're not going to be casting Mindrazor ourselves any time soon.
We're going to need a fuck-you sword way before we are able to:
1) we need to get magic 7 before learning, the quickest way being two turns of intensive training with grandpa Melkoth.
2) we need to learn mindrazor, which is a high level battle magic spell, without a room of calamity. I.e almost certainly eating a miscast
3) learn bm level enchantment
4) 2 AP for the enchantment itself.
Optimistically that's 3 turns.
Otoh, we could
1) learn BM enchantment (1ap)
2) hire a BW that can cast it and make the sword (2ap)
Which is a much more reasonable proposition
I'd add a powestone or two in either case.
Not a fan of Flaming sword. There's unsubtle (big honking sword) and there's UNSUBTLE (Flaming sword of rhuin).
Not to mention, our first foray into windherder shouldn't be BM level enchantment. Those are quirky enough as it is.
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I counter with this:
We need at least some time out of combat to make use of our DL seed. It was most relevant in the fight against orcs in Karagril.
We weren't able to use it while the orcs kept coming, only after we managed to disengage.
We only were able to use it with Alkharad because he was lieing on the ground in pain due to his Burning Brain.
Qrech wasn't attacking us.
It would have made no difference in the current scenario.
Any half-way decent opponent will make use of Mathilde being unable to move by killing her instantly, making the Seed non-viable during combat.
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Sure, but per the quote in my post you quoted, on the very first time we used it, we were able to use it during what seemed like a several-second breather. We killed the orcs directly attacking us, the Seed kicked in, and then we went back to fighting the orcs that were slightly further away. This would be very useful in our current situation in this quest, even if it's not "while being actively attacked" healing.
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Yes, but we did need the couple seconds of a breather.
It wouldn't have made a difference in this very fight that almost killed Mathilde here. So switching the Seed up because of this fight would be senseless, the different one would help just as bad as our current one.
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We're already relying on in-combat healing: the winning plan for this past round centers around the need to get our arm back and activate it a second time. If we had the OTL Jade Seed here, the current situation would be much less dire because plan Skywalk-up-a-tree would require significantly less time without interference. Given what kingreaper has shared (that both we and Wolf survived), it appears it worked out anyway, but it would mean that the time we need to pray "the ghouls don't roll well enough to climb fast" or "the vC doesn't double back and wreck our shit" or "Wolf doesn't bleed out" would have been less by an order of magnitude, and I don't think that should be dismissed.
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Upgrading enchanted items after they're completed is extremely hard. Windherding them is basically impossible if not planned in advance - you'd need to be present (spending an AP) for the creation of the Flaming Greatsword to give guidance on where to leave gaps for the Mindrazor.
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Hey @kingreaper... How is the update coming along?
We're all on tenterhooks...
Or are you wanting to close the new vote first?
We're all on tenterhooks...
Or are you wanting to close the new vote first?
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Need to close the new vote and have the issue of whether or not to retcon permanently behind me before turning the bullet points into prose. Also need to eat breakfast and sanity pills.
I've rolled for both options (retcon and not) and neither should take hugely long to write. Also started on the socials that I've been failing on.