Re: Battle Magic Gone Bad

From: Roderick and Ellen Robertson <rjremr_at_...>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 09:27:57 -0800

> +In the case of a lone hero against 188 oponents, if we read too much
> HeroWar as
> a story telling game with "characters over statistics", "heroism over
> realism"
> and movies as inspiration of how the contest will develop, the skill
levels
> of the
> protagonists are not relevant.

[snip]

Totally true, if there are no dice involved. Pulling out the dice and saying "okay, now we roll" ipso facto means that Fate (in the person of the Narrator) has taken a back seat to Luck. Then the skill of the opponents *does* matter. However, a 3-mastery advantage beats luck every time. The hero simply can't lose (as long as he can hang on to that advantage, of course - if the 188 change the contest by running away, or pleading for their lives, or staying out of reach and shooting him full of arrows, then that's a whole new ballgame).

> +Battle magic
> I think that the Lunar/Dara Happan have the secret that allow an
individual
> to give a magical
> effect to a each member of a group.

...
> I am confident that the barbarians will learn to do something similar in
the
> future of the hero wars

It's not a secret. Any group with a Guardian Being has this ability.

The Lunar secret is to give members of disparate groups the same Guardian Being - a vexilla is a "unit of detachments" - say, one cohort from the Steel Legion, a platoon of Thunder Delta Slingers, a taxeis of the Granite Phalanx, A wing of Rinliddi Feathered Lancers and a Great Hand of Dark Moon magicians. These detachments are part of their "parent" groups, but the Lares of the Vexilla is still able to treat them as a formal group.

The "Barbarians" haven't managed to make the transition from Clan/Tribe wyter to "Vexilla" style - you can't have warbands from other tribes in your Tribal warband (clan warbands *can* form together under the tribal warband Wyter, btw). So, for instance, you can't form all the Vanganthi in the Sartarite army into a "Flying Regiment" because their primary attachment is to the Clan warband. (HQ will have a reason not to break heroband alliances too often).

Argrath manages the trick, forming the "Magical Units" in the White Bear Red Moon/DragonPass boardgame. Instead of penny-packet clan or tribal-level magical support, now he can get a thousand magicians to function together, no matter what their origin (even integrating Shamans and Wizards in the mix).

RR