Communion Fatigue question--- strange obeservation

[konming]

I have made some tests with Pythium concerning communion. Since many times communion slaves are accidentally killed, it is worthwhile to find out how exactly fatigue is accumulated in communions.

The conventional wisdom is that, spell base fatigue is distributed among all(master and slave), then each one using his own path to adjust for fatigue and finally add the caster emcumbrance.

I found this to be totally untrue.

For the following examples, we take Theurg(1A1W2S2H,base 4 fat) as master, and Theurg Acolyte (1S1H,base 3 fat) or Theurg Communicant(no path, base 3 fat) as slaves.

The enviornment is either drain 1 or drain 2 in the experiments.

Case 1
With 2 TA as slaves
Spell Master Fat. Slave Fat.
Divine Blessing 3 6
Horror Mark 8 16
Air Shield 6 12
Dessication 13 26

Case 2
With 2 TC as slaves
Spell Master Fat. Slave Fat.
Divine Blessing 2 8
Horror Mark 8 32
Air Shield 5 20
Dessication 14 28

Case 3
With 4 TA as slaves
Spell Master Fat. Slave Fat.
Divine Blessing 1 2
Horror Mark 2 4
Air Shield 2 4
Dessication 4 8

We can see that in all cases, slave fatigue is mutiple of master (2x or 4x), this hints that emcumbrance is either ignored(unlikely) or somehow distributed among the communion.

Second, contrary to most people believe, TC is in many cases a worse slave than TA, and accumulates fatigue much faster and therefore dies much faster. Get 32 fatigue for a simple 2S 20 fatigue spell is just unbelivable.

Third, no matter how many slaves you add, master always gets less fatigue (at most half) than slaves and there seems to be no way to prevent master from overdraining slaves to death. The only solution I can think of is to let master cast no more than 5 spells and just retreat or stay behind troops. Maybe you let the one with less spell path to be the master? But that certainly is counter-productive.

So can anyone with insights or developers themselves shed light in this matter? Thanks!

[Tuidjy]

No, actually the common wisdom for communion is "Buggered if I know" :-)

[llamabeast]

I believe I wrote a really long post once about communion, so thought I understood well how it worked. But... I'm stumped, for the moment. I do remember that someone (LazyPerfectionist?) said he had found that Pythium's Communion Slave units were somehow a bit strange - but I can't remember in what way.

[konming]

I searched high and low in this forum and only got some apperantly incorrect answers, hence the post. Please all the gurus give us the insight.

[Folket]

I did some calc but divine blessing does not coast any fatigue... It also seems that you have gain less then base encumbrance, that is very suprising.

It also seems that large communions get much less fatigue then small ones. That is very intresting.

[Baalz]

Well, I�m no guru, and can�t answer the questions you�ve posed, but I can give a little insight into using a communion effectively.

1) Communion slaves get all paths boosted for communion spells, even paths they don�t have at all (though it doesn�t show on their character sheet). Even the �phantam� paths can be boosted by other means, so for instance any communicant will benefit from light of the northern star, phoenix power, etc. for the purposes of fatigue if any master casts it. Buff your slaves! Summon earth power is particularly good for obvious reasons.
2) Counter intuitively, placing your more powerful mages as slaves is often the best way to go. If your communion slaves start out at level 2 or 3 in whatever path is being cast, get a 2 or 3 level boost from the communion, get a further boost from phoenix power/power of the spheres/etc, they�ll end up taking very little fatigue from the stuff unscripted mages usually cast (falling fires, raise dead, etc). There is no encumbrance hit for the slaves so it�s not uncommon to see them taking 2-3 fatigue per casting which (assuming you�re raining down serious destruction) generally means they won�t get sucked dry. Also, it�s often the case that your more powerful mages have paths not available to your weaker ones, but not vice versa. Having the masters (for example) spamming raise dead when the slaves have no death magic is a tragic experience�
3) Manage to acquire a level one blood mage and do a tiny bit of blood research. Give him 2 blood slaves, script Sabbath master, hold, hold, hold, reinvigoration. He�ll go unconscious from the Sabbath master, sleep for a couple rounds (depending on magic scale and his encumbrance), wake up, wait three rounds then reinvigorate every one of the slaves about when they�re fatigue is starting to get dangerously high.
4) This one is kinda self evident, but apparently a lot of people don�t act upon it � communions need critical mass. Not only is a larger communion more powerful, it�s also safer. A three mage communion (2 slaves, 1 master) is almost certain to kill the slaves after a couple battles. A 6 mage one (4 slaves, 2 masters) you have to be careful with, and if you�re unlucky you�ll lose your slaves killing PD sometimes. A 16 mage communion (8 slaves, 8 masters) � if you set it up right you�re very unlikely to lose slaves due to the communion. This is because not only are they much better at distributing fatigue and boosting levels, but they also throw down so much damage that battles don�t drag on long enough for the fatigue to pile up.

[konming]

These are good points.

Altough concerning using your best mages as slaves is kind of impractical in many cases. First these better mages are often much less in number. Rarely can you afford to use 8 arch theugy in battle as slaves, when they could have cast thunderstrike, astral fire and alike. Second if you lose 8 acolyte theugy you will sigh and move on, but if you lose 8 arch theugy it might as well be game over. Third often only the best mages have the random path you need, and mixing good and bad slaves will just get the bad slaves killed.

Still appreicate your good thoughts in using the communion.

[Baalz]

See, that's exactly the problem most people have with communions it seems, they want (for instance) the guy who got the air random to cast thunderstrike, while the other big mages are casting all kinds of stuff the slaves don't have the paths for. That's the kamikaze way to use a communion, and while effective *will* result in communion slave deaths because the slaves are soaking up fatigue for spells they can't themselves cast (alternatively you can use 16+ slaves so they can actually soak that stuff up). That is, of course, a viable strategy but you should be aware of the cost and not bemoan it. The other way to use a communion is as I describe above, which is much safer and still hideously effective most of the time.

If your question is how to prevent master from overdraining slaves to death, the answer is don't make the master more powerful than the slave. If you objection is then that you don't get to supercharge your mage to cast spells not otherwise possible, I say just use more slaves (use 16 slaves and one master...you can cast thunderstrike all day long). If you think that's too expensive, then just go in knowing your slaves are expendable kamakazees and plan accordingly.

[Folket]

But nothing explains the result in case 3. Twice the amount of slaves give each slave just a fourth of the fatigue. And these were the slaves without paths. I can only explain that with that the slaves gets bonus to paths they do not have.

[llamabeast]

They do get bonuses to paths they don't have, I think. I think with a communion of 2 slaves the slaves go to level 1 in every path they didn't previously have access to - i.e. the bonus levels are given in paths they don't have as well as paths they do have.

Of course this doesn't apply to the masters.