Any Man Advice

[Manuk]

You cannot cast the spell if your skill is less

[DrPraetorious]

Yes you can, if you are a communion slave.

[Manuk]

if you are a slave you don't cast spells.
but if you are a master your skill can be increased so you meet the requirements right?
or there is some hidden mechanism?

[DrPraetorious]

There is a hidden mechanism which I described above.

Say I'm an S4 caster with two S2 communion slaves, and I cast "Will of the Fates" (S4, 400 fatigue.)

I'm boosted to S5, so I pay (400 / 2) / 3 ~= 66 fatigue.

My slaves are boosted to S3, so they each pay (400 * 2) / 3 ~= 266 fatigue, and drop dead.

I'm not sure how spending extra gems works into this - it may or may not reduce the fatigue spent by the slaves.

[Manuk]

So, at least 2 slaves for a 400 fatigue spell so they don't drop dead.
Because it makes no sense to me to have slaves of lvl 5 in any magic.

[MaxWilson]

DrPraetorious said:
The issue is - do you want the slaves to live? Also, do you want to cast any other spells out of your communion? (answer: yes, you absolutely do, master enslave is great but not THAT great.)

8 Slaves -> Slaves are S4, Fatigue = 800 * 5 / 8 = 500, so instead death.
16 Slaves -> Slaves are S5, Fatigue = 800 * 4 / 16 = 200, so inatant death.

<snip>

Thanks for the details. I had kind of wondered how Communion Slave worked in terms of distributing fatigue. However, with 8 slaves, under Light of the Northern Star, with Power of the Spheres, each slave should be at S6, assuming PotS was cast by a Communion Master.

-Max

[DrPraetorious]

Max, that's true, but keep in mind that we're fighting Armageddon here. Your opponent probably has Master Enslave or the like to do to you, so your communion slaves may not *live* to benefit from both spells.

Initiative is key.

[Ironhawk]

Guys, the astral value of a slave is meaningless. Not sure why you are even talking about it. All they do is absorb fatigue from spells that masters casts, they have no impact on any of the spells themselves.

[MaxWilson]

You've convinced me that you can't do Master Enslave with a 4-man Communion and have any hope of the slaves surviving. That's the main point and I agree.

On the other hand, you *already* have to wait till the second round to cast Master Enslave unless you're using a Crystal Matrix and casting at the end of the first round. Having another astral mage cast PotS and/or LotNS before ME goes off does not require an extra round, merely an extra mage and/or extra Crystal Matrix. If you don't happen to have 32 Communion Slaves available (say you had 32 but 3 of them died), making one of them a <Communion Master/PotS> and another a <Communion Master/LotNS> could save you a lot of fatigue. That's all I'm trying to point out, that those spells shouldn't be overlooked.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Ironhawk,

The fatigue of the spell is split amongst master/slaves *before* skill in magic paths is factored in. A 200 fatigue S3 spell distributed amongst a S4 master and three S1 slaves will be 50 fatigue to each of them, adjusted for Astral paths at each mage *individually.*

50 fatigue to the master, but he's got +1 from 3 slaves and it's an S3 spell, so he takes 1/3 of that = 17 fatigue.

50 fatigue to each of the slaves, but they're S1 with a +1 bonus from being in a 3-slave communion so effectively S2. This is one shy of the S3 requirement, so the 50 fatigue allotment is doubled for each of them. Each one takes 100 fatigue.

I'm not entirely sure where encumbrance fits in, whether it's just the master's encumbrance that gets divided up or whether slaves take encumbrance from each spell that a master casts. I wouldn't be surprised if it were the latter and maybe later I'll check it out.

So you see, the skill of the communion slaves can matter quite a bit.

-Max