Understanding Communion
 

So I've been loving MA Ermor lately and I'm trying to understand how the communion spell works, since it appears to be one of the keys of their power. I'm a little lost in understanding the relationship between communion masters and communion slaves, since the game stats don't change on the caster (but the master was able to cast a Holy 4 spell while still only showing holy 3) and I'm mostly casting 0 fat spells so I can't trace the damage. Are all slaves shared between all masters, or are they divided up between them? If I have 4 masters and 8 slaves, does each master get +3 to all paths or just +1?

Post Irrelevant Aside - IIRC I'm playing dominion 6, sloth 1, order/growth 3, drain 2, death 9, earth 4 sleeping master liche. Death goes well with my natural tendencies and boosts the Vestals a bit, while Earth is there to help my communions. Make sense? I love the Shadow Vestals, but I usually have about 60 Longdead Horsemen / 10 Shadow Vestals, so I didn't want to go too heavy bless. And does anyone really use the basic troops with Ermor unless they are already dominating, or need gladiators on emergency defense?

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Okay, I played MA Ermor before and looked into this at some length (you're right, communion is really helpful for them). My conclusion is it's super-confusing, and in fact I was intending to do a writeup at some point of how it works, although there's another couple of posts in the forum with good explanations.

With, say, 4 masters and 8 slaves, all their levels are increased by 3, and you can think of the slaves as having their levels raised _in all paths_ (not just the ones they have). Then the fatigue it costs them depends on their own level in the spell in question.

As an example, imagine one of your communion masters is a Sorceress (A2S2), and casts Fog Warriors (A5, 300 fatigue). With the communion, she becomes A5, so the fatigue cost for her is 300/9 (her + 8 slaves) = 30-odd. So she's fine.

The slaves are effectively A3. Fog warriors is therefore two levels higher than they can cast, so they pay triple fatigue. So they take 3*300/9 = 100 fatigue.

This is an example of where communion isn't very helpful, but generally it's brilliant. Another feature of communion is that if one of the masters casts a self-affecting spell, it also affects all the slaves (but not the other masters). So, getting one master to cast Power of the Spheres makes your communion _much_ more efficient.

Hope that's helpful.

I've got some questions I don't know the answer to though, I wonder if anyone else does.

1) Can people join a communion at all different times? (I think they can).

2) If a communion gets a buff (e.g. power of the spheres), and then another mage joins in the following turn as a slave, does he get the buff? (I'm guessing not)

3) If a _bad_ one-person-only spell is cast on a master, does it affect all the slaves too? e.g. can you soul slay the whole lot in one go?

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Communion is weird.

In the Faerun PBEM, I gave my prophet and a MotW a crystal matrix each, and four MotW a slave matrix. The boosted MotW seemed to work fine, but the prophet bizarrely gained ultra quickness, casting holy avenger thrice a turn.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

So - what are the gem implications for the above spellcasting example? The Sorceress would pay 0, and each slave would pay 1, for 8 gems loss? (if they had gems, that is?)

Re: Understanding Communion
 

The Sorceress would pay the 3 gems necessary to cast the spell. Probably no more, though I've never quite figured out the "using gems to reduce fatigue" AI.

The slaves would/could use no gems.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Yep, I agree with thejeff there. Although it would cost the slaves 100 fatigue, that just means 100 fatigue, whereas 100 fatigue in spell descriptions is code for "100 fatigue and a gem".

And actually, although I said that's an example where communion's not very good, actually I think I lied - if you had no air boosters, that might be the only way you could cast a battle-winning Fog Warriors, although I think 4 slaves would do at a pinch.

With 4 slaves the sorceress would become level 4. She'd then spend 1 gem to become level 5 for the turn, and 3 for the spell - so she'd spend her maximum of 4 gems for the turn. She'd take 300 fatigue, but since you can never take more than 200 fatigue from a single spell (an important rule that I don't think is explicit in the manual), she wouldn't die.

The slaves on the other hand would only be level 2, three levels too low, so the spell would be quadruple cost, giving each one 4*300/5 = 240 fatigue. So here's another question - would that just count as 200 fatigue, or would they die?

Re: Understanding Communion
 

What spells do you use communion for that the slaves cant just cast themselves?

Nice writeup, though they pay 3x their own encumbrance too in this example.

Sure, since communion master (or slave) is a self-buff for the duration of the battle.

The guess is right since the buff goes to each slave, not the communion itself

Someone told me no, and it seems true. Death of all slaves usually only happens when some happy master decides to throw blade wind at fleeing guys almost off the screen when slaves are at 200 fatigue.

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Um, sadly I can't remember actually (it was a while ago) but I remember being very pleased with it. Soul slay is one option with massed thaumaturgs, though they're a bit expensive to just use as S1 casters. Maybe crazy skellispam? Or if you have quite a few thaumaturgs, using 4 as slaves would make nether darts more efficient (+1 penetration from +2 levels, some extra darts, plus very low fatigue). Hmm, I'm not sure about that one, it's marginal. Things like Darkness become castable by people who couldn't otherwise cast them, that's good. I have a feeling I had some other cunning plans though, but sadly I can't remember...

Re: Understanding Communion
 

Oh, shadow blast is a good one if you've got the gems. 4 communion slaves can power a lot of shadow blasts (20 in fact I think, which is more than you're ever likely to cast and will absolutely decimate most armies).

Re: Understanding Communion
 

I can tell you from experience they would die. I have killed off loads of communion slaves in my time. Entire rows of 8 going 'pop' as they die.

Communion Master/slave is very powerful and can win you many battles, you just after be careful how to use it.

A good use for MA Ermor is with multiple shadow blasting. Have 8 Thaumaturgs script communion slave, hold, hold, hold, hold, retreat. The retreat order is there to save your slaves from dieing. The masters, grand thaumaturgs, communion master, shadow blast, shadow blast, shadow blast, shadow blast, retreat.

Its a pain having to gather them all up again but at least it increases the chances of them staying alive. Also worth it to win a important/big battle.