[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Chris,

I actually don't like your horror mark suggestion. It would allow a weak astral being such as one of the Ry'leh assassins to cause a horror mark on a Pretender much more powerful in astral than the assassin. I don't see this as remotely desirable.

He can already do this by casting the spell Horror Mark (no MR save, IIRC). You could make the chance of this effect lower for very unbalanced duels (which are presumably over more quickly) - perhaps tie it solely to the lower of the two combatants' astral skills. 9 vs 1 attracts no more horror attention than 1 vs 1, but 9 vs 9 has the doom horrors drawing straws for who gets to eat the winner.

Horror marks on sages or shamen...bah...what's the use?

Well, I think the threat of a horror materializing near the winner would be a bigger problem in that case. Because after it eats the shaman, it is probably still hungry.

I usually have astral 3 or so on my pretender. I just keep him out of combat.

That is, of course, one possible strategy - for your pretender. Do you play Marignon or T'ien Ch'i? Would you suggest keeping all their astral mages out of combat? In the case of Marignon, that is all their mages except the inquisitors and initiates, none of which have more than 1 level of magic. You can't lead very many magic beings with 1 level of non-astral magic.

As an aside, does anyone have a chart of the relative chances of winning/losing an astral duel given given powers vying for success?

Good question. I'd like to see it too.

But if the challenger is both cheaper and more skilled (not hard to do against a CM), or cheaper and equally skilled, then it obviously favors the challenger on a cost killed/cost lost basis.

That isn't even counting the possibility of star children assassinating with Magic Duel.

Astral 1 vs Astral 3?

Astral 2 vs. 3?
Astral 1 vs. 4?

I'm curious as to how this generally plays out.

So am I, but:
* if the bias for unequal skills is small, cheap astral-1s (shaman, crystal priestess) are the preferred duelist
* if the bias for unequal skills is large, astral-3s (4 with the right randoms) are the preferred duelist (Starspawn, Astrologer, Archtheurg)
* in either case Grand Masters and Celestial Masters get easily killed for relatively low cost.

The only situation that would make magic duel not that big a threat between most mages is if the defender had a substantial advantage (perhaps even enough to make up for a small skill difference). Like, attacker's skill + dice compares to defender's skill + dice + 1, ties result in the deaths of both combatants. Then it would only be the Astral 6+ gods that could fight half a dozen duels every battle without breaking a sweat.

But I don't think it actually works that way.