[Saber Cherry]

Astral is excellent, and not a risk at all, in my opinion, unless you have low astral on your pretender. Don't do that.

But national mages with astral aren't the negative many people claim. They can only be mind dueled and killed regularly by enemy astral mages with much higher astral. Those enemy mages are very expensive and still risk death... not a risk I'd want to take. Witch hunters are often mentioned as vulnerable... but who would risk an expensive astral-3 mage mind-dueling a 150 gold witch hunter?

-Cherry