[Stormbinder]

All right. I though you were suggesting using quells to overpower (meaning fully compensate) -3 reseach on my reseachers as a method to live in drain 3 for Vanheim.

But what other option do you have? As a standard Vanheim you can't have any death 2 mages for skull mentors, and very unlikely to have much death income or even more than few death 1 mages anyway, since you only have 1/7 chance to get a death 1 mage on your expansive national mages. And there are some must-have items on death scale that you will need for you SC if you are to compete in MP (wraithsword is a primary example, or your SC vans will just pass out, especially on water 9 blessing) (180 gp for none blessed reseach 6(3 on drain scale) gnome or 380gp on Van). And affordable ligthless latern (fire 1) is not available until you'll get at Con6, which is very long way to go for Vansheim on drain 3 scale. At the end it's almost like catch22 situation - "you need reseach to get reseach".

I think many other nations would do better than Vans on drain 3 scale, due to their better national reseachers and/or avlaibility of death magic, directly or through more than 1 random picks. Quills alone can only get you that far, as I think we both agreed.

[ May 18, 2004, 06:09: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]