[Baalz]

Nope, the slaves most definitely do not take an encumbrance hit when the master casts a spell. I just double checked that in a game I'm playing, my Augur slaves (4 of them each with an encumbrance of 3) gain two fatigue when the master casts nether darts (neutral magic scales). This is consistent with what I saw in my large communions. I don't remember the actual numbers because I'm recollecting a game from awhile ago, but when I got up a decent sized group of Mystics they just did *not* stop. I think what it is, is the slaves boost the levels of the slaves as well as the masters, so if you've got 16 slaves they each get +4 to their paths, and if your slaves are decent mages to start with (on par with the masters) then a couple masters cast phoenix power, light of the northern star and power of the spheres and suddenly the spells being cast are *well* below the slave's magic capacity and the fatigue is split by 16. They didn't take anywhere near to 60 fatigue each round despite the fact that there were a dozen spells being cast. It also helps that the spells are not super high fatigue, most of the mid range evocation spells are 20-50 fatigue if you're an on-level caster. Heck a 30 fatigue magma eruption divided by 16 is less than 2, so if you're just one level over the path requirements you're down to 1 fatigue. Throw in a little reinvigoration and yeah, you can go well past 10 rounds of laying the smack down - and that magma eruption by an earth-10 mage is certainly some smack being laid (30 damage, aoe 12).

Obviously immensely expensive to line up 30 decent mages, but certainly attainable for decisive battles.