magic dueled by the comp...

Cheezeninja · #1 April 27th, 2004, 07:00 AM

ok, here's a little scenario for you.

While preparing to storm a castle with my Jotunheim army, including Myr my pretender who is a son of Niefel with 4 astral and 4 water a pitiful pithium force attempts to break the siege.
after my pretender has buffed himself up and is about to lay down the unholy smackage with falling frost..... Canin the astral 1! theurg acolyte casts magic duel and prompty annihilates my pretender. But it gets better... i still win that fight but then the next relieving force manages to rout my giants, and since i was sieging a castle with a vastly superior force (with my pretender in there anyway) i hadn't pulled out when they cut off my retreat. Total loss of my pretender, my prophet, about 15 jotun hirdmen, and 4 endless bags of wine. Because of magic duel cast by a astral 1 theurg acolyte. I do believe pythium is going to award Canin the Royal Pythic Cross posthumously, they damn well better anyway.

Pirateiam · #2 April 27th, 2004, 07:15 AM

One word...OUCH that hurt! LMAO

Norfleet · #3 April 27th, 2004, 07:16 AM

Yeah, that's how magic duel works: If you don't have at least 6 ranks of astral magic above the dueller, you will die. The more ranks of astral magic you have greater than the target, the less likely this happens, but unless you are >= +6, you will die. That's the hidden gotcha of astral magic, which can otherwise be the Real Ultimate Power.

[ April 27, 2004, 06:17: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Cheezeninja · #4 April 27th, 2004, 08:43 AM

wait a second here... i was thinking that through some extreme quirk of luck this happened. Are you saying an astral 1 mage has a better than likely chance of taking out someone who isnt at least 6 astral better? Does that mean that if I magic duel with MY astral 1's i'll be able to slaughter all THEIR astral mages with little chance of death? Does being the one to initiate the duel matter that much???

Gateway103 · #5 April 27th, 2004, 09:29 AM

According to Saber Cherry, the mind duel death probabilities are:

-6 :100.000%
-5 :100.000%
-4 : 97.212%
-3 : 91.673%
-2 : 83.331%
-1 : 72.212%
0 : 58.346%
1 : 41.718%
2 : 27.856%
3 : 16.725%
4 : 8.402%
5 : 2.807%
6 : 0.000%

The number to the left is relative astral level. So in your case, the 1 Astral Thurg (the spell caster) has 91.7% of being dead himself. Guess the Thurg beat the odds that time ^_^

In reality though, the situation favors weaker but expendable astral mages more, as a tie roll kills both duelists. So who cares if he loses a few astral 1 Thurgs if he can bring down an Astral 4 mage or pretender with them?

Saber Cherry's post can be found at http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=000772#000000 (one post down)

-Gateway103

[ April 27, 2004, 08:36: Message edited by: Gateway103 ]

Norfleet · #6 April 27th, 2004, 09:35 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Cheezeninja:
Are you saying an astral 1 mage has a better than likely chance of taking out someone who isnt at least 6 astral better?

Yes. The percentage chance of death is significant and nonzero. It WILL happen: The percentage chance of any event, no matter how unlikely, so long as it is possible, when performed repeatedly for the express purpose of succeeding, is 100%.

Quote:

Does that mean that if I magic duel with MY astral 1's i'll be able to slaughter all THEIR astral mages with little chance of death? Does being the one to initiate the duel matter that much???

No, the chance of death for a lower level astral mage is extremely high and can pretty much be treated as near certainty. Do not duel higher-level astral mages unless the target is of great importance, such as the enemy pretender, and/or the mages duelling are of little or no importance, such as expendable nationals.

[ April 27, 2004, 08:36: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Cheezeninja · #7 April 27th, 2004, 09:43 AM

ahhh i see. Well it seems that theurg acolyte was pretty heroic after all, oh well, live and learn. Im currently trying to extract my just and righteous revenge but they are resisting admirably with living statues.

Norfleet · #8 April 27th, 2004, 09:49 AM

You also subjected a low-level astral mage to the vagaries of Pythium. That's kind of a no-no, as Pythium has fairly expendable astral mages out the wazoo, and with communicants backing even their lowest level mages, magic duel leans strongly in their favor. Your pretender, having just been demoted another astral rank, does not belong anywhere near there, or he WILL die again, that much is a certainty.

Just because it's a slightly unlikely event doesn't mean it won't happen: As any veteran RPGer can tell you, something that happens a even mere 5% of the time is going to happen with absolute certainty sooner or later.

Yossar · #9 April 27th, 2004, 11:42 AM

I didn't think the computer even knew how to use magic duel.

Stormbinder · #10 April 27th, 2004, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Norfleet:
You also subjected a low-level astral mage to the vagaries of Pythium. That's kind of a no-no, as Pythium has fairly expendable astral mages out the wazoo, and with communicants backing even their lowest level mages..,

Hmmm, I've heard several times that communion/shabat does not affect magic duel. Are you sure about that Norfleet?