Help - Newbie

[Cainehill]

Goblin said:
Another Question in relation to Pretenders and Magic - I remember reading someone’s comment a while back that they either gave their Pretender lots of Astral magic or none. Supposedly this was to avoid being involved in a duel...

Is it the case that if a leader has Astral magic that they can be targeted by powerful mages (with Astral magic) - even if they are not casting spells in that field at the time?

If you take low-level astral, you might be ambushed while out site searching - mind dueling hit squad mages teleport in to try and take out your pretender. Also, someone might try an assassination with an astral magic assassin (mostly only an issue when R'lyeh is in the game), meaning you could be sitting "safely" at home and still get nailed.

Hence why a good rule of thumb is to take 0 astral, or 6+; immortal pretenders can get away with less, and I have occasionally taken something like 3 astral on a non-immortal rainbow myself, but that was on a fairly large map, non-wrap around, where I could park the pretender in the boonies where no one would find him.