Understanding Communion

[llamabeast]

I didn't realise communion slaves would still do things once they were slaved. Will they still do everything except cast spells then? Can you send them into battle?

Ooh ooh, I have another question. Do fatigue-restoring spells affect slaves? I know that Reinvigoration doesn't, because I tested it. How about, say, Drain Life?

Summon Earth Power is a very good spell to cast if you have someone with earth who can be a communion master. I'm pretty sure that works.

[thejeff]

Communion slave only act on turns none of the masters cast.

I'm not sure how hold orders play into that.

[Meglobob]

thejeff said:
Communion slave only act on turns none of the masters cast.

I'm not sure how hold orders play into that.

The hold orders are just to fill space until the retreat order. Otherwise the AI will have the masters cast raise dead or such until all the slaves are dead and usually well after the battle as been won.

[thejeff]

My understanding is that the slaves don't act while the master is casting.
What I don't know is, once your master retreats, will the slaves hold 4 times before retreating or do the turns they spent not acting count as holds?
Complicated by them probably being unconscious by the end anyway.

[Meglobob]

thejeff said:
My understanding is that the slaves don't act while the master is casting.
What I don't know is, once your master retreats, will the slaves hold 4 times before retreating or do the turns they spent not acting count as holds?
Complicated by them probably being unconscious by the end anyway.

I have used this several times, the slaves retreat. Either at the same time as the master or when there fatigue goes below 100.

[Teraswaerto]

llamabeast said:
Ooh ooh, I have another question. Do fatigue-restoring spells affect slaves? I know that Reinvigoration doesn't, because I tested it. How about, say, Drain Life?

Summon Earth Power is a very good spell to cast if you have someone with earth who can be a communion master. I'm pretty sure that works.

I also think Earth Power will work, however since it reinvigorates at different levels based on the Earth skill of the caster, will the slaves get reinvig at the caster's level, or their own, which would be 0?

Relief obviously will work on the slaves, which could be good, or totally useless if the slaves get so much fatigue in 1 round that they die before it get's a chance to affect them.

[Baalz]

One other neat strategy I came up with quite by accident (accidentally placing my infantry in the rear one fight) is to use your comunion slaves as blockers. This can be very useful because they are effected by everything the communion masters cast to buff themselves. That means if you have a large communion with diverse mages, you can have each master cast one of the following:
body ethereal, personal luck, invulnrability, breath of winter, fire shield, astral shield, mistform, etc. etc. Each master (in the back row) is only moderately buffed, but each slave (in the front) is a fairly indestructable linebacker. Obviously you need some way to cope with arrows before your buffs take effect (chaff works well), but I've actually found this is pretty damn effective because the synergy here is that the higher the slave:master ratio is, the longer the masters can keep casting...while also having more effective linebackers (with fire shield, breath of winter, etc. they even have a bite). Not many deaths from fatigue when you've got a 4:1 ratio...

[Taqwus]

Not that I recall Fire being a MA Ermor trait, but more generally...

A communion master casting Phoenix Pyre can have some very *interesting* results. Experiments are left as an exercise to the uninitiated.

[KissBlade]

By "interesting" do you mean ... disasterous? O_o XD

[Taqwus]

Or "highly entertaining", although for whom is circumstantial.

At some point, in some bizarre SP game I'm going to be tempted to do the wildly inefficient and silly task of setting up an immortal communion squad headed by a fire mage, for this very purpose.