Guide: Guide to communions

[LDiCesare]

I don't think magic paths you don't have are boosted, so " no fire magic will get a +3 boost" is probably wrong.
Otherwise, communion would open all paths to all mages (except you may not script them without copying orders from another commander). I don't think it does that.

[thejeff]

Apparently they're boosted for the slaves for the purposes of absorbing fatigue from the masters only.
You still can't cast (with either slave or master) from paths you don't have.

Slaves do pick up the side effects of the booster spells: fire resistance from Phoenix Power and reinvig from Summon Earthpower.

[Torin]

the manual doesn`t say the slaves are boosted. do you know this by testing?

[llamabeast]

Yeah, they are. The manual is not too hot on communions.

[ano]

I just thought about a nice trick. If you have tough slaves with regen (Ulmish Vampire counts are a good example), then when you cast Holy Avenger with your master, every single point of damage done to slaves through fatigue will result in a nice smiting divine bolt. Needs testing, but I'm pretty sure it should work)

[MaxWilson]

It doesn't hurt, unless you have something better to cast on them. It's not every point of damage, of course, only every round in which they take damage.

-Max

[earcaraxe]

Hi!

There r some fact that i cant deduce from what i have read here and in the manual. I was experiencing (its my first try) with communions this morning, trying to get a feel for it. Here is the list of my commanders:

A - basic mictlan priest, B1H1, enc3
B - mictlan priest with 1 exp. star, B1H1, enc3
C - tepeyocatl A1B1, enc 4
D - hpots, B3F2H3, enc 6

D has 30 blood slaves. (it seems that unlike the other gems, blood slaves are common goods, every commander can use the other's (btw: from what distance can a mage use a blood slave in combat?).

The battle takes place in magic+1.

1 round:
A,B,C casts sabbath slave. using 1 slave apiece, so we r down to 27. A,B gets to 93 fatigue (that I understand), but C to 95 (i think it should be 94 but nvm, its only 1 diff), then D casts sabbath master: number of slaves: 24, so D's fatigue is 28 (just as i expected).

2. round:
D casts hell power. reamining slaves:21. its fatigue is 300 (270 with M+1), so each participant gets about 67. D has B4 now, so it's 33 for him, plus enc, so theoretically he gets to about 33+28=61, which is in reality 60, but its ok. Now the slaves get their share of the fatigue. They get 67 apiece, but because they r just B2 mages (HP is a B3 spell), it should mean 93(1st round)+134(HP)+3(enc)=240 total fatigue for A, right?
In reality his fatigue is just 157, which means he got 64 fatigue from th hell power spell. Its about the one-fourth of 270, so it seems he didnt get penalized for having only B2 for a B3 spell. (?) (its not that he gains HP's effect first then fatigue second, because the master didnt get it either)

3. round:
D casts Reinvigoration. new fatigues: A:53,B:47:,C:53,D:0. Counting the reinvigoration5 they got from hell power, thats about -100 fatigue on the slaves (for some mysterious reason B got a little less).

It worth mentioning, that for Reinvigoration D used 2 extra slaves, but didnt need to. My perception is that pots dont cast Reinvigoration unless i script it, and they always used 2 extra slaves so far (two tries only, so small pool of evidences, but its totally needless)


after the 5th round three lesser horrors appeared to indicate their appreciation for the invitation for lunch. They left well fed.

I'd appreciate any comments, but the main question is: why did the slaves get 64 fatigue instead of 134 on the second ruond?

[thejeff]

The manual, as far as I can tell, says nothing about how fatigue is divided in communions, other than that the slaves share the fatigue.

I tried doing some testing this weekend and what it proved to me was that I couldn't even get fatigue without communions right. The manual says fatigue should be the given fatigue for the spell times 1/(1+(magic skill - minimum skill)) plus spell casting encumbrance.

I tried this with Arcosephale, because I wanted to see how fatigue got spread around communions with various paths boosted and/or missing.

Before I even got to the communion I saw:
My prophet casting holy spells (0 fatigue) with 10 encumbrance, got a straight 10 fatigue every time.
A Priestess, with 3 encumbrance, got 3 fatigue for every holy spell.
Then she cast Protection, which is N1, 20 fatigue and gained 27 fatigue, not 23.

Mystics are also 3 fatigue and those with 1S also got 27 fatigue when casting Communion Slave
A Mystic with 2S got 15 fatigue from Communion Slave, not (1/(1+2-1))*20+3 = 13
Casting Body Ethereal, which is still 1S, but 30 fatigue, the 1S Mystic got 39 fatigue and the 2S got 21.

Once the Communion was up with 8 slaves, the Master cast PotS and got 6 fatigue. He started with 1S.
The slaves who started with 1S got 4 fatigue and those who started with 2S got 3.
I can't even try to calculate that out, until I understand the non-communioned results.

So, is the manual wrong about fatigue calculations, or am I misinterpreting something?

[Baalz]

I also tried to figure out how fatigue was calculated (before throwing my hands up and saying it wasn't obvious). On top of the things you mention I also saw weird stuff like different levels of fatigue on slaves who had the same magic paths and were the same unit type, and reinvigoration not removing all the fatigue from some of the slaves (or perhaps it removed the fatigue on some before fatiguing them for the casting, and some after). Some of this is probably rounding type differences.

All in all, my conclusion was that the fatigue calculations in the book were not exactly correct but were close enough for rough strategic planning. Use the formula you reference above (don't count encumbrance), divide by the number of slaves and that's *about* how much fatigue each slave will get.

[Torin]

The encumbrance added fatigue it´s twice the encumbrance according to the manual