Guide: Guide to communions

[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

[thejeff]

I don't have the manual in front of me, but I think it's only encumbrance from armor that's doubled. And that's reflected in the spell casting encumbrance shown under the detailed fatigue.

On first glance, it looks to me like fatigue from encumbrance is boosted based on the base cost for the spell. But not in any even or obvious fashion. I'll have to look at casters with different encumbrances.