Man, making sure quote blocks are all lined up right gets old fast...
BLANDCorporatio wrote:coyotenose wrote:That Slately is so easy to equip, and yet magic items are considered significant, suggests a difference between the units that is relevant to the matter at hand. The most plausible relevant difference is either the type of gear on the units or the duration of the enchantments. We've seen no hint of temporary magic item enchantments, but we know there is a difference in gear quality. Slately's raiments are obviously of royal quality (I shouldn't have to say why it's obvious)
Alas, you should state why it's obvious(ly relevant). For instance, nobody would fight a war in hermine and silks. Slately's gear, while more than adequate at the task of preventing Flash effect from seeing his Kingly toned boday, is not meant for war. Why would it be better than a Piker's pike as a basis for enchantment?
I'm referring to the material quality and expense, not intended use. Magic items traditionally have to be studded with gems, or made from the purest possible metal, or crafted by the most ancient of dwarven masters before they're enchanted... you know the trope. The idea is that Slately's sceptre, while presumably crappy as a mace, may have qualities that make it more receptive to enchanting than a piker's weapon. Obviously what Slately is currently wearing and carrying isn't suited for enchantment as armor against weapons, but luckily, they're hunting pseudo-Caster units, and cloaks, crowns and sceptres are more associated with nonphysical enchantments in traditional fantasy lore.
coyotenose wrote:6. You, as an adult, would not learn very much about fighting by punching children.
Yes, but I as an adult would get just as much experience shooting people's heads off with a PSG or with an AK-47**. The difference is one of them allows me to shoot from further away, and also allows me the "benefit" of seeing their faces before I put the extra hole in. Now that is experience.
You wouldn't get any experience at punching, though. A stack of pikers outfitted to the teeth with magic won't learn how to fight better by wiping out another stack with no bonuses, and they won't learn how to be better pikers by using bows or guns. Certainly a stack of archers could get better as a ranged stack while using assault rifles. I don't know that anything in Erfworld specifically suggests that anything modifies experience, but another standard trope is that experience gained depends on the relative level of the combatants involved. It's a reasonable theory that piling on bonuses and making a unit effectively much higher in level reduces the
numerical experience gained as well as the
tactical experience.
In fact, better equipment may well mean more experience because of increased survivability. This is certainly the case in games.
This is a "All your eggs in one basket" deal again. Low-level units appear to have an expected high mortality rate on Erf, probably because there's so many combinations of ways to match up combatants and so many specials. If a single spell can essentially negate a stack, or heck, if a handful of archers can wipe out a stack of pikers at range (or be similarly shredded in melee), there isn't much incentive to artificially inflate troops, at expense, in a nonflexible fashion. "Flexible" being a warlord's roving bonus, for instance. This wouldn't be true except that the rules (and the ruling attitudes) don't place much value on individual lives.
Don't forget that Erf units prosper largely on special abilities. Weak units given bonuses to attack and defend lack the specials of naturally strong units. Investing in them is therefore arguably very inefficient.
I can equip a first-level D&D character with half a million gold pieces in magic items and he still won't be able to survive alongside a party in an adventure aimed at fifth-level characters, even though his total combat bonuses will probably be much higher than anyone else's. And he won't be resurrectable when he does die.
coyotenose wrote:The proverb "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" sums up what effect a Caster with a relevant disenchanting spell would have on a stack of level 1 Pikers that have been artificially inflated by magic items to the equivalent of level 3. The fact that Erfworld units know to engage and disable warlords and casters supports the point, which we all understand: sometimes the enemy's strength lies in bonuses; when that's true, you attack the bonuses.
So why not charge in without providing bonuses, warlords and good equipment to your units, since the enemy
may disable it? I trust I need not explain why that's not a good idea. Look, if you have a L1 stack of Pikers on magical steroids, you just don't attack the Dispeller with them- unless they could take out the Dispeller while being their L1 selves anyway. Assuming the enemy even has a Dispeller.*
EDIT: *: and in the same vein, in all TBSs, "buffing" spells should be useless, because the enemy might dispell them. Right-o.
Nooo, buffing spells are naturally going to be temporary and thus of relatively low cost (otherwise why even have magic items). One of several reasons for such buffs is to make your enemy use up resources countering them. Having your enemy counter your
equipment that you use all the time, train with, and depend on at a certain minimum level of functionality is a different animal.
I named Dispels as one of many theories why mass magic item production might be avoided, not as the sole or even a major one. Note that it was #8 among my thoughts. We have no evidence of any one overriding reason. It's probably a combination of elements. But I will still happily defend #8, because indefinitely artificially inflated units are not going to be able to handle deflation, are easier to deflate, and because the lost resources when they ARE deflated and defeated are probably much more painful.
coyotenose wrote:Individual characters choosing between Specials {snip}
And there was another point to that example: an item would not "weaken", not directly. It may prevent another from being used. So you have to chose the bonuses. Your idea that items must directly weaken some aspect of a unit is pure conjecture. Some items might do that, but that need not be the case in general. "Weakening" is just a result of opportunity cost. You can deck yourself in fireproof armour, but that prevents building up protection from Shock, say.
I'm pretty sure we're arguing the exact same thing there in different ways. You see it as trading bonuses opportunistically; I see it as reducing the unit's strong points for other bonuses, but feel that the logistics of making the tradeoff aren't reasonable. The units involved have their own "slots" for gear, yes, but the spare gear to trade in has to be stored somewhere or carried.
coyotenose wrote:It's unreasonable for a stack to train in several types of combat and carry around gear for each.
That's not what this is about. Less about retraining your Pikers to be Archers,
I don't mean things like switching from melee to ranged combat, which would be silly in a world of specialized units, but other, simpler changes:
Upgrading to magic gear seems to involve some significant changes to the gear over the "norm". Parson is wearing a bracer that is just about guaranteed to cut the crap out of him. Slately's crown is now higher and probably heavier. He has a big metal thing hanging on his back, and he's now sporting an unfamiliar weapon. His changes are pretty simple, but there's still a learning curve. Now imagine that in heavy armor. Units seem to have all their basic skills when they pop, but wearing armor, using a weapon (not only a particular weapon, but in a particular way), formation battles, individual combat, and more are all actually fairly specific skills. If the armor and weapon change, the unit has to be retrained, which takes time (which is money, really), and probably takes warlords off the battlefield.*
...more about providing your Pikers with Foola-Flash-proof helmets so that they don't get distracted by upskirts on the outskirts. Archers might benefit from such headgear as well.
Isn't that the flipside of prepping against Dispels? Should units be carrying around extra gear "just in case"?
While this is not automatically true, the Thinking Cap looks like piss-poor armor, and given its function, it SHOULD be. Slap one on a melee unit and you've reduced its survivability in the battles it's most likely to engage in. Prep a unit against all types of attacks and it will defend poorly against all of them. Prep it against a couple of types, and have a warlord switch it in and out as needed, and it'll do better.
*And it may take more actual upkeep, because the nonstandard gear might not auto-refresh each Turn. I'm not clear on that. If a low-level unit snags a quality weapon off a foe and trades up, does he have to maintain and repair it himself, or does it become "part" of him?
