Guide: Guide to communions

[Endoperez]

You could start it with a few castings of Astral Geysers, horror-marking enemy units.

I think horrors would, indeed, come. Phoenix Pyre, as an example, makes the caster explode and reincarnate upon death - but both caster and slaves are affected. Similarly, Hell Power gives the caster +2 magic and gives 20% chance of horror attack. I presume both effects also affect the slaves. They are part of the same spell. Otherwise, it'd be like Phoenix Pyre bringing the dead slaves back, without explosion or fatigue. You shouldn't get one without the other.

[Zeldor]

Endoperez:

From what I've seen Phoenix Pyre makes communion explode and not reincarnate. Probably because of fatigue

[MKDELTA]

Endoperez said:
You could start it with a few castings of Astral Geysers, horror-marking enemy units.

I think horrors would, indeed, come. Phoenix Pyre, as an example, makes the caster explode and reincarnate upon death - but both caster and slaves are affected. Similarly, Hell Power gives the caster +2 magic and gives 20% chance of horror attack. I presume both effects also affect the slaves. They are part of the same spell. Otherwise, it'd be like Phoenix Pyre bringing the dead slaves back, without explosion or fatigue. You shouldn't get one without the other.

Yeah, but we'll never know for sure unless we/I test it. Also, would horror marking actualy make the horrors prioritize enemy units? Oh joy. That would make it a neat ultimate sadistic and hilarious kamikaze (maybe not if you got Returning) sabbath.

[Baalz]

Added a section on Hellpower at the end. I have tested and used it, I didn't originally include it in the guide because its very difficult to use effectively.

Also added a section regarding item autocasts.

[AlgaeNymph]

Baalz said:
This means that so long as there are at least two slaves, all slaves will benefit from such spells as phoenix power for the purpose of soaking up fatigue.

So if I have 8+ S1 slaves boosting a fire mage, they won't have fatigue penalties if the master casts phoenix power?

[Baalz]

Not sure I understand exactly what you're asking, but 8 slaves who have no fire magic will get a +3 boost, resulting in a fire level of 3. The master casting phoenix power will boost this to 4 (the slaves will take fatigue from that spell as if they were level 3). At that point they will soak up all fatigue as F4 mages.

[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.