Communion - items of master affect slaves ?

[MaxWilson]

Communicants are an exception in more ways than one. They take less fatigue than theurgs from casting spells in communion, especially for high-path magics. For instance, in a test game with an S5F4 caster, 2 communicants took a total of 112 fatigue (8 + 108) when the master was scripted to <Communion Master, Astral Shield, Flame Storm>. 2 theurgs scripted to <Communion Slave> took 23 fatigue from casting Communion Slave, 31 and 41 more from Astral Shield (making 54 and 64 respectively), and 115 and 136+ from Flame Storm (making 181 and 200, and the 200 guy was down 1 hit point). I have no good explanation for this, but Pythium communicants are far better than normal communion slaves for fatigue. Especially if you do like Wish and give them Standards of the Damned so they can Drain Life.

-Max

[Foodstamp]

Wow, come on guys. He had an AIR 10 bless, casted divine blessing on turn 1 of the combat. Who can figure out what really happened here to the sacred shamans? If you guess right, you get a cookie

[PvK]

You can have multiple communion masters, too, huh? Buff-o-rama...

[Manuk]

Changing a little the subjet. If I have two comm masters will I need twice many slaves to rise magic paths of those two or I will need the same amount like having only one?

[Ironhawk]

Same amount. All masters benefit from the same from having slaves. The only difference is that more masters means the slaves overload on fatigue faster since there are more people pouring fatigue into them.

[mivayan]

Yrkoon said:
As soon as the battle starts, before anything happens, I click on the shamen just to see and - surprise - they have "charge body" on them. But not resist lightning 100%.

It appears that some of the effects of the magic items carried by the communion master also affect the communion slaves. Some, but not all ... weird.

Charge body is autocast at the start of the battle, the matrixes makes it affect slaves too like if the master had cast it manually. The lightning resistance is not a spell that is autocast at start of battle - since it shows up on the unit's stat screen even outside battle.

Anyway, I think this is highly exploitable: (...)

I doubt it. You need a crystal matrix and many slave matrixes (unless using pythium communion slaves) - since it happens before you can cast communion slave.

Seems you could give the slave only these four abilities from master's items (since other item abilities show up outside combat too):
-Charge body from the copper plate
-Power of the spheres from crystal shield.
-Breath of winter from the rime hauberk.
-Soul vortex from the Bone armor
needs testing.

Letting the masters cast a ton of buff spells and then retreating works, but you dont need slave matrixes for that.

Manuk said:
Changing a little the subjet. If I have two comm masters will I need twice many slaves to rise magic paths of those two or I will need the same amount like having only one?

No.

One or two or forty communion masters doesn't matter, except the slaves will reach 200 fatigue faster and start to get hurt and dead.

[Wish]

no to soul vortex and breath of winter, but yes to power of the spheres, charge body, and ritual of returning (from that one artifact armor)

[mivayan]

Wish said:
no to soul vortex and breath of winter, but yes to power of the spheres, charge body, and ritual of returning (from that one artifact armor)

Neat to know. Sounds like you've tried it?

MaxWilson said:
For instance, in a test game with an S5F4 caster, 2 communicants took a total of 112 fatigue (8 + 108) when the master was scripted to <Communion Master, Astral Shield, Flame Storm>. 2 theurgs scripted to <Communion Slave> took 23 fatigue from casting Communion Slave, 31 and 41 more from Astral Shield (making 54 and 64 respectively)

31 and 41 from astral shield is *Really* odd. Were the theurgs wearing really heavy armor or something?

[thejeff]

MaxWilson said:
31 and 41 from astral shield is *Really* odd. Were the theurgs wearing really heavy armor or something?

Drain?

[MaxWilson]

mivayan said:
31 and 41 from astral shield is *Really* odd. Were the theurgs wearing really heavy armor or something?

I know, it was weird. This was a test game (all spells pre-researched), theurgs straight from recruitment, no drain scales anywhere. I didn't test with other astral mages (e.g. lizard shamans) to see if it was specific to theurgs or to astral shield, but this is not the first time I've seen certain casters take surprising amounts of fatigue from certain spells (even when not in communion) so it was only a moderate shock. My main point was to show that communicants are really great communion slaves who take low fatigue even if you use them to cast e.g. Master Enslave. I ran a couple of other tests with e.g. Enslave Mind and got similar results--2 communicants took very little fatigue, 2 theurgs took lots--even though according to DrPraetorious' figures on communion the communicants should have been taking (20/3)*3 fatigue from each casting (because they are 1S under communion and the spell is 4S). Communicants are different from normal communion slaves.

-Max