I don't think that the problem with Spear of Allah is the ability of the lightning to find its targets- it's that it doesn't like being commanded.
As a pious Moskurger, I obviously believe that the storm is a manifestation of Allah, and we can do nothing with it without his blessing.
As a 21st century atheist, I think lightning doesn't actually care, and the lack of accuracy is caused by a failure on our part to properly guide it to its destination. What we need is to pre-ionise the air between the clouds and the target, which we should be able to do with some simple magic.
Just wondering, did you post this before or afters reading my spell ideas?
I've been suggesting improved targeting for SoA for a while. I was just posting from my phone, so I didn't respond to your ideas. Let me do so now:
Avatars: By using a Detect Thought wand to achieve a direct mental link to Allah, a mage can completely surrender his mind to His will, effectively becoming possessed by Him. In addition to, y'know, having physical avatars of our god walking around on the battlefield, Avatars will be able to greatly improve long-range communication- since Allah is one being, what one Avatar knows, all of them do. Hence, one can tell important information to an Avatar on one side of the continent and have another Avatar relay the information to commanders on the other side.
That sounds hella heretical. Plus, I'm not sure it would work. Allah is in all things already. Mankind is already an (imperfect) reflection of His being. In a sense, we already are physical avatars of Allah.
That being said, it's worth looking into. It may not have the exact effects you're looking for, but Divine Magic could be an interesting path to go down.
Improved Divine Spellcasting: Due to Detect Thoughts wands enabling us to obtain a better understanding of Allah (and the divine in general), all divinity/divine-related projects and spells have their costs reduced by one when used/created/cast/whatever by a bearer of a Detect Thoughts wand (that isn't currently using it on non-Allah beings (or his angels, I suppose), of course).
Hella heretical still, but if there is some sort of divine energy we can tap into to enhance spellcasting, that would be useful (I imagine that, for balance reasons, said 'divine' energy would be non-denominational, so that Arstotzkans could also use it. Our religion actually being
literally true would be somewhat OP, I feel)
Improved Spear of Allah: Instead of commanding lightning to do our bidding, our mages will use Detect Thoughts wands to implant suggestions in the "minds" of storms and lightning. In addition to greatly reducing the risk of our own mages being fried (because the storm will 'think" that it came up with the idea to strike that guy over there with lightning itself), this could be used to cause a storm to autonomously go to places/do things that we desire (i.e. plant a suggestion to "fly over to Screwedville and fry anybody there who is wearing a suit, then do the same in Doomedland, etc. etc. (worded in a less demanding and more "natural" way, of course)).
The primary problem with this line of development is that, whether it is possible or not, Detect Thoughts is designed to work on humans. Making it work on divinity, or the 'minds' of natural phenomena, would almost certainly require a design, not a revision. I think a more mundane way of increasing the accuracy of SoA would be easier to pull off.
How about instead of abandoning the mountains, we just decrease the amount of troops we send in these death missions?
Order: Slow the assault: Cut the amount of attacks we attempt in the mountains in half
That'll just
guarantee they fail. We'd be throwing them away even more than before. No, it's all or nothing.
We could just redirect them into invading the Tundra.
Not until we have spells or weapons that are specifically designed to help us invade it. At the moment, their home territory advantage is too stronk.
Bodkin Arrows.
Our best weapon is our horse archers with their recurve bows. Their best weapon is their heavy armor. Lets make our best weapon, carried on all our troops, effective against their best weapon.
It should be helpful when skirmishing, and it should be helpful in pressed battles.
I mean, yeah, we definitely should revise our arrows to be armour-piercing at some point. But the potential of SoA to take out commanders and mages, whilst also improving our offence against heavily-armoured troops (especially if we make it cheaper) tips it in SoA's favour for me.
If we had two revisions, I'd do both.
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Topic: Wands Race - [Moskurg] {COMPLETED} (Read 202727 times)