Default/Sample Spell Sets

[Calmdown]

The problem with the Chronomancer, as far as I can see, is that most of its 'power' spells involve sacrificing an action... to gain an action. Take Time Walk - the hardest to cast spell, with extra damage for failure (making it nearly suicidal until you can put 4+ levels into dropping the dificulty). Yet all it gets you is... a chance to move again and cast another, different, spell. Which you could just have cast the first time.

Actions are a precious resource for wizards - you can only cast one spell each turn, so setting up elaborate chains of spells will be difficult to pull off. The chronomancer doesn't really do this any better than anyone else.

Yep.

Time Store is OK, sacrificing a turn early on to get an action later isn't bad since it means you can stay hidden for a turn and do something that will have impact later - but 14 is still a real hard cast. You just have to hope you don't get Dispelled before you use the action.

Time Walk on the other hand doesn't seem to have any point and I wonder if it wasn't playtested into oblivion by accident. You give up your action (by casting it) to act later in the turn instead, so you essentially get to do a Move in the Wizard phase followed by your full action later. So for the cost of an 18 cast and extra 2 damage on a fail, you gain... a move action. If the spell cast on maybe an 8 and simply let you delay your action until later I could see it having some uses (sometimes you want your wizard to act later) but as it stands, it's a massive risk to simply gain a move action. It's almost completely inferior to Teleport, Leap, etc even from more difficult to cast schools, other than the niche use of acting later.

And the rest of the Chronomancy school is pretty janky, too.

I'm going to shut up now cos I have half written articles about most of this

[drfunk]

It's the problem i'd been noticing with the Soothsayer. A lot of his initial spells (across the schools) turn into either "situational only" or simply "Redundant".

Wizard Eye allowing you to nearly double your effective zone of threat (almost literally letting you cast from right across the board) with only a difficulty of 8. There's also three fairly cheap buff spells (+1 Initiative, +2 Fight and +3 Willpower). And as has been noted, Mind Control and Reveal Secret both have hefty impacts on objective grabbing (or walking your opponents 100gc Templar face first into a Worm).

But from there it seems to break down a bit. They struggle to get any direct damage spells outside of the Neutral +4 Range, which means they find it very hard to have a native way of tackling/handling random creatures that are immune to physical damage effects (the Enchanters Magic Weapon spell also being a +4).

Their Aligned schools of magic has one of them as the much maligned Chronomancer, who has its own list of problems noted above. It's full of either difficult spells to get off at +2, as well as many spells that can cost you activations. The only "universal" spells I can really seem to vouch for is the +2 Move (yet another buff ontop of the Soothsayers own buffs) or Crumble, which seems a lot like a poormans Teleport (not bad, but much more situational given it gives your opponent a door to benefit from too).

I wonder if I should drag this into it's own thread though, I could probably keep going on

[Calmdown]

A tad hyperbolic a reaction there for the poor Soothsayer.

Mind control is a beast.  You gain a soldier, they lose a soldier, net gain of 2 men on the ground for you.  Plus cast it at someone just about to escape with loot and the loot is now yours!

Reveal secret is practically a free treasure and turns what would be a 3-3 draw into a 4-3 victory for you.

Combat awareness not only makes your troops hefty fighters but also makes them harder to hit at range.

Not at all. Whilst Soothsayer has some ok spells, there is very little reason to take it as a Primary school as it offers so little and its aligned schools are equally weak as a set.

Mind Control is just as good when taken in an aligned school - since you're happy casting it at higher numbers (harder to resist). It is Soothsayer's best spell, and probably one of the more powerful spells in the game, yet ironically it doesn't make a huge difference casting it from a non-Soothsayer Wizard.

Reveal Secret is a decent spell but is kind of hard to cast without XP (even if you do get 2 chances at it, it's still far from a sure thing) and all treasure takes one of your guys out of the fight - there are only so many guys you can afford to lose - so it is far from free.

Combat Awareness is absolutely horrible. It casts on a 12 and requires touch range, and whilst more fight is always good, +2 fight is not a massive buff given the opportunity cost of casting it over another spell. Even Strength in the enchanter school, 2 easier to cast and castable at range, is often a hard decision as to whether to cast.

Awareness is an ok spell - just OK - it doesn't come into play very often and even then, initiative in Frostgrave is (somewhat counter intuitively) not always a big deal. At least it casts on an 8.

Every other spell that Soothsayers have is awful.

Wizard Eye is very range limited and requires LoS to where you place it plus only has a 180 degree FoV, making it very poor in practice. It won't let you see to the other side of a wall because you need LoS to the facing on the other side of the wall to cast it in the first place. Furthermore, since it does need LoS to somewhere where you may place it, you have to expose yourself to the enemy and spend an action casting it before you do anything offensive or defensive. It's a really bad spell.

Willpower has a decent effect, but either you'll be casting it after the fact when someone is already under the effects of a resistable spell or pre-casting it which means your opponent will simply choose another target. In practice there are almost always decent spell targets so that isn't a big deal. Add to that that many opponents won't even use resistable spells as there are other options and you have another narrow use spell.

Reveal Invisible is a decent spell with another very narrow use. Could easily be taken as a secondary spell from any other school's caster.

Forget Spell casts on a high number of 12 and can only target enemy casters who always have decent willpower (and will improve it with XP). Furthermore, as the opponent learns more spells, it becomes weaker and weaker. Plus you have to get LoS to their casters to use it. All round weak.


I wish Soothsayer was better as a primary, but unfortunately it isn't. It suffers from too many niche spells, casting numbers that are too high for the spells, and some outright poor spells. If Combat Awareness was the same as Strength for Enchanter, and if Wizard Eye was not useless (eg if Wizard and Apprentice could see through eachothers Wizard Eye, and/or it didn't need LoS to its casting point) Soothsayer would be fine.

[Darkson71]

Reveal Secret is a decent spell but is kind of hard to cast without XP (even if you do get 2 chances at it, it's still far from a sure thing) and all treasure takes one of your guys out of the fight - there are only so many guys you can afford to lose - so it is far from free.

Combos well with Raise Zombie. Cast pre-game and use the free Zombie to get the treasure off the board.

[axabrax]

This seems a bit of a harsh over-statement. How can any spellcaster in the game be described as such when over half your spells come from a half dozen other schools and you can buy any spells you want as you develop? I think you're putting way too much emphasis on the meta-game, list-building aspects of Frostgrave when you make these kinds of sweeping, dismissive pronouncements.

I don't really consider Soothsayer playable for anything but fluff reasons. It's the weakest primary after the almost-completely-pointless Chronomancer.

If I was going to play it though, I'd probably use

Mind Control
Awareness
Reveal Secret
Dispel
Fleet Feet
Transpose
Absorb Knowledge
Telekinesis/Leap/Raise Dead