Can you combo Light of the Northern Star and Magic Duel?

[Fleshbits]

Does it give enemy mages astral magic 1 and then let you duel them?

[Mulzaro]

Path boosters will not work if the target does not have atleast 1 of that path to begin with.

[Fleshbits]

Shattering all my hopes and dreams. That would be pretty cheesy though. Ty.

[Telos]

Also, magic duel considers only the mages' base level in astral, before boosters, so that means giving your high-value astral mage boosters or communion slaves won't help to defend it against magic duel.

Magic duel is the bane of pretenders with low S-paths. E.g., here's an old let's play where Mictlan uses this trick with relatively cheap flying turkey-mages to take out a heavily geared enemy super-combatant (it's Dom3 with some freaky mods, but the general point carries over to Dom5): https://lparchive.org/Dominions-3-(by-Lilli-et-al)/Update%2011/

Magic duel is often worthwhile against other expensive mages with low S-paths, like LA Man's arcane magisters or MA Nazca's royal malqui.

[ÆtherNomad]

Does Light of the Northern Star affect enemy astral mages, anyway?

[Miguel V-DF]

Originally posted by Oneyr:

Does Light of the Northern Star affect enemy astral mages, anyway?

Yes, It does affect all astral mages on the Battlefield

[Zonk]

Originally posted by Oneyr:

Does Light of the Northern Star affect enemy astral mages, anyway?

That's why, even if it DID apply for purpose of Magic Duel, it wouldn't matter at all - your mages would have +1 S, but so would the enemies they are going to duel!

EDIT: I suppose technically it would let you Magic Duel more times because of the decreased fatigue, actually.

[applenta]

This magic duel is so useful, so you can use it to reliably take out enemy mages, right? Would it lead to astral arm race? How would the dueling result works? How is the winning chance calculated?

[Zonk]

Originally posted by applenta:

How would the dueling result works? How is the winning chance calculated?

Caster base Astral + 1d6 vs target base Astral + 1d6.

1d6 = one six-sided die, NOT open-ended.

If one side has a > result than the other, the other side dies.
If both sides have the same result, *both* die.

[applenta]

Welp, that doesn't sound reliable to me, which is justified. So you have to risk the life of a mage to take down a mage, sounds fair to me.

[Miguel V-DF]

it's more useful when taking down a big mage, like the seraph, with droves of cheap mages, like the sequani stargazers. Or using LOTNS to raise the astral level of the chayot in all forms so you can mage duel him to death (very expensive tactic as you will have to kill him 4 times with this unreliable method, but it can be one of your only possible options, depending on your nation and conditions) You have more cost efficient tactics to do in normal situations that using your mages to mage duel. Also, note that if the difference between the mages is bigger than 6, than the magic duel it's guaranteed to fail. This only matters in extreme situations, like if you go S9 on your pretender.
Also, can Zonk confirm if the following is true: if there are more than one astral mage in one square and one of them is mage dueled and loses, the others will die too?

[Zonk]

Originally posted by Leugimimi:

Also, can Zonk confirm if the following is true: if there are more than one astral mage in one square and one of them is mage dueled and loses, the others will die too?

It's a bug I have seen reported, but I never personally saw. It's POSSIBLE this has been fixed - I don't know, though.
If it still happens it definetely should be reported again.