Thermophile Posted November 21, 2015 Report Share Posted November 21, 2015 Okay, this is something that has been bothering me for a while. Why are chalklings viable? At first I'd assumed that they were super simple, but the book shows them being really detailed. I don't care how fast you can draw, a decent chalkling is going to take at least thirty seconds. A line of vigor can be drawn in less than three. And don't give me 'chalklings don't need to be precise'. If you're good (and any decent rithmatist needs to be) you don't have to draw slow in order to be precise (although I'll admit that no human could draw with the end of a rifle). Any thoughts? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meandbooks Posted November 21, 2015 Report Share Posted November 21, 2015 Well, I think the value lies in the idea that they can be as simple or as complicated as you want them to be. So if you're fast enough, you can make more detailed ones that will be stronger, or you can draw simple ones quickly that will wear out faster. I'm pretty sure those simple spider ones are a lot weaker than Melody's chalklings, but they would only take a few seconds to draw. Also, although Lines of Vigor are useful, they can only go in one direction, and in the time you spend wearing down one of your opponent's Lines of Warding to attack the circle directly they can easily draw another. Chalkings just allow for more flexibility. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thermophile Posted November 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2015 (edited) (I'm guestimating on a lot of this, but I think it's fairly accurate) Chalklings also need instructions. Even a simple chalkling would take 3-5 seconds to draw, and another 10-15 seconds to give it even simple battle commands. It would take one, maybe two lines of vigor to kill it, and that person just earned 10-20 seconds in relation to their opponent. A decent chalkling would take 30 seconds to make, 10-15 seconds to give commands, and would take 5 lines of vigor to kill. A really good chalklingwould take 2-3 minutes to make, 10-15 seconds to give instructions, and would take maybe 15-20 lines of vigor to kill. It would do damage in that time, but the opponent could put up a barrier and barrage it fairly easily. All in all, I think the book greatly underestimated the time it takes to draw something, especially anything good. Don't get me wrong, chalklings are incredibly useful (espeially if you can make them autonomous), just not in a formal duel scenario. Edited November 21, 2015 by Thermophile 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voidus Posted November 21, 2015 Report Share Posted November 21, 2015 Well the simplest instruction you can give is the same one you give to a line of vigor (Go forwards) which would take less than a second to give, and a simple dragon chalkling wouldn't take much longer than that, and yes they can blast them with lines of vigor but that's putting them on the defensive, plus you can get chalklings to dodge if you're more careful with your instructions (maybe five seconds worth) which wastes their time further, the goal is to eventually have too many for them to destroy since chalklings unlike lines of vigor will just keep attacking until they're destroyed they can do more damage than a line can, attack from more angles, have complex instructions.The main problem though is that someone who attacks solely with lines of vigor is never going to beat the incredibly simple defense of a single line of forbidding in front of your circle, you need to have chalklings who are capable of navigating around the line or you can blast it all day and your opponent can just take a quarter of that time to draw it again. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thermophile Posted November 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2015 I'll admit that it is helpful to use chalklings to 'overwhelm' the enemy, and that without them, defense is much stronger than offense. However, the illustration of the knight that one guy drew (I can't remember names from books I've read once over two years ago) I specifically counted the lines, and it added up to around 40. You can't draw something that complex without a lot more time than he was depicted as having. I'm not trying to say that chalklings are completely useless in duels, and I'm sorry if it came out that way, but I think the time to make them is greatly underestimated, meaning that they should be a lot less powerful. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackhoof Posted July 11, 2016 Report Share Posted July 11, 2016 Given how much time Rithmatists spend practising, it isn't unreasonable to think that they spend a lot of time learning how to draw quick chalklings. Really quick. There are real-life artists that can draw detailed sketches insanely quickly. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Secret Corner Posted September 17, 2016 Report Share Posted September 17, 2016 And some fantastical ones as well... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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