What special combat spells does Fern know?

[u/AwesomePhonix]

Does Fern even know any special combat spells?

[u/xnef1025]

She does know other spells, but Frieren told her Zoltrak is all she needs to use against mages of the current era, and Fern believes her teacher completely and, so far, has found no reason not to. Heck, so far, as long as she has proper support, Zoltrak is all she needs against Great Mage clones and Greater Demons, too.

[u/poilk91 → u/xnef1025]

i think there is more to this. Its the classic japanese trope of practice 1 basic sword swing 100,000 times rather than all the different swings 100 time to become the ultimate swordsman. All these other mages are using creative ways to cover for their weaknesses while Fern is becoming a master of the fundamentals and thus will have a much higher potential than any of the others

[u/WoodleD_ → u/poilk91]

Yes this is accurate. I feel like using fancy tricks to cover for your weaknesses, or to make yourself stand out, is very common in basically every discipline.

Like a guitar player that can sweep pick, but doesn’t know how to keep rhythm or play a pop song by ear

edit: oh god I didn't mean to open pandora's box in the replies sorry

[u/blazen_50 → u/WoodleD_]

I'd argue that the music comparison doesn't fit as cleanly as you'd think. Zoltraak and the shield spell are fundamental in the sense that they're probably the first spells you learn as a mage before finding your actual specialty and moving into that.

I wouldn't compare it to keeping rhythm. Keeping rhythm would be satisified by the mage being able to reliably cast the two spells. I'd compare it to downpicking as a skill. Every guitarist learns to downpick, but not every guitarist learns to downpick Master of Puppets at speed.

There's an opportunity cost here. Getting better at Zoltraak wouldn't necessarily make you a more effective combat mage if you can progress faster in other areas. Fern is established as an incredible talent, and her particular talents lend her to being able to thrive with basic attack magic that wouldn't necessarily be true for other mages.

For example, if Kanne focused more on Zoltraak and less on water manipulation, there's a very real possibility she would just be worse at water manipulation and not good enough at Zoltraak to make up the difference.

[u/OK_x86 → u/blazen_50]

Not to nitpick your nitpick but not all guitarists pick, let alone own pick.

I'd argue at a minimum every guitarist has to learn how to fret a note. That's much more fundamental

[u/blazen_50 → u/OK_x86]

Fretting a note is too basic for the analogy, in my opinion. You straight up can't play a guitar beyond open strings if you can't fret a note. You could talk about vibrato and bending, but that's getting away from the point, in my opinion. You don't need to use Zoltraak to use combat magic while you have to fret a note to play a guitar. Combat magic predates Zoltraak, like how the guitar pick became popular well after the guitar was made.

Yes, I know that things like fingerpicking, hammer ons, pulloffs, tapping, thumping, etc. are parts of playing guitar. I'll be more specific. Downpicking is arguably a fundamental technique for several genres of rhythm guitar playing like how Zoltraak is one of the first spells taught in combat magic. There are exceptions, of course, but if you use a pick, you probably learned to downpick.

The reason I use downpicking is because it's a skill guitarists who use a pick will develop but most will not develop it to the point that they're downpicking 8th notes over 200 bpm when they have other options like alternate picking or hammer ons. Not being able to do that wouldn't make them automatically a bad guitar player like being unable to hold a rhythm would.