A plea regarding "Through the Aegis: Developed covenants"

[Ovarwa]

grin

On an Aegis botch, a Group of players go into Twilight for a number of sessions equal to the number of botches, during which time they experience metagame conversations about ritual magic and botch dice! If they have a bad Twilight experience, they are likely to emerge with a driving goal to get a math degree...

Yet another possible House Rule: All ritual magic cast during downtime automatically succeeds, but costs its caster one Warping Point. A ritual used to attack cannot be considered part of downtime.

Anyway,

Ken

[Jonathan.Link]

Arbitrarily assigning warping in exchange for automatic success isn't a good alternative, either. At least a double botch or greater gives the possibility of a positive experience in exchange for the warping points.

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

It's easy to throw house rules or ideas out there to see if they stick. (It usually takes years for one of my suggestions to gain traction. /23947823)

It's even easier to just handwave. /234750802198401987622341

:waves his hand

Ken

[The_Fixer]

IMO, the solution to the Aegis is the solution to the lack of Mastery options for Ritual Casters besides taking Mercurian Magic, a strong Gold Cord and Cautious Sorcerer.

All these are useful to any wizard that'll cast spells "on the field", who also benefit from cool mastery options. But a Ritual Caster never casts on the field, and has little Mastery Options. He can't focus on his signature spell like other magi.

=>

In Andorra, we have a few masteries that are "Ritual-Only", something which, IMO, is sorely lacking in the RAW.

One of these is the Secure Ritual Mastery, which doubles the botch reduction from your Mastery (And I would see it being expandable by multiple choices).
Another one reduces the number of Vis Pawns used.
Botch of these lower the number of botch dices.

Another HR I would implement is that wizard's communion doesn't impact Mercurian Magic.

Take a Mercurian Caster who tries to cast a lvl 20 aegis, with 4 other magi.
He spends 4 pawns of vis, and incurs (1+2+5) 08 botch dices.

Assuming a gold score of 1, and a Mastery of 3, that leaves only 1 botch die. Which is manageable, and rewards the Ritual-Focused player, just as the Flambeau who focuses on PoF is rewarded by his focus.
And with Adaptative Casting, his mastery applies equally to the lvl 40 aegis, leaving "just" 3 botch dices.

A non-mercurian would occur 10 botch dices (14 for the lvl 40 aegis) and, in the same situation, would need a higher Mastery.

[jebrick]

I would again say Cautious Sorcerer does not cover Ritual Spells. but YMMV.

[Jonathan.Link]

@The Fixer

IMO, the solution to the Aegis is the solution to the lack of Mastery options for Ritual Casters besides taking Mercurian Magic, a strong Gold Cord and Cautious Sorcerer.

All these are useful to any wizard that'll cast spells "on the field", who also benefit from cool mastery options. But a Ritual Caster never casts on the field, and has little Mastery Options. He can't focus on his signature spell like other magi.

=>

In Andorra, we have a few masteries that are "Ritual-Only", something which, IMO, is sorely lacking in the RAW.

One of these is the Secure Ritual Mastery, which doubles the botch reduction from your Mastery (And I would see it being expandable by multiple choices).
Another one reduces the number of Vis Pawns used.
Botch of these lower the number of botch dices.

Another HR I would implement is that wizard's communion doesn't impact Mercurian Magic.

Take a Mercurian Caster who tries to cast a lvl 20 aegis, with 4 other magi.
He spends 4 pawns of vis, and incurs (1+2+5) 08 botch dices.

Assuming a gold score of 1, and a Mastery of 3, that leaves only 1 botch die. Which is manageable, and rewards the Ritual-Focused player, just as the Flambeau who focuses on PoF is rewarded by his focus.
And with Adaptative Casting, his mastery applies equally to the lvl 40 aegis, leaving "just" 3 botch dices.

A non-mercurian would occur 10 botch dices (14 for the lvl 40 aegis) and, in the same situation, would need a higher Mastery.

The Fixer, David Chart has addressed the issue of casting rituals, and Mastery, here. And, so, with that understanding, one never need learn mastery greater than one for rituals, especially the Aegis, which will be cast during relaxed conditions while mastered. So, having additional mastery options for Ritual Magic isn't strictly necessary from the perspective of reducing botch dice for casting.

[Tellus]

@The Fixer

In Andorra, we have a few masteries that are "Ritual-Only", something which, IMO, is sorely lacking in the RAW.

One of these is the Secure Ritual Mastery, which doubles the botch reduction from your Mastery (And I would see it being expandable by multiple choices).
Another one reduces the number of Vis Pawns used.
Botch of these lower the number of botch dices.

We have discussed similar houserules recently at my hometable. May I ask how these areworking out for you?

@jebrick

I would again say Cautious Sorcerer does not cover Ritual Spells. but YMMV.

An interesting take on the matter, but I'm afraid I've missed the argument. Could provide a reference?

[jebrick]

@Tellus

@jebrick

I would again say Cautious Sorcerer does not cover Ritual Spells. but YMMV.

An interesting take on the matter, but I'm afraid I've missed the argument. Could provide a reference?

The Cautious Sorcerer text says either Spontaneous or Formulaic. Since it is specific in saying either Spontaneous or Formulaic, I think it does not include Ritual magic. Others disagree and we have agreed to disagree.

[Tellus]

Ah, the "are Rituals a subset of Formulaic or not" discussion, thank you.

[Marko_Markoko]

@Tellus

@The Fixer

In Andorra, we have a few masteries that are "Ritual-Only", something which, IMO, is sorely lacking in the RAW.

One of these is the Secure Ritual Mastery, which doubles the botch reduction from your Mastery (And I would see it being expandable by multiple choices).
Another one reduces the number of Vis Pawns used.
Botch of these lower the number of botch dices.

We have discussed similar houserules recently at my hometable. May I ask how these areworking out for you?

We had brainstormed a huge list of new Mastery ideas. I was thinking we would only wind up using half of them, but we decided to thow them all in the stew and see what people pick and what works. So far only a few people have chosen even fewer. So far so good, though I have recently (the other day) noticed a potential bug or two while drawing up advancement plans for my one character. I plan for Roberto (that guy again) to pick up a level 20 Aegis for various useful purposes. With Flawless Magic he gets a free Mastery. So I am on the fence between Stalwart and Secure casting. David stated his take on relaxed mastery, but in a troupe where I have given over much of the ruling power of a GM to the players, I know that wont fly. Secure may be the way to go here.

@jebrick

I would again say Cautious Sorcerer does not cover Ritual Spells. but YMMV.

I must confess that this makes no sense to me. I mean, why would you choose such an interpretation?

[jebrick]

@Marko Markoko

@jebrick

I would again say Cautious Sorcerer does not cover Ritual Spells. but YMMV.

I must confess that this makes no sense to me. I mean, why would you choose such an interpretation?

Because the RAW says EITHER spontaneous or formulaic. If that line were not there then you could say all spells. And ritual spells are LIKE formulaic spells, not another version according to RAW.

Why put that line in the virtue if it is not meant to limit?

[Arthur]

@jebrick

Why put that line in the virtue if it is not meant to limit?

On the other hand, if the line was meant to exclude ritual magic, then why not say that? Saying "either formulaic or spontaneous" may have just as well been intended (by the writer of that section) to cover all spells.

Trying to translate natural language into absolute mathematical/logical expressions is fraught with perils. (For the record, I'm not saying you are wrong, but neither am I convinced that you are correct in your interpretation.)

[jebrick]

@Arthur

@jebrick

Why put that line in the virtue if it is not meant to limit?

On the other hand, if the line was meant to exclude ritual magic, then why not say that? Saying "either formulaic or spontaneous" may have just as well been intended (by the writer of that section) to cover all spells.

Trying to translate natural language into absolute mathematical/logical expressions is fraught with perils. (For the record, I'm not saying you are wrong, but neither am I convinced that you are correct in your interpretation.)

Then why have the line at all? Without it it is unambiguous for all spells.

Play it however you are comfortable. Much like the ritual stress die/mastery/botch argument, you get what you want out of a story.

[Tellus]

@jebrick

Because the RAW says EITHER spontaneous or formulaic. If that line were not there then you could say all spells. And ritual spells are LIKE formulaic spells, not another version according to RAW.

Why put that line in the virtue if it is not meant to limit?

If it simply said all spells my troupe would probably exclude spontaneous magic, while happily considering rituas to be a subset of formulaic magics.
I would read that line specifically to include spontaneous and formulaic spells, and thus by extension rituals, considering them a subset of Formulaics.

But that's just my reading.

@Arthur

Trying to translate natural language into absolute mathematical/logical expressions is fraught with perils. (For the record, I'm not saying you are wrong, but neither am I convinced that you are correct in your interpretation.)

Quoted just to point out that this is my position as well. I could as easily be wrong.

@jebrick

Play it however you are comfortable. Much like the ritual stress die/mastery/botch argument, you get what you want out of a story.

Absolutely! Play on!

[Arthur]

@jebrick

Then why have the line at all? Without it it is unambiguous for all spells.

Simply because the text was written by a human being. All of us do something like that, fairly frequently. We write in an unprecise language, and we mean different things when using the same words words, or omitting them.

@jebrick

Play it however you are comfortable. Much like the ritual stress die/mastery/botch argument, you get what you want out of a story.

Absolutely!

[Berengar]

Formulaic magic is defined on ArM5 p. 8. And the definition there includes Ritual spells.

Cheers

[Jonathan.Link]

@One Shot

Formulaic magic is defined on ArM5 p. 8. And the definition there includes Ritual spells.

Cheers

To be quite pedantic, no, it doesn't include Ritual spells, it doesn't even mention ritual spells, nor is there anything defining ritual spells on the page.

[Berengar]

@Jonathan.Link

@One Shot

Formulaic magic is defined on ArM5 p. 8. And the definition there includes Ritual spells.

Cheers

To be quite pedantic, no, it doesn't include Ritual spells, it doesn't even mention ritual spells, nor is there anything defining ritual spells on the page.

I didn't believe writing out the argument completely was needed. But here it is.

@ArM5 p.8

Formulaic magic: Spells that have been worked out in detail ahead of time. They have one effect each, but magi can only use their full power through Formulaic magic.

So Formulaic magic denotes all "spells that have been worked out in detail ahead of time". As Rituals are also spells (ArM5 p. 81), they are also "spells that have been worked out in detail ahead of time", hence Formulaic magic.

Cheers

[callen]

That "all" is not implied logically. For example, "Cats: animals with four legs." Lacking amputations and birth defects, does this imply all animals with four legs are cats? Or does it tell you that cats are animals with four legs.

[Jonathan.Link]

Oh, I know where you were going. It's just not explicit in the definition of formulaic magic. Later on, the book says ritual magic is like formulaic magic. There is an implication, sure. But ritual magic is not defined on that page, as you assert. As I said, pedantic.