The Aegis specialist might well be encouraged to accept periodic InMe spells administered by a Q. If he proves trustworthy, he is a likely candidate to be invited to become a Q. He might also be a Mercere: These guys already tend to know more than is healthy about many covenants, and they are trusted. That Guernicus and Mercere are especially likely to be into rituals just makes things more consistent and convenient.
A similar argument holds for LR experts: Are you going to trust this guy for a season, and maybe after if he retains an AC to you?
I acknowledged that when I said that an LR specialist only has to be trusted by one person, while the Aegis specialist has to be trusted by all magi of a covenant. There is a difference.
Recaps, sure. Merceris magi? Maybe.
Setting trust issues aside, if one is contracting out the Aegis what is a fair price?
Sure... if the covenant allows all magi to have a say.
Some covenants will have their own resident specialist.
Some covenants will have a senior magus or two who contract it out, and the other magi have to suck it up.
Then there is Transylvania, where magi fully expect the Perimeter Defense Engineer (Class III) to come in and do his job.
Some covenants will be split on the matter, with the mistrustful magi losing the vote. Of course the Criamon magi (or Mithras cultists or whoever) will all trust one of their own.
Some covenants will simply trust a particular specialist. Maybe they're from the same cult.
A chapter house or dependent covenant might have an obligation to pay a specialist from their sponsor. (Now there's a Major Hook.)
There might be a lineage that is simply trusted, because they have been doing this for the past 3 centuries.
Many possibilities. Some of them are even interesting.
Ooh. If there are no botch dice at risk? Probably depends on the Tribunal. It would really suck to be an Aegis specialist in Thebes; you might be expected to pay the vis!
Csilla is willing to create a level 50 Aegis for your covenant for a rook of Vim, expending half that in casting and pocketing the other half. That way the cost of your Aegis is no higher than your own effort would be. Please send an Arcane Connection by Redcap well in advance of the winter solstice, so she can Leap of Homecoming. (Surcharges for likely loss of long-term fatigue apply for castings in hostile Auras. Terms may vary in sagas where the Aegis must penetrate.)
Indeed, where the Aegis must Penetrate (a ruling I favor), you pretty much need Wizard's Communion and a bunch of magi, so Mercurian Magic doesn't work so well. There are several factors that influence how much a magus can/will charge, including:
1.) Use of their time. If they have to travel to and from, the price goes up. Roughly, I'd expect magi to charge as much vis as they could extract from their home aura, provided that travel wastes a season. Keep in mind that you're hiring a Vim specialist, so this could be a lot. That said, it's also likely a Rego specialist, so they might be able to teleport and waste little to no time at all.
2.) Mastery. Assuming having mastered the spell means essentially risk free casting, those that have mastered the spell can charge more. You might think that not having mastered the spell would mean charging more (more risk = bigger pay), but being able to offer 'no botch, no fail' is a far better bargaining position than "I might waste all your vis and throw all of us into twilight".
3.) Availability. Magi who can cast Aegis of the Hearth 30 are a dime a dozen, those that can cast level 50 or 60 version are much less common. When you start running into the problem of "It's him or no-one else.", the price is sure to go up.
4.) Personality/Reputation. Magi are prideful and self-important (much like nobility) and probably prone to overcharging. The better your covenant's reputation, the lower the price will be, however.
For rituals level 40 or below, it's probably a modest fee (1 pawn for up to level 20, 2 pawns for up to level 40); magi who can cast spells of that order are fairly common. If they have to spend a lot of time traveling, add 3-5 pawns depending on the magus. Above that point, the magi are less commonly available, so they would probably charge 1/2 the Magnitude plus travel expenses. Someone who hasn't mastered a ritual would get paid less, and only be called upon in desperation.
Well, depending on how much you want/rely on the warding-against-creatures-with-Might effect. The resisting-spells and lowering-casting-totals/Penetration effects presumably don't have to penetrate (or else a botch would leave the Aegis completely useless, which would contradict what I infer is intended in David Chart's post on the first page of this thread).
The warding creatures effect is probably the most important effect. It prevents the magi from being hassled by the problems that creatures of might causing mischief in the covenant.
David Chart's response also minimizes the detrimental effects a botch would have. While I agree that the botching of an Aegis wouldn't be a fatal event, it would create some major issues. But under David's understanding that Spell Mastery sxore of 1 for a ritual removes all risk of botching in relaxed conditions, the Aegis will also never be botched. So...
The worst effect is surely having to roll all those botch dice (base + magnitude of Aegis + # of magi casting Wizard's Communion) and start eating Warping and avoiding Twilight. A mucked-up Aegis of the Hearth can be brought down with PeVi if need be.
The rest of the paragraph containing my quotation above also included Mr. Chart's understanding of Spell Mastery and botch dice. Rituals can be cased in relaxed conditions with Spell Mastery of 1, which means no risk of botching in relaxed situations. So, the Aegis will never be botched and one will never have to deal with a massive number of botch dice with 5xp spent in mastery. Unless it's a totally contrived situation by the SG designed to inflict botch dice on the player(s).
Combat in Ars doesn't usually last more than 3 or 4 rounds. So, having the SG plan attack during the casting of the Aegis (only to create an opportunity for massive botch dice) effectively takes one magus out of the combat, the one casting the magus. There are questions about those involved in a Wizard's Communion, as to whether or not they could respond, we will assume that they can. What if they respond to the attack with overwhelming force and shut it down without the caster even knowing about the attack? If they can't, then the ritual is moot, and I'd let the caster disengage from the casting, forfeiting a proportional amount of vis to the amount of time spent. Otherwise, he's just a sitting duck if the attack is such that he needs to be involved. So, yeah, it is desperately contrived to attack a covenant during the casting of their Aegis. Now, there might be good reasons for the attack, but then that speaks to my point of the huge disparity of no risk to total risk that a magus who casts the Aegis would have to deal with.
It's not about SG plans. It's about what makes sense in-character.
Any supernatural enemy of the covenant, who is affected by the Aegis, knows about the Aegis, and has time to plan, would surely consider attacking during the casting of the Aegis. As that's when the covenant is most vulnerable to supernatural attack.
All Hermetic enemies would consider this a possible strategy, and many other possible supernatural enemies (i.e. anybody with an Org Lore: Order of Hermes Ability Score) have at least a vague idea of what an Aegis is.
Seems as if you are making an assumption that the other Aegis is down, which it wouldn't necessarily be down. If D:Year is D:Year, then it would be possible to cast a new Aegis just as the old one is coming down. So, at best there is the possibility of nudging the elbow, so to speak, but if he couldn't enter the Aegis before or he was neutered too much by the Aegis before, he's going to be affected.
Sure. But for the same reason the covenant may decide to cast the Aegis at another time than the Winter solstice. The commentary about the aura being slightly stronger then is utterly meaningless, and even if it added an additional magnitude to the aura, it's still meaningless, as the aura should probably be ignored from calculations of Aegis penetration (since creatures of magic add it to their resistance, and faeries add 1/2 of the aura score to their resistance, etc).
Edit: there has to be a way to disengage from the ritual to respond to threats. Yes, it might involve a concentration roll and giving up some of the vis to do it, but the alternative is that the character is trapped in the casting of a ritual and will be utterly defeated by someone coming in to mess with said ritual. So, disengaging the ritual, answering the threat and then starting the ritual anew should certainly allow a relaxed casting.
Depends on how much you're worried about hostile human wizards rather than hostile creatures of might, and how difficult it is to substitute other warding magic to deal with the latter. Obviously, that's a YSMV issue.
(With the other warding magic also being a useful way to make sure you can cast the Aegis without creatures of might interrupting . . . but very much not securing you against other wizards.)
Mmm. My interpretation of D:Year would be that if you cast your Aegis before sunrise on the solstice/equinox, that day's sunrise counts as your first of four, and you'll lose your Aegis in approximately nine months. But that isn't absolutely established by the wording on p.112, I grant.
I typically view the Aegis as a defense for the covenfolk, rather than the magi. It's to keep the supernatural creatures attracted to the magical work that magi do from interfering with the daily lives of everyone else, and thus pulling the magi away from their preferred activities.
By one interpretation of RAW, and this might be an omission, the Aegis doesn't provide defense against outside attacks that stack with Parma. So the Aegis causes external spells with penetration less than its level to fizzle, but spells with more penetration than the level of the Aegis go through and strike the magi at their resistance with their full dose of penetration, unfettered by the Aegis. That's not much of a defense for magi.
An even better reason to not cast the spell on an equinox or solstice! Your interpretation is pretty harsh, no one would ever cast their Aegis on a solstice or equinox were it so.
I prefer an interpretation that is well within the astrometric capabilities of magi, being able to measure the time passing, similar to the Faerie duration Year+1. I suppose it devalues that faerie duration, but to be honest, I've never seen that duration get used, so I may have been letting one of my unwritten house rules cloud my thinking here. By RAW, every covenant is vulnerable on the sunrise of the 4th passing of the season. And if every covenant is so vulnerable, then an attack by enemy magi on the Winter solstice means that their covenant is unprotected or they cast it on an alternate schedule. It would then seem to me that the timing of the casting of the Aegis is a huge secret to keep, especially if one expects to have Hermetic magi as enemies.
But the point remains that casting a ritual spell will almost never be under stressful conditions, unless those conditions are contrived by the SG or the progression of the saga's story. There are some other considerations, too. A covenant might get attacked the day their Aegis is down, during the casting period of the ritual. It means that the covenant members weren't expecting the attack, and it might not even happen during the ritual casting period. If it does happen during the casting period, it should be possible for all participants disengage from the ritual to aid in the active defense, rather than being sitting duck(s) (you're taking magus characters out of the story of defending the covenant, otherwise).
If a covenant is concerned about an attack, they could time the casting of the Aegis to finish moments after sunrise (astrometric observations by the magi should allow this to happen), minimizing the period of time that they are vulnerable. Is this stressful? Almost certainly, but there is a tiny bit of wiggle room, since they are free from attack during the substantial period of the ritual casting. Which speaks to my other point, that when a ritual is stressful, especially the Aegis, you have a huge difference between the botch risk levels. Consider the situation of a pending attack hanging over an Aegis casting is probably not a normal botch occurrence and calls for more than 1 botch die (I'd say 3) for circumstance, plus for all the vis and plus for all of the participants in the Wizard's Communion to get the penetration.
cast the new Aegis before the previous has expired. Which means that you end up casting more frequently than once a year, so is inefficient in terms of vis (and there is a period when you redundantly have two).
cast the new Aegis exactly when the previous expires. Timing this exactly (probably takes at least two hours to cast) may well be considered "stressful" (as you say), or you run the risk of a brief period (perhaps only a round or two) when there is no Aegis. Note that Parma also falls at sunrise, so the caster of the Aegis has that to worry about too.
It's a difficult or impossible secret to keep, because "typically" the whole covenant physically walks the boundary. And Hermetic observers (at least) can identify what spell is being cast.
Yes, it has most direct benefit for covenfolk and junior magi; senior magi probably have sufficient personal Magic Resistance from their Parma + Form Bonus Scores.
However, even for senior magi there are brief periods at sunset and sunrise when they are renewing their Parma and thus vulnerable. It's good (but obviously not always possible or critical) to be within the Aegis at these times.
Perhaps. So, basically, this, to me, suggests that the casting of the Aegis should always be stressful, since there's always something that can bump your elbow while handing the dynamite that is the vis, and the additional power from the magi involved in a Wizard's Communion.
The text says quite often, which suggests that it isn't compulsory. The caster might be sufficient, and participating in the ritual might happen in some other manner.
If you are worried about exact timing, yes. On the other hand, if the magi are prepared to be without an Aegis for minutes or even hours (i.e. the magi don't cast at sunrise and don't expect attack) then it shouldn't be particularly stressful. Likewise, if the magi inefficiently cast the Aegis more than once a year, then the caster wouldn't be very stressed about exact timing.
Sure, but as you say the text does state "often". So regardless of what is actually technically possible the normal/expected way for Aegis to be cast is a pretty hard thing to keep secret.
Shouldn't be particularly stressful is not the same as not stressful at all. Not particularly stressful sounds about like a normal 1 botch die situation. Consider the case where the Aegis is already down, something may have already crossed over in the time between the Aegis fell at sunrise of the passing of the 4th season. Wouldn't that reasonably be on the mind of the caster? If they are concerned about an enemy taking advantage of the period, might the botch dice involved even be greater? No, the more you talk the less reasonable/likely it is that one can cast the Aegis in a relaxed environment, because of trying to get the timing right, or the fact that it is actually down for a period of time, and all covenants have enemies who would like nothing more to bump the elbow...
One of the reasons I started the Rethinking Ritual Magic thread was to come up with a method that trades risk for time, allows players to properly pay for risk free rituals in a way other than sacrificing a lot of virtue/experience points in mastery or force the early acquisition of a familiar and prioritizing a Golden Cord over one of the others. Rituals and magic items have something in common, they are extending the power of the magi into the world. I think it should be possible to do them over the course of a season for no risk, and also maintain them indefinitely buy paying the vis cost when it would expire. I'm not convinced, despite David's comment on Spell Mastery 1 being sufficient to be considered relaxed. Maybe I'm just being my usual, intractable self.
