A month or four back it came up that we don't really have good examples of old magi (more than 120 years past apprenticeship)written up. Someone pointed out two to me in the Atlas Supplements one was from Through the Aegis and I don't recall the other. In both cases the magi were pretty weird and they were apparently made using the guideline of 30 levels of spells/enchantments per year which in my experience isn't a good representation of magi ever save by sheer coincidence (not even young magi -just try and recreate the 15 years post apprenticeship version of Alexander of Jerbiton, using the lab rules.)
But I'd put in a good deal of work on two magi who were close to that age already. So I'm going to advance them both another 15 years and we'll at least have two examples.
At 120 years out of apprenticeship Adelbert's longevity ritual is beginning to show some weakness. Working from the point of view that creation of a longevity ritual is restricted by the amount of vis useable in the laboratory (an issue that we've debated before), he'll need to find someone who has a really amazing magic theory (15 or 16) and is really good with longevity rituals and has a free season or two to help out Adelbert. I'm going to say that he doesn't find such a magus (I don't think that this is too unreasonable). He is then forced to ask if continuing to slow his ageing is worth the years of effort that it would take to accomplish this. Reluctantly he's going to say yes and prioritize his new deal above his animals ad his investigation spells.
Or, her could depend on peope casting CrCo rituals to have him survive when he experiences potentially lethal illnesses.
Less fun, probably more expensive. But requires a less ridiculous investment in Magic Theory.
I agree it's sensible. I looked at Adelbert and asked; considering everything, what comes next? The longevity ritual was the obvious answer. What I'm concerned with is, is it too boring?
Consider these two options.
Option 1, Adelbert works like crazy on his magic theory and boosting his longevity ritual lab score. He cuts deals to get lab help, I present a bunch of enchanted devices for the laboratory to boost appropriate specializations and perhaps a bit of something else if he has time.
Option 2, I presume that Adelbert find someone else capable of making him a longevity ritual, mark off a few seasons payment and then go on to develop suite of spells to send animal servants searching all over Europe in search of "stuff" (creatures of virtue? a type of Faerie?, a type of regio?)and then move his laboratory or covenant to the location of the stuff (possibly by transmuting them into a flock of birds for the journey).
Do you want new and different, or do you want an NPC who doesn't have so much go his way?
[size=85]Edit: Now that I see it written down, the obvious answer is to advance him for 30 years and do both [/size]
Both of your options share something in common: He is searching for lab help.
This suggests a third option, which has the virtue of loading you with even more to do: Use similar methodology to create the magus from whom Adelbert commissions a LR. This provides you with a third advanced magus, and also lets you take his perspective when it comes to charging Adelbert.
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EDIT: Let's make that a /92849. A magus or cabal from whom magi can buy LRs is a useful resource to drop into virtually any saga. Showing full advancement is especially useful here, since different sagas will prefer experts at different stages of development.
I take this to mean that you're volunteering to write up the high Magic theory longevity specialist? Before Wednesday would be convenient for me bu tif you need to take until Friday I'd completely understand, sometimes it takes a few minutes to write up dozens of spells and items and do hundreds years of calculations.
The closest to a fully detailed longevity specialist I've seen is Bausas from the Annulus Connectens threads, and he both has other priorities and is quite short of where he'd need to be on magic theory.
I'm resigning myself to doing 30 years on Adelbert, probably on Ranulf too.
That's why I made sure to use the second person pronoun. Thrice!
But yes, you should look for it on Wednesday.
It'll be yuge.
(In a more serious vein, I'd consider stuff like this except that I remain keystroke-limited. There's a series of essays on rolemasterblog.com (not at all my game, a system I find intriguing yet worth avoiding, but...) that I started and had to put on hiatus, and two AM projects for here that I've not dared to start.)
Out of curiousity, why do these have requisite bumps for carried objects? Leap of Homecoming and other teleport spells in Core do not seem to require requisites at all, which does strike me as odd. Is there something I'm missing?
There is a discussion in Transforming Mythic Europe (I think, please someone correct me if I'm wrong) regarding casting requisites with teleportation spells. It tells us that different sagas handle the issue differently but the default is that if you cast seven league stride you should cast it with herbam and animal requisites to avoid arriving naked.
Now an enchanted device can't do casting requisites, so I was compelled to add them in as real requisites, and because this seems to be a clear example of a spell doing more than it could do without the requisite I was also compelled to add a level bump.
Which is ironic because I susspect that this effect - high level as it is, will almost never be used because it will warp the user.
Adelbert will spend 10 of these fifteen years in study to get 300 xp.
He'll raise his magic theory to 15 for 173 with his affinity taken in to account (his puissant magic theory gets him to 17)
he'll raise his corpus from 11 to 16 for 60
He'll raise creo to 16 for 16
He'll raise his Animal score to 18 for 18
5 xp in spell mastery
and the remaining 18 experience points will go into intellego netting him 27 xp on account of his affinity and raising his intellego score to 32 (+1 xp)
This leaves 20 seasons for other activites, but six of these are spent finishing traing his apprentice. So he has 14 seasons left for lab work and such.
He'll probably have to go into the next period before he gets the lab total to where he wants it. But I'll stat up devices and lab stuff and see how far he gets by year 135.
(edit I had originally forgotten about his magic theory affinity. I came back and re-adjusted the numbers)
Possible foci of study: Adelbert could start looking at an alternative to longevity rituals, perhaps using his Intellego to determine information. Lab assistants are great, I admit; Its also explicitly stated that a magus helping their parens does not come with the social onus of admitting inferiority, and an aged wizard will have at least one apprentice to drag into the lab for a big ritual.
Instead, he could look into transforming himself into a creature which does not age, such as a magical ghost, or similar creature.
There are rumors of unaging rival wizards out in the world he could start seeking.
He could look into founding his own mystery cult that focuses on defying death, creating better longevity rituals, and becoming ageless.
Also, I'm getting very curious about this myself, because my current character in my home game is a Merinita who specializes in longevity rituals, with a fondness for making faerie deals with people; eventually he's going to start looking at alternatives for standard longevity rituals, but he's still young.
I'll have to look back over the thread to be sure but I think that he's had 2 apprentices (including the one that finished up this period). He'll also be developing a circle target version of intelligence of the Heroes which he'll trade with an old friend. I figure that at 120 years out of apprenticeship he's got to have at least one buddy who'd be willing to help him out. Also my take is that social pressures tend to be less strong on magi with over a century behind them. They're not worried about what others think as much as most.
I was considering an alchemy cult to learn the lesser and greater elixir but there but decided against it for a few reasons:
*He absolutely has time to do it himself if he doesn't know about the schedule of a mystery cult
*He's not sold on the idea of becoming a magical being, yes he doesn't want to die, but he believes that if he lives well he'll have eternal life anyway, if he becomes truly immortal will he, ironically, perish with the end of the world and thereby have a shorter exisitence?
*Out of character, if he gets the lesser elixir he still has to pump up his magic theory so he's not saving any time and, I haven't re-read the section in years so correct me if I misremember, but the bonuses gained from the lesser elixir aren't substantially better than those gained by spending time using magic items to increase his laboratory bonuses.
Not before his present ritual becomes too weak to hold off the ravages of age.
When dealing with the limits of vis in the lab for the initial enchantment, what ways exist to reduce that vis cost?
Imbued with the Spirit of (Form(Corpus?)) looks like it could lop a couple of pawns off of the required total (more if its a Bjornaer magus with the right Heartbeast?)
Would Dedicated CrCo vis (with a Longevity shape/material bonus?) help with a longevity potion?
Dedicated vis would add double its shape/material bonus to the lab total but, unless the longevity ritual is some sort of enchanted device, it wouldn't reduce the vis requirement. If could make your longevity ritual an enchanted device then lesser and greater philosophic alchemy would reduce your vis costs. But I don't think that there is a way (in the books) to do this.
I thought that Leper magus might help (despite the drawback that having leprosy presents to longevity) but while it can provide a fair amount of vis it doesn't alter the amount of vis that the magus can use.
I just carefully checked the wording of the Root-Cutter virtue from HoH:S - it cuts the cost of healing rituals (including ones to resolve aging crises), so unless you house rule a longevity ritual counts as a healing ritual then that only helps trying to deal with the consequences of failure.
That's the wording that had me wondering - a Longevity Ritual is an application, just not one of the ones listed - although it could arguably be some weird semi combination of the two.
I see where you're coming from, that longevity rituals aren't spell use or enchanted item creation (is that where you're coming from?). I don't see the longevity ritual falling under spell use, the heading for dedicated vis are spell casting, study, and enchantment creation. Notice that it's enchantment creation not enchanted item creation the following paragraph only specifically calls out devices as being included but it doesn't rule out other things, I think that longevity rituals are a somewhat better fit for enchantments than they are for spells. I'm pretty sure that authorial intent wasn't to include longevity rituals for the spell casting effects of dedicated vis. While it would be sensible to come up with a sort of longevity vis, I'm not looking to do that for this character.
Another possibility, if Adelbert is willing to go to lengths, is trying to get access to the Thebes Tribunal's Epidauros covenant; IIRC, the healing covenant dedicated to Asklepios makes the covenant's longevity rituals, and has access to the Blood of Medusa.
at reading your suggestion I looked at that covenant, They've got a +6 lab bonus to longevity rituals because of their patron and a +12 longevity ritual bonus on account of the blood of Medusa, in addition they have a leper magus who specializes in longecity rituals and is as old as Adelbert will be at the end of this 15 year period (although if you choose to use an older version of Adelbert it doesn't make sense to have him have been helped by the 1220 version of Xenias the leper fifteen years ago).
Although it would be justified to have an Epidauros made longevity ritual have a higher total than what Adelbert could arrainge for himself, I'm not certain that the monster magic theory is a fair assumption.
Also I've already done some of the work for Adelbert as the magus who wants to make himself a new longevity ritual and I'm not going to change my direction at this point.
With that note, Here's xp for Claritas
I'd been giving Claritas 10 xp per year, I think that this has been low, so I'll switch her to 30 xp per year as if she were a maga for at least a while to catch her up.
During the period she'll have 10 years of study while Adelbert is studying- this gets her 300 xp.
Like Adelbert, she'll spend a bit over five years studying magic theory 165 xp gets her to magic theory 12
She's going to raise Artes Liberales, Code of Hermes, Folk Ken, Faerie lore, infernal Lore and Organization lore: OoH all to 2 for 10 each 55 total (she already had 5 xp in Folk Ken).
She'll take Magic Lore to 3 for 15
Divine lore at 1 for 5 (edit: she already had it at 1 I just added 5 xp)
and because she's such a rumor monger and eavesdropper:
Stealth at 3
Living language Castilian at 3
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