I seem to be missing where these character creation rules are...
The characters posted are fresh from guantlet using normal rules. We have been discussing how to advance a character for 43 years post guantlet. I posted the first draft of a ficticous covenant and decided it needed reworking. The second draft is found here:
dropbox.com/s/rcd8e67bnhct6 ... .docx?dl=0
Trogdor made another covenant using similar rules found on the fifth post of the third page.
I have play tested both covenants through all six cycles and found them to be similar, save that Trogdor's gave 10-15% more experience, mostly due to the higher adventure xp rewards. Both made a believable, playable character broadly developed with many options. Trogdor's limits the character to two transformations/initiations, while mine does not have limits, which upon consideration is not necessarily a good thing.
These ideas are still in development but the final results are likely to be something similar.
The questions about rules for adventures and correspondances seemed to be more in depth than simply making a covenant, and I was wondering if this had separate documentation I hadn't been aware of.
Hmm. Damn. Might have to find another option than what I planned.
Are sources like Sub Rosa mag legit?
There are some neat effects in there. Likewise the web Grimoire but that's got less editorial control than SR.
I don't actually have any of the Sub Rosa issues, so I'm inclined to draw the line at official published spells (except for TME, since the whole point of the spells in that are that they need to be developed).
How many spells has SR actually published?
The web Grimoire is clearly unofficial.
I'm not saying that all the spells in the web Grimoire or SR are out. They just have to be invented from scratch.
I've been remiss in letting this progress without some official guidance. So here are the general rules for character creation (with thanks to Marko from Light of Andorra).
Character Creation
Characters are granted a slight increase in overall experience points for creation and development. This is due to an expectation to have scores in a diversity of minor abilities (such as Area Lore, Order of Hermes Lore, Profession-Scribe, etc.). It also takes into consideration the high demands of the saga, and encourages you to play with power.
Early Childhood (Representing the first five years of life)
Begin with (Native Language) 5, (Native Area Lore) 2, and 45xp for Childhood Abilities
Youth & Later Life
From age six onward (until apprenticeship), you gain 20xp per year. If you are Wealthy you gain 25xp per year, and if you are poor you gain only 15xp per year. Magi and certain other characters cannot choose Wealthy or Poor. If applicable, they may choose Privileged Upbringing instead to represent their past.
Apprenticeship (magi only)
Apprenticeship usually begins between age 7 and 21 (10 to 15 is the more frequent range), and lasts 15 years. During this time, you receive 300xp for Arts and Abilities, plus 150 levels of spells. You should spend no more than half your xp on Arts, and should not have any Art score greater than 10. Your spells may come from the main rulebook or elsewhere in canon, but at gauntlet many of these may also be original or unique spells, invented or obtained by your parens, which they have passed on to you. Newly gauntleted magi may not begin with spells above the seventh magnitude.
Gauntlet
Mandatory Minimum Ability scores new magus are: Artes Liberales 1, Latin 4, Magic Theory 1, Profession-Scribe 1, & Parma Magica 1.
Suggested minimum scores, however, are: Magic Theory 3, Magic Lore 1, Order of Hermes Lore 1, Parma Magica 1, & Philosophiae 1.
Post-Gauntlet Development
- Post-gauntlet development will be season–by–season, cycle–by–cycle for six cycles of seven years each using an approved covenant. This is still in development, but the following rules will likely apply:
- You will receive a certain number of study seasons, exposure/lab seasons, and adventure seasons each cycle. (This is to encourage a variety of actions.)
- A study season will allow you to:
[list] [*] Study a book
-
Train
-
Be taught
-
Conduct Covenant service, receiving 3 vis and 2 MP as wages.
[/:m]
[] An exposure season will allow you to: -
Set up/improve a lab/workshop
-
Refine a lab
-
Conduct a laboratory activity
-
Teach or train a companion/grog
-
Any other normal Exposure activity
-
Conduct Covenant service, receiving 3 vis and 2 MP as wages.
-
Do anything else that might take a season (visit relatives, go on vacation, etc.)
[/:m]
[] An adventure season will give you 10xp and 1 confidence point, and will allow you to pick (or roll for) one activity that happens during that adventure. Depending on the activity, you will gain something else in addition to the xp. If you pick your adventure activities, they will be limited in how often you can choose each one within a given cycle. [/:m]
[] Everyone must spend at least one season setting up a lab before doing any lab work. If only one season is spent, all lab totals will be -3. A second season of lab setup will remove this penalty. [/:m]
[] You will receive a vis/MP salary each year, the amount depending on the cycle. [/:m]
[] In later seasons you will receive the services of a skilled companion/grog for a couple of seasons. Their skill will vary with the cycle. [/*:m][/list:u]
One thing I notice that strikes me as really wrong is the question f arcane abilities- reading the text strictly there are (at least in the first cycle) no books for these, but I can gain SQ:15 training regardless of my level for 2 MP. So if I have faerie magic:9 and wanted to find an instructor that could raise my score it would take 15 MP, the same as if I wanted to learn woodworking as a novice.
It also strikes me that this covenant is set up pretty much to support your character, and my concept, for example, would not be able to find a book on herbem until cycle 3, but the library has multiple books on imagenem in cycle 1.
Hmm, good point about the ability training. There should be some limit on that.
I'm certainly willing to shuffle around the books and even make for some higher books in herbam (that come earlier) if you like. Aside from Rego and Terram, I arranged the books somewhat randomly as to when they appear and which were at what level. (I made up the library before I knew anyone else's concept.) That's why some have multiple books appearing before others have any. This was mostly meant as a starting point for debate. Nothing is set in stone.
Admittedly, however, the covenant was designed to allow for someone to eventually learn an extremely high level ReTe spell to raise Atlantis, as that's the core concept for the saga.
It makes sense for a specific covenant to have a fixed library, but an easy fix to simulate a generic covenant would be for the player to "build" the library prior to character development so it complements the strengths the player wishes to develop.
Perhaps we could we could simply put caps on Ability teaching, say you get SQ15 teaching up to level 6 for Academic/General/Martial Abilities and up to level 4 for Arcane Abilities.
That would let people learn abilities, but wouldn't let them abuse the option.
sounds good.
After that, well, that's what tracti are for.
The plural of tractatus us actually tractatus. It's a 4th declension noun.
So,
I'm just an observer, not a potential player, with no stake in this. I'm also the guy who came up with advanced AM character development by Tribunal-length cycle, and while Marko's adaptation served his saga very well, and while the sample covenants with options are rather cool (AM Traveler character creation, anyone?) I see it not serving yours at all. Andorra is not the same kind of saga.
The original goal was to start with power and do things: future-facing and focused on the use of power rather than its development. What I see is discussion about rules, and the rules for rules, and worries that oh no, options A and B are too powerful. Too powerful? You guys are raising Atlantis.
My recommendation? Screw all that.
- Give everyone an unreasonable number of XP, say, 5,000 or even 10,000 (preferred), to be added to a newly-Gauntleted character created using the normal rules.
- Provide rules for converting these xps into other things: XPs/virtue, XPs/canonical spell level, XPs/invented spell level, XPs/pawn at start, etc.
- Let players choose their ages, or just assign ages "You were all born in 1143; your coming together again must be destiny." Whatever. Let em choose warping points. Their starting covenants? No numbers, just description, since players don't control them.
- Don't allow more than the usual # of flaws. Who really cares; 10pts of flaws are already hard to really use. But maybe require at least some number, fixed for everyone.
- If there are rules that you don't want to deal with (like, say, faerie correspondence or astrological foci) call them out.
Then just look forward.
But a game of creating covenants for creating characters is also cool, I must admit.
Anyway,
Ken
Yah, I also pronounce vis with a "v". I'm a grammar heathen.
So do I. But then I learned classical Latin pronunciations rather than Church Latin pronunciations. (And at a Jesuit school, no less!)
There is merit in Ken's point. That said, I'm both staggered by the effort of doing season by season, and also enjoying the mini-game in itself.
To what point does these crunchy detail of which season we learn what achieve a tangible future difference? Well I'm sure that season based will generate more realistic characters. I know that an XP spend will create more specialised characters. It seems so far (I'm about 20 years in so far) that I'm not sure I'll get to my character concept gracefully. I will also need help from the other players very soon to do the advancement as some of the options are staggering to design.
I've also thought about designing my own covenant to begin the character, as a way to get a faster progression. That speaks back to Ken's point - why not just pick the numbers you want?
So really I'm pottering around with my character concept and might throw parts of it away.
As a troupe we need to know which characters are leads in which areas.
Trogdor - if you want to use the pbp forum "tales of Crimson and Gold" for multiple threads, we can. It was a game I tried to start but never got rolling. That might make it easier to track separate threads if it takes a while to get a sub-forum setup on here for Rise of New Atlantis.
Hi,
I think you want more specialized characters (including "my specialty is being a generalist.") I also think that having a few covenant "lifepaths" that everyone must choose from is harmful: Over time, a character's scores approach that of his library, so unless the library is impossibly good, powerful magi sharing a library have the same Art scores. Similarly, if initiation is limited, you won't see any Bjornaer of the Inner Circle, because self-initiation is the biggest benefit. That Criamon near the end of his Path? Nope. Etc.
Mini-games are fun though. Like, given the two sample covenants, how to extract the most xp?
BTW, both covenant guidelines greatly disfavor characters who want to do lots of lab work. Exposure to do gruntwork and exposure from inventing stuff seem different categories to me. Also, no provision for finding an apprentice. A legitimate character concept for this kind of saga might be a Tremere Master with his own sigil, who is always training an apprentice and who already has trained apprentices with apprentices of their own, all of whose sigils are held by the PC: not the most powerful magi on their own, perhaps, but they do know a few Ceremonies.... That magus probably gets a lot more than 2 seasons of gruntwork done for him per 7 years. Etc.
FWIW, it takes 3150xp to bring all Arts to 20. I tend to see this as a boundary of sorts.
Anyway,
Ken
I'm planning to take a familiar in the first 7 years years, and train it in lab work, also looking to recruit a permanent lab assistant/aide. And wanted an apprentice in the cycle too, to help build a cadre of influence. I thought some of those intangibles would just happen; call it lab improvement. Again good points.