My problem with this, is how does the magic know that the attacker hates him? (As opposed to being angry with him, or some other negative mental state.) This seems like this would leave the "trigger" too open for interpretation and debate.
This feels like something akin to Special Circumstances (Minor Hermetic Virtue) and Deleterious Circumstances (Minor Hermetic Flaw), but all the "certain uncommon circumstances" listed for them are fairly cut-and-dried. During a storm, while touching the target, when sitting or wet, against wild animals or iron, or in a city or high up a mountain. Not a lot of room for interpretation when the "trigger" is present.
The trigger for all of Hekrates's Enmity/Affection Virtues/Flaws is based on Reputations and Personality Traits.
I appreciate the idea of counterspelling, and while it is parallel to the idea of a guy who does better against people who dislike him, it is not the same thing. I'm afraid the idea does not seem appropriate to me.
Suggestions that this is "too passive" are, in fact, absolutely correct. Hekrates's particular version of Hermetic magic is not under his control. He did not choose to have magic which only works when he's an a-hole. He did not choose to -- with this idea -- have increased Magic Resistance against people who hate him. He is just struggling to make the best of the bad deal he's been given. His Blatant Gift, Special Circumstances, Deleterious Circumstances and Weak Magic Resistance are all representative of that.
I'm looking for a positive version of "Weak Magic Resistance." Hell, I'll just take Puissant Parma and then, in the event he gets attacked by someone who triggers his "Affection" flaws, will simply waive the bonus and tell the GM to ignore it.
Parma Magica isn't part of Hermetic Theory, so I can easily see that it's not a Hermetic Theory problem. It could even be that it's an idiosyncrasy of how Hekrates conducts his Parma ritual that he leaves himself open to attack on a subconscious level.
I'll point out that facing away from the caster, included as an example in the definition of Weak Magic Resistance would, by this standard, need the same knowledge, since the magic doesn't know if the recipient of the spell is more easily affected since his back is to the caster. Now the caster might know this weakness, and the recipient certainly does, but the magic itself doesn't know anything about the weakness.
Question about that. Fiona, after spending time in Magic, no longer has the required Flaw for being a Daughter of Circe (losing Rigid Magic and gaining Chaotic Magic), and she can only pass along the new Flaw to Sheelagh, which she already has. One of the things I was wanting to do in Bibracte was to have a story where she went to Marós and basically told her that, under the circumstances, she would be the first of a new Tradition called the Metaschematistes. Basically, the only differences would be the different Flaw and that the Metaschematistes wouldn't be girls-only. Um...question. Right. So...can/would she be the first in her new splinter Tradition?
Also, near as I can tell, Sheelagh had seven years left on her apprenticeship, so...advance Fiona that many years and say Sheelagh had just been gauntleted when Fiona accepted this position?
Instead of introducing the possibility of all characters moving into and out of the Magic Realm to adjust virtues and flaws during character development, can we just say Maros wasn't able to pass on Rigid Magic over Fiona's already realized Chaotic Magic? And instead of abandoning the apprenticeship, she realized the change in her line. And then when she discovered Sheelagh, who was similar to Fiona, she just passed her to Fiona instead of trying to do what she already failed at once?
You can do whatever you feel is appropriate here, with respect to Fiona's age. If the timing of events in her back story is important to you, you can age her from where Bibracte left off to 1268, or not. It's entirely up to you.
Any question that begins with "How does the magic KNOW..." is answered with "because it's MAGIC."
How does magic know you're near water when your Special Circumstances: Near Water is working? Do you need an InAq effect for that? No, of course not. It's not a question of magic "knowing" something. This is just how his magic works.
Works for me. So, she's still Daughters of Circe, but she's like a variant cover maga. Kinda.
Aging her 40 years would put her at...75 years post-gauntlet? Which is doable. Might take me a couple of days. And it would allow her to enchant the Pegasaurus herself (not that I think this is the awesomest thing she's ever done or anything). And would probably make Sheelagh an established arch-maga herself by now, who's had an apprentice or two herself. And Fiona probably would have had another apprentice, as well. I'm kinda liking this.
So, if you're okay with Fiona being that far out of apprenticeship, I'm off Tuesday and can probably sit down and hammer it out.
It's all cool. The instructor is the character that is going to have the greatest diversity between players at the start of the saga, having different ages is part of that. While student characters will have some diversity, they'll be relatively blank slates upon which to build.
I'm going to go with my original gut feeling and play a Verditius. I don't want to change Alexei, as much as I ilked paying him and also I don't want to undo the fate I wrote for him at the end of Bibracte.
My idea is for a Verditius that I've had a long time, more of a name than a clear concept, but I always liked it. Fabrica Diabolica (with my awful Latin I believe it means something like 'Devilish Devices'). A Verditius with an ambition for greatness, amd he feels that making a name for himself at this academy would be a good start. Plus as he'd be older I'd have the opportunity to give him some interesting Mysteries.
If we have a stat at 0, and a spell to raise it up to a maximum of +3, can we assume it has already been cast on themselves or do we have to do that at the beginning?
How many seasons are we expected to teach, and how many do we have for lab activities?
There are a series of assumptions built into stat boosting rituals that aren't well modeled by this particular method of advancement and I have certain beliefs about the ease of acquiring the spells, too.. First and foremost is that while anyone can invent a stat boosting ritual, it's still really tough to do and the lab texts for these spells are either closely held by the magus who invents them or the province of The Cult of Heroes (HoH:True Lineages, House Mercere section). RAW spell learning all but presumes the presence of a lab text (or at least a teacher), and I'm not going to allow it for these specific spells. So there are two ways of getting the spells, Cult of Heroes or inventing them as a lab activity.
There are a few gateway options to the Cult of Heroes, but being a member of House Mercere is probably not an option here, since I have one player expressing an interest in playing a Mercere, and with one Mercere NPC already in the saga, it's a lot of magical Merceres in one place. One can be in the Cult of Heroes if one is already part of the Cult of Mercury, but you need to have attributes that make you a good member of the Cult, and you will also have demands of time placed upon you and lose some development XP.
To invent stat boosting rituals as a lab activity, you need to provide me a snapshot of your character at the time he invents the spells. I might veto the snapshot if he is extremely optimized to get to a sufficiently high lab total, and missing a lot of core things I think are important or reasonable, this is more of a feeling than it is a hard and fast rule. In this case, you need to convince me why this character has a CrMe Lab Total in excess of 45 compared to other lab scores and overall development.
Finally there's the matters of casting the rituals and how much vis you'll have during development. Rituals, in this saga will always have a chance of botch, whether you master the ritual or not, the mastery score only subtracts from botch dice, doesn't remove all botch dice. You will be rolling these spells when you casting them. The chances of botching when you roll a 0 are really high. You will not like the botch effects. I also haven't clearly outlined how much vis is available during development, which is a big issue that I was hoping to avoid tackling (and am still avoiding) until I had a forum.
Long story short, you're not going to like the impact on XP and/or character age to get these rituals and then cast them, against the risks of botching. And I'll point out that you don't know much about Panacea, but as a Merceris maga creo corpus specialist she is likely in the Cult of Heroes and may even have a CrMe Lab total sufficiently high to cast these spells. As an NPC providing them, the risks are much less, especially since she is Mercurian, but there will be a cost both financial and story related.
The first year will involve a light teaching load and amounts to only 1 season of instruction, but I'm estimating that some teachers might have to spend some time on school duties which I'll only know when they're developed.
Well, any student is possible as a lab assistant[1], but it would come at the expense of a class and/or extracurricular activity, so you need to do something to convince a student to be a lab assistant. The rewards for teaching are going to be spelled out in the charter. Going to be paid a significant amount of vis, as the school has the backing of House Bonisagus and House Tremere.
[1] I'm working on school rules for students, and trying to figure out how to model infractions of the rules. Detention could be served in a magus's lab providing a small bonus to lab activities if the detention is long enough. Detention will subtract XP from extracurricular activities, so it will likely be a ratio between the amount of XP lost and the total bonus a student could provide to lab total. It's also conceivable that a magus might recruit a 6th year student as a lab assistant if he's willing to give up most of his extra-curricular activities, but that needs to be a pretty powerful inducement to get the agreement, IMO.
I just received notification the forum is up. I'll be posting stuff over there later today. In the meantime, you can create your individual character threads. I'd like to see a snapshot of the character at gauntlet before you advance all the way through what you'd like to be the final version of the character.
Thanks, I might hit the necessary CrCo Lab Total with my Bjornaer as I mentioned he will be Creo focused and Corpus is probably the highest Form.
Overcoming his weak Strength could be interesting enough but I still have to see how everything get together.
If a character has Poor Characteristic with a Flaw it will not be overcome with a ritual designed to increase the attribute, or have at least unexpected and undesired results.
The primary issue is who determines hatred. I think, this is largely a story consideration and therefore clearly my domain. If Hekrates has any enemies, well, sure, there's some hatred there.
Beasts without intelligence don't have hatred. Even beings or people that are unknown to each other don't have hatred. Bandits on the road don't hate Hekrates, they just want his stuff. As to whether player characters hate Hekrates, that's largely up to the individual players. I'd love to see some inter-character development where some people hate him and other people don't. People may also start to understand his weaknesses and strengths, and that's really bad for Hekrates.
House Tytalus, as a rule doesn't hate any of its members. It may think individual magi are misguided or mistaken, but hate is a bit too much. I doubt there was even hate for members of the other side in the Harpax or Bulliste Primus debate back in 1220s. The other side was simply wrong, you don't hate someone for being wrong, uneducated, stupid whatever, certainly members of House Tytalus don't hate that way. It's tougher (and more fun) to kill with kindness. Of course, members of House Tytalus excel at engendering hate in other members of the Order.
I appreciate the input, but keep in mind that this doesn't necessarily involve your player character, and you can, if you would for some reason get into combat with Hekrates say you don't hate him. Your problems immediately following any magical confict are dealing with House Bonisagus and House Tremere, and explaining yourselves to the representatives of the respective Houses here at the school.