- I agree we should go with the 10 exp per season with 1 season no exp. per year or something like this. Also I think Spells should be Lab work instead of bought via Exp.
- Only Mythic Companion (2x Virtue per Flaw) and Gifted are to my understanding at the same level as a Magus all other are normal Companion or even Grog. For house Mercer this means only a real magus or a char with blood of heroes is at magus level.
Honestly even grogs are subject to power creep to some degree, except that nobody but me seems to use them enough to notice. I have had grogs with the right set of virtues can do all kinds of things companions used to be unable to do. In my saga there are grogs in the background earning vis with herbalism (selling potions to recover fatigue!) abilities while another trio makes clothes enchanted with the mythic weaver virtue...
I think mystery cults should be about time and cost, not a clockwork type advancement of initiations per decade. Most magi probably never join them, and any rules for doing so should not have a guarantee of success, unless it is done as an apprentice.
7/It's about the kind if story you want with companions and is also about their power compared to that of magi.
If companions are strong, they can deal with a lot more situations, including a lot of the the faery/magical stories. That's good if you want a lot of lab time for your magus, or if your magus is old and would not go outside to deal with trivial matters.
If your magus is the adventurer type, or is relatively young, those small scale story are actually interesting and you'd prefer to play it with your magus rather than a companion.
As a player I would like a rather large gap of power between magus and companions so strong companions is we're playing older magus and weak (almost mundane) companions if we play young magus.
I am going to stick mostly, or maybe even exclusively with the core book. I am not sure about what my companion and magus will be, but I am probably going to stick with a younger magus and a mundane companion to streamline the process.
I don't, personally, see a reason to fiddle with the advancement rules as written. The book does say, on page 32, that "Older magi can learn spells more quickly than these guidelines suggest. You may therefore want to use these rules to have a magus learn spells as a lab project if you are advancing him more than forty years or so beyond apprenticeship." Now, my bias as an ST in general is towards being more permissive, so I would say that everyone should use whichever method seems better and, if I was the alpha, I'd just say that, if you want to take the time and do the work to figure out the break-even point where it becomes better to switch from spending xp on spells to figuring them out as lab projects, go for it.
(Maybe this is a bad habit, but I've been using the practice of just adding up a post-gauntlet magus' total xp and then dividing it out at once, rather than bothering to go year-by-year or season-by-season. It's certainly a lot quicker.)
I'm totally on board with this, I'd prefer to have slightly more powerful characters.
Your companion seems fine to me.
Our patron brings out the question of our Covenant. The saga is about medieval people integrating with the Order of Hermes. If we're on the coast, then Poseiden, otherwise Demeter or Athena. I don't remember most of my Greek mythology, so others may be better. Are we in a weak, medium, or powerful covenant? (using examples from page 72 of ArM5). Before we go into design, I think we should all agree on the power of the covenant. I'm not interested in a weak, starting covenant.
I would vote strong, given the theme, otherwise we are jus along for the ride as changes are made over our heads.
Keeping in mind we are unlikely to be senior magi in the covenant in such a case, but at least we will be involved...
That or a chapterhouse of a Roman or Norman covenant, in which case people entering and dropping from the game can just be part of the turnover of getting marched by the Theban tribunal and shipped back home while replacements are cycled in...
For a strong Covenant we would need at last some summer or even autumn mages, but knowing my limits I have to say that is something I can't really help to create.
As I prefer to play a Tebes covenant the way around still could be a chapterhouse but from one of the existing strong Tebean Tribunal covenant.
One idea to have a covenant way beyond what a normal Spring covenant should have is that one or more magus from the founding covenant stayed in this chapterhouse for years because they wanted to study something there and now that they returned to the main covenant they placed some younger magus on this chapterhouse.
Edit: Also don't forget that a strong patron could give a Tebes covenant power way beyond a starting covenant usual have.
I agree with silveroak that it should be a strong covenant. If it's a weak Spring covenant, then we're just leaves in the winds of change. If we're to address the issues of the Order integrating with normal society, then we want to be the people doing the integrating, not just the people watching it happen.
But that leads to another few questions: who is spearheading the intergration of the magic and the mundane, how accepted is that within the tribunal, how long has it been going on, and why are the other tribunals allowing it to happen?
Who is spearheading the integration (or even supporting it) is important because if there are powerful magi above us who are leading the integration, then we run the risk of falling into the shadows storywise. But if there are powerful magi above us who are opposed to the integration, then we run the risk of being told to back off by our superiors (who presumably have the support of the rest of the Order). That would make this a story about rebellion rather than integration.
How accepted the integration is within the tribunal is also an important issue. Based on the original premise, it seems to me that it should be generally accepted among the tribunal. Not that every magus will be for it, but most should be. Otherwise it's a saga about politics within the Order (or rebellion against the Order) rather than about how integration with the mundanes came about.
How long it's been going on is relevant, though perhaps not as crucial as the others. But we ought to know, will we be dealing with the first efforts to integrate, or has the effort been going on for some time (months or years)?
Finally, why is the rest of the Order doing nothing about this? (Or are they?) Most importantly, why haven't the quaesitors come down hard on Thebes with the full backing of all the other tribunals? I would posit that some (many?) of the tribunals secretly like the idea and are willing to let Thebes run with the ball. They'll let Thebes try this experiement and take all the risk. If it works, they join us; if it doesn't, they nod their heads and say that they knew all along it was a bad idea. However, that doesn't explain why the (typically conservative) quaesitors are not coming down like a ton of bricks on Thebes for violating the Code (“I will not interfere with the affairs of mundanes and thereby bring ruin upon my sodales”). Has there been any effort to modify the Code? Has this been brought up at the Grand Tribunal? Totally ignoring a core precept of the Code would have strong ripple effects throughout the Order that many would oppose.
Of course, many of these issues are the issues that the saga would address. But we'll need to know what the background is before we can move forward.
From my understanding we chosen Tebes because they have war against other magic user that are already acting in the public and that is the reason why this tribunal is going into the public as well.
The opening posting suggested a campaign 100 years after a tribunal or the order was going into the open but it looks like we go for a slight different setting now.
Thebes has multiple reasons to go public, and the OoS argument is the weakest as they are far more active in the Levant than in Thebes. What Thebes does have is a history of going their own way combined with a tribunal structure which limits the ability of magi from other tribunals ability to interfere, since they don't get to vote at the tribunal and are not recognized as part of it regardless of how long they have lived within it. Additionally there is a lot of political sympathy within the tribunal for throwing out the crusaders who have invaded, nd the tribunal is united in this way, to where they are likely to wink and nod at each other's actions instead of slapping wrists and getting embroiled in their own political intrigues within the order.
As to why the rest of the order hasn't done anything, there is little they can do- if it is after 1228 and wasn't brought up at that grand tribunal (presumably it wasn't that significant at that point) then it won't be brought up until 1261, at which point the integration may be completed. Quaeitors work for the tribunal and punish individual mages, not tribunals which go astray. They can arrest magi who have broken the rules, but if the tribunal keeps voting to acquit them there isn't much they can do.
The process of integrating the Order into mundane life is thoroughly documented in Transforming Mythic Europe.
Playing the part of change agents who make this happen is appealing, but it may be hard to do this in the context of a play-by-post game. I'm with silveroak on this - the Theban Tribunal decided that it was OK to interact, Tribunal refuses to punish interaction, and so far no one has really pushed limits. Cooperation with mundanes is accepted, but how each ruler comports with a Covenant is entirely dependent on the details. Some have a tight military alliance, and are sending sons to be educated. Others are very wary.
Is the Pagan major story flaw a thing for worshiper of one or more gods from the old Zeus pantheon in the Tebean Tribunal? (Reason I ask is because I'm not sure if the orthodox church in Greek had the same radical stance as the catholic in most of west Europe)
If it is realistic it should. The Byzantine Empire was more fanatical about rooting out paganism than the Roman.
I'm working on character concepts. I have several: a Holy Magus, a combat specialist, a ritualist, and an oddball Bonisagus who specializes in long duration spells. Is a Major Magical Focus of spells of Moon or Year duration acceptable? I wasn't sure if it was too broad or not.
I'm assuming that we will take turns being Storyguide. I'd guess that each of us runs a story, and when it's resolved, we pass the baton to the next person. Is this a workable plan?
Personal I don't like the holy magus that much as they have problems to intergrate in a normal covenant but all other concepts are fine in my opinion.
The Ritual Magus bring up the question if we want to have a house rule that change Mercurian Magic? I remember that many people here at this forum think its weak for a major virtue.
I probably go with a town focused (Way of the Town + Cautious Sorcerer) Ex Misc. with either Re Vi Circle or Co centered magic.
Edit: Is a Major Magical Focus of spells of Moon or Year duration acceptable? From my understanding a duration centered Magical Focus don't work but I'm not that sure if something like you want can be done with Astrological Magical Focus.
That is a workable plan, but we still need an "alpha" for setting up the board.
It seems to me that a Jerbiton holy Magus with ways of the town would be a killer concept in Thebes.
Ok, Holy Magus it is.
Earlier posts have decided that we want a strong covenant with lots of resources. We also have four players (Trogdor, Adauli, Silveroak, and myself), and I believe we were going to be relatively young magi. How do we have a powerful covenant? Answer: wizard's war. The elders of our covenant had a long-running dispute with another covenant. This ended with both covenants suffering damages, and Tribunal ordered us to stop the war, and merged the two covenants together. There are four NPC mages who are generally antagonistic to us, plus the covenfolk have divided loyalty as well.
Since I have Ways of the Town, I'd like to have an urban covenant, perhaps the vanquished rivals is a chapter house. I'm in no way married to this concept, but I'm looking for some Hooks, and a reason why there aren't archmagi here.
You missed mplsmagus who also suggested a potential covenant location
Because Thessaloniki is mentioned a lot in The Sundered Eagle I'm not sure if it is the best place but after 1212, when a covenant of Frankish magi where destroyed there by the greek, it could be a option without changing the tribunal book story to much.
Ouch. Sorry, mplsmagus!
Thessaloniki sounds like an excellent place for a covenant.
Because we now have a holy mage I withdraw my Apollon worshiper companion idea as it would be to much potential inner covenant conflict.
Instead I will go with a Blood of the Nephilim (RoP:D 34) warrior char without Divine Might who is disillusioned about the church to give some interesting inner covenant story potential without going all the way to kill or be killed.