Character Creation for Nithyn (OOC)

Actually, the limit isn't on the Shape and Material bonuses. It's on the number of components. A component can combine a shape and a material. So an iron sword counts as a single component. A ruby in the pommel is a second component. A brass guard would be a third (a guard of the same material as the sword would not count as an additional component). Etc.

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Given the fact that you're quite literally putting the vis into the item in question (which can only be accomplished by Vim), I don't agree that you're not using Vim. Especially since the act of opening an item require Vim vis, you can't use anything else. It feels more like a situation where the process is highly ritualized to the point where people don't realize they're using the form, but as it's something that can't be replicated by any other tradition that I can think of, it doesn't feel like too much of a leap?

But something as minor as exposure xp is hardly the hill I want to die on.

It's not as if this is trying to happen during play or anything. While this character creation process is an extremely lengthy one, it is just that, character creation. Making adjustments like this is, in my mind, just a part of the process. That said, I'm more than happy to sit down and go back over his lab totals to make sure that it wouldn't have changed anything.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but starting the saga with a working talisman is pretty much the only time you'll see me put my foot down and insist on something. It is absolutely essential to the concept, and not something I'm willing to budge on.

Let's agree to disagree here. Everyone has their own experiences and they influence everyone's assumptions, simple as that.

I wouldn't say completely unwarranted or unsupported. I noted the possible concern about it making Vim the obvious choice for a specialty expressly because I was trying to observe that there was a legitimate concern for potential abuse or negation of the variety in choices. It is just not a view I've ever seen before and find surprising. And surprises that affect the value/return of resources already expended in a negative way are not pleasant surprises.

You may very well have had very different play experiences from me, to where this seems common/everyday application of the rules to you. And I won't criticize that by any means either. I just have found myself surprised a few times going through this process and find myself wondering if/when I will be again. And prefer it be well before I've already done/created something and then try to use it. But that isn't a personal attack, in spirit or intent, and if it seems like it is ... well you certainly have my apologies on that score. I believe that in general I can see that you have a good, even deep, knowledge of the rules and apply them even handedly. I've learned some things already from being in this game, a time or three.

Best regards.

If Vim was a relevant specialty when opening items, there would be less need for a dedicated "enchanting items" specialty.

If Belisarius hasn't used that "Vim" specialty, would Vortigern be able t change it to "Enchanting Items"?

Nithyn -> Belisarius
Vortigern -> Vorsutus

:wink:

I won't pretend to tell Nithyn what to do.

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If Vim was a relevant specialty when opening items, the value of the Art would have an impact in it. But Vim level doesn't appear anywhere there.

I think that is interpretive ... but regardless it seems like we have a substantive troupe majority that "art" specialties do not apply to vis manipulation.

This begs the question then. An "art" Magic Theory specialty would apply obviously to designing a spell or magical effect that used that art. Does it apply to anything else?

Where else can you add both MT value and the Art value at the same time?

I'm not sure I'd agree with that as seemingly a hard criteria, but it is an interesting point regardless.

Certainly "adding both MT value and the Art value" would be a clear case of incorporation. But you could be "incorporating" Vim by building a Vim oriented lab improvement/feature by an alternative definition of "incorporate".

Clearly a far looser view than only when the Art score is also being used. I'm not sure that there is an explicit example of such things in action that would clearly indicate how incorporate should be viewed here.

I think my biggest hesitance on this account is that it seemingly makes the "Enchanting Items" and/or a "Laboratories" or the like specializations decidedly mechanically superior to others?

Thoughts?

If you arent using the Art score, then you arent using the Art at all.
It like asking to add Exposition exp into Single Weapon (Longsword) because he "used" a sword to make the enchantment :person_shrugging:

What you are telling is pretty much how sympathy bonuses works, but not specializations.

"Laboratories" cannot be an specialization (unless you understand it ONLY as a specialization for increasing the Refinement).

And "Enchanting items" cannot be used when you create/reinvent spells, for example. With Vim specialization you can add a +1 when you add Vim effects into an item AND when you create/reinvent Vim spells.
If you want to create a lot of items from several Arts, yes, "Enchanting items" is the way to go. If nearly all your "Enchanting items" will be from the same Art because you specialized, then just pick the Art and will be better.

Any total that involves both the Art and Magic Theory. That is usually a lab total, but I think there are a few totals here and there within the game that use both wothout being a lab total.

So in addition to enchanting effects and inventing spells, there is familiars (if the Art matches one used in the lab total), extracting vis (Cr or Vi), crafting a longevity ritual (Cr or Co), investigating an enchanted item (In or Vi), opening the Arts of an apprentice (also In or Vi).

And that is just lab activities from the core book. There are probably a few more possibilities scattered through the other books.

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Color me curious, how do you think the vis gets transferred to the device in question? Because it's not something that any other tradition can do. At least not any that I remember off the top of my head. Instead, if they want to make items, they have to find material that already contains vis and craft their devices accordingly.

Mind you, I'm not even arguing about the specialty at this point, this has become something else entirely, and purely a discussion for fun.

Side note, make friends with a bunch of hedgies, move vis into their preferred crafting material for them, profit?

Also, I'll have to sit down and give the talisman a once over and decide on what else to potentially include.

No other tradition, as far as I recall, enchants items in a way similar to hermetic invested devices. The ones which can create things usually have something similar to lesser enchantments (where you use an item and vis from a particular flavor). The final item doesn't need to have vis in it before the enchantment begins.

You might be thinking of enriching Things of Virtue, which is not quite the same thing.

I like the idea of making him some kind of either transplanted personality/spirit or transformed human who actually was a Roman military engineer. And has an accompanying desire/need for order and structure ... which he so thoroughly and completely does not get in this environment. Cranky with a sense that nothing is ever good enough and/or everything compares poorly back to the days of the Empire etc.

I've been pondering powers a bit still, but time has been short. I'll be working on a list here soon and get back with you.

You know how much I love this idea mate, so please take it and run! I'm also amused at the idea of just how much he'll lose his mind with our Muto aura interfering with his precious order.

In the manual it says that the mundane "resource" that a lab needs most to replace are glass items, so it could be imagined as the most typical alchemist lab, full of tubes, stoves, containers and liquids, where you "dissolve" the vis and you get a liquid with which you "varnish" or "immerse" the object to prepare the enchantment.

While to imbue some powers to item it would be more similar to develop a type of spell (i like to imagine that like when you see a mathematician with several blackboards filled with numers and symbols) that you later will cast it into the item in a similar way to a ritual one.

Well, ofc there is nothing official, so how we imagine the process can be very different from player to player. How you all imagine it? :open_mouth:

Sound very fun! :smiley: And maybe Julius will make a friend xD

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Pretty much how I always viewed it as well!

No I agree, invested devices are unique. Which is precisely my point actually. If the process of opening the device didn't require Hermetic arts of some kind, then you'd expect to see other people with some version of it. But you don't. Thus, to me, I've always assumed that it's a highly ritualized process that only takes as long as it does, because it doesn't rely on the user's art in Vim, only that they've been opened to said arts. But again, to each their own!

The closest the most traditions get is Lesser Craft Magic. Which is still awesome for what it's worth. Actually, speaking of, it reminds me of this hedgie I designed once as a mage level character that was extremely weather focused. Was a ton of fun to build, but alas, never saw play.

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But there are traditions that can move vis in the lab and fix Arcane Connections (for example), with no need for Vim. And the Cr, Re and Vi arts of a magus offer no help to any of these activities either.

I default to what Arthur mentioned earlier: you are using an Art if you are generating a lab total or casting total with said Art. Otherwise you are not using it.

For anything that doesn’t explicitly uses an Art, I’d even go further and say that knowledge of Magic Theory (and the Gift, of course) could (but would?) suffice to do said things.

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In fact, you can do any of those things in the lab even with a Flaw that prevents you completely from using Vim.

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In Hermetic Theory all magical energy is described as vis, vis in different states essentially. Spellcasting uses ambient or "fluid" vis that is basically everywhere to the point of being inescapable. Vis as we commonly use the term to refer to pawns etc. is "physical" concentrated vis, especially powerful concentrations of vis. Enchantments are "spun" or woven patterns of vis energy in objects.

Auras and vis of all kinds fall under Vim (which is why ReVi is used for moving Vis around and, and InVi for measuring and identifying Vis). The theoretical underpinnings there are seemingly well established by both the nature of Vim/vis and the descriptions of hermetic thought in RoP: M. In general ... I'm inclined to call every type of Vis an expression of magical energy associated with that Art. All of this "only when the Art" specifically is included in a given total type of thinking to me is kind of ... mechanistic/gamist.

That said my greater concern was whether it made other selections to those associated then with an Art obviously mechanically superior from a gameplay perspective. I think it does explicitly do that.

Enchanting Items becomes essentially the only choice that boosts your seasonal vis handling limit, and then (since you are handling vis you are also enchanting items) adds to any total involving that as well.

Conversely a specialty in labs becomes superior expressly, yes, for boosting refinement and giving another slot for a lab upgrade. This makes it the only specialty that then nets you a bonus to lab totals, in the end, greater than one through that additional lab upgrade.

Art specializations by comparison then are by definition worse than either of these as a selection, because they do not boost vis handling and only provide the occasional bonus of one.

So ... to me the relevant question should be, is this a desirable result of this interpretation?