Character: Sophie

Huh? Arts, including Difficult Arts interact with Virtues differently than do Abilities, including Accelerated Abilities. For example, Puissant Ability adds 2 to an Accelerated Ability.

I guess. I'd think accelerated Ability is still Ability. I think Careful With could apply. But I'm just cluttering your thread at this point, sorry.

Exactly. But the Goetic Arts aren't Accelerated Abilities. They're regular Arts.

I am glad that Sophia is not a Tainted Character!

I happily leave the corner cases of Virtues and Flaws (Tainted Virtues for non-Tainted Character with Offensive to Demons, All According to Plan for character not a Thief of Marrakesh) to @Xavi to adjudicate, who knows the game he wishes to run.

I assume that Sophia's Greek is her native language, (TSE p.41f Languages) Romaic Greek, not the Koine of the times of Alexander the Great? With Romaic Greek 6 she would also be able to speak Classical Greek at 4.

For the love of Hermes girl! Raise that Intrigue (Bargain)!!! That is a key ability for summoners that need to negotiate with spirits. I have no idea about what some of your virtues do (all according to plan, envied beauty) and I need to review the alluring thing and leadworker, but this can change somewhat that statement, I suppose. If they do not I would strongly suggest doing that.

Offensive to demons would be better left out and changed for something else, since I do not plan to use these much. At least not overtly. The infernal is more insidious for me than hordes of critters to be smitten. it will have an impact if you plan on summoning, negotiating and binding demons, though, so if this is the case you can keep it.
Ambition might be a little bit long in its planning time, no? Unless you become undead or something. :slight_smile:

I think that if we go for a less infernal character it can work as well. We can untaint the virtues if the troupe (and you) agrees. Commanding spirits can be magical without being game breaking. Binding depends. If you force the spirit against his will I can see it being tainted, but if you have the spirit agreeing to being bound it can be normal. Weren't untainted versions of those abilities in ROP:M or ROP:F?

What do you think?

However, I can sense from the character concept that being tainted seems to be the thing of the character, with the hedonistic approach et al. A grey character. In that case all the abilities being tainted makes sense and is actually really cool. So whatever floats your boat, but we can have the abilities not being tainted as well.

Cheers,
Xavi

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Neither, really. Byzantine Greek. Now we have modern Greek. Koine Greek is earlier, as you mentioned. There is an intermediate between the two. Romaic Greek, as far as I can tell, is a no-longer-used term for Modern Greek, referring to an earlier stage of modern Greek (ending somewhere in the ballpark of 1800. Despite what TSE says, there are several widely spoken "dialects" at the time of Ars Magica. There was Cappadocian in south-central Anatolia, Pontic on the southeastern coast of Black Sea, Yevanic by the Byzantine Jews, and the common/koine version.

I figured right now, since she focuses on magical spirits, 7+roll for bargaining with them would be a good start.

All According to Plan is in BS&S p.52. It's a botch mitigation Virtue, weaker than Cautious (something), but more broadly applicable.

Envied Beauty is in HoH:S p.56-57. It's essentially a variant on Curse of Venus.

Alluring to (Beings) is in HoH:MC p.86. It's somewhat like Venus's Blessing toward different things.

Leadworker is in HoH:TL p.143. That's the Hermetic Virtue I'd asked you about earlier.

OK. I'll drop it. She would be avoiding summoning demons as best she could.

No, not undead. Binding spirits to her. She expects the Order to ultimately fail. Right now she needs to become the most powerful sorceress ever and gather the pieces together so she can eventually rule when the Order falls. Some of that may well include locating nobles/royals without church burials so she can summon the ghosts their ghosts.

In canon only (Spirit) Summoning is always Tainted if it's Faerie or Magic, otherwise it's Infernal. Ablating, Binding, and Commanding area always Infernal.

Yes, that was part of how I built things. I was trying to include the taint within a character intentionally avoiding dealing with demons.

I am aware of it. And I know I liked it from the tremeres when I read it (and so I said OK to you when you asked), but can't remember what it does without looking :stuck_out_tongue:

Wow. so REALLY Major Ambitious. The personality you seem to be building sounds interesting! I am looking forward to her background.

I remember that it irked me when reading the abilities that summoning and associated abilities were always tainted. I might have been projecting my feelings here. If tainted works for you, go ahead :slight_smile:

Ars Magica sometimes uses language denominations no scholar would use for that language. The obvious example is Middle High German, always called High German in ArM5. If you know that: good for you. If you insist on consistently writing Middle High German onto your character sheets and have your SG figure out what it means in ArM5 context: bad for everybody.

ArM5 uses Romaic Greek as the name of the language of the common people in Greece, who called themselves Romai (later under Turkish rule: Rumi). So it makes some sense to call Medieval Greek Romaic Greek in ArM5. As it is just a name, be gracious to troupe and storyguide and use it as well.

To be honest I've always thought it was stupid to have any virtues as general as these arts or even ablating be inherently infernal or tainted, just seemed like a lazy balance mechanic by the authors, so I'm fine with any such changes.

Am I right in thinking that this has grown to be Callen's first choice and the Sihr issue is moot? It seems noone objects to Sihr anymore based on the other thread.

There is a difference between a full-blown TC&TC Sahir and a practitioner of Sihr.

TC&TC Sahir is nowhere near Hermetic Power

We don't need to discuss this here, as we are going to play:

Right?

I was trying to discuss it in the off-topic thread, because someone wanted to play one but was prevented via private communication of another player to the SG. Which is really not healthy, imo.

The power level was already set, when Xavi posted the recruitment thread:

So TC&TC Sahir were clearly out from the beginning. No need to block anything by private communication, that was not clearly blocked before.

Why were Sahir clearly out? Where is the cut-off for a hedge tradition? I thought it meant non-Hermetic.

For the precise cut-off you needed to ask Xavi, of course.

If you somehow understood "everything non-Hermetic allowed", that explains why you suggested the TC&TC Sahir. If I imagine all the big non-Hermetics assembling in Triamore, I shudder: that would have been just a character building exercise without any chance to play.

But Amelia's and Xavi's respective Opening Posts for recruitment and sub-forum should have clarified, that really hedge magicians were requested. Asking Xavi directly - perhaps with some explanation of TC&TC p19-61 Order of Suleiman: Naranjs, Sihr, Solomonic Alchemy, Astrology, Physic, Storytelling and Travel - should have further reduced doubts about the expected level.

I am officially smashing any further discussion in this thread about power level.

I will open another thread about this. In general I am not very enthusiastic about people bans on other player's choices. I did veto sahir on an assumption that I just discovered might not be the case. Will read the rules tonight and come back to you.
I will delete all then power level discussions in this thread in brief, since this is Sophia's thread, not the power level discussion thread.

Thanks.

Fine with me! Please go ahead!

Can you change the character name to "Sophie" without the Greek (trying to keep things somewhat the same)?