Covenant design discussion

I'm thinking for the last grog I make it will be a crossbowman, or are there any requests?

Need to allocate 250 bps to the covenant, these would be items Apollodorus has told you he has at the covenant. I'll be posting everyone else's 250 bps in a stickied thread sometime soon, perhaps later today. Also, you have 75 bps in stuff you can bring with you. These can be whatever and are yours to be shared as you wish, while the 250 bps belong to the covenant as a whole. If you spend bps for your lab, those should come out of the 250. Also zlorfik has generally given everyone a +1 sized lab.
There's a matter of a companion. It appears everyone has paired off and picked a companion. If your companion won't be involved in much interaction with your character, there's no problem with you running him. If you want a factor for selling your items to mundanes, I can never remember the Verditius term for that person, I can run him, if someone wants to BSG those kinds of stories. Also, if you want a companion who's indpendent of any magi and works with the covenant as a whole, that's good too.
You can also build up to 4 grogs to come with you and any number of grogs you'd like to be at the covenant, if you want to save bps.

Edit: To anyone: zlorfik is also looking for someone to take on his apprentice. He'll be 2 or 3 years in, so he is unlikely to require a significant amount of playing time, at least initially. If anyone is interested in building a magus from apprenticeship up, this is a good opportunity.

A very important Vis source seems to be missing. So far it doesn't look like we have a source of either Rego or Vim. we'll need that to cast the Aegis each year, possibly a little extra so we can add to the Penetration total also.

Anyone that hasn't spent their points should maybe include that. The Dedicated Vis of Rego Vim (from Realms of Power) might be a great way to come up with that.

My 250 included two pawns of Rego every so often. And, worse comes to worse, we can always extract Vim vis from the aura, right? Granted, it's not going to be humungous amounts (Fiona can only extract three pawns per season, if I reckon rightly), but it's better than nothing.

With all of the build points we have, surely we can come up with more than that I'd think. I'm prefectly willing to re-do my points a bit if we're lacking. As it stands, we'd likely need two seasons (between one or two magi) to pull enough vim vis out. This is important enough to take a look at. I can't believe I didn't think of this until now, whenever I've designed a covenant I've always looked to the Re/Vi vis source for the Aegis.

https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/covenant-description/6105/1

Missing 2 boons. I am unsure what two boons were selected, I didn't hear objection to ones that were thrown out, but I didn't get a sense that everyone had agreed.
Qcipher had thrown out a healthy feature and another secondary income. zlorfik had countered with just going with Wealthy. I'll let this hang out there for a few days for troupe comment before I just pick something and move forward. :smiley:

I (still) support picking "healthy feature".

I would like to not have to worry about monetary issues. I dont know if "secondary income" once is enough for that. If it is, great, and we can pick something else as a boon. If not, lets take "wealth (minor)" in addition and that should be enough then.

Just so I can be sure, we have 1 boon spent on a secondary income at this point, so we have 2 Typical incomes, and still have 2 boons left.

In all honesty, maybe dropping the secondary and then using the 3 boon points and buying Wealthy is the way to go. If we kept the secondary though and took a healthy feature, then we could maybe use the last point on the aura and increase it or modify it in some way?

Yes, that is correct.

The aura is at 5, don't forget about the additional warping as it increases above 5. If you'd like, the aura within the regio could be 6, limiting the covenfolk who'd be affected to those who would work primarily with magi, scribes, librarians, teachers, autocrat, etc.

Aye, but dinna forget that the magi who'd be livin' in th' aura'd also be affected...and I dinna relish tha thought o'bein' e'en more warped every year.

Maybe if'n the aura is higher in spots in tha regio?

Time ta crack tha books agin.

Ach me boyo, Magi dinnae Warp in high Magic Auras, as they be attuned to it by their Gift!

Umm, I think you're mistaken.
Can you cite that? The MRB doesn't put say magi are immune because of their Gift, and I don't see where any distinction like that is made in Covenants or other books.

Check Page 168 in the main book, 3rd paragraph on the left.

Read it and agree. This is one of the maddening inconsistencies of Ars Magica. The section starts off with "Auras of over five points have an effect on anyone living within them..." No mention of exceptions in that or that there even are exceptions which then get revealed later on.

I'll put this out there...Apollodorus (being a Jerbiton) probably wouldn't want to subject covenfolk to warping... I don't actually consider another Aura addition to be a boon...

It is kind of minor in all honesty. Don't have my Covenants book with me, so that was the main thing I could think of right now.

(Geez, questioning me like he runs the game or something..! :wink: )

I'm a big believer in concurrence and understanding. At some point after things move along a bit and people have a better sense of the saga, I would like someone to step up and BSG, so I can bring in a character.

I just realized that we don't have Regio listed. I thought we had taken it, but I don't see it. That's a Major boon, so that gives us room to take one more Minor Hook

Which may or may not give us room to bring in the Wivre, depending on how nasty we want to make it. If she's just a pest or a nuisance, then she could be a Resident Nuisance (p. 10). If she's as nasty as mythbeasts.com makes her out to be, then she's be a Monster (p. 9), which is a Major hook and puts us right back where we started.

Ima keep looking.

wait...never mind...I see it now. (Way to blow your Second Sight roll, Peregrine). Dangit! Ima still keep looking.

It was the first one on the list!

I think you botched your awareness roll.

So, I must not have noticed the variability of these Vis sources before. These should be one type of Vis. If these are variable, I'd say that they cost more, on the order of the Dedicated Vis sorce (7.5 bps/pawn).

Some of the issues it brings up are the inability for players to plan on a certain source being availble for use, difficulty or cost in trading it, if the type is suboptimal. Although, I'm willing to let the troupe as a whole help make the determination...

I like the descriptions and methodology of these, but yeah, random and varying amounts of vis are a bit of an issue. A challenge in getting a known and dependable amount I'd say is preferred.

Having said that, of the 75 build points for Alexei, I did put in a vis source for him which varies in what type of vis, but it's a tithe from the Milites that gets delivered to him.

And again, I think we need Rego and Vim to cover our Aegis, pulling Vim vis ourselves seems inefficient.