The only question I have: Which book is Pralician in? I'm assuming True Lineages?
HoH:Societas 126
He is house Ex Misc
It is just those virtues and flaws he has listed.
The Ex Miscellanea chapter in HoH:Societates, p.126
Hi!
Could you elaborate on what this means? Is it that your Magi’s CM only works linked to your Parma, while it’s up? As a Necessary Condition? If so, I would argue that’s not really a flaw, though, since a HM wants their Parma up 100% of the time except during very specific and extremely narrow windows of the Magus’s choosing. But I might have misunderstood.
Usually the typical best for really old magi is in the ballpark of 40. Puissant doesn't help for writing, so 40+3 is still 40. So as a general rule the maximum possible level is in the ballpark of 20. So writing at level 20 probably wouldn't leave room for a Quality boost by writing to a lower level than your max. Practically, the best writer will max out around 14 base quality. But how many of those Com +5, Good Teacher writers are the ones with a 40 in an Art? So level 20, quality 14 would be a truly extraordinary work.
Yes, I can build a character coming out of apprenticeship with a score of about 30 in an Art, though that requires ridiculous focus. Yes, I know how to get a base quality of 23, but that's requires more cheese than cheesemongers generally have available; tweaking things with less cheese would be more like 16, much lower. But I don't think we're really looking at those kinds of crazy builds here.
So level + quality of 34 is at the point of a covenant Boon, and so is much higher than I would expect to be able to pick up without doing it in-character. The core book limits starting libraries to summas of level + quality = 31, which is still really high, reaching close to the upper expected limits.
Can we swap specialties when we improve Abilities?
Character wise - I can't find a hook for a "game/strategy" angle for a magus yet, and have started thinking about luck, chaos and order as aspects of magic. I found this post and this negative onewhich started talking about similar topics and suggested Hedge Magic for influencing luck, and integrating Fortunam from the Learned Magicians, in Hedge Magic is interesting to me.
Few questions before I get too excited:
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Do you think the game will move at a pace where finishing Original research is possible?
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Is "finding" the Form: luck viable? I ask as one post really smashes the idea, but I think it would be something interesting to do as I have never done this in game before.
Particularly I do not mean transcribing the way learned magicians "do luck" but instead research how hermetic magic might influence luck. My end goal would be to have a virtue which a hermetic magus can learn which grants them access to a new Form: Luck (probably with a sexier latin name), which they they use with the normal Techniques. -
Fortunam is a minor virtue, but is part of a large body of virtues and flaws of Learned Magicians, ... so a minor breakthrough, or ?
Think of it economically. You spend 4 seasons writing. You get scribes to make some copies. If you get 20 pawns per copy and only sell 4 copies ever, you just made 20 pawns/season of work. Not bad! More realistically, you might spend 3 seasons writing a Q12, L18 book and be able to sell at least half a dozen copies for 7.5 pawns on average. (I'm sure half a dozen covenants would buy that good a book at that price.) That would still be 15 pawns/season put into it on a far more realistic end. If you charge much more, seeing how much can be made, others will likely undercut you. If you can write/teach well, you can make it quite lucrative by keeping prices reasonably low but not too low.
Please don't try to break things like this.
Or...
Doing this devalues the product by flooding the market, which over time - and I am the purveyor of how soon in this game - returns less and less vis for you while not lowering your burden for paying for the scribes.
Or...
Please don't try to break things like this.
No. I was just trying to show that the price isn't actually ridiculous.
Is that what you were trying to do, I really didn't get it. My point was we should not have access to books with no level caps. YOU already established why such books shouldn't ever exist so the economics are not relevant.
Also we're PC's it's our job to break the world!
I was responding to the "only pay" part, which comes from the formula, figuring I'd already gone into enough detail on the level and quality. The reason I was responding to that, is we could talk about how much you only have to pay to get a level 18, quality 12 book, for example.
Like, 7.5 vis is fairly affordable. I'll probably still get a book Equivalent to our Perdo book for Creo, Mentem, and Corpus. Maybe not all at once but They would be nice to have.
Yes, things like that might be nice. I'm looking more at lab texts. With a ReVi lab total in the low-mid 30s likely coming out of gauntlet, it could take a while to invent some ReVi 25 and ReVi 30 published spells. But 80 levels would cost 4 pawns, 1 1/3 seasons. Doing that would let me develop those 80 levels in 3 seasons, saving a lot of time, and then I could provide the texts to the covenant, too.
I am in a similar boat. My concept is based around a set of min level 35 rituals I think It would only take me a few seasons to invent the first one but the later ones are real tough.
Are the spells from Ars books or bespoke? If from cannon you could wait a year once game starts and but them from the vis salary drawn from the covenant. Especially plausible if other magi might benefit from the spells (like many Vim spells).
Adeline, as I mentioned, would probably be willing to help. Getting improved Characteristics would help her become the greatest Hermetic warrior ever, which would trump any social issues with assisting in the lab. Coming out of gauntlet I expect she could provide +10 (unless you're working at nights, in which case it's +4).
I think the problem is they're canon spells, many of which are also carefully guarded in canon. Of course, developing T: Circle versions can work better, but that requires you to develop your own.
In my case, two canon spells I'm looking at are Circular Ward Against Demons (ReVi 30 or so - not so critical, but useful and fitting) and Suppressing the Wizard's Handiwork (ReVi 25 - absolutely critical to my design), both of which might be generally useful to the covenant. I realized circular wards are great with Life Boost because you can figure you probably have a protected place to rest and recover, plus Affinity with Rego will provide for a good Rego score.
I thought that was canon, but maybe I'm mistaken. Anyway, I'm all for it since it shows character growth.
Someone else wrote that recently. I'd thought it was a house rule we always used. Now I just don't know. I haven't found it in the books yet, but I haven't looked hard.
The core book makes no mention of swapping specialties when you improve Abilities. I guess my question is: why would you?
One current case is wanting a specialty of pole arm (probably) for Great Weapon. Right now Str is too low, but not for a staff. So the specialty that makes realistic sense isn't the one I would choose. I could just choose the unrealistic one I want, but I was trying to avoid that.