Those are awesome! Helps me get started!
[strike]What is the online dice roller of choice now that InvisibleCastle is deceased?[/strike] - Never mind; I found coyotecode.net by searching through other games here. 
You mentioned that you removed the portal system from our version of the covenant. Do we know what is up there now? Is it more amenable to us having out labs there to get the higher aura bonus?
When you said "no Higher than the Library" for buying books post gauntlet does that mean I can buy a book on an Art with one of the stat lines in the Library or does it mean nothing better than each literal book.
As an example can I buy a Rego equivalent to our Perdo book (so L16/Q15) or can I only buy additional Q10 Rego tractatus?
Please check my character's spells
For what's there now, please read the covenant thread. I changed the Virtues and Flaws of the Covenant, and explained them in detail in that thread.
For the lab, assume an Aura of 5. As I stated previously, we are going to make the handwaved assumption that regardless of where you lab was before the game starts, it's at Semita Errabunda when the game starts.
I know what I want to say, but I can't find the right words. I've bolded your statement that's applicable.
I'll try to look at them over the next few days; I'm being pulled in a bajillion directions at work, and I'm trying to advance my own maga at the same time. 
Disparaging comments about my character no doubt, I don't mind I know I already sort of pushed the envelope on the topic and it is probably getting annoying but I felt it was an important clarification. You are trying to say we can buy L16/Q15 or L6/Q21 books on Arts and no better than 6/21 on abilities?
Since we have no way of tracking silver post gauntlet can I treat a qp as 2 pounds to buy mundane books of that (6/21) quality for my personal library? I'll run them by you so you can vet the skills to tell me which would be sufficiently rare to require a season to find?
Which is to say we do not have a Regio at all and the whole area is Aura 5 so of course our labs are aura 5, good. I just sort of assumed it was still there but in a different form, my mistake.
Sorry, unlike you, I have had a particularly slow week hence the constant questions.
To be honest, and to further what you said, I am a bit annoyed at the topic. I'm not really used to a pile of questions on one topic during character creation. To me it feels as if a loophole either exists or is trying to be exploited; every answer I give ends up with another 10 questions. And it's getting hard to keep straight what is/isn't allowed.
I've said before, and I'll say again: I'm expecting you guys to somewhat self-police and help me out here. Especially with the buying books thing; there is no hard mechanic in the books for this, and I'm pulling rules from Marko based on his recommendation. I'd rather you use common sense instead of trying to get me to give a hard answer that I honestly don't know. I don't know how a given level of book is going to impact character creation, or the game once it starts, or what it will do for your character. I stated as much when you talked about ridiculous quality books, which led me to say use the library as a guide. Which is now bringing up more clarifying questions. Sorry, but it's tiresome having to grind out an answer for something that I thought was answered a dozen questions ago.
Use your best judgement. Don't go overboard. Realize that I am no expert in this system and need help answering this stuff. If you want a hard answer...I don't know. What's the difference? Is it important to have a L16/Q15 book, or a L6/Q21 book? Or something in between? What is the major mechanical impact between the 2? Again, use your best judgement here.
As far as mundane books go, there is no mechanic to turn vis into silver, and thus no mechanic to purchase mundane books. I'm not going to open that can of worms like we did with the hermetic books. And as silver has almost no meaning to a magus/maga other than to deal with mundanes, I'm not sure what to do here. Again - self-police this and let me come back with "that's too rare" or "that seems a bit much".
Oops. My bad. I'd remembered incorrectly.
That's a Spell Mastery option, not a Virtue. That way you can cast a formulaic spell as fast as a fast-cast spontaneous spell.
The major problem with this is that the base material requires 15 pawns of Vis to open the Enchantment. Which means a Magic Theory score of AT LEAST 8 is required to do this in a single season. That's just not feasible. Unless I'm missing something basic about the size and shape of the gem?
That's why you make it a lesser item and you don't have to worry about opening the item. You only have to open Invested Items not Lesser Enchantments or Charged Items.
Charged Items don't even cost Vis!
Ah. I keep looking at the item as needing to be opened so I can make it a talisman (which gives a +5 bonus during creation). Which I probably don't need on this item, but might want on a different one.
Now I just have to figure out how to get my lab total to 58 when it currently sits at 39...
I asked a few questions here - could I get Ghost’s and other players opinions soon as I’d like to keep creating the character.
Thanks in advance guys. Asking as I might have time to plan more this weekend.
I'm sorry if I missed these. Some days I come in here and there's a page or more of posts overnight and I have to try to keep up. So...answers!
- I can't say how fast or slow the game will move, or what the timeline for anything is going to be. That's really going to be a group effort as to how long this lasts, how many seasons we get to do research, other things in-game that come up for you to deal with, etc. I obviously want this to be long-running, but that's not entirely my decision.
- Luck, as far as I know, is not a Form. Or a Technique. Or anything to do with the Arts in and of themselves.
- Where is Fortunam located? I read through the posts you linked, but neither of them that I see indicates where this might be. Both, however, hint that adding Fortunam to Hermetic Magic would be a breakthrough, and it's implied that it would take a Major Breakthrough to do it. But I'd need to see the reference material in order to rule on that.
I like the idea of a magus who plays around with luck/fate/chaos/destiny/etc. It's a decent concept, and I'm curious to see how one would put that together. Are we talking a Criamon magus who dabbles in time manipulation? Or someone with the right Virtues/Flaws who can manipulate what happens to someone both near and far? Perhaps Divination to see the actual future and predict outcomes based on that?
Books are the best way to gain XP. It's why, if a Magus bothers to go on an adventure, they only spend a few weeks or take a good book with then and completely forego the Adventure XP.
Magi are functionally bounded by the books they have available. So the level 16 book up there will get us to level 16 in 9 seasons (starting from 0) the other is what most would call an apprentice book that takes you from exactly 0 to exactly 6 in 1 season.
Marko's system is all the formulas from the core book on customizing your library but with the units changed to qp. That section has it's own limits the quality of books to the lower of 11+(20-level) or 22 which [11+(20-16)=15 and 11+(20-6)=24] both of the example type books fall inside of. I would have brought that up initially but Q+L=31 is easier math, what covenants calls out, and (i'll own up to it) I didn't know that library section existed in the core book until today. It basically works out because a level 20 quality 11 book is basically just a safer way to study from vis. While anything higher quality than 21 will just be wasting XP since it would be well over what was required for the max level of the book.
That all said I am content with the state of affairs. I can convince the covenant in character to release some Vis to me and I'll get books that way.
I was trying to self regulate but it isn't fair if I self regulate to one level and callen (just and example) self regulates to a different level. That is why I presented a potential issue and suggested solution all in the same post. Same way I did with personal Vis sources and with me not having a valid parens, I don't know of a better way to bring up foreseen issues.
I could pose them as question to the party instead of putting the onus on you specifically? I could start a thread for counsel rules decisions and update the OP with ruling we come up with to make a short list for you to say "Yay", "Nay", "A, B, or C" on. That would be more troupe style.
Well... Like I said you can straight chop 10 off by reducing the soak by 5.
You can customize your lab first.
You can bribe one of us to help you.
You can bind your familiar first.
You can work triple over time to get a +9 (Covenants 109). It'll hurt but not so bad when you are still young.
You can experiment to get a +1d10 and up to an a +3 on top of that.
Also guys, he gave us permission to have character specific threads. There is so much going on in the general OOC that things are getting missed. Ghost has been real good about responding in the threads that have been active.
I am beginning to see why magi spend so much time in their labs. I may end up having to actually scrap Vonette and start over; the PeIg combination is not working the way I thought it would (or the way it's presented in Societates), as most of the effects I want are actually Aquam based. And my lab total there sucks. That's frustrating that I've put this much time into this character to see that it isn't working. Sigh.
Ya, magi spend pretty much all their time in their labs because that's where the magic happens (figurative and literal).
What were you trying to do with PeIg that you aren't able to do?
Blasts of cold are PeIg, making ice from existing water is PeIg (I suppose Mu or Re Aq could do it too...). We could reevaluate the ward spell to use PeIg but It might not be as efficient. Basically Re counters Cr passively while Pe would counter it actively via fast casting.
EDIT: All that stuff I said, not really that extreme of measures, I think most of us will be trading favors for lab assistance and working long nights to get our kits up to snuff.
That tends to be why we all spend so long going through character creation. It's more like the engineering design loop than a linear process. Some advice:
- Decide exactly what you want to be able to accomplish, perhaps spells, perhaps research, etc. It looks like you want to deal with ice rather than cold, though of course cold is related. Define it as well as you can, sometimes done by defining the spells. (That's my current case. I know the effects I want to pull off, so I then figure out what will allow me to do it.)
- You've got some experienced players here. If you can concisely state your target, we can help. In general with broad things I go with a Minor Magical Focus over Puissant/Affinity. For example, a Minor Magical Focus in volcanic activity would like you work with lava, volcanic ash, volcanic fumes, volcanic lightning, etc., while parts of those could fall within all the techniques and Auram, Aquam, and Terram. This is one of the two primary approaches to a Focus. One is to boost a specific combination (or maybe two), like a Minor Magical Focus in cold along with high Perdo and Ignem giving you a huge PeIg by adding a high score again. The other is to boost something low to get to moderately high scores faster. For example, all techniques at 6 as well as Auram, Aquam, and Terram at 6 would cost 168 points but could be used with mMF in volcanic activity to get 18 in all those combinations, what would otherwise require eight 9s and cost 340 points. You might find ice and snow (and associated water/steam) are somewhat like volcanic activity.
If I wanted to craft a version of Ball of Abysmal Flame, but make it Ball of Abysmal Ice, would that be CrIg with a Pe requisite? Or would it be straight up CrAq? I want to get this right, which is why I'm asking.
As far as the mMF over Puissant Ignem...that's interesting. I'd have to do a bunch of math to see if it's worth it to do that.
I'm not sure ice will do what you want. Ball of Abysmal Flame burns things quickly. A big ball of ice will be heavy and will slowly cool things it touches. The cold equivalent to Ball of Abysmal Flame would be Conjuration of the Indubitable Cold (ArM5 p.142) done without extra size and with extra damage (+1 to go from 1 Fatigue to +5 damage, +2 to go to +10 damage, etc.). Attacks with ice generally make the ice move quickly to strike the target (e.g. Dagger of Ice in HoH:S p.35). The difference between Conjuration of the Indubitable Cold and other cold attacks is that most of the others specifically chill the target as opposed to making a region very cold. You can see that difference between Winter's Icy Touch and Conjuration of the Indubitable Cold.
Yup. A Focus gives you a bigger boost, but the Focus covers less breadth.
I second the view that a focus is better, but it’s a point well made that it only applies to a very narrow style of magus. Well said. I made an ice magus and used both, and the character starts to see solutions to all problems as ice orientated. It makes for some very backward looking solutions.
You could crush an enemy with a large ice block as an alternative. It’s low level and not at all subtle.
Base 3 CrAq, 2 Voice, extra size might need 1 mag, maybe 2 if you want it to really squish them.