The Major Virtue Craft Magic (HoH:S 131) seems a bit problematic to me. I find some things hard to understand, and it seems to be quite overpowered. Let’s take a closer look.
In general,
The crafter needs no lab to craft magic items when using this Virtue.
For Hermetic effects, he uses his Casting Total as his Lab Total.
For Supernatural Abilities/Virtues, he uses his Ability roll as if it were a Lab Total. It the power does not require a die roll to activate (i.e. there is no Ability), make an appropriate Craft roll instead, and the base level of the effect is 5.
I'm using "normal crafting time" here as a shorthand for the normal amount of time to make an object, which is at least 15 minutes per magnitude of the effect (as long as it takes to cast a ritual spell of the same level).
The owner of the Virtue
Can use his craft to cast a spell: This removes the need for words and gestures but it takes the normal crafting time.
When doing so, can get a bonus to his Casting Total for shape/material/design and inscriptions, limited to the level of his Craft Ability.
Can make a number of charged items in the normal crafting time.
Can make (in the normal crafting time) a number of charged items that allows using one of his Supernatural Abilities or Virtues, even if they normally only affect the crafter.
May (in the normal crafting time) craft objects that already contain raw vis into magical devices with lesser enchantments. This is more expensive: The level of the invested effect cannot exceed five times the number of pawns of vis in the object.
May (in the normal crafting time) craft objects that already contain raw vis into magical devices with lesser enchantments that allow using one of his Supernatural Abilities or Virtues, even if they normally only affect the crafter. He only needs to exceed the level of the effect, not twice the level. This is the same as the Virtue Lesser Craft Magic (RM 11-12).
My main issue is with the reduced time it takes to make items. The time depends on the craft, but the only lower limit beyond the imagination of the player (and the consent of the troupe) is the 15 minutes per magnitude.
I assume that the amount of vis the crafter can use in a season is still limited by 2*MT, so the number of lesser items he can make is limited. He still needs to spend only very little time to make one, so he can use the full season for another activity. The trade-off here is that the item is twice as expensive, but takes almost no time to make.
There is however no limit to the number of charged items he can make. IMO, the only thing that balances charged items is that they take a full season to make - time in which you could do other useful things. If this limitation falls, charged items become a game-breakingly cheap way to give power to your grogs.
I'm pondering several ways to fix this issue. You could simply remove #3 from the Virtue, and it would still be very good. As an alternative, the "normal crafting time" to make items (as opposed to casting a spell) could be set to a week per magnitude, making it possible to produce a large number of weak items fast, but not a large number of powerful items.
Yes it is broken. A bit like Diedne magic or the Tremere focus Certamen.
See it more as story seeds. In your campaign the Rusticani could be in the process of being marched for endangering the Order or they might be on the cusps of creating a new Golden age.
I have been in a couple of campaigns where players had a Rusticani. The character walked around with literally dozens of charged items and made of of them constantly. But I don’t recall a single instance where these items were ever particularly useful or solved any problem we could not have solved in some other way.
As a GM I think the virtue is a bit of a trap. It incentivizes the player to spend hours and hours devising long lists of items they want to make, and then compiling ever longer lists of items they have but seldom use, and none of that sounds fun to me. It’s a book keeper’s virtue, a virtue for people who love spreadsheets. I love those people but I am not one of them.
There are two big balancers. First, you need to learn craft skills and be decent at it. Which, if you want to more than one can be a huge xp sink. Second, and most importantly, you need to find the natural item with raw vis in it. Yes, a leather craft can make a lesser enchanted armor that gives its owner access to Wizard’s sidestep daily… but he can’t just use any imaginem vis, he needs to find a magical animal whose pelt can be turned into leather that happens to have Imaginem or Rego vis. If he later wants to create a mundane armor protecting from Fire, he needs to find a different animal that has Ignem or Rego vis. A jeweller needs precious metal that has natural vis in it, or gems, neither of which are common. If you’re getting those from redcap trade, expect them to charge a premium. They already charge 100% to trade form, how much do you think they’re going to charge to trade for a gem of virtue? The answer is more, and will vary by component. I don’t suppose gems of virtue are traded for their value in vis by anyone sane, when you can enrich them for a virtue. Now the rusticani is already spending twice the vis someone would spend in a lab season. At some point, either you have the component, you go out and find it, or you pay a verditius three times the cost, because 3x is less than twice whatever the redcaps will charge you. In other words, for non-charged items, the troupe or storyteller is in perfect control of what gets enchanted. I have a rusticani at the covenant in one of my games, and he’s just about to produce the first set of lesser enchanted items that will be recurring 8 years into the game, since aligning his arts with the vis sources we manage to find takes time and a lot of forethought. It’s easier to control what book you study than what vis sources you end up controlling, and if your rusticani wants to have wide array of non-charged things, he better be willing to go on adventure non-stop. Now, of course, if you interpret Craft Magic to allow the rusticani to move vis into raw materials in his lab (the virtue is less than clear), you’ve got a different ball game going on.
It really is strange that every added effect level adds +2 penetration, and I don't see the reason for that. I'll think about changing it.
The main arguments so far are:
It is balanced by the player's inability to come up with truly useful charged items. - I'm not sure I want to rely on that.
It is balanced by the need to learn a Craft Ability. - I don't see where you need a Craft Ability greater than 1, most of the time only the Casting Total is referenced.
Lesser items need materials that contain vis. - This is true, but does nothing to balance charged items, which are my main concern.
I’m having a hard time seeing what you see as game breaking. Yes, it’s not a useless virtue, it’s a major virtue, one restricted to a lineage at that. If it gives nothing useful, it shouldn’t be major. Frankly, I haven’t seen a ton of charged items being used in my games. If a magi wants to boost grogs at a distance, arcane tunnels are the way to go, not Craft Magic. It saves you virtue points too. Craft Magic has some uses that arcane tunnel can’t do, but it’s limited to replicating what the magi can already do through spellcasting, unlike charged items which, when I’ve seen them used at all, were typically used to do things that are out of the league of a given magi.
The craft score has a minor use - see the last paragraph of the middle column. Bear in mind that, while the rustic magi aren’t obsessed over design like Verditius magi might be, they are still medieval crafters in a guild-based society where your status is tied to your craft experience, and where item sales might be considered illegal if they’re below the guild expectations. If I had a player at my table learning Craft to level 1, and using that to mass craft charged items of low level quality - I would allow it, but I’d also hit him with a poor reputation, including scorn from both his own lineage and the Verditius, and mundane complications. Which incidentally might be contagious to the covenant, if they’re seen using regular junk items. This lineage is literally described as having strong ties to mundane communities and craft guilds. Craft guilds have certain expectations of their members. And magi expect a standard of living and tend to frown on a turb that looks equipped like beggars.
Now that’s a really interesting point. Does a magus have to know the spell in order to create a charged item with Craft Magic? The description always talks about a Casting Total, but I took that to mean that one should not use the Lab Total, but calculate the Casting Total, which is different. I did not understand that the magus had to know the spell, as the description says “Third, the character may make charged items in the same way as Hermetic magi”.
On the craft score, I agree that you should have one thematically, but it doesn’t do much for you rules-wise, except for that one bonus.
The Rusticani being a tradition linked to craft guilds, not to mention Verditus also needing good craft scores, I have to imagine there exists many level 3 Quality 15 Summae for multiple crafts.
Any Rusticani should be able to branch out in to other craft areas getting a level 3 in 2 seasons. With the right focus, and presumably at least a +2 stat, +6 to a roll is no longer novice work.
My understanding is that, either the magi knows the formulaic spell, OR, he can alternatively rely on what he can spontaneously cast: “Use the character’s Casting Total or the result of the Supernatural Ability roll as if it were a Lab Total to determine the effect’s level and the number of charges (so that an exceptional roll might allow the character to enchant a great many more charges than usual).” So that, most of the time, the Rusticani will be relying on his formulaic spells to enchant charged items for that specific formulaic. If he relies on spontaneous spell, or a supernatural ability, he rolls a stress die and has the normal chance to botch and incur warping.
C&G 42 lists apprentices at Craft Ability 3, Journeyman at Craft ability 5, Masters at 5-6. Craft ability 5 requires 75 experience, which is a significant investment of time. Apprentices aren’t normally allowed by guilds to work without supervision - indeed, it’s one of the perks of being a journeyman to get the stamp that lets him sign his work. I suspect an hermetic magi can bypass the lengthy requirements for apprenticeships by buying his way to books, and then teachers / trainers. But we’re looking to an investment that might be closer to 5-8 seasons of time then 2 seasons depending on how generous a troupe is with quality craft tractatus and trainers / teachers.
I still think it could be more explicit in the description of the virtue, but I think you’re right. What convinced me was a sentence in the section “Major Hermetic Flaw: Weak Spontaneous Magic” on the following page: “when they do perform magic spontaneously, it is typically done in their laboratory or workshop, producing a charged item that they may take with them or give to another. This still requires that they divide their Casting Score by 5.” That only makes sense if the character has to know a spell in order to create an item.
I have thought about this some more. It seems to me that with the requirement that the rustic magus needs to know the spell, it is more or less balanced against the standard way of creating magic items, especially when considering that once a regular mage has a lab text (or the Periapt Minor Virtue from TMRE p. 48), he can crank out a considerable number of charges (equal to one fifth of his Lab Total) every season. The rustic magus can still produce a few charged items while doing something else in that season, but he took a Major Virtue to do that. Thanks everyone for your input.