On the other hand, your Twilight Experience, Mystery Cult initiation, whatever, where you gained the virtue was so powerful that you had to reorder your understanding of the Art and Ability and suddenly understand so much more about the subject than you did before, a paradigm shift, if you will. Conversely, you get a big bonk on the head and are suddenly confronted with the knowledge that you knew so much more, were capable of so much more before the accident (I've seen people with TBI struggle with this). I'm unsure whether RAW says that affinities are retroactive or not, but I can see both sides of the argument. It couldn't hurt to ask for it to be changed to allow the existing score to stay, and recompute or change how they work generally in MetaCreator.
Well, if you aren't using MetaCreator, or specifically if I wasn't using it, I would prefer Arthur's method. MetaCreator does a really close approximation of this, since it tracks total XP, anyway.
That may be. When a programmer has a piece of code that he thinks will do the job, he'll reuse it rather than invent from scratch. I wouldn't ascribe as much to the software being a certain way as I would to the programmer who may not be as motivated to understand the underlying system as an avid player might. My experience suggests he's open to making changes, based on my reporting of the Flawless Magic errata to him. He made the change, put it in a beta version, told me about it and I said it worked great (I think) and it was put into the next release of the production version. He didn't know about the Flawless Magic errata, while it had been published for some time.
This would be more easily represented as a major virtue and a major flaw, (My gut feeling is that it would be better represented this way as well but I could possibly be argued out of that point).
I do find spell mastery useful. One particular use that I haven't seen many people here discussion is defense mastery. As I've been advancing Ranulf and Adelbert in to elder characters I've frequently looked at learning spells simply so that the character could master them for defense, touch of the Enigma, and enslave the mortal mind are two that that I did this for. Certainly given a enough time to study magi would also want to learn a level of mastery in defense for wind of mundane silence (to prevent the removal of your parma) and opening the intangible tunnel as well, (although these were in the case of my magi spells that they'd want to know anyway).
But, useful as it is, I don't see flawless magic to be as powerful as life linked spontaneous magic -
"Hey Jim can you cast [ insert any imaginable sixth magnitude spell here]? "
"Sure just drag my unconscious body back to bed after I'm done and you're gonna owe me a beer"
A character with life linked spontaneous makes entire covenants over the top powerful. Not just an individual magus.
I can see this happening in a play group that didn't have their magi generally mistrustful of each other, think of the covenant as a place where they just live and not an agreement of business partners, more or less. If Jim is talking to a Tytalus, for example, why does he trust the Tytalus to do only what he asks? Why isn't someone plucking ACs from his unconscious form? It's easy to be too powerful when you have an assumption that you're all PCs and in this together. I know it can be hard to play, but magi should be generally cautious with respect to other magi. As has been discussed in other threads, spells that lower your defenses are easy, and doing things that let magi do this even more easily is something that would probably be at the top of everyone's mind.
It's 18 xp. First one generates a study total - to which Book Learner contributes. Then one doubles the exp to be put into Spell Mastery.
It depends of your campaign whether that is as good as it looks: you first need to get lots of books on Spell Mastery, and second lots of situations where high Spell Masteries matter.
I had forgotten about the magic resistance mastery ability and now I read it, its actually rather badass.
I think part of my internal monologue on this comes from the generally rare nature of books on mastery abilities. My sagas current library only has about 6 books on mastery. However, most of these are for attack spells so the magic resistance ability would be very handy.
I might also start thinking a bit more seriously about inventing spells specifically to take advantage of mastery abilities. such as fast cast defensive spells, generic attack spells to magic resistance, spells that allow one to talk while gagged to take advantage of quiet casting. This could add much utility to the virtue.
Although the consequences of a botch are nasty. Mythic Stamina + Cautious Magic can knock off 4 botch dice, even down to 0.
I see LLSM as more powerful toward the beginning of a magus' life and FM more powerful later, especially for an experienced player. Then again, there's Marko's excellent example of a starting character with FM.
But FM + (minor virtue that gives +2xp for practice and 3xp for adventure) is also interesting; not as good as having a book though, but you at least don't need the book.
I consider FM to be one of the few Major Hermetic Virtues that are really worth it. It is both versatile and powerful, allowing many kinds of effective characters and allowing a given character to quickly acquire and develop new competences. Your favorite offensive spell? Penetration, Fast-cast and Multicast (and Magic Resistance if it's everyone else's favorite spell too). Your favorite secret Mentem spell? No words or gestures. That ritual you don't want to blow up in your face? Get rid of a few botch dice. Etc.
There are lots of ways to increase penetration; vis, arcane and sympathetic connections, wizard's communion, ceremonial spell mastery, synthemata, etc there are darn few ways to increase magic resistance but at least the way we do have doubles the resistance against an entire class of spells.
For characters who have significant resistance already, the magic resistance can get close to unbeatable.
There's merit to this in that it keeps the power curve a bit more manageable and danger from inside of the group can add some interest to a story. There is no more formidable an opponent than another PC and intra party conflict tends to not have the quantity of bloodshed. Players exhibit more care with other player's characters than they do with "mere" NPC's. On the other hand there the time span that the game takes place over, after a decade of in game time has passed is it realistic to not have a sizable portion of the covenant's magi treat one another as something like family?
There is also the fun factor of playing a game where the characters are working together for the good of all. Cooperation has in my experience provided more great game sessions than intra party conflict. Not that I haven't had exquisite intra-party conflict games, but it can grow tiring. I more frequently want to tell stories of friends working as a team than scheming opponents trying to take advantage of one another. It's somewhat more relaxing to be around the table if I feel that the other characters have my character's back than when there is distrust and animosity between the characters. One has to, at least a bit, imagine things from the perspective of your character and it makes things a bit more tense. There's less information sharing and fewer goofy strokes of genius that come out of group planning to be laughed about.
OK I'm getting pretty far from the original xp point question now. Sorry.
I'm not itching for conflict, but I'm not thinking magi are going to be singing kumbaya. I see people in business with each other all the time, and they aren't necessarily all family and intermingled. And the worst conflicts seem to be the ones that involve family businesses.
It takes a really tight knit and cohesive gaming group to handle inter-party conflict well, and it also requires a lot of discussion about the meta-game aspects, which can kind of be unfun... It's more tiring when its the same person justifying their character would reasonably behave in a certain way. I'm generally going to play characters that are standoffish, not necessarily selfish, so I can be in character and not give my all as a magus, unless asked specifically. It's how I envision the Order working.
Well, gribble did thank us for the discussion, so I think we have some license to extend the discussion...
I'll point out that you said here it was the best virtue in the game.
While best and most powerful are arguable as to their equivalence, you're love of Flawless Magic was professed early here in the forum, and I think in our conversations, often.
Like I said earlier, the virtue seems to magnify other things about the magus, and there are some virtues that are really complementary to a magus with Flawless MAgic. At gauntlet it's Mastered Spells, maybe even well past gauntlet, because it's worth effectively 100 XP. Cautious Socerer further reduces the botch dice, and with a mastered spell they're taking 4 botch dice off every roll, and in many cases this means they will roll no botch dice.
The halved lab totals for magic items actually already exists as the minor flaw "Weak Enchanter", which also halves your lab total when investigating items.
It does seem quite harsh as a minor flaw, but I suppose magic items are something it's relatively easy to just get someone else to do on your behalf.
I am not sure if I should be flattered or afraid that you keep track of things I said five years ago. But anyway, there is indeed a vast difference between "best" and "most powerful". There are exceptionally powerful virtues, such as some foci and mysteries, that are much more powerful but not as fun or as useful to my preferred style of play. And "if you utilize it correctly" is a huge variable. There are some SG's out there that like to nerf certain mastery abilities, such as Fast Cast and Multicast, which makes it no fun to play using that virtue.
Yes. I keep track of things you say. Well, not just you, anyone. But in this instance, what you said was read by me about 3 years ago, as I was coming back to Ars Magica after nearly 20 years away. I read a lot of stuff. Yours stood out. Others have also made comments that have stood out, too, though.
There's that and mysteries may not make a character all that more powerful.
Multicasting is ridiculously overpowered as compared to almost every other mastery ability. Discussions about fast casting should be left in that topic. I beg to differ that some SGs think they are nerfing certain mastery abilities, more like bringing them into alignment. Other SGs might decide precise and quick casting should be a function of the ability score, and I thought about that, too. But, all that aside, Flawless Magic can still take multiple casting many more times, for less overall experience points than someone without Flawless Mastery. I'll point out I didn't actually change the multiple casting for the saga I SG'ed that you were in. I did suggest that change in your saga, before I decided not to play in it. My suggestion certainly wasn't anything as radical as The Fixer's solution to multiple casting.
/924723984729 +3 from BL gets doubled ftw. Affinities round up ftw.
