Frightening Munckinism

Given that the table on p. 192 (of ArM5) puts 'small dragon' at size +7, +2 magnitudes for size seems the bare minimum for dragons :wink:
Ofcourse, that was before RoP: M.

Why the Twilight Mastery hack is unlikely to work

Ars Magica 5 main rulebook, page 89, Effects of Twilight:

"New Mystical Virtue: Minor (if between 7 and 10 warping points, inclusive) or major (if more than ten Warping Points). Virtues cannot be gained if the maga gains fewer than seven Warping Points."

Now, CrVi base guideline to give a warping point is 5 (personal, momentary - you can't increase duration for this guideline). So the spell works out at 1 magnitude per warping point. So you will need a CrVi 35 to give you a chance of minor virtues, and a level 55 to get a major. Level over 50 makes it a ritual and hence costs vis, so every time you try to gain a major virtue you burn 11 Vim vis, you probably can't avoid twilight, and if you roll a zero on the stress die to comprehend you'll probably botch and be looking at losing 22 xp, 55 levels of spells or gaining a major flaw.

Correct me if i'm wrong but didn't i solved that at least twice?

Please, I'm pretty new in Ars Magica rules, but since i wrote a solution for it and nobody corrected me i thougth it was correct.

CrVi 15
R:touch D:momentary T:individual

Gives the target 2WP

Mastery 5 Multicast. Et Al

IIRC RAW All the copies resolve at the same time. So you can cast up to 6 at once. +1 dificulty for each copy, but you can Fail a formulaic up to 10 so...

Procedure:
low your parma, warp yourself 12, roll comprehension. ta-da! next virtues come easier thus your Warping score sums to the gained WP.

Please, someone can throw some ligth upon that?

Sounds reasonable.
However I don't suggest that many warping points because you will get 1d10 wp in additon.
With 6 wp triggered twilight +1d10 you will get a major virtue with 60% chance. Sometimes one would pick small virtues, too, like affinities. But 5x2 wp just brings too much warping without better results.
I thought on better arts and a single personal ranged spell because the concept can be combined with the PeVi munchkin. As you wish.

Same page, same section, first paragraph: "Roll a simple die." I missed it often enough to have it burned in my mind. :wink:

Even a measly CrVi10 can return a Major Virtue 20% of the time.

I am sorry I don't mean it that way. If you understand these facts I don't mind you going against them. :smiley:

As I said not so clearly, using that Flaw to abuse your childhood/later life years was great Munchkinism.

Those are good reasons.

Please, I've read 5 times the pages 88-89 5th edition core-book. I cant find that "damned" free WP dice. I couldnt even find the WP gained by your warping score. The only WP that apearing you gain are the "0's" on botches and the Vis invested on the spell.

Would you be so kind to point me where to search? did i refer the wrong book?

Maybe were earlier rules? maybe you mean the Twilight Comprehension?

Im completelly lost. I'm still a novice :wink:

Page 89, Effects of Twilight, first paragraph

The timing of multicast spells is under-defined and still debated.
At the table where I usually play, each casting would be considered a seperate event, granting you 2 WP each.
You would thus resolve twilight for each of them before moving on to cast the next one, causing massive annoyance with the rest of the players.

As a note aside, the "-1 per copy" is not for the difficulty of the casting roll but purely applies to any relevant finesse roll (AFAICT).

LOL!!!!! I've read that 5 times and missed every single one! thanks :slight_smile:

At least on in my troupe, we consider multicasting as one mastery of the spell, that allow you to do many copies of it instead of re-casting. So we consider to be simultaneous, and here comes the target dificulty, if you were re-casting you could simply re-target. But since you are copying, you need to have in mind and focused all the diferent targets.

If not multicast will automatically gives you fastcast because you would only cast the spells quicker. :wink: diferent points of view i guess.

Ah. As much as it has come up, agreement has been that it cannot be simultaneous due to the low penalty. It's only -1 one after all and you're still casting multiple instances in under 6 seconds.

We've appearantly assumed partial re-usablity of elements of the spell - not sure this has ever come up.

But yes, different points of view.

IĀ“m surprised noone is screaming at the outrageous 2800XP right out of apprenticeship monster i posted. :wink:

Not really. It's just silly.

Well first of all, I actually believe increasing stamina with Vis is the cheapest/fastest way to improve casting total (and thus Penetration) for many a specialized/weathered magus.

Secondly I also find killing dragons much more interesting than being a Vis Monkey. This magus was not created for playing, it was an exercise. Much like the OP requested (as I read it anyway). I found it impressive that he could have some of the most powerful spells in the Order, straight out of Gauntlet, without even having to go completely 'all in' to do so. Also it was an attempt at creating a potentially 'frightening' character, without being dangerous in combat... yet.

Equal Creo and Corpus is only Munchkin as far as getting the optimal lab total for CrCo spells. I did this to show how much leftover/unused xp this design had, despite its narrow specialization. As long as he can still manage the level 60 CrCo spell, he could do whatever he wants with those, and other, Arts. As i suggested under Further Development, he could easily go for PerdoCorpus, or CreoIgnem for combat uses. In the latter case he could shift some xp from Corpus to Creo (only costing him 1 xp for the first step, then 3/5 etc.), but keep in mind that you'd loose lab total and casting total for spells within the focus area for every step away from even scores. In most cases he would probably be better of just throwing most of his 70 unused xp after Ignem, for a decent score of say 9 (for 45 xp), allowing him to learn level 35 spells at Gauntlet (and probably settling for a much lower level, in order to maintain some penetration).

Not a lot of comments in general for the large amount of work we put into those design Direwolf... It's a good thing then, that creating them is in itself enough to give sad people like us a kick :mrgreen:

+1 to Tellus

Otherwise we can go the route of what David Chart posted when ROP:M was created and make a lab assistant that provided a +60 or so to your lab total just by sleeping around (immune to deprivation). And that is not munchkinism: it is just silly.

Cheers,
Xavi

First line of multiple casting mastery says: "You can cast several copies of a single master spell so that it affects more people, objects or areas (as applicable) than normal." Since time isn't mentioned and the purpose is to affect more than normal, I think it has to be simultaneous. The -1 for targeting for every separate target (including the first) you might consider low. Someone with a Mastery Ability score for a spell of 5, as has been presented in this thread has spent 75 XP to get to a mastery score of 5 in a spell. That's not insignificant. It's like raising an art to just short of 12, again not insignificant. Now, Flawless Magic might reduce the XP expenditure down to ~38, but that's still an Art at 8 or another ability at 3. Spending XP on mastery is the sign of a specialist, and not, in my opinion, not a munchkin. He's specializing in a particular spell, when that spell is countered he's likely in for a very bad day.

My Troupe hasn't played for quite a while and it's been ages since I made a new magus. Maybe thats why I like doing these exercises. Anyway, here's another one, inspired by the relative ease with which my previous concept could learn level 60 spells from Gauntlet. This design aims for the highest level spell in the Core Rulebook, using a design similar to the CrCo-concept I previously posted.

Overview
Name: Herpes of Hermes
Age: 24
Hermetic age: +0

Virtues
Mercurian Magic
Puissant Terram
Affinity with Terram
Puissant Rego
Affinity with Rego
Minor Magical Focus (anything applicable for Hermes Portal)
Skilled Parens
+1 Minor Virtue
+1 House Virtue

Flaws
Covenant Upbringing
+2 Major Flaws
+3 Minor Flaws

Characteristics
Intelligence +3

Abilities
Artes Liberales 1
Latin 4
Living Language 5
Magic Theory (Rego) 3
Parma Magica 1
Profession: Scribe 1
Order of Hermes Lore 1
+ 45 xp from Childhood

Arts
Terram 18+3
Rego 20 +3
Vim 3

[i]= 300 xp spend from Apprenticeship

Terram: 114 xp (+57 xp) = 171 xp
Rego: 140 xp (+70 xp) = 210 xp
Vim: 6 xp
Abilities: 40 xp[/i]

Spells
Hermes Portal, ReTe 75
Wizardā€™s Communion, MuVi 75 (which he would probably never get to cast)
, and another 75 spell levels, possibly including some other Rituals for creating Terram structures, or other Rego-based ritual spells such as:
Aegis of the Hearth, ReVi 35/Watching Ward, ReVi 35/Waiting spell, ReVi 35

That "virtue" worths 56 virtue points so not really available for a beginner character. :slight_smile:

Well duh, it was made to go beyond the ridiculous in munchkin. But dont try and say it isnt "Frightening Munckinism"...
The only worse thing i could do to truly break things apart if going further along the same theme ( stupidly much XP ) would be to exploit the thing about how you can split up your studying time, and the XP still gets rounded up, and add in the XP bonus Virtues(especially secondary insight, which in this case will raise study seasons into making a couple hundred XP each time). But thatĀ“s when i consider it going beyond "friendly local munchkin of doom" into the territory of "just shoot the idiot".

Hehe, but it wasnĀ“t aquired through virtues...