General Table Talk

Well, lets free up some access. Lab Mastery should obviously be available to Verditius magi.

I would make Lab Mastery open to anyone.

I think most magi descend from some sort of Mercurian lineage. Flambeau for certain. I also think that it is RAW that masteries are open to everyone, you just need to justify (backstory) where you picked up some of the exotic ones from.

By the RAW, Lab Mastery and Stalwart Casting are Cult of Mercury only. Multicast would significantly increase the number of potential botch dice, not reduce it.

How would Lab Mastery apply to, for example, Aegis of the Hearth? Bountiful Feast?The Shrouded Glen? Any of the Creo Corpus rituals? Conjuring the Mystic Tower? Hermes Portal? Enchantment of the Scrying Pool? Those are the rituals that I see most commonly used or sought after in games.

Granted, some of these are Not Exactly Hermetic, but I'd argue that allows for us to grab some restricted mastery abilities and make them available just for that one spell. For example, I think it'd make a lot of sense if Adaptive Casting was widely known for Aegis of the Hearth, but otherwise restricted.

Doissetep is a huge bastion for the Cult of Mercury. It's easily justified for anyone living there learning any spell mastery option associated with them.

A flambeau, in Magi of Hermes.

Yes, but...
If you cast a healing spell with sun duration on someone, he is healed for the spell's duration.
When the spell duration lapses, the wounds open again, but if you instantly casts the spell again, the target is healed anew.
I think he meant something like this.

First, I think it may be better/interesting to maybe let interested players develop specific masteries as minor breakthroughs,or to have these be released "ingame" as the result of some bonisagus research, so you might want not to have at least some of these exist at the start of the game. That being said:

  • Flexible: Not a fan, I think it diminishes bosted casting a little, but otherwise, it's OK.
  • Vascilated: Love it. Period.
  • Forceful: Forget it. Not only is it too weak (Mastery 5 to have your BoaF do 36 damage?), but there's already Unraveling Mastery for WomS, and Apotropaic Mastery for DEO. You should consider Barbed Mastery, though.
  • Introspective: Hum... Why not? I mean, you perceive things, but do you understand them? Or, say, a Per bonus to perceive anything through this spell? Dunno.
  • Optimized: Yes. It gives another incentive for developing the spell before investing it.I'd say it can't bring the vis cost to less than half the normal, though.
  • Certamen: Useless outside of cult-specific instances. I can't see it being very much used, if at all.

Yes.

So I'd say, and ONLY for rituals (keeps the risk in battle, and rituals already incurr a whole lot of botch dices:

  • Ritual Mastery: You are used to casting this specific ritual flawlessly. Substract one the number of botch dices rolled due to the vis used to cast the ritual. Each new instance of the mastery substract another die.

Redundant. The base definition of Mastery is that add it to casting score and subtract it from the number of botch dice, down to zero. Or are you suggesting that Ritual Mastery subtracts an ADDITIONAL botch die?

Yes, but only for the vis.

If casting the minimum Aegis (lvl 20), you already incurr 4 extra botch dices just for the vis used.
This mastery would enable you to avoid these with only Mastery 2 instead of 4. This makes mastery of rituals really valuable, especially when combined with Ritual Magic.
For a more extreme exemple, a lvl 40 aegis incurrs 8 extra botch dices. Mastery 4 would negate these completely. Mastery 2 for a mercurian. Mercurians rules with ritual spells, which, IMO, is great.

You wanted an incentive for magi to master ritual spells? You wanted to know why Mercurians are the guys that cast big rituals? Here it is.

It reduces even more botch dice is the idea I think.
Vascilted was something Carmen had, but I ditched it and wanna re-add it.
Flex got let loose in my Knights of Seneca article, and Guillme makes extensive use of it. I did write that thing, so he was just following my groundwork. For now, I say limit to Gillme and the few spells he has it for. This one may need to be refined a bit. As for Boost, that is Mutantes, this is meant for Mercurians.
Love Barbed Mastery! That was sorta my idea.
Apatropaic, I forgot about :blush: . Does it work with WoMS though?
I like the idea of custom masteries for specific spells.

These are mainly just ideas I am tossing out there :smiley:

No, but Unraveling does.

And OK for Flex being limited to guillaume and his cult at chargen (Unless this bugs someone else?). This is great. Hum, IMO, I mean, of course :blush:

I agree with you, but he was doing it with Momentary duration.

Having thought more about it, I do like Fixer's constant magic idea. There are other problems with having constant flaming swords and the like which would probably tend to limit a lot of the constant stuff.

I have been thinking of Mercurian Spell Masteries and loosening them up a bit. Perhaps the level of access depends on how Mercurian an influence there is in your lineage. For example, any Hermetic Magus can take Cerimonial Casting. Stalwart Casting requires a strong Mercurian heritage. Flambeau himself was Mercurian, not Mithraic. This lie is propogated by those who seek to achieve influence and control over that house. These myths have not circulated much in Iberia. We all know his name was Reculed Seneca.

Anyway, as for new Mastery abilities, Flex casting is restricted to the Cult of Mercury. Vascilated is open to everyone. Optimized is for those with Lab Mastery and/or Verditius magi. Ritual Mastey (lowering botch dice further) is Mercurian.
I like Barbed Mastery, but I prefer calling it Forceful Casting anyway. Introspecive got a good review :slight_smile:, other ideas are considered.

Input anyone? Detractons? Attractions? Subtractions? Satisfactions?

As you can see, I have made some changes to the format of this saga's forum. Stuff important to evryone gets put up in the top box (Anouncements). Characters, when ready, are copied to a clean post and I will make it a Sticky so that it floats to the top. Keep your individual development threads. We can use these to log history, refer to earlier ages of yourself (for flashback stories or new stories depending on your past) and general discussion about the character (such as lab projects and seasonal advancment in game).
Everything else is a Standard Topic, floating to the top (below stickys) depending on how recently it was posted in. Active story chapters float to the top. Active table talk floats up as well. Old stuff sinks down and gets forgotten.
Post your character anew when you are ready to play!
Have fun :smiley:

Mark, you may want to check your posts at the end of the thread at Doissetep. You quoted me and didn't say anything. Then you posted a copy of that post, too.

Oops!
I'll fix it later. headed into work now (Excalibur/Vision nightclub, Chicago)

Fixed

Writing will be slow for a bit - broke a bone in my dominant hand this morning. Work will also take longer as a result so I'll have to spend less time on the boards this week. I'll keep up, but I'll be terse.

ouch!
get well my friend :slight_smile:

Ouch!
Be careful. You don't want this healing badly, especially as it can give you pains in your old age.

(Lol just saw marko and I had the exact same first reaction :laughing: )