Help with elementalist character

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hi :slight_smile:

I'm creating an older Verditius elementalist who will guide the player characters in an upcoming saga. His plan is to rebuild the crashed flying castle of Legends of Hermes, but with a more spectacular solution -A CrMuAuTe item that generates a solid stormcloud to lift the entire covenant. It's not the most efficient solution, but it's really cool and this is all he wants.

So I'm considering going for Elemental Magic for him and make something of this crippled virtue. My question is: Since the virtue text says you can ignore requisites, am I correctly understanding the rules when I conclude you can -with Elemental Magic- focus on Creo, Muto and Auram and replicate all elemental Creo spells without even thinking about your score in the other elements? (Yes, I'm ignoring the extra points the virtue gives in elemental arts)

Well, there's the Muto requisite and guidelines, but it's focusing in three arts to get six. Is it worth the weirdness for fun and interesting situations? Do you have interesting experiences with this virtue to share?

Thank you for any insight. :smiley:

2

It's actually a decent virtue if you want to be a master of all the elements and your game stretches over a longer period for the extra XP's to start counting. You should get atleast 6xp extra per year, 60 for 10 years, 120 for 20 years.

Unfortunately, you need to bring up each of them if you want to be able to cast all of them as a master. If you only bring Aquam up, you wont be able to cast super BoAF with the same casting total as MToW but you could do some lava spells that ignore the igem requisite.

Concepts that work well are specialists of a hybrid mixture such as lava, plasma, meteors, ice, vapors, etc. Then you can really focus on one element and be awesome at your mixed element while not being totally useless in the other elements. Combo with a minor focus in that mixture makes you a thing to be recon with.

W

3

The castle flying on the top of a storm cloud sounds quite cool.

But about the effect to manage that and the Elementalist virtue, I don't think that the virtue is crippled either; it's just that as written gives more advantage if you take it the other way and use it not with an elementalist, who is supossed to have high scores in every elemental form, but with a specialist in one elemental form that can then cast Muto spells to other elemental forms without bothering on their scores.

I thought a bit about here, while doing a Verditius focused on swords and taking the hardcore approach to a focus in Swords (that it applies when you cast spells on swords, non in anything where a sword is involved). This verditius is on paper the opposite of an elementalist: he is a MuTe specialist, who turns Terram stuff into other elemental form.

As for your spell, I think that in order to support stuff on the top of it, your cloud doesn't require the Terram requisite. On the Terram description it's written that it affects solid objects, which is not the same that object's solidity. To make the cloud solid, I would require only CrMuAu (if the same effect creates the cloud and makes it solid) or a CrAu and MuAu (to create the cloud and then to make it solid). Looking at the Muto forms in the sourcebook I just see Terram requisites where you actually turn things into stone (like Rain of Stones, which turn raindrops into stones, or Trapping the Fire, where you turn fire into a gem or stone). But Talon of the Winds, for example, turns wind into abrasive stuff which must be somehow solid to make damage without any other requisite than Rego to point it around. With this point of view a MuAuTe spell would actually turn the cloud into stone, which would give you some issues with flying maneuverability in anything else that flying down at full speed until hitting the ground (hmmm, that would be a nasty offensive weapon for such a castle, anyway: turn other clouds around into massive solid cloud-bombs...).

And that would make the Elementalist virtue quite useless to your character, wich on the good side would mean 3 virtue points to spend in something like a Major Magical Focus in Weather or even better Affinity with Auram, Puissant Auram and a Minor Magical Focus in either Stormclouds or, if you rule it narrow enough for a minor magical focus, Storms.

4

Thank you for the mixture ideas! :smiley:

Yes, that's what I'm intending to do with the virtue. I like your caracter concept!

Oh, true! Didn't check the guidelines. The rock-cloud bombarder spell sounds pretty devastating hahaha.

Well, I now see I could skip Elemental Magic for the flying castle spell, but I still want to try it in the way we are talking -focus in one element and then combine it with others via Muto.

I'm not sure if replicating other Cr(element) with CrMuAu(element) would be legit. Like casting CrMuAuIg to replicate a BoAF. What do you think? I guess a spell that creates something and then Muto it makes little sense, but well, could be an "elementalist trick".

Your blade to thunderbolt spell is pretty cool, anyway, and I guess I could invent some spells like that without messing with CrMu.

Thank you both again. ^^

5

Take a look in the elementalist section of HMRE. There is an optional update for Elemental Magic that makes it a little stronger, a way to apply it to starting experience placed in the elemental Arts.

I wouldn't be concerned with "replacing" Creo. You sort of can, yes. But it doesn't do much good as far as healing, improving Characteristics, putting memories or thoughts or similar in someone's head, extracting Vis, making Longevity Rituals, etc. So Creo specialists are unlikely to really feel they've lost out.

6

Actually, I'd just take a normal cloud, and MuAu it into solidity. If you can fly to it, or open a R:Eye wizard tunnel to it, or otherwise affect it by Touch, the final level is 10 + magnitudes for duration (Base 10: transform air into something wholly unnatural, -1 alter only one property of air (solidity), +1 Touch, + ... Duration)

7

One way to make the Elemental Magic virtue not suck quite so bad is to simply assume that, during character creation, you spent 1 xp per season (exposure or adventure) on an elemental art. That essentially grants an extra 180 xp (60 XP per Form), getting your character up to 10.5 in each art. (Or 57 XP per art, if you want to be technical - you wouldn't get any exposure xp when you're being taught spells or having your Gift opened, I believe.)

There are also a number of spells your magi will most certainly want to learn - elemental warding, for example. (A variant described in Covenents, pg. 104). Essentially, you can design a simple Circle/Ring ward that protects against equally well against Fire/Water/Earth/Air: find the level you want (probably Auram "protect against extreme weather phenomena"), and use that level to protect against all the other elemental forms.

Another effect would be an "Elemental Blast" power, Cr(Ig/Au/Aq/Te) that shoots four different kinds of blasts at a target. (I would personally rule that this would damage as four separate attacks, all landing simultaneously - so the immediate penalites of one doesn't stack on the next.)

Others would include "Levitate Element", "Destroy Element", and "Comprehend Element" (basic Rego, Perdo, and Intelligo guidelines, all smashed together.)

This, IMO, is the real power of Elementalism - the ability to mush together disparate spell descriptions, and combine them into 1 low-level spell effect. This seems almost broken to me, but both Elementalism, as well as spell descriptions that use the technique, are fairly clear that it's only +1 magnitude for each prerequisite, even if it's adding a completely new spell guideline - which is what Elementalism allows you to ignore, as long as it's in a different Elemental Form.

Your GM may want to restrict you to having spell guidelines that actually do similar things - the aforementioned Circle/Ring effect is all about warding, for example. Or alternately, declare that "simple" combinations are only +1 magnitude complexity (which Elementalism can cancel out), but more complicated combos, even if only using 1 extra Form, will be additionally complex. Personally, I don't have a problem with that interpretation.

8

You can use the suggestion in HMRe (Page 19, Elemental Affinities & Character Creation insert), in which you can take the total of points spent on the four Forms and equally divide half that amount among them. I use this rule.