House Rules Discussions

Affinities and other xp-multipliers. I prefer that we track fractions rather than rounding up or down.

Fine with me, but then I don't have any.

(Quick check) Only Japik has an affinity at the moment. But that will apply to grogs as well.

I think it's easier to just adopt round up or down and then be consistent, rather than keeping track of fractions. If it's a low resource saga then why don't we go with round down? :slight_smile:

I would slightly prefer rounding, I guess, but am not strongly inclined either way.

I vote for rounding as well. I see no problems with the current system here. Fractions look bad. Rounding can be up, down or depending on nearest natural number. Up to the SG to decide. In any case it is not gonna have a large impact in the saga. We are talking about a few XP more, not something that will unbalance a character and make him ubberpowerful or anything like that :slight_smile:

Well, no, I guess it won't make a huge difference either way. It's only when you add a virtue such as Linguist (which add 25%) that rounding becomes troublesome.

On the other hand, I don't like the optimization that comes from systematically allocating 1 xp from stories to the target of an affinity, which ends up doubling that xp. Which is why I usually prefer tracking fractions.

Bearlord, since it is only your magus that will be impacted, do you have a problem with always rounding down? Which means you'll have to allocate at least 2 xp to Imaginem before the Affinity quicks in, and will make it desirable to allocate an even number whenever possible.

EDIT: Although, if we decide to round down, we may make that general, unless the rules say otherwise. Meaning spontaneous magic will be impacted also, as a total of 4.8 (from Fatigue-less spontaneous casting) would count as 4, not 5.

Considering that Linguist is not in the core book and we are limited to that + Rhine tribunal book for the time being, I do not see the problem. :slight_smile:

About rounding, the core book rounds up consistently, like in vis extraction rules. I counted around 6 or 7 instances of rounding up by a "round up" search of the core book. There were no instances of "round down" when I searched for it.

If the issue is with XP, we can simply say that we round down here, but I would not contradict the core book on that one. A spell total of 4.8 is still below a 5 in any case.

Xavi

No problem there. I actually put rank 10 in Imaginem first but changed it to 9 because of the uneven extra xps when buying 10 from scratch.

Mercere Portals (the permanent enchanted items) were never discovered in this saga. So there are no permanent portal network, except for those rich covenants that can support regular casting of the ritual Hermes Portal. Some of those few who do are Durenmar, Harco, Magvillus and Durenmar.

Well, that's not so much a House Rule as a background change. I'm sad for Mercere, who was one of my favorite Founders (and the one who brought them to the Order), but I have no problem with it if you feel you need it to set the tone of the saga.

Yeah, it's more about the background, but I wanted it to be discussed somewhere. It actually makes recaps more valuable and communication slower.

I don't see it having a huge impact on you. I may end up going back on this, if it proves that it has some unforeseen impact. If such a thing as Mercere Portals exist, they are rare and few magi know for sure that they exist.

Well, it's not like the difference is immediately obvious between a large stone arch enchanted yearly with a ritual and one that is an enchanted device. And I'm sure investigation of either is discouraged and they are carefully guarded.

I assume you meant valnastium, coeris or another domus magna?

Actually, I was thinking Duresca.

In most sagas I have played in, Mercere portals have never been used, so no biggie. They are only used sometimes for travelling across Europe, but not for regular travel. No problem at all with the change. It slows down travel a little bit (plenty of teleport spells still existing), and this is good for a less communicative order.

I agree it seems to fit into the general setting of this saga.

Agreed.