house rules

Retired Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: A Sudden Spring
1

Summae and Tractatus have a different source quality calculation than in the core game- the base source quality of a text is equal to the authors communication+3 for good teacher, +1/2 (teaching+vulgar poetry) with a bonus for craft quality of scribe, illumination, and bookbinding for magical tomes, or simply scribe and illumination for non magical tomes (bookbinding quality will aid the durability of texts in either case).

affinity, puissant, and cautious abilities for abilities with (categories) will carry across all categories. Affinity for living language or affinity with dead language are mutually exclusive with linguist, but not with each other.

aura variation rules will be used

income variation rules will be used, with the following modifier: 1/2 the prevailing loyalty will be added to the die roll as more loyal people tend to put more effort into the job

prevailing loyalty is modified as follows: rewards can only gain a total of +5 loyalty points, and every 2 years with no rewards will drop the bonus by 1 point. Loyalty points from altruism are lost at 1 point every 5 years, loyalty from reputation lasts only as long as the reputation itself does, similarly negative points for wounds, attitude or punishment are lost at the same rate points are gained for familiarity, but not while familiarity points are being gained.

spell mastery: custom target- this form of spell mastery allows the magus to define one extra target per level which does not take warping from having this spell cast on them.

For the beginning mages Magister in artibus may not be taken- this is primarily an issue regarding time usage as an apprentice and is specific to this situation.

Magical senses may be granted with Mu(In)Co spells as well as Mu(In)Me

craft magic and city and guild- the "ease factor" for craft work is 6 points higher than the workshop total for calculating the necessary finesse roll to replicate craft work.

Warping is tallied separately depending on realm. Any source of warping may trigger twilight (or other tradition based reactions), and warping from twilight is always magical.

Rolls to avoid twilight are based on the sum of the warping scores, rolls to comprehend twilight depend only on the magical warping.

familiar's and learning: SQ for bound familiars learning mundane (including arcane) abilities is not reduced by their might. Experience towards transformation is.

Lab bonuses in an art (not GQ or other specializations) will add to the study of that art when studying vis in that lab.

I consider MOH and LOH to be largely fluff, do not rely on sample spells or virtues and flaws from these books. An exception is exciting experimentation, more may be posted later upon individual review

2

Any changes to Character Creation? i.e. Starting Experience Point calculations or Characteristics?

3

My plan for Affinity with Organization Lore will come to fruition! (Seriously though, I'll pick up Puissant and Affinity Craft for my artist )

Excellent, that is the one I cared about!

4

no, there is not

5

Is Puissant or Affinity possible to take with Spell Mastery (as a weaker Flawless Magic? Or in conjunction with it?)

6

I will allow it- note that puissant applies with rolls and does not give free mastery abilities.

7

Oh interesting!

So, question on rounding does affinity xp round up, or are we using half units?

Eitherway, for example, having Affinity+Puissant Spell Mastery and throwing in for any given spell,4xp -> 6xp and a score of 1+2 is distinctly not bad.

Though I'm guessing Puissant would grant +2 to the effective mastery score, and not add 2 more masteries?

8

Puissant applies to rolls, so it will give a +2 to casting the mastered spell. If you have Mastery 1+2, and took the Multicasting option, you will be able to cast two instances of the same spell, and not 4, if I understand it correctly...

9

correct on the multicasting example

affinity uses effective half points, also correct that the +2 would not add more masteries.

10

Are you allowing custom spells at gauntlet?

11

no, the apprentice had no time to develop them, they have only been taught standard spells.

12

What about 1. Variations of existing spells or 2. Spells for guidelines without a "standard" spell, I.e. Heavy Wounds in Perdo Corpus?

13

I'm going to still say no- basically you would have to have a parens who knew the advanced non-standard spells and decided to take the time to teach those particular spells to their apprentice.

14

Then I need to dispose of my From Ese to Ram spell, since it's a custom spell, and find another spell instead.

15

My issue with this is that there are pretty large holes with "standard" spells. i.e. Perdo Corpus goes from Light Wounds to Maiming, then to Killing a Person, with no Medium, Heavy or Incapacitating Wounds offensive spells inbetween. I might as well redesign my PC to be a creo ignem specailist because at least the standard spells are better for offensive uses.

16

It does give you a chance to diversify, and to later research such spells.

17

I would point this out - though some of the spells are from the two books @silveroak mentioned above as suspect, so may not be approved, it does fill a lot of those holes. It's just a collection of spells that are here and there scattered through all the Ars books.

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18

Keep in mind that your parens likely was not a perdo corpus specialist and did not have the same set of virtues and flaws that you do, and thus would likely not have a complete list of every possible spell you might want to learn to be able to teach you. that is the point of the limit at gauntlet to standard spells, not how to optimize your character but in what limits would exist on optimizing them.

19

Also, keep in mind that restrictions on spells known at gauntlet doesn't prevent your character from researching them, and that silveroak might just decide, given this game's particular background, that we'll have lab texts for spells that were researched post-gauntlet.

20

also keep in mind that I have asked about your character's ambitions- having a particularly juicy spell effect on your ambition list is acceptable and appropriate for a newly gauntleted magus.

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