As for comparing acquiring Potent Magic vs. Flawless Magic mid-life:
Sure, Potent Magic gives no advantages until you spend time re-inventing your spells to fit with this Mystery.
But you still want Flawless Magic to give huge benefits right away? Without allowing it to work retroactively it does excately the same thing as Potent magic: Absolutely Nothing! Withon subsequent seasons of time spent.
All things aside, the different ways of viewing Flawless Magic *has' opened my eyes for different ways of looking at the process.
If I interpret it like Mastery being a way or method of casting spells which is more fficient than standard, rather than a modified knowledge of the spell. You cast the spell as if you had practiced it for 5 exp. Further practice just expands this insight or method. So in this view I see the arguments for allowing spells invented previously to benefit from this new method, in effect working retroactively.
As for losing the virtue, those spells lose their free mastery 1. I'm not sure about what happens to exp gained from practice which was doubled while under the effect of this virtue. If someone has Book Learner and they lose it, do you subtract 3 exp from eash season of reading? I wouldn't! So perhaps not. For book keeping purposes I hope nobody ever loses Flawless Magic!
That is exactly the point, the lab text for a spell is either potent or not potent. You can not study a non potent lab text and get a potent spell. This is not true for flawless, so potent and flawless are clearly different in their fundamental nature. One is a modification on the spell, the other relates to the mage.
The latter, and I wouldn't have gaining flawless effect already mastered spells, so you do not say take a spell with 5 xp in to it and double it and add 5 more for the base 1 to get a level of 2 mastery even though if the mage put 5 xp in it now that is what would happen.. The thing is that Flawless gives you mastery scores in all your spells that is one of its basic effects. Kind of like if you gain any supernatural virtue that has a score associated with it, the first level is free.
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It is not about how effective the benefits are right away or not. Gaining secondary insight or elementalist wouldn't change a thing for the characters past, likewise apt pupil or book learner.
The point is that unlike potent magic, flawless magic does not require spells to either be flawless or flawed. Potent magic requires this. This indicates to me that potent magic is an effect that can be added to spells, while flawless magic is something special about the caster.
Quite right. There is one thing to think about when it comes to flawless magic as well as the various affinity virtues. Unlike most of the other learning virtues (Elemental Magic, Secondary Insight, Book learner ect) these virtues actually have an effect during character creation. Directly modifying the experience spent. This puts Flawless Magic (as well as affinities) on decidedly different ground then those other virtues.
Thats why in my troupe's sagas we treat them as final modifiers each with an equation to adjust the final score for the ability.
An Affinity is (total exp. spent)x1.5=final exp. total
Flawless Magic is (total exp.)x2+5 exp=final exp. total
If you somehow gain or lose the virtues during play you add or remove the equation from your sheet and immediately adjust your ability score. Is it RAW maybe not though the RAW isn't terribly clear. You could parse out the write ups for Affinity and Flawless Magic a couple of weird ways.
What is not at all how we play, we play it modifies the XP for the season and that is a permenant change. Of course we also planned out our characters lives by the season so all the learning virtues effected character creation.
Yes but do you also determine when virtues are acquired. What if a Jerbiton gains an affinity for Artes Liberales as his house virtue. Would it effect his childhood learning before he was adopted. The description of Affinities suggests yes.
Most house virtues are Puissant not affinities so that is not terribly important. Also it would require an educated background to be able to spend pre apprenticeship experience on it. So between those two things it has not come up. No one has gained an affinity yet, soon that will likely change as we have a character who can by the rules initiate people in anything.
Yes, if you decide to just read the name of the Virtue, you might be right. However, we have a whole lot more text than that. Reading what the Virtue actually does it seems to apply to the invention/learning of spells.
It seems to be the intended interpretation that it is the invention of spells that is Flawless. Or another way of looking at it is that, sure, you have Flawless Magic, but where that actually matters is when you are inventing spells or trying to master them. Flawless Magic doesn't really mean anything for actually casting spells --- which seems to be the interpretation best supported by what the Virtue does in terms of game mechanics.
Yes, but you mean "you either have the Virtue or you don't when you cast the spell" and I mean "you either have the Virtue or you don't when you invent/(try to master) the spell".
If it was "magic" or if it was "innate" why wouldn't it apply to spontaneous magic?
It only applies to formulaic and rituals, which are learned spells. So it comes in effect only when you learn a spell, which can only be ritual or formulaic. And that's why it doesn't apply to spontenaous.
So how long does it take to teach yourself a spell you already know? You don't need to reinvent the spell to incorporate the effects of flawless unlike potent, so how long does that take? It should be higher than your lab total as you can teach someone else your labtotal in spells after all.
If say someone got this as a result of understanding twilight then I could say that the understanding comes with time, but it should be much faster than learning the spells. So in a case of Bam you now have Flawless magic, I probably wouldn't have all the effects show up at once. But I wouldn't make them teach themselves all their spells.
So how long does it take to teach yourself a spell you know? You know it so you don't need to reinvent it or anything, just figure out how flawless magic effects it.
I agree. You could however reinvent several small spells (relative to your Lab Total) in a single season if they all use the same TeFo combination.
However, apart from the case where you can reinvent a lot of small spells in a single season, there is not really any net mechanical benefit for a magus who has just acquired Flawless Magic to reinvent their spells. They would be better off spending the season practicing the spell, which will net them 10 XP towards mastery (as they now have Flawless Magic).
I would let them practice two of their old spells in one season to get mastery 1 in each. Or study multiple level 1 mastery summa. Since mastering a ritual by practice is expensive and dangerous.
Having come to terme with how I interpret the virtue and how I want to run it in my saga, in agreement with the Troupe, I'll be backing out of this thread. I think most arguments have been made by now, and people can make their choices.
However:
I see the situation of wanting to Master a Ritual as having the Magus do Practice as usual, but without actually doing the finishing touches of the spell. He goes through all the motions and procedures, but stops right before the end. So he never actually casts the finished ritual. But the practice helps him to understand what he must do, to get the benefit.
Otherwise there should have been some rule, that Rituals could only be mastered by reading a book on the subject. I see Practice as casting again and again and again. You can't really do this with rituals.
So it is much easier to teach someone else spells than yourself? Remember you are limited to one pair of arts when reinventing spells, but not when teaching spells.
Yes. Its not "realistic" to do the addition retroactively for Potent Magic as it really does use specifically different spells, while Flawless is a bonus to all formulaic.
Exactly.
I would go with the simple version, they loose 5 XP, effectively equal to the first level of Mastery.
I can justify that as saying that any bonus XP later gained is knowledge, and as such is retained even if gained with the help of the Virtue.
