My discussion with Urien on the talisman thread just made me realize something regarding immortal magi.
Immortal magi can retain experience points by enchanting the learning into their talismans as mentem effects.
Every already instilled effect in an item that shares a technique or form with an effect that you wish to instill gives the character a +1 on their lab total.
So while this is a very subtle effect, the more that an immortal magus learns after their assension the bigger their lab total will be for enchanting more knowlege into their talisman and the faster they learn in the future. (Not that I've ever had any immortals in my games.)
Wow.. .. .. .. .. I totally missed that little rule snippet in the item generating stuff.. .. .. you just made a Verditius mage very happy ^^
.. goes back to recalculate potential lab totals
And yes.. .. that -does- make it even more interesting... which is good.. cause my Verdi wants to become immortal eventually
Edit: My ST just pointed out something.. .. technically, a magus could just instill an obsolute ton of multiple small effects.. if you had the vis for it, you could just slap in a ton of level 5 effects per season... and that +1 is going to creep up and up.. .. .. I can't even imagine the terrifying lab totals you could amass
I'm currently probably going to take the alchemy route.. as.. again.. that just works wonders for Verditius with the Vis gains
Though I've also considered working out an entirely new mystery.. and binding himself into a talisman automaton.. . people would be impressed by a 50 foot long golden dragon talisman, animated by your spirit
Okay, I know when I'm asking a stupid question but I have to because I'm soooo curious. How does a character BECOME immortal? (You can point me to the book and page # if you don't want to explain it. I don't wish to hijack Erik's thread.)[/i]
Actually, that is not, quite, true. Check out The Mysteries, Revised (Theurgy and Alchemy chapters, and one other, I think) and Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults (the Bjornear and Merinita chapters). There are various ways that your character can become a being of Magic or Fae. I don't have RoP:I so I don't know if there is an Infernal path to Immortality but since both the Infernal and Divine are all about winning eternal souls, I kind of doubt it.
There may be other ways in other books, but I haven't found them yet.
Some seriously fun stuff in both of those books. I don't know as if I want to play an immortal magus, but running one as a SG or as a story hook would be a lot of fun!
The Infernal has many different ways to become immortal, including at least one method of gaining Infernal Might (taking a spirit's Might for your own). You can also bind a spirit to you so that you stay immortal as long as it is, or command a spirit to keep you from aging. There are even powers that let you to take the life of another to strengthen your own.
There's a few similar things in The Divine. I think the coolest is associated with the Zoroastrian tradition, a holy sacrifice that essentially allows you to become immortal by bathing in molten silver. There's also miraculous effects that aid Aging rolls. I don't think there's any way to gain Divine Might, though, except perhaps by dying in service to the Divine and coming back as a saint.
Well, I sit corrected. I'm deliberatly not getting RoP:I because my storyguide is running a few hooks out of it and we try to minimize meta-gaming so I was completely unaware.
I had forgotten about the bathing in silver thing, though, I don't know as if I would count the Aging effects thing in the Divine. I can see how some would, however, so I'm not willing to argue it.
Guess it all goes to motivation, though. For the Fae and Magic Realms, some of the paths seem to be "if you can win it, you can keep it" and short of Might-destroying magics, you're good as gold. The other realms seem to be more results-oriented, but maybe I'm inferring too much.
I remember a nifty 2nd or 3rd ed. ritual for becoming a lich. I always thought that was one of the more interesting ways of becoming immortal. Among other things you had to kill you'r familiar and replace your blood with embalming fluids .
3rd ed.
You needed to sever all ties to everything external - (which ment destroying your talisman, severing your familiar bonds and doing the rites in a place with no aura).
Then you needed to renounce all ties to all the supernatural realms(exept magic) (making faeries, the divine and the infernal rather pissed at you).
Finally you made a special variant of your longevity potion - which you used to replace the blood in your veins...
Part of the renouncing of anything not of yourself resulted in renouncing the oath of Hermes...
I'll note that there are two different sorts of tricks that magi can pull (although in truth it doesn't split up in so simple a manner as I present it.)
There is stopping the body from ageing which is what the zorasteran holy magi can do and what is gained by immortality of the forrest, guardian of nature and walking the Criamon path of the body. In this state the magus does not age (and often gets other benefits) but they still accumulate warping points as normal and they will almost certainly eventually fall to twilight if they don't get hit by a bus or the like first. In this state the magus is basically just like eveybody else except they are a powerful magus and age does not touch them.
Then there is transforming yourself into a creature of might. This is what gets done with the greater elixer, asscension to the hall of heros, the merinita mystery of the becomming, and the mystery of the living ghost. In this state you no longer acquire warping and you are a creature that does not age. The downside of this is that you are no longer human. In most of these methods you naturally return to the state that your body and mind were in when you achieved immortality thus over the course of time you heal all wounds and forget all new knowlege.
In this second state (becomeing an imortal rather than becoming ageless) a magus can enchant their talisman with a continuous creo mentem effect to hold new knowlege in their mind and continuous rego vim effects to give them the ability to cast new spells. (Becoming a faerie is different and so to, I susspect are the infernal methods). In all cases becoming a creature of might more or less slows down your acquisition of power to a crawl (unless there's some creepy infernal trick that I'm forgetting).
Ergo if you are a verditious who has a whole bevey of bonuses to item enchantment you'll have some advantages to gaining knowlege if you ever achieve immortality.
low level rego mentem effects that target yourself such as "i'm not getting as annoyed as I might otherwise become" or "I feel happy", or "I'm genuinely interested in what this person has to say" would both be somewhat useful and they would provide bonuses to both learning spells and retaining knowlege.
That's another bonus I just got reminded of, and that I don't recall being covered..
Transforming yourself into a magical creature has a quite nice extra bonus for mages... no more warping, ever.. ... can you imagine the array of constant spell effects the immortal verditius will have in his talisman? .. all the other effects of course being linked to a mentem mind reader, so he merely has to think to annihilate his enemies ^^
Thanks! This is ALL seriously fun stuff!
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