There's been a lot of talk about how much XP you get from it, or how many seasons you save.l, and while there's been some mention of the other perks of FM, they haven't really been discussed.
The first one, and most basic, is every Mastery adds +1 to your casting bonus. Sure, most spells you invent/learn, are spells you would be able to cast, especially as a young magi, but that gets skewed as the bonuses from your lab/familiar/apprentice come into play. Plus, it reduces the number of botch dice you roll for casting it.
Sure, not every spell will benefit from every Mastery option, and for some of them to be useful, you really want high Mastery., But they give you options that other Magi might not have with every spell they know.
I think ezzelino's point is that you can get all those perks without FM, simply by spending xp on mastering spells. So in one sense all FM gives you is xp, including the time needed to acquire those xp.
The counterpoint to this is that you would normally not spend xp on mastering many of your spells, due to having so many other things to spend xp on, yet having mastery on all your spells is certainly nice to have.
Yes, but the true unit a magi builds his character with in play is not experience points, it's time. A season of practice for 5 xp < a season of studying from a summae, tractatus or from vis. Adventures sort of help bridge that gap, and that's where most spell mastery XP will come on a sheet I build. Still, even the best adventure, at 10 xp, falls short of reading an average summae. If I have the choice to read a summae at 15 xp with book learner giving me a total of 18 towards an art of my choice, or to spend that same season getting 9 adventure xp that I can spread arround... the choice is usually simple and what will lure me to an adventure isn't the actual adventure experience. On the other hand, I don't expect there's a ton of spell mastery summae above level 3. You just can't assume an experience point in spell mastery has the same opporunity cost as an extra experience point in an art or magic theory. It doesn't. This varies a lot from campaign to campaign. But in a campaign with high auras and a lot of powerful art book, I'd wager every XP sunk in spell mastery costs 2 or 3 xp sunk in an art in what I'd call an opportunity cost. As such, I think analysing Flawless Magic in terms of whether it will give that much more experience points than this other virtue is missing the point, unless those other virtues also contribute to spell mastery.
This is true, I never denied it. Flawless magic gives you xp in an area where getting xp tends to be harder than, say .. Artes Liberales. How much harder depends a lot on the saga specifics, so you can't come up with a hard "exchange rate".
However, xp is all it gives you, mechanically. I do not buy the argument "oh, but it gives you so much more, because it gives you stuff that you could purchase with xp, but that you would never want to purchase with xp, because it would not be worth it".
I've seen the argument made elsewhere, by a friend who received a $3000 designer bag instead of a $3500 paycheck. "How nice! They gave me so much more than money! What do you mean I could have spent $3000 of my paycheck to buy it, and still have $500 left? That's nonsense, you know I would never spend $3000 on a designer bag"!
Well .. I still don't buy it Though I do see many people buying it, which is why I said Flawless Magic is well-designed because it's very gratifying.
Magi that do more than just theorize in their labs, such as the wise masters of House Flambeau, will tell you for certain that Spell Mastery can be the deciding force between life and death. Victory is in the preparation. Further, the simple fact that all formulaic spells are Mastered without further effort results is a massive reduction in Warping.
Your example is only valid if it would take three months of your friend's life to procure the handbag. In that case, her argument could easily be, "How nice! They gave me so much more than money! After all, the opportunity cost of spending all that time just to get a handbag is easily worth much more than $500."
We did argue that Flawless Magic gives you something which you could not buy with XP, because there would not be time to do it. This is quite typical when you invent a a new spell for a particular endeavour, for which you only have that one season to prepare, and you really want to master it.
Mostly, however, we argued that it gives things that you could buy for XP, but that these XP are much more valuable than the XP from other XP granting virtue, hence the attempts to count the savings in seasons instead.
There are a lot of virtues which only give benefits which you could get through XP, but nobody has argued that they are not worth the cost.
Actually, I consider that argument valid as well. I would not have deliberated against buying that designer bag. I would never even had the idea to consider it. Furthermore, if I did have the idea, I would not bother to figure out where and how to buy one, or take the hassle with customs and taxes which would probably follow.
Hence the $3000 designer bag comes with too things, so much more than money. It gives an idea, which I would never otherwise have had (much less rejected), and it saves the time to implement that idea.
Yes, I would also have opted for $3500 cheque, and I would probably not have used the designer bag if I received it, but the actual statement that the item is more than the money is valid.
Does this translate back to the question about Flawless Magic? Yes, it does. If I could take a virtue which gave me 5xp free whenever I invented a spell, and 5xp, to be freely spent, each time I spend 5xp on mastery, then I would surely take that over Flawless Magic, but that kind of pay cheque virtue does not exist. And I suspect we might agree that it be unbalanced. Flawless Magic would still have an (minor) upside, in that it would save the player the effort of making certain design choices in the character advancement.
I agree. In fact, I would say that, by choosing it at character creation, the player puts himself in a situation where, willing or unwilling, he'll develop a character that may well be less powerful, but will probably be more fun to play (from what I've seen, Roberto of Flambeau seems to be the epitome of this). I think this the crux of why it's so well-liked.
Possibly, for some definition of power designed to make the statement true.
When all the other Hermetic virtues grant a different kind of power than the character wants to wield, Flawless Magic will probably make the character more powerful in the right way than any other choice.
Power is so many different things which are not comparable.
I mean Diedne Magic is arguably the most powerful Hermetic virtue, but the dark secret is a real unpower, which can make the magus really, really weak.
My current character was originally envisioned as a lab rat. I took FM because none of the other Majors really spoke to me for what I wanted to do. Early on in the saga it made me the "Ritual Guy" since I could cast them without botches, which is very helpful for things like AotH.
A few decades into play, I volunteered to be one of our reps at Tribunals (we were expanding out connections and book selling biz). Made a mental lab and off I went. That was where I discovered having FM and mastering everything actually lets you just cast your spells. By that I mean the no/reduced chance of botching takes much of the worry out of spell slinging. When you are out and about in the world, that reduced worry lets you use your magic more freely.
Of course after getting in a few fights, I picked up combat spells. We already had books on Pof, AoFR, BoAF, and tIoL Mastery (thanks to our Flambeau), so I learned them and spend a few seasons reading. In under a decade, I went from minimal combat ability to a broad range of offensive (direct & mana stripper) and defensive spells, mastered to a degree that made me very effective with them.
FM lets him develop rapidly in different areas of specialty (the ones where Mastery is important). Combat, Wards, Metamagic, subtle, etc. That is not even considering what happens if you are using an expanded list of Mastery Abilities, which can dramatically expand the width and depth of what you can do.
Certainly, for any definition of power designed to make the statement true
The statement was fuzzy because I felt it was the best way for it to convey its meaning concisely. But it can be made more concrete in a way that does capture, I believe, the notion of "power" as "capability to deal with obstacles effectively".
Take a set of published adventures. I don't know, Thrice Told Tales? Whatever. Ideally ones fitted to a broad variety of "power levels", and for which it is easy to define "success" or "failure".
Now for any player, given a magus advanced "yearly" over a lifetime, one can in principle define for each adventure the earliest age at which the magus with, uh, six grogs designed as newly created characters, has at least 90% probability of completing it succesfully -- let's call it the "maturity" age for that adventure.
Then define magus 1, played by player A, as more powerful than magus 2 played by player B, if the average maturity age (over all adventures in the set) for the former is lower than that of the latter. Note that the two magi or the two players might coincide. This is still a slightly fuzzy definition ("how many pawns of vis of each Art does the magus start each adventure with?"), and obviously the choice of the adventure set and the definition of "success" and "failure" plays a role, but it should all be much clearer than before -- particularly if folks approach this in good faith.
Given this definition my claims are as follows.
Under my play, a magus with Life-Linked Spontaneous Magic is more powerful than a magus with Flawless Magic.
Take all the players on the forum. Divide them into two fields, a) those under whose play (a magus with) LLSM is more powerful than (a magus with) FM, and b) other players. I claim that, on average over all possible pairings, magi with LLSM controlled by players of group a) are more powerful than magi with FM controlled by players of group b).
Note that the above has very little to do with enjoying the adventures themselves -- and perhaps the character development process as well, that's a minigame too. I strongly believe having fun should be the primary goal of play, and I have already stated repeatedly that I now see how Flawless Magic is a very gratifying Virtue to play. But we were talking about "power", very fuzzily defined as "capability of a magus to deal with obstacles effectively". In that, I think Life-Linked Spontaneous Magic wins.
Firstly, published adventures leave enough liberty to the SG, that the maturity age can only be determined for a given SG.
Secondly, the definition of powerfulness is not set for a given player. Most players I play with have more than one play style, more than one character concept, and more than one way to be powerful.
Thirdly, play style and genre, and thus power ranking does not even have to be constant within one story in the same group of players.
So averaging over pairings is not meaningful. You need to average over all the SGs, stories, sessions, and troupe combinations as well. It might be true, but it is neither verifiable nor relevant. What matters is what fits in the given saga that you are going to play.
As long as there are play styles which make flawless magic useful, there will be sagas where that's the right virtue to get success (i.e. have power).
If you define "dealing with obstacles effectively" to mean "falling unconscious after your first successful spell" as opposed to "multi-casting your spell 5 times with a bonus to penetration, no chance of botching, and then fast-casting 4 spells on top of your multi-cast" then yes, I suppose by that definition, Life-linked spontaneous magic beats Flawless Magic.
I repeatedly said it myself. The alternative, a protocol of several dozen pages, does not seem a sensible choice. Either people are going to approach this in good faith, or I am not going to waist more time
Think of this as a competition. You have to design a magus so that, under your play, it gets a 90% chance of completing an adventure successfully at the youngest possible age after gauntlet. The lower the average of that age over our adventure set, the greater the "power" of the magus under your play.
Sure, the number is fuzzily defined. SG plays a role. Many, many others little things do. For example, there are character concepts that are more forgiving of player error than others; these are likely to do better in 8-hour play marathons (at the end of which players get tired). Choose any way to clarify these aspects that most players on the forum would agree is "reasonable".
While I did not state it explicitly, I was assuming that players were actively trying to complete the adventures successfully. Play style, character concept and ways to be powerful should be chosen so as to be "powerful" according to the definition above.
Sure -- specify and or average those aspects and all other little details. I claim that, unless you go out of your way to specify stuff to "bend" the result, the comparative results will change little.
I never disagreed with that. There are players for which FM will yield greater power than LLSM. But look carefully at claim 2. I claim those players have less power with FM, than remaining players -- those for whom LLSM yields more power than FM -- can extract from LLSM.
Put somewhat more fuzzily, if you are very apt at extracting power, then you'll extract more power from LLSM than from FM. Hey, I am probably going to drive faster with an Audi than with a Formula 1 car, simply because I am likely going to crash the latter. But if you look at the fastest pilots, they'll all drive faster with a Formula 1 car. That's why we say, informally, that a Formula 1 car is faster.
I am in good faith, and I mean no disrespect, but in my mind, a spell mastered formulaic spell beats any form of spontaneous magic in all situations with one exception: When there is no formulaic spell known to deal with that situation. LLSM adds a second one - doing what you could otherwise not do. So, for me, yes, LLSM is a great virtue. And it's one of the virtues which can make a character, because I really like the concept of being able to overcome anything if you're willing to lay down your life for it. But dying to overcome an obstacle, or bringing yourself on the brink of death, is only satisfying in very rare situations. It doesn't sound like power to me. A threat, perhaps, sure. And definitely a nice toolbox to have. But spell mastery will typically carry the day unless A) You do not have the right spell to deal with the situation and B) You're facing something you should be smart enough not to take head on. Sure, LLSM lets you kill a dragon out of gauntlet at the price of your life, but were you so in a rush to create a new character for the covenant, and wasn't this a situation where there was a way out of the problem by dealing with the story?
This is a very different discussion (albeit an interesting one). Are my claims "valid"?
It only has a point, though, if they are reasonably well-defined (including "in potentia" -- i.e. if we iron out all the little details). Loke seemed to suggest they were not. Then, there's not much I can do
It seems to me that your view is that LLSM's value lies in using it in a "go all in" fashion. I disagree, and note that "being able to cast a really, really powerful efffect if you are willing to die for it" does not count as "power" for me.
Hmm, how can I be concise with it?
Essentially, LLSM allows you to deal better with an unfavourable situation than FM (not by giving you power, but by giving you flexibility). It also requires more player effort. FM allows you to be even better at a situation at which you are already at least good, with little player effort.
Let's say that, out of 10 difficult situations LLSM lets you get ahead in 8, but bruised and bloodied and by the proverbial hair. FM lets you get ahead in 5, but in those you do so effortlessly and looking super-cool. Particularly if the SG selects only those situations in which you will get out ahead, to a lot of players FM will appear better.
That's why, as succintly as possible, I'd choose LLSM (and why according to the definition of "power" given above, I think it's more powerful); it's also why I think FM makes most players happier
Actually, no they don't. That depends on the road they are driving on. Regardless of the driver, the Formula 1 car will do worse on a cross country track.
And the Formula 1 car does not even have the power to carry my shopping or my kids. In other words, the Formula 1 car is completely powerless.
Except on its home turf.
The challenge only makes sense when we know which adventures we are talking about, including how the SG and the rest of the troupe will implement it.
If the challenge includes choosing the play style of the SG and the rest of the troupe to make my PC maximum powerful, I am going to decline the challenge.
Like the Formula 1 car, magi are also most powerful in their home environment.
Though I do see many people buying it, which is why I said Flawless Magic is well-designed because it's very gratifying.
