Is Flawless Magic really so good?

[temprobe]

@ezzelino

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.

We agree on flexibility.

@ezzelino

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.

Yes, it totally gives you a more flexible toolbox. FM lets you become better at what you've chosen to do. LLSM, like Diedne Magic, lets you deal with situations you didn't anticipate, but with a different optic than DM does.

@ezzelino

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

Each virtue has its strength. LLSM lets you deal with one or two situations before you rest. It makes you resourceful, a sort of get out of jail free card. FM lets you run through a gauntlet, punching through the wall with your fist of a jackhammer, and come away without doing more than brush the dust of your enemy on your shoulders. The later sounds more powerful to me But it doesn't help you deal with the unexpected and if your fist happens to encounter an immaterial ghost or a political problem, you better have another tool to use. So I don't think either is fundamentally better than the other option. Both are awesome first-pick, character-defining virtues.

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

They are both fantastic virtues. Leaving aside shenanigans with vim, they are still both fantastic virtues. They do different things, and are hard to compare. Both do better when their strengths are played to and built around. I think that flawless magic requires more subtlety to use and build around, because a player needs to think hard about his toolkit whereas the whole point of lifelinked spontaneous magic is that the magus does not need to think much about his toolkit because he always can do something.

With all this talk of formula 1 racing cars, which is not at all necessarily applicable to Maggie, I think that it is clear that Magi are all like tanks. Especially like world war II tanks. Obvious, right?

So, what is the best world war II tank? I am willing to argue that the best world war II tank is the Sherman, even though it does not seem to have the best stats. What it does have is reliability. It can be easily manufactured, and it does not break easily. So when you want a platoon of tanks you get a platoon of tanks and they don't roll double boxes. Remember, nothing is worse than a tiger King suffering a Twilight experience.

Sherman tanks were versatile, reliable, easily transported, and all around good tanks. A great deal is said for example about Soviet tanks, yet the Russians themselves gave their elite tankers Sherman's that they got via land lease. And these were greatly favored.

Flawless magic gives you that capability. You are reliable. You do need to choose your kit carefully, but if you do, your power is unmatched, especially after the guy with life linked spontaneous magic watches, which he will inevitably do since all of his roles are stress rolls when he uses the virtue, except in some sagas in which heroic stamina that affects spellcasting is permitted.

Again, both virtues are fantastic. A character built around either will be extremely good. I think these two virtues stand Head and shoulders above any of the other hermetic major virtues in the main rule book.

Anyway,

Ken

[ErikT]

LLSM and Flawless Magic are both good virtues. I think few people will argue against that.

LLSM might be more powerful, but "more powerful" and "better" are not exactly the same thing.
There is a built in drawback or two with LLSM that can make it dangerous to use.
The first is that you can only use it once or twice in a short period of time before you are badly fatigued.
The second one is that if you botch when using LLSM you are very likely to end up unconcious and wounded - and that is before even considering the regular drawbacks of a botch.

Flawless Magic on the other hand will reduce the number of botches you get, and has no drawback whatsoever.

[loke]

@ErikT

LLSM might be more powerful, but "more powerful"

The magus I have played the most, ever, is a Rusticanus. There is no way LLSM would have come across as powerful.

YPCMV

[ezzelino]

@Ovarwa

They are both fantastic virtues. Leaving aside shenanigans with vim,

Well ... vim increases the value of (particularly short term, i.e. minutes to days) preparation.
Removing vim from the picture hurts all magi. It hurts less those with FM, who are fast, always relaxed, never fatigued etc. It hurts more those who can pour a lot resources in one spell, like those with LLSM or Life Boost, because it removes their ability to "transfer resources across time".

@Ovarwa

they are still both fantastic virtues. They do different things, and are hard to compare. Both do better when their strengths are played to and built around. I think that flawless magic requires more subtlety to use and build around, because a player needs to think hard about his toolkit whereas the whole point of lifelinked spontaneous magic is that the magus does not need to think much about his toolkit because he always can do something.

I tend to view it the other way round. I think we are both correct, but on a different timescale.
I am talking of minutes to days, you are talking seasons to decades, I think. Then again, I shamelessly use ... "vim shenanigans"

But this is an interesting direction to take. What would be a good toolkit for a FM-mage? I think this is a very pertinent question to this thread ("Is Flawless Magic really so good"). I think it would in general be very pertinent mutatis mutandis to characters without, or with limited access to Spontaneous magic (including, say, Redcaps working with magic items).

At the same time, a good understanding of the "right toolkit" might prove the value of FM is less. If the toolkit of spells, and the levels of masteries for it, is very small, you can get by without FM's discount.

@Ovarwa

Flawless magic gives you that capability. You are reliable. You do need to choose your kit carefully, but if you do, your power is unmatched, especially after the guy with life linked spontaneous magic botches, which he will inevitably do since all of his roles are stress rolls when he uses the virtue, except in some sagas in which heroic stamina that affects spellcasting is permitted.

Hmm. Why shouldn't it be permitted?

[Red-Shadow-Claws (Itzhak Even)]

I assume @Ovarwa is talking about Mythic Stamina. If he does, then one still can't combine both Mythic Stamina and LLSM, because to take MS, you need to have Mythic Blood, which is a Major Hermetic Virtue.

[Cyborg (thepsyborg)]

@Red-Shadow-Claws

to take MS, you need to have Mythic Blood, which is a Major Hermetic Virtue.

Not true. Legacy (minor story flaw) unlocks Heroic V&F, and is 100% compatible with LLSM.

[temprobe]

@ezzelino

Removing vim from the picture hurts all magi. It hurts less those with FM, who are fast, always relaxed, never fatigued etc. It hurts more those who can pour a lot resources in one spell, like those with LLSM or Life Boost, because it removes their ability to "transfer resources across time".

Can you elaborate on how you use this with LLSM? Knock yourself unconscious in your lab to prepare watching ward spells?

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

I think it should be permitted, at least rules as written, but I also think that cautious with liberal arts or philosophy should affect ceremonial and ritual casting. In this case, I can imagine all kinds of arguments about why spell casting is an unfair specialization for mythic stamina, including that even spontaneous spell casting is simply too big. I can imagine a group wanting to take such a specialization, even after it is narrowed, to justify it by choosing an appropriate heroic limit lineage and then deciding that this is not appropriate for one reason or another. New paragraph new paragraph

Oh hell I hate the way sometimes it knows how to recognize the paragraphs and sometimes it does not. But anyway. New paragraph

It is also in a book that not everyone will allow into their sagas, and I admit that I have deep sympathy with that perspective.

Anyway, new paragraph Ken

[ezzelino]

@Cyborg

@Red-Shadow-Claws

to take MS, you need to have Mythic Blood, which is a Major Hermetic Virtue.

Not true. Legacy (minor story flaw) unlocks Heroic V&F, and is 100% compatible with LLSM.

And other Virtues (and perhaps Flaws) might work too, according to HoH:TL.
Plus, the Clesrada is a cult that initiates Heroic Virtues ... so it stands to reason that if you take Cabal Legacy, your "Cult" might have initiated you.

[ezzelino]

@temprobe

Can you elaborate on how you use this with LLSM? Knock yourself unconscious in your lab to prepare watching ward spells?

Not necessarily using the Ritual version, and not necessarily in the lab (and not necessarily all the way to unconsciousness, which is easier if you first shapeshift into the appropriate form); but basically yes.

In particular, the Watching Ward is a Ritual only because of the a)indefinite and b)conditional nature of Watching ward. The guideline itself is not Ritual. A D:Conc version does not require a Ritual, and can last indefinitely, if you keep recasting (an appropriate Duration version of) Maintain The Demanding Spell. Dispel that, and the D:Conc "container" is ready to be terminated, releasing the spell.

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

I think that the side discussion of great tool kits for a magus both coming out of gauntlet and at various years past is a good one. The Magi of Hermes book only partially addresses this, because these examples are idiosyncratic; they are useful but they don't quite address the same question of how to create a magus who is generally useful and playable across a wide variety of stories. And powerful too of course because that's why we're here in this thread. I don't believe

I don't believe there is a single great toolkit. The conversation of essential spells have come up numerous times in these forums, and essential spells break out by category of function rather than specific spell. But a toolkit is bigger than this.

It must have essential functions that answer some basic questions. Can I get out of Dodge? Can I lay down the smackdown in combat? Can I do something in a social situation other than get out of Dodge? And more, but these are the basics. A toolkit should help a mongoose control his environment. New paragraph new paragraph

Some of these spells will benefit immensely from laying on the mastery. For example, a plum of fire is great but a pilum of fire that I can cast quietly while tied up at lots of people in a church before anyone reacts is even better. Teleporting back home is a great get out of jail card, but I'd certainly like to put silent and subtle on that, in case I am teleporting from shackles. There's a mastery that suppresses sigil and I suspect that will be helpful on one or two of these spells. New paragraph new paragraph God damn it

So I'd love to see various toolkits for an optimized flawless magic magus coming out of gauntlet, and I think these are particularly interesting because they will reflect different kinds of choices that have to be deeply considered due to the heavy investment involved. And I think that the benefit of pimping out spells with flawless magic is going to be greater rather than lesser. New paragraph

As an aside, which I might have mentioned some time ago on this forums, I think that spell mastery has a cultural impact as well. Pilum of fire might not be the very very best Korean spell a flambeau could learn, but it becomes a lot better when you consider that the house has been writing books about mastering the spell for nearly half a millennium. Many of these books are trash, but quite a few of them are not considering there are probably so many of them. And, of course, Maggie outside the house are well aware that flambeau will pay well for good books about their favorite subject.

The order probably has a few other boutique spells of this kind. Flawless magic doubles the value of all those trackpad high. Okay, all those books.

If your tool kit runs toward rituals, flawless magic plus cautious magic plus a familiar really helps. Of course, a pure ritual magician or mostly ritual magician might want mercurian magic rather than flawless magic. But the latter is more versatile, if not quite as good for rituals. New paragraph

It's a bit strange to me that I am here advocating flawless magic because while I think it is a powerful virtue it is not one of my personal favorites. But I do notice that when I see a newly gauntleted magus with flawless magic online that is well done, I find myself admiring the cleverness of the player and power of the character, where power means a combination of ability and flexibility. Anyway,

Ken

[Marko_Markoko]

At this point I think we can all agree upon the incontravertable facts as we have discovered in the analysis.
Now, as to the matter of battle axes versus poison daggers...

[silveroak]

Who uses poisoned daggers? Eat your mushrooms.

[Fishy (Lee)]

@Marko_Markoko

At this point I think we can all agree upon the incontravertable facts as we have discovered in the analysis.
Now, as to the matter of battle axes versus poison daggers...

Flawless weapon mastery is most useful with poison daggers as the reduction in botches is very important when using poison.
Life Linked Beserking is better with a large weapon such as a battle axe. The ability to take damage to produce more damage works best when you've already bashed past their soak with the big weapon, so the damage from LLB makes a bigger wound.
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[these do not exist. it was satirical]

[Marko_Markoko]

Interesting tangent. The one magus of mine that is the spell specialist and all gonzo for Mastery. Because he spens so much time on spells, he never get around to making enchanted items or anything. No Talisman, no Longevity even! But the one non spell thing he puts a lot of focus into is his Familiar. A fat one-eyes orange tabby named Cidito. That cat has his own powers (inspired by the magic cats in RoP Magic). But the two main features are a strong Bronze Cords (to make up for longevity, AND Endurance of the Berserkers!
Mastery of that spell with the Lab feature gave me that extra oomph I needed to get that enchantment done in a single season.

[The_Fixer]

I love FM, especially with my current maga.

Even if I seldom pushed mastery levels and didn't optimize it by far, I like all the little perks, such as the ability to fast cast, or without gestures...
She's all "Ok, I can cast this simple spell, but if I am in a town, it may be great to use it without being blatant and without risking a botch due to that damned Divine aura".
Having fast cast on defensive spells, such as ward against heat and flames, is always useful and, although I've not used it as much as I could, having Magic resistance on a few common spells, such as Call to Slumber, make you feel that much safer.