Right, it is handwaved, and I don't care that it's handwaved. I'd like to have the setting and rules truly take that into account, though. I'd like all possible rules interpretations to be able to go back and say, yeah, it can be handwaved, because it's not a dangerous activity, somehow, someway. I see other rituals handwaved, too. If coming up with a clear ruling means that Mastery 1 mitigates all botch dice as some believe, then I suppose that's fine. It doesn't match my sensibilities, but such a ruling would certainly remove what I see as ambiguity, no matter what someone else says. A consequence of such a ruling would be that no rituals are really dangerous. Everyone would spend a season mastering them for a single point of mastery, and they would always be cast in relaxed situations. There really aren't time constraints in Ars. Ars scales from the moment to the season, and situations where a ritual needs to be cast under stress will be contrived by the SG, at best. So, ultimately, all rituals are risk free for the low, low price of a season of practice. You want to stat-boost your character, go for it. Learn the ritual, master it, and now you can handle 12 pawns of vis and put it into someone else's body without any risks whatsoever, and doing it for 3 hours straight doesn't stress anyone out, at all.
I think a better mechanic for handwaving something like rituals, is what I outlined earlier, make it a seasonal activity, and be done with it. It's at least consistent with risk free activities taking time (although you can add risk if you want or need to do so by experimenting, but your sodales would take a dim view of you experimenting with the Aegis).
Well, without that paragraph there would be no hint at all about needing a stress die to cast a Ritual spell.
More explanations of the reasons for that would simplify discussions on the forum, but are not its raison d’être, and also would not lead troupes' decisions unless they were also addressed on p.86 after the introduction of spell mastery.
Nothing beyond the RAW and definitions of stress dice and botch dice outlined earlier in the book. Mind you whether a ritual is cast with a simple die or cast with a non-botching stress die because of spell mastery is very nearly a distinction without a difference
Stressful conditions and use a stress die would entirely annihilate your position, because you could never be relaxed. Granted, it may not change troupe's positions, where they decide to adopt the ruling. I mean, I see troupes deciding that Wards and the Aegis don't need to penetrate. Troupes can decide whatever they want and do. My position has been that the setting doesn't really fit within the rules as I understand them.
Under RAW, the section on how to determine whether a situation can botch, i.e. is stressful, ritual magic fits in quite well. Ritual it consumes a resource, and it can't easily be re-performed without consuming additional resources. That, to me is stressful, and about all the justification I need as an SG to determine that rituals are always considered stressful situations. As with all things, YSMV.
I may have churned out slightly different numbers (e.g. everyone wants Rego and Vim at least at 5, because they'll eventually train an apprentice) but somehow, 11 seasons was what I came up with myself. That's one season of service/year for about a decade.
From my experience, in a newly founded spring covenant, magi do end up devoting that amount of time to setting things up. I mean, they need to secure vis sources, books for the library, mundane income, grogs and specialists; and cultivate relationships with nearby nobles, coveants, supernatural creatures etc. It is a lot of work.
Of course, one thing is a season of service battling dragons, and another is sitting in the Covenant's library raising your own Rego score "for the good of the covenant" So I guess some negotiation might be involved. Of those seasons, only those devoted to learning the Aegis and its mastery are undisputedly "for the covenant". These could be as few as 2.5 (two for the mastery from the summa, "half" as you study the Aegis in conjunction with something else). Nonetheless, yes, dealing with Aegis is a chore.
Alas, yes. I think the problem is not with the Aegis though. It's with the Communion. Too many botch dice for too little benefit, particularly after you hit 3-4 participants.
Well. It seems to me you are making an implicit assumption: a Spring covenant is the covenant most in need of a fair Aegis, so it should be able to cast a fair Aegis. Well, a Spring covenant is the covenant most in need of a good set of Summae, so it should be able to acquire a good set of summae... mmm.
I think there are two aspects to Aegis casting. The first is the penetration. The second are the botches.
I think something like 5 botch dice can be tolerated for a very few years, because it's a small risk that becomes large only over the long run. Similarly, if penetration is low for the first three or four years ... it's ok. Maybe there will be a story about it. Or maybe for the first three or four years you just don't cast an Aegis, I don't know (like, you don't have a lab or a source of income...).
Let's see. Year 1. You have the magus with the best Rego Vim lab total spend a season to learn the Aegis, and cast it. Ok, the first time it won't have such great penetration. Say the character has Rego 8, Vim 3, MT 3, Int +2, in a +4 Aura. Casting it alone is a stress die + ReVi 11, +1 Stamina, +4 Aura, +2 Artes Liberales including a specialty in ritual casting, +1 Penetration, +2 voice and gestures -20 for the level of the spell, yields a penetration equal to stress die+1. With 5 botch dice. Maybe worth it, maybe not. Probably not. No Aegis for the first year, or maybe you ask a helpful quaesitor or a parens to cast it for you?
But! Year 2. The young magus studies (in one season) the summa on mastery, gaining 15xp, and a score of 2, with Penetration as one of the two special abilities. Now he's down to 3 botch dice, and has an effective penetration of stress die +5. Better, particularly if he's willing to spend a confidence point -- unless he rolls a 0, it has a penetration of at least 10.
Year 3. Say, two seasons spent raising respectively Philosophiae to 1+, with a specialty in ritual casting, and Vim from 3 to 6. The magus has negotiated that these two seasons together are worth 1 season of covenant service -- after all, they are pretty useful to him too. He still has 3 botch dice, but now a penetration of stress die + 10. Much better.
Year 4. One season of service spent finishing the summa on mastery of the Aegis. Penetration up to stress die +12, and only two botch dice. He's on his way there.
Year 10. After Year 4, we can assume that he'll gain 1 point of Penetration/year, by spending one season/year improving Rego, Vim, Penetration, Artes Liberales etc. and maybe lose another botch die by the end of the decade from some additional study of mastery, a bound familiar etc. So, by Year 10, it will be Penetration 20+ (if willing to supplement a roll of 0 with a confidence point), with a single botch die. Done -- at least for a decade or two, by which time there will be a familiar with a gold cord, and possibly slightly stronger scores etc.!
One important thing to note is that Communion to cast a level 20 Aegis is not very useful; it maybe somewhat useful to have 2 or 3 magi learn it, but beyond that point it's wasted time. Having two magi learn Communion (the Aegis caster and another) to level 20 requires two magus-seasons (assuming Communion is in the library) and boosts Penetration by +10, at the cost of 2 extra botch dice. Maybe worth it, maybe not. Adding two more magi boosts Penetration only by +5. Almost certainly not worth it.
The Aegis and the entire Realm of Faerie are rules tidbits...
Silly me, my example of a minor inconsistency with S/M boni from rings was probably too major for you guys, go ahead and keep talking about things that are so petty that they only define the nature of the entire setting. G'job mates.
Why do the rules have to take into account the HR of any SG? Just run a game without hand waving of the AoH and see what happens. Instead of guessing about what happens to a Spring covenant and getting into arguments over this or that just run a game with the way you want to.
I'll bet the people arguing for all the botch dice as RAW have never played it like that because they do not want it to become the focus of the game.
Well, obviously people do run the game the way they want to run it. But is RAW consistent with the setting? The setting suggests that almost every covenant has an Aegis of the Hearth, the ones that don't are noteworthy and have an explicit mention.
You have a perfectly serviceable HR, I don't happen to like it. Because in one situation, we are treating rituals differently from another situation. Is a ritual to improve a stat now an off-screen activity? If not, why? We already presume that the Aegis, one of the most important functions of the covenant is off-screen, automatic and just accounted for in the vis record. Why can't the same be done for a stat boosting utility? What's the difference between an off-screen accounting method that assumes the ritual is automatic and paying for a mastery score of 1 and then saying it's always relaxed? There isn't a difference in that, and it's at least nearly consistent with itself. Your HR is a patch over a system that obviously has issues. And so, what we have is a system where sometimes rituals are rolled for, and sometimes we treat them as fait accompli. Aegis, because it's for the good of everyone is just presumed to go off without a hitch, while other rituals, because they are onscreen entail a huge risk. Umm, who's going to sign up for that?
I think making rituals operate like lab work is probably a better approach. If we are going to have a system that entails no risk to the magus, costs vis, I would much rather that be handled as a seasonal activity. Ritual spells, as they are now are this odd duck. They take more time than a formulaic, but I've never had a game where there was a time critical aspect to a ritual. Anyone can do a ritual spell, even without "knowing it" by doing the lab work. Maybe a lab text is created, and the first Aegis done by lab work doesn't have all the bells and whistles of penetration, but subsequent Aegis rituals will have increased penetration, the difference of the lab text level and the lab total. I dunno, it's one of those things that has bothered me for a long time. It's always consistent: rituals as lab work cost time and vis. There isn't a risk of botching, because you're spending a lot of time going over things in that season leading up to the ritual, dotting all your I's crossing all the T's, consulting with the stars and perhaps with other magi to check your work, and then at the end of the season you perform it (as if it were a longevity ritual, almost) and it's done, and automatic.
It's not just Aegis, it is a minor inconsistency in the rules that has huge implications. It does make me
Ars has dozens of things that can be done that will literally break the game. They are often found in tidbits. And if they don't break the game, I've seen conflicting understandings by players literally nerf entire character concepts that are already in play. SGs and troupes have some real challenges to navigate when those issues popup. This thread isn't [strike]entirely[/strike]too different from the simple HR thread, in that some really basic understanding by different people results in huge power differences.
See also Into the Lab thread, where Ben McFarland, others and I discussed T:Group. I'm currently in two different games which have entirely different understandings of how T:Group works, and I'm about to ask the SG in another game to adopt the understanding that I arrived at with Ben's help.
I've even seen one troupe determine based on a snippet in RoP:Faerie that there is only 1 Craft skill.
Do you interpret this to mean that those that have never had an AoH are untrustworthy or those that have had it for years and botched as casting then got one a day later are also now untrustworthy? Does trustworthyness of a Covenant happen all at once or over time? If you did not know that Durenmar had botched their AOH and took a week to case a new one until several years later cause then to fall into the untrustworthy bucket? Is there a time limit on the untrusting mantle being laid on a Covenant for a AoH failure? A day? An hour? A week?
All of these questions are rhetorical. I recommend running a game like this to see what would happen. I personally think the Order would come apart as the magi have no reason to trust one another. Would it even survive until 1220 as a serviceable organization? you could not trust any apprentice from those covenants to form a new covenant.
Might as well run Ars Paranoia.
That is simplifying it. Any aggregation of skills ( Dead Languages for example) can be considered one skill for the purpose of Puissant with Ability based on the snippet from RoP:F
Where does trustworthiness come from? I said noteworthy, as in of note or of interest, as in an exception to the understanding that all covenants have an Aegis. I didn't even come close to saying that a covenant that doesn't have an Aegis is untrustworthy. You seem to have misread what I have written.
I'm not going to answer them, because they don't seem to be based on anything I wrote, but of you misunderstanding what I wrote and somehow coming to the conclusion that covenants without an AoH are untrustworthy. All that despite I said no such thing. FWIW, I think magi in Ars are far too cooperative.
Sure, it's a simplification, but your example is an inconsistency with RAW when there is such a virtue as Linguist. In a game where Living languages is treated as one skill family and Puissant and Affinity apply to the family then Linguist is a worthless virtue. Considering it was a virtue added at a later time, I don't think it should be a worthless virtue. And my example was specificly with Craft, but again, it's treating all Craft as a family and Puissant and Affnity Craft apply to the whole family. I mean, if you're going to do stuff like that, it's not a minor virtue, at least call it a major.
Saying that because Dwarf blood adds +1 to all Craft skills, all craft skills should be affected by puissant or affinity. Likewise with languages, living or dead.
Poor/Wealthy virtues techinically refer to how TIME-rich or poor you are, the sort of wealth or poverty that gives you xp, the only currency players crave. A Poor Noble still lives massively better than many others. A poor guild-master has to spend months on guild business while still finding time to make things to sell in his shop, so is busy 3 seasons a year, while a wealthy Journeyman may spend 1 season making a few commissions at a good price, then have enough money to do exactly as he pleases. Yes, the virtue/flaw names are slightly confusing but reflect that having more free time is a big bonus, having less free time is a penalty.
The every 20 years with aging rolls is down to whether the "unlucky 13" roll is possible this decade or not with your longevity ritual. The unlucky 13 has to be in there to provide a chance of catastrophic aging for people unlikely to roll 23+. This is largely academic for people whose defence against aging is eating well or minor faerie blood, but it does provide the effect for high-powered magi that decades alternate in danger.
It's possible to get an open-ended result and end up with a huge score, although the likelihood is remote. It's much more likely, given the amount of vis that might be used, that you'll botch, which means wasting the season, contending with a possible Twilight episode, and not earning any XP. On the averages, studying from vis doesn't seem so bad, except when you consider the very likely negative outcomes at higher Art scores, the general propensity for their being a thriving book trade in the Order, and then the sheer cost.
If the average aura is 5 (it's not, but let's assume it is) then an average roll would provide 11 xp, about the same SQ as a sound tractatus. A sound tractatus costs 1 pawn of vis, studying from vis only costs 1 pawn when Art score <=5. Even if you bottom feed and get really subpar tractatus and grind away at 8xp per season, you're still going to be better off, because you're spending less vis AND you never botch.
4th edition had it partly right in tying the experience earned to the amount of vis sacrificed. In 5th edition, no one studies from vis unless forced to do so by circumstance, and even that is an extreme case.
I'm not quite sure what the issue is with the Aegis and botches?
Why is it a problem (for the RAW / setting) if covenants occasionally botch their Aegis? Most botches while bothersome are not fatal, instead they tend to be weird and unexpected. Also, bear in mind that most botches are obvious and visible. So, if a botch renders the Aegis ineffective (which not all botches will) then the magi will probably notice and hence can have another go at casting it.
There's a risk of Twilight from botches, but that's just the cost of being a magus.
It seems to me that in the setting, magi would just accept that botching an Aegis was a risk. Given the rough size of Tribunals, it seems that each year one or two covenants in the Tribunal might botch their Aegis. Which means that for that year, those covenants have a slightly weird Aegis or some problem with it, or those covenants merely cast the botched Aegis again if the particular botch problems are considered by the magi to be too risky.
The point is that the cost is too high if you presume that mastery doesn't mitigate all botch dice from rituals, or completely and utterly irrelevant with a season of practicing spell mastery if a single point of spell mastery allows you to cast a ritual as if you were relaxed and use a non-botching stress die. Then there is no cost to being a magus.
If most magi of a covenant need to be involved in the casting, especially in canonical covenants like Magvillus with it's 10th magnitude Aegis, and assuming it has full penetration, it needs a number of participants involved. You're starting with 11 botch dice, and then adding one for each participant in a communion, then you are subtracting mastery, virtues, and familiar golden cord, but that number is still probably around 5 or 6 botch dice. So every participant in the Communion for the Aegis now has to contend with a possible twilight episode, if more than one botch was rolled, and you've also thrown away 10 pawns of vis.
It's not just the Aegis, although the Aegis is the most common application of the problem.
On one hand, some believe that Mastery 1 will mitigate all risks for casting a ritual spell and site the rule that mastered spells, cast under relaxed conditions use a non botching stress die. An Aegis, or any ritual really will never be cast under stressful conditions. I've had this argument, I've had players tell me they will wait until it isn't stressful and then do it. It's always stressful, why? And the rules don't exactly support the idea that rituals are always stressful, merely that they are always cast with a stress die. Which goes to the other hand, some believe that casting rituals is 1+X botch die at a minimum, where X is the number of pawns of vis. You can further reduce risk by additional levels of mastery, virtues and Golden Cord, but it is also increased for each participant in a Wizard's Communion. And if there is a botch, then everyone in the communion gets the effects of that botch, or if a double botch or greater has to check for Twilight. It makes casting a high level Aegis, like the canonical one in Magvillus problematic on a lot of logistical areas. Back to the other hand, Mastery 1 no risk of botching makes all rituals pretty much risk-free, except in contrived situations which everyone knows at the table is contrived to make the casting stressful. Yay, natural storytelling!
Not all botches render the casting so ineffective that you need to cast it again. Not every magus who tests for Twilight fails the test, and Twilight is something that is meant to happen occasionally to magi. And not all Twilight episodes are bad.
Assuming that the caster has actually mastered the ritual.
Not necessarily. Depends on the nature of the botch. Many botches affect the spell rather than the caster. Potentially, even a botch affecting the caster might not affect the other participants in the communion.
So I guess some negotiation might be involved. Of those seasons, only those devoted to learning the Aegis and its mastery are undisputedly "for the covenant". These could be as few as 2.5 (two for the mastery from the summa, "half" as you study the Aegis in conjunction with something else). Nonetheless, yes, dealing with Aegis is a chore.
