Howdy, I'm a new player that got into an Ars Magicka game and there has been a lot to take in with how many options the system seems to provide.
I am trying to figure out how to make a mage who is really into the beauty of architecture. So his spells would be aligned towards making and manipulating complicated and eccentric structures, I think. However, from char gen guides I have seen I want to specialize in one form and one technique. Yet houses are both Herban and Teran.
What advice or ideas can you give to make this concept work for a mage out of the Gauntlet or pursuing such lofty goals?
A few thoughts, rather than specifically coherent guidance. Others may disagree:
There is a lot of wood construction in the Middle Ages, but the prestige construction is stone, and the major canon create-a-structure spells tend to be Creo Terram.
A Minor Magical Focus (Architecture) is a fairly obvious move.
Creating permanent structures from nothing with Creo magic is neat, but expensive in vis. Turning raw materials into architecture with Rego skips the need for vis, but will require serious investment in Finesse.
While a single TeFo pair is generally optimal, it doesn't hurt that much to split one very strong Technique, two good Forms. It also can be viable to have specialization look like "Primary and secondary Technique, primary and secondary Form", especially as a way of ensuring viability in certamen.
Having recently played a craft-magus, I will pitch by two cents to this topic.
The main challenge you will face, if a mage wants to create beautiful things by magic is to have the highest Finesse score possible. Not a spell, but a skill.
Since you mentioned you are a new player, let me break down the issue.
Spells are tools that can do many things, but the quality achieved by such spells are limited by the mage ability to finely control his/her magic. And this is achieved through the Finesse skill.
You will likely find on this forum explanation of the difference between using Creo magic (which bring from nothingness complete structure/creature), versus Rego magic that mould and shape existing material to the whim of the mage. But both hit the limit of the mage's skill: Finesse.
You will find a lot more details into HoH: Societas in the Jerbiton chapter.
In a nutshell, Finesse is very versatile and can be used with any type of magic to shape stone, leather, bone, wood, etc. The downside is twofold: first, there is a price to versatility and it means that in term of Ease factor, an object crafted through magic and Finesse is always at least 3 points higher than done through mundane means.
Second, because magic happens instantaneously, the longer the mundane task to manufacture said object or structure, the more difficult it is to replicate by magic.
For example: assuming a skilled craftsmen would build a wooden, cosy hut in, let's say a season of work, with an Ease factor of 7 (functional, neat, tidy, nothing fancy). A mage with the right spell can do it within a few seconds, but the ease factor will be 7 +3 (craft magic) +6 (a season's worth of work done in an instant) for a total of 16...
So if a mage wants to go that way, Affinity, Puissant and Cautious with Finesse are three virtues he will need.
Spells' level will range between 15 to 25 for most for crafting spell, possibly 35 for Conjuring the Mystic Tower (creating a tower, not building it from existing raw material), so Art level requirement is not as high as you might expect, which allows the mage to get Herbam (carpentry work, furniture), Terram (masonry, metal bits) and to push it Animal (for tapestry and other interior design)
By canon, it is not really possible to increase the level of a spell just to lower the Finesse requirement. It is not a bug, but a feature to prevent non-magic craftsmen to become obsolete so they keep having a purpose in the game. It can be houseruled, but discuss that with your troupe beforehand.
Additional skills to consider:
Profession: Architect
Artes Liberales (covering knowledge of perfect ratio, geometry, etc...)
Thank you. I do plan on being part of House Jerbiton and I had no idea Finesse would be so important for this character concept. It looks like I will be investing in Herbam, Terram, Animal (in that order of investment), and Rego (As the main technique). With the possibility of taking Imagenum to make a room feel cozy even if isn't.
The remaining question is what spells I should slot? learn? pick up at the beginning for adventuring should it happen. The whole Offense, Defense, Travel, Sense, and Utility array.
since you'll be skilled in terram and finesse, I'd suggest Invisible Sling of Vilano for offense (which bypasses MR), maybe Wall of Protective Stone. Hands of the Grasping Earth allows you to disable opponents without killing them.You can also take the wizard's parry (from MoH) to block metal weapons.
Herbam will give you the pretty nice Shriek of the Impending Shafts + Repel the Wooden Shafts, and Intuition of the forest may come in handy. Coils of the Entangling Plants will serve a purpose similar to Hands of the Grasping Earth, while The Mystical Carpenter will allow you to quickly craft items out of wood. Tangle of Wood and Thorns can, likewise, immobilise someone, but, unlike the previous spells, it doesn't depends on your surroundings and may be used anywhere if, like any self-respecting wizard, you've got a staff.
From Animal, Soothe the Ferocious Bear will quiet any wild beast you'll meet, and Doublet of Impenetrable Silk can protect both you and your grogs.
Rego can give you Rise of the Feathery Body (RECo) as an utility spell, as well as Endurance of the Berserkers to use on your grogs. It'll also lets you cast Wizard's Sidestep (ReIm), which is a powerful defensive spell.
Rego Mentem gives the alll-purpose The Call to Slumber, to disable people quietly an discreetly.
That's all for now, sorry I couldn't be of more help. I'm sure others can do more, and better.
Good luck, have fun! And welcome to the wonderful world of Ars Magica!
Because mages rarely travel alone, you don't necessarily need to be able to perform all these tasks: companion and grogs are there for that, and you should also consider what other mages are bringing to the party. Your mage won't be able to do everything you mentioned well, especially just at creation.
For the architect part (Covenant has also a section on Magical crafting, p49 onwards):
ReHe 25: The Mystical Carpenter (Cov, p 51): build any wooden structure with seasoned wood
InHe 15: The Carpenter's Keen Eye: check the quality of wood and suitability for construction purpose
And to complete this set, I would toss in:
ReHe 10: Into Carpenter's wood (Base 3, D: Inst, R: Touch (+1), T: Group (+2), personal invention): turn a pile of green wood into dry, seasoned wood, ready for construction.
With these three spells, a mage can build anything construction made of wood as long as enough material - for very large structure, new variant of spells with +1 or even +2 size modifier will be required, however because such large structure takes very long to be built by mundane means, the Finesse Ease factor becomes so high (+9 for a year's work, +12 for longer for a total Ease factor of 18 or 21 for average quality) that the mage will achieved at best average quality, but a young mage will likely fail and waste the material.
Similar spells can be found for masonry (Mystical Mason ReTe 20 - the base spell is slightly lower than for Herbam, and "from Rocks to Cut Stone", ReTe 15, Base 3, Inst, Touch (+1), Part (+1), +1 size modifier, +1 flexibility to accommodate various cut shapes).
Because Finesse is also the skill used to direct projectiles (that bypass Parma Magica), look at Vilano's Sling (ReTe) and other variants, quite effective attacks.
Defense, you can find spells that create and/or move shields around you or deflects attacks, but they will be form specific. Alternatively, you can dip into low-medium level ReCo 10 or 15 to quickly move out of the way of incoming attacks.
Keep in mind that Formulaic spell takes a full round of casting to take effect, so defensive spells need to be master with Fast Casting, or need to be spontaneous, fast-cast spell, which can quickly taxes a young, non-specialist mage.
Because the mage will have a high Finesse, he should leverage this skill and instead of spreading his Arts too thin amongst many spells of various form, he could commission/buy lesser enchanter devices that required Form he is not familiar with, but works well with Finesse: ReCorpus effect that move people around (but only human), ReTe to move generic objects, etc.
Regarding "Utility" or "Sense", they are such a wide categories that one mage cannot cover everything. What is your mage interest and where will he likely spent most of his time/adventure ? He is dealing with magical regiones (various InVi, ReVi can be useful), is he dealing with mundane people a lot (likely for a Jerbiton), then Mentem can be useful, or if he is into trading something related to his business (assessing quality of material, protecting it). Or is going to collect strange materials from hard-to-reach location, then he will need spells that allows to track these materials, or to go there.
Don't forget creo- depending on the availability of vis in your saga that could be more important than Animal for construction unless you plan to be making tents.
You will probably also want a decent skill in Artes liberales and perhaps some organizational lore in a mystery cult that can move you towards hermetic architecture as an initiation.
I might be wrong, but I thought that by raw org lore and cult lore were different?
Anyway an org lore is just the knowledge of the members and practices of an organization, so you might use it to settle a dispute about the quality of the goods you've been making as a master craftsman, and you might use it to have previous knowledge of the other members of a guild.
You might consider order of Hermes lore and code of Hermes taken together to be an org lore, for example.
It's a house rule, but usually I allow covenant (or others of similar scope) to function as both an area and org lore
Cult lore by book definition is organization lore in a cult.
Probably because hey didn't want to get into the habit of defining new abilities like adding "cult lore" as a new ability.
One alternative route is to go with a Verditus magus, and do things the old fashioned way.
Craft Masonry and Magic Theory (likely with Puissant Magic Theory) to increase your ability to open magical items for enchantment. You'll be working with stone (x3 or x4 vis multiplier), but your size multiplier will often be 5 or more, so you need to able to use a lot of vis.
Verditus Magic lets you both reduce the amount of vis required when using an appropriate craft skill, as well as allows you to do stuff that is flat out impossible for mundane craftsmen to pull off. This is often ignored but could be used to make some simply amazing architectural features with a bit of creativity (like inserting hidden iron reinforcements into masonry).
The main problems you'll have doing this is vis availability and fitting stuff into a laboratory (or setting up temporary labs everywhere).
Being down multiple Long Term Fatigue levels for an entire season is incredibly bad for a magus. Not to mention that Verditus magi are actually doing craft work when they enchant stuff, so would you want to do a season of construction work while Tired, just to save 3 pawns?
Imbued with Spirit of (X) is a good virtue, just not so much for this kind of thing.
Ofc nothing good comes without some payment But even then, there are ways to avoid the worse part...
For starters, you don't need to use all the fatigue levels... just using 1 so you can cut down that last pawn that you cannot remove from Verditius Magic alone should be enough for the majority of times (its preferable to trim the amount of vis through the Verditius system to avoid paying a lot of Fatigue).
Also, you can also pick Enduring Constitution to be able to use 2 Fatigue levels without malus.
"Only" the powerful ones... and not always (at the virtue its described as "Typically"). That can go from very bad to not noticeable... it depens on the amount of "lab-ratness" that the character have
Ofc, if that still worries you, then you don't pick that virtue I was just giving more options to the player
Have been busy. Here is where I am with the build and the concept kinda of evolved beyond just an architect, but more to a Merinita who is obsessed with stories of enchanted castles in Arcadia. Ala Disney princess architect to be short form.
Major: Supernatural Beauty
Minor: Inoffensive to Animals
Minor: Alluring to Animals
Minor: Affinity (Rego)
Minor: Affinity (Terram)
Minor: Cautious (Finesse)
Minor: Puissant (Finesse)
Minor: Minor Magical Focus (Architecture)
As for rituals, creo and vis. I talked to my SG and it was concluded that should we require large amounts of vis the covenant could pursue it. Which I don't personally see as an issue but then again I never played before.
The idea of Creo is fun during combat of throwing out tiny castles or churches at enemies, but beyond that, I feel Rego is a bit more versatile if that makes sense? Additionally, we have a classic Flambeau. So they are Creo and Ignus. And my gut is telling me it's better to have each person specialize in one Technique.
As for Verditus, my gut or that D&D urge to not stack is screaming. We have an Odin Rune Smith, not exactly sure how it works but they seem to be the crafter of sorts.
requires some discussion with your Storyguide - as usual for Foci.
But a Minor Magical Focus (Craft Magic Architecture) I would believe from the start.
But even then, there are ways to avoid the worse part...