Making Holy Magic Good

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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So, holy magic. I'm playing a true faith pious magi looking to convert to holy magics part way through a campaign, but boy does it seem like a lot of investment for an okay at best benefit.

Of the restrictions:

  • Cannot use magic to sin: Not a problem, already a goody two shoes
  • No Hermetic words or gestures: Bad since I don't have the subtle virtues, but it seems like if I can get my theology + Presence up to ~10, I can somewhat reliably cast without the minuses. I'm a touch confused about the second paragraph describing it. It says:

Alternatively, holy characters may perform the actions associated with a Method ability that they possess. For example, a character with invocation may write a prayer on a piece of parchment and spend a point of confidence. This can be done with any spell, and does not require any words or gestures.
RoP: TD pg. 67

My reading of that is: If my holy magi has Purity levels, he could do an action associated with that (flagellation, maybe?) that would cause either a light wound or a fatigue level in exchange for not having to take -15. Is that correct? Does this affect the timing of spells at all? I'd assume it takes longer to do these actions than normal hermetic words and gestures; does that slow down casting (particularly for in combat casting), or is that ignored for simplicity? Also, do you get to try the theology roll and then get to do the action if you fail, or do you have to choose one or the other ahead of time?

  • Must relearn hermetic spells: annoying, but mostly just a loss of time.
  • Incomprehensible to outsiders, hermetic study totals halved: Ouch. This seems to incentivize delaying my transition until I'm reasonably competent and leveling up is gonna take a while anyway. Also, while still a loss, this probably means I should write all the tractum I can for my covenant before I take Holy Magic.
  • Increasingly poor supernatural relations: probably not a bad thing, actually

Overall, basically just a big expenditure of time and resources, with some long term losses to both me and my covenant, with a possible loss of consistency in combat.

And for the positives:

  • Attuned to both Divine and Magic auras: Probably pretty good? My party spends a not-small amount of time in cities, so that'l help (and getting a +3 rather than a -9 in strong divine auras actually offsets that -15 pretty nicely). And if I can swing it, setting up a lab in a strong divine aura is likely going to be easier than strengthening my covenants magic aura.
  • May use long-term fatigue as vis in rituals: This seems like the really big one to me. While powering the aegis with myself might not be tenable, since those fatigue levels have to be lost for the entire duration, momentary rituals seem like they have a lot of abusability.
    Also, from a supplement:

THAT I MAY COME UNTO YOU WITH JOY BY THE WILL OF GOD, AND MAY WITH YOU BE REFRESHED
ReCo 25
R: Per , D: Mom , T: Ind
Special: Requires Holy Magic
Your faith in God immediately restores a single lost Fatigue level, something impossible for Hermetic magic.
(Base 25 Transcendence/Purity)

The Contested Isle – The Hibernian Tribunal, 6
From the other rules about breaking hermetic magic, it seems like this should have to be a ritual, but it's not listed as such. Is that an error, or is this an exception?
If it's written correctly, I'd assume that the requirement of the fatigue points needing to be lost for the entire duration prevents this from being abused with long duration rituals, but assuming this works on long-term fatigue at all (which I don't see a reason it wouldn't) this seems like it would be able to do some really silly stuff.

  • May use the dominion for laboratory activities: Is this not just a restatement of benefit 1? Or am I missing something important here?
  • May use holy power guidelines as spell guidelines: Also potentially very powerful. I haven't theorycrafted the best ways to abuse this, but given that it can fundamentally break the rules, I can imagine it being quite good. Would love to hear what you think the strongest tools you can get out of this are. (As a sidenote, because the powers and methods are abilities, it seems basically impossible to invoke the higher level holy powers unless using them through magic. Am I missing something there, or is that intentional?)
  • New range, duration, and target categories: Most of these seem like sidegrades at best? Presence as a useful substitute for voice since words aren't used is useful, Office is probably usually better than diameter, but gods does keeping track of the nearness of the next prayer seem like a headache. Devotion, Grace, and Fast could be abusable, but the former requires a continuous supply of devotees (maybe I could coopt some covenfolk to keep up a spell?), Grace seems like it could easily break accidentally, and fast...I assume would come with some kind of fatigue penalty to maintain, but that might be the strongest one. Sin only seems useful to ensure you don't accidentally hurt a non-sinful individual, the rest don't seem meaningfully different from their hermetic counterparts. In all, there's some possibly useful ones, but besides the ability to infinitely maintain spells without rituals, I'm not sure how valuable these are. I'd love to know if there's benefits I'm not seeing here.

So, overall, It seems like I'm taking some pretty hefty mechanical penalties (I'll grow more slowly and take minuses to a lot of my spells in one way or another) in exchange for the ability to take some circumstantial plusses and break some rules. Seems to me like the only way this is a net positive is if I make sure I'm breaking those rules to maximum benefit. So, wise rules sages, I'd love to hear how best to break the game with holy magic, and any hidden advantages or pitfalls it seems like I'm missing.

Tertiarily, is there any point in having a holy magic score above 1? Same with the powers and methods. Assuming I'm using holy magic rather than invoking them directly, do they provide any benefit besides unlocking guidelines?

Edit for additional questions:
I assume a holy magi can use magic items as usual, but might hesitate to do so if those were designed by someone else, and can instill effects themselves as normal. Can they instill effects using holy guidelines (presumably using Holy Magic in place of magic theory for that)?

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You can use relevant powers and methods in place of A-L and philosophie in rituals, also im fairly certian that spell should be a ritual

One of your best bets is probably an ex misc from a tradition of holy magi (take a method or power as your extra major virtue) and thennhope some of your predecessor's have written some books

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Ah, right, I'm pretty sure I read that but I'd forgotten. Good to know.

And, to be clear, I've already got an existing magi, not building one to start with. I've worked it out with the DM that I'll get access to a good teacher for holy magics, and some books besides. Mostly I'm asking about what the most powerful things I can do with holy magic would be.

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I know you have some ranges/targets that break the limit of arcane connections(at least some with depend on holding some kind of office) but this kind of thing is quite strong if utilized appropriately, I think the big selling point is the ritual fatigue though, plenty of uses for that, throwing up aegises wherever to protect people from demons, creating food in famines, healing the sick/wounded etc. You could also crack open TME and build an island of (holy) magi and/or a second tower of babel.

One big advantage for this type of thing is being able to ritually create memories or ideas in people's minds, of course you can't use this for sinful ends, but you might be able to end some bloody feuds or such things

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5

Its a direct analogue to Magic Theory, so if you want to use vis in the lab (for example, to make a new potion when your old one expires), then yes. Or set up a new lab. Or do (holy) magical research to try and surpass the limits (e.g. by developing a standardised vocabulary of holy words and gestures to replace Hermetic casting).

Having to learn it from scratch, without sources, is very difficult. The best thing a new convert to holy magic can do is find some other new converts to share the journey and help each other. And then you're off into found a new covenant / socitatas within the Order / leave a legacy of knowledge for your holy apprentices...

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Yeah Holy Magic is tough but imo that is how it should be, or almost everyone would be doing it! At the very least it would have taken House Jerbiton by storm.

What makes Holy Magic "good" is that an especially pious magus who learns of it is likely to view it as the only truly good option available to them. If they were to reject it on the basis that it was too much of a sacrifice, that would be a hugely important in-character decision, and possibly trigger a crisis of faith. It's primarily, in my opinion, a story-generation tool rather than a useful game mechanic. That said, the all-Holy-Magi covenant in Hibernia is extremely useful for a Holy Magus in the British Isles, as they will have useable texts and are not only willing to teach but likely to feel obligated to do so.

Unquestionably, the player of a Holy Magus is playing sub-optimally, but there are going to be some great stories involving that character.

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The penalty to casting without using Hermetic words or gestures is significant, but honestly, if you join a holy society, I'd expect them to initiate exotic casting (HoH:S p.107) and just move on. Constantly making a theology roll is Not Fun, and doesn't meaningfully contribute to stories. (And even St. Francis uses initiation for holy methods and powers, per the section on Franciscans at the end of The Church, so it isn't only for sketchy cults.) Acknowledge the difference, remind the player to keep their score in Theology respectable, and otherwise handwave the issue.

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My last mage became a holy mage after a positive twilight experience that occurred shortly after he'd prayed to the Virgin Mary for a miracle, and the SG decided the most appropriate virtue to be given was Holy Magic. I hadn't finished reading all the lovely summae that our covenant had spent a lot of effort collecting, and now I could only learn from them at half speed. This certainly put a damper on things. If you're planning to be a holy mage, study books until you reach the point where studying from vis starts becoming attractive, then you don't mind this downside.

My personal favourite Holy guideline to use is Meditation+Intervention 15 (read meaning into unfamiliar writing) which allows you to read texts in long-dead languages, something no amount of regular Intellego lets you do, closely followed by the level 5 version for understanding spoken language.
Adjuration works on demons, so you can actually get the truth out of a demon - I haven't got this power yet, but may try to develop it if the saga continues.
Using Understanding to ask the SG for hints feels like metagaming, but it is the in-game way to do so.

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How does 'Holy Magic' interact with (Realms of Power: Divine, page 97) 'Ars Notoria'? Are Holy Magic Summae & Tracti still only half quality to a mage with Ars Notoria? There is nothing specified; but AN is specifically mentioned as being explicitly christian, and '... the Church views Ars Notoria
as operating within God’s will...'; given the common framework, it seems like the usual penalty could be removed.

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Ars Notoria and Holy Magic do not really interact at all. Knowing Ars Notoria doesn't change how your magic works - other than reducing the penalty for operating in a Divine aura. A penalty which you don't have with Holy Magic.

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Actually, there is a very strong interaction between Ars Notoria and Holy Magic; it's just more subtle. Ars Notoria can give you a really good teacher to get Theology to 7 easily. It can also give you 100 experience on top of that. With a specialty, that gets you to Theology 9+1 very quickly. As Holy Magic uses a simple die to replace voice/gestures, that's a minimum of Presence+11 (or Presence+12 with 35 more experience in Theology) to hit a 15.

Back to the original question, you don't need to make Holy Magic good. Holy magic is already really good. Really, it's excellent in its own areas. Yes, you need some Methods and Powers to take advantage of how good it is. Look at all the things you can do that you cannot with normal Hermetic magic: restore Fatigue, raise the dead, get past demonic lies, provide Magic Resistance, transfer Confidence, give a huge Aging Roll bonus without seasonal effort, temper Auras, create Regios, stay awake all year to gain extra seasons ... And this is on top of things like the extra R/D/T and the fantastic vis substitution.

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I believe that as Holy Magic requires you wholeheartedly adopting a different mindset, its works are Incomprehensible to outsiders and they find regular magic Incomprehensible in turn. A holy mage should have no penalty learning Ars Notoria, because it is not magical. A hermetic mage with Ars Notoria would still find Holy Magic to be Incomprehensible until they develop the virtue Holy Magic themselves. A Gifted person with Ars Notoria but no knowledge of magical systems could learn Holy Magic with no penalty, but would then discover that learning other types of magic is penalised.

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Well, the core rulebook specifies that extraction of vis requires a "magical aura" (p.94); RoP:D p.69 says a Holy Magus can extract vis from a Divine aura. Presumably this is stated generically (and not just specifically about vis extraction) so that if there are other lab rules (whether in later books or house) that specifically require a Magical aura, a Holy magus can similarly substitute the Dominion.

(I note there's been some debate as to whether extraction of vis actually requires a Magical aura, or whether here "magical" simply means any mystic aura. On the one hand, RoP:I, p19, says "Vim vis may be extracted from an Infernal aura (of any strength) by a Hermetic magus as if it were a Magical aura", and there's text on RoP:F p.15 that is fairly obviously written on the assumption that vis can be extracted from a Faerie aura. On the other hand, the Confluence of the Realms virtue in Legends of Hermes, p.14, "provides the understanding needed to extract vis from any of the four realms", which implies that it can't be done in non-Magic auras normally. YMMV.)

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I think trying to use Holy Magic to build a second tower of Babel is wrong on so many levels.

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I got all excited at this suggestion, and started trying to build a magus who would exploit the Ars Notoria to build up a high theology. Unfortunately, I came to the conclusion that it doesn't really work. There are two routes that a character might take to learning Holy Magic: either they are apprenticed to a Holy Magus, or they convert later in life.

Those who convert later in life will find the Ars Notoria entirely inaccessible to them: the only way to learn them is by reading Apollonius' text, which doesn't work for anyone whose total arts exceed 15. Unless they were lucky enough to have gained access to the text as an apprentice or straight out of gauntlet, which will almost certainly require you to take the major virtue Ars Notoria, and at that point you might as well just take Quiet Magic*2 and Subtle Magic and solve the problem with a less contrived backstory.

An apprentice whose master is a Christian Holy Magus could fairly easily have access to a copy of Apollonius' text during apprenticeship: the Bishop of Armagh has a copy and is noted to be a scholar uninterested in gaining power for himself, so he would probably be quite open to letting a devout Holy Magus send his apprentice to visit and read the text. However, advancing will be a problem. The 100xp from the second ring is only enough to take the apprentice to a theology of 5; and because the ease factor for replacing gestures with theology is so high, this is only enough to allow an apprentice with average presence to cast properly one in ten times. So if the apprentice is relying on Ars Notoria to learn theology, they won't actually be able to cast spells without the -15 penalty until they unlock the fourth ring, and get a bunch of training from their guardian angel. That's an awfully long time to go without being able to cast spells, especially when you remember the apprentice also needs training in four different languages and Artes Liberales 4 just to read the thing. As best as I can calculate it, to unlock the fourth ring in a reasonable number of attempts, an apprentice with average intelligence with a suitable minor personality flaw needs an Ars Notoria score of 5 (7 stress die + 5 Ars Notoria + 1 specialisation +3 int (raised by the 2nd ring) + 2 seasons fasting + 1 chastity + 1 personality vs ease factor of 19. This means that the apprentice needs to gain 75xp in Ars Notoria, around 120xp in assorted language skills and scripts which wouldn't be part of a normal apprenticeship, and then spend around 8 seasons attempting to unlock the rings and another 7 being trained in theology by their guardian angel. Unless the master allows the apprentice to spend a lot of extra time learning in place of the labwork he's entitled to, or neglects his conventional magic training entirely, there's no way this is going to be finished by the end of 15 years, meaning the magus has to gauntlet an apprentice who is practically incapable of using magic! That's not a good strategy for improving the reputation of Holy Magic in the Order.

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Or, you know. Make a piligrimage and ask God. Nicely. Who knows, he answered once positively on this subject, and pillgrimages allow gaining virtues.

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The Subtle Opening helps. Of course, I am not even sure a Holy Magus who knew it could use it for a Holy Apprentice, since Subtle Opening is a magic-realm-of-power thing and the Holy Magus is supposedly completely converted to realm-of-dominion. There is not, to my recollection, anything explicit in the rules forbidding it... but given the rest of the flavor around Holy Magi, it seems a little like a jarring oversight.

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Well, a little bit of an exaggeration, right? Book Learner would mean you could have a total of 18. Affinity with Ars Notoria wold mean you could have a total of 25. Both would mean you could have a total of 30. But, yes, it is much harder later on to pick it up by reading the book. That's why it says

Hermetic magi to learn Ars Notoria. Magi wishing to learn the Notory Art often make that decision early in their career. Some few are lucky enough to study the text during their apprenticeship, although this is rare.

But the strong, though subtle, interaction doe exist nonetheless.

Yes, getting to that ring isn't easy. But you get a lot of stuff along the way, too. I never said it would be easy.

Separately, if a mage with Holy Magic is Islamic rather than Christian, Book Learner will help you get to Theology 10 (Holy Magic) reasonably quickly. The Qu'ran will get you there with a Source Quality of 13 (BL included). Sure, it would take about 21 seasons to get there, but the access is pretty easy. If you're Christian, it's a little harder. With Book Learner Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works) will give you Source Quality 16 to reach a score of 5 in 5 seasons. Another 2 seasons with The City of God will give you Source Quality 13 to get close to a score of 6. You need 174 more experience to get to a 10. While, sure, the Bible will get you there, improving with a Source Quality of 6 will be painful. Turn to Peter Abelard, Hildegard of Bingen, Peter the Lombard, St. Anselm, and Photos. Their books will provide Source Qualities of 16, 3x16, 4x12, 2x11, and 2x10. That's 154 experience in 12 more seasons. Now you only need roughly 3 seasons with the Bible. Altogether, that's roughly the same time required for the Islamic mage. Now, if you don't have Book Learner (or Affinity with Theology or Puissant Theology), this won't work nearly so quickly. But the point is that there are some more, even more reasonable, ways to get Theology high enough. This way doesn't not require that you started with Performance Magic (Prayer), but just the more commonly selected Book Learner (or Affinity with Theology or Puissant Theology if you prefer).

Again, Holy Magic has some big drawbacks because it's got some immense benefits, way, way more benefits that you should generally expect to be able to get. So is it so unreasonable that you'll have to spend significant time studying God's will to get this power from God?

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True, if you carefully select the magus's virtues you can pick Ars Notoria up slightly later. (I hadn't noticed that Affinity helps with learning supernatural abilities - that's good to know, although taking an affinity in an ability you don't have access to at character creation is an interesting choice.)

But picking and choosing virtues like Affinity with Ars Notoria that will "luckily" enable your magus to function with Holy Magic down the line feels like cheating; and it requires you to plan out your character's story arc in advance in a way which I find problematic in RPGs. Moreover, if Ars Notoria can only be used by holy magi whose players picked out a careful selection of virtues to enable the concept, then an Ars Notoria build is competing with Quiet Magic*2 + Subtle Magic, which has a similar virtue cost and removes the casting penalty entirely without having to devote years to training languages, Ars Notoria and Theology. Compared to that approach, Ars Notoria seems significantly weaker to me. Yes, you get some other neat abilities from the rings, but unless you go all the way up to ring 7, you get very little that you couldn't mimic with arts without having to invest years of training in languages, AN and theology.

It seems to me that the main benefit, in theory, of using Ars Notoria to access holy magic, is that it can be learned by anyone - virtues like Quiet Magic and Subtle Magic can't be taught, except through mystery initiations (or to your own apprentices if you have a really high score in Teach). This would enable two character concepts: 1) Player characters who weren't been designed with the expectation that they'd be using holy magic but have converted to it during gameplay, either because the character naturally evolved that way or because the player didn't want to choose virtues to make their job easier; and 2) Characters who are trying to train NPCs in holy magic (either by conversion or taking an apprentice), and can't rely on their candidates having the right virtues. Unfortunately, Ars Notoria doesn't work for either of those concepts, because (as you point out) to make it viable the person converting to holy magic either has to have some very specific virtues, or be an apprentice your training who is unable to cast spells properly until they've spent a couple of dozen seasons learning Ars Notoria and Theology. Which unfortunately means that unless you let them spend all their apprenticeship studying, when they reach their gauntlet they'll have diverted a bunch of their training from the arts to AN and theology without seeing any benefit, and will still have the -15 penalty to all their casting. While they might indeed end up stronger in the long run, the reputational damage (to them and you) that this will cause will be disastrous. The magus training apprentices in holy magic would be much better served setting up a mystery cult to teach quiet & subtle magic, or looking for a way to fast-track their teach skill so they can teach those virtues.

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I'm not saying AN is or should be the go-to thing for Holy Magic. I'm just saying there exists a strong, subtle interaction. So if you're doing AN, then you have an avenue through which you can make HM work better.

As for building a character coming out of apprenticeship, no, you don't have to be terrible as a mage; I designed an at-gauntlet mage doing Ars Notoria and Holy Magic and things looked fine. Well, fine is a bit of an off statement. The character revealed something really gross that I showed here (Divine Form + Hermetic magic), so the character was actually abusively powerful. But even neglecting Divine Form, the character was perfectly competent. I just never wanted to play that character because of the problems it revealed with Divine Form.

If we're talking V&F, the most efficient way is to put 1 point into Performance Magic (Prayer). Suddenly no issues, and noticeably cheaper than Quiet Magic + Subtle Magic.

But more generally, if you didn't start with any of this in mind, what you can do is raise Theology, as I mentioned above. That would be the generic standard. The books to get you close really aren't that hard to come by. You will have to spend a while, though.

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