names of power question

When you search for a name, you search in books, make suitable divinations, call appropriate spirits and ask them to guide you...
No need for in-game mechanics, this is just flavor.

Also, maybe you already know some big names (zeus, hades, apollon) but need to meditate on them to understand their mystical applications to your magic, and how to weave them with it. Something like contemplating a name with gematria

Great! Now Im getting somewhere. :slight_smile:

That answers that...

No, not really. What I am looking for here is the HOW. Everything in the game is based on a skill of some sort. How much you know about magic is MT, how much you know about Bargaining is is a skill, how much you know about Faeries is a skill...It seems logical that How many 'Entities' names you know would also be linked to a skill..somehow.
Call it a Clarification.

Yes, that was understood...but you can't take two bonuses from the same entity on the same spell...
So you need multiple names...

Thanks for the help Sodalis. I am Appreciative of your patience and time.

Glad to be of some help.

Caution sarcasm liberally used

No. why lump another thing onto what MT is good for, next thing we know it will be used for making bread, since the bread must rise by magic.
As is, there is little use for magi to learn most mundane abilities. why learn somthing if you can ask your grogs?.
"I say old chap, know any good fire gods?"

I disagree, you need some way to say how long you generally need to search to find enough about a name. It's one thing to know zeus's name it another to KNOW his name.
"we'll sure I do Guvn'r but why not just look in that big book o'names ye have"

"Oi! I'd fergotten 'bout that, guess I can put off my trip to the volcano i had planned"

The amount of time it takes to search for the proper name, combined with the proper use of that name to aid spellcasting, is what the Muto Vim 'spell' research represents.

As for lumping another thing onto what magic theory is good for -- it's not that magic theory in itself is good for that, it's that the virtue allows magic theory to be good for that.

It may seem all well and good to make the players quest for every Name they learn, but that's excessive, and the rewards should be bigger if you do that.

If the idea sounds good, I suggest a variant virtue could be created, maybe, that uses similar names of power but requires a story learn each one and provides much bigger benefits.

I dsiagree here completely. Sure you have to process the name into a spell, but if don't know about and 'of' a particular entity, how can you design a spell around your knowledge of it?
Look at it this way...
You have a recipe for apple pie. (your knowledge of how to make a spell-MT)
You have a very nice kitchen (lab)
You have lots of ingredients (paper, ink etc)
You haven't any clue what an apple is. You have never seen one. All you have is a recipe.
Should be fun watching you dig around in the ground to find an apple.
Should be fun watching you spit out seeds and the skin if you ever find one and manage to put it in your pie.

:open_mouth: :open_mouth: Botch dice. That spell should be fun to cast...

:wink:

Similarly, if you don't know what an apple is, you can't use Creo magic to create one. Yet, there is nothing in the game that keeps track of that kind of familiarity. I guess that general knowledge of names you might be able to call upon falls under Magic Lore ... or knowledge aquired during a story (e.g. The Quest For The Mystic Apple). That's also where books come in handy beyond their basic statistics: actual topic and origin will matter just as much. You might find more Name Magic insight in a Magic Theory treatise discussing Egyptian cults than in a commentary on Bonisagus's works.
Are there rules for that? No. It's left up to players and SGs to settle on what's available.

I think you've maybe misunderstood me.

In my opinion, the time things take are already covered by the rules: I think this covers both the eventual search for a name and its integration to your magic.
What is flavor is the way you know zeus's name, for exemple.

If a particular name of power (say, a fire name) take you 2 seasons to "invent" as per the rules, you may say you take 1 season conversing with various fire spirits, searching ancient lore... to find an appropriate name, and another season to integrate it to your magic. But this is still flavor, you could just as well have said that you already knew the name (say, loki), and that it took 2 seasons to integrate.

Yes, this is my point also. From a rule viewpoint, all the character needs is the relevant mystery virtues and some lab time. From a flavor viewpoint, I'd say that the basic theoretical knowledge is contained into Magic Theory, Magic Lore, Faerie Lore, (again, I'd use both since I do not want to mess with the argument "pagan gods are Magic or Faerie") and your theurgy mystery's Lore. That's four Abilities, it's more than enough to give basic knwoledge about all the typical entities a hermetic theurgist may try to integrate (within reason, European and Middle Eastern mythologies are fine, I'd balk if the character was trying to integrate Hachiman or Amaterasu). How such knowledge is applied (researching a "secret" name of a god you just know by the "public" name, or researching the name of an entity you just knew by its general nature and existence, or integratin a name you knew beforehand) is flavor abstracted by the lab time to invent the theurgic MuVi spell.

I thought I answered this:

when you Initiate, you get the Virtue, but nothing else.
Not only do you have no Names of Power (spells) yet, but unless you have one of the Virtues that link to it (Hermetic Theurgy, Invocation Magic, Consummate talisman) you can't use it for anything except learning unusable spells...

none or "very many, but they don't yet work for you" - depending on how you view the names of Spirits in general. There are thousands upon thousands of spirits with Names which could be used - like there are myriad anonymous spell spirits. The spell research process guides the magus to find a Name the does what he wants and how to use it to a focussed end.

The game-mechanical process of inventing the spell represents the lab time spent researching names of spirits and working out how one can be applied in magical circumstances, and building that one up to work for you.

It's the same as the actual invocations used to cast a spell - the lab work supplies them.

you have time, as you need game-time in the Lab. While your character is in the lab, discuss suitable names with the troupe?

No, the magus does not need an Ability to discover names that work; the player may find lists of names useful...

We didn't have time or space to make list of Names in TMRE, but someone could make a list if it's useful to people - to be honest I never thought it'd be contentious.

The actual Names are flavour text - the meaty stuff is a rack of new spells and a limit of +MT.

I do not disagree that Inscription On The Soul is useful to many magi including Theurgists - indeed it is.
I do deny that the actual process of enchanting your own spirit or body as a Talisman has anything much to do with actual Names - mechanically it is pure Hermetic stuff-with-spirits.

looks like you are making the same mistake that was all too often made in TM4e, and which we tried so hard to clear up in TMRE - the types-of-magic have nothing whatever to do with the actual Mystery Cults.
A Mystery Cults can dabble in whatever choice of magics it can get scripts to Initiate.

The only thing that limits most cults is style - a Theurgical Cult is likely to focus on Name magics, while a cult which chooses abstract Spirit Magic as its theme is likely to spurn the Name side of things.
Either cult could equally have the Inscription On The Soul Initiation, just as much as a bunch of Alchemists could (or either spirit cult could have Hermetic Alchemy!)

I may have introduced a small confusion by having both Spirit Familiar and Hermetic Spirit Familar - the reason to split those is so that it is clear there are 2 almost equivalent paths:
One is abstracted spirit magic and lets you bind an elemental or ghost
the other is Invocational and encourages Names of Power etc, and in particular lets you make a Pact with a Daemon to gets a Familiar Aspect. Only Theurgists get to bind Daemons...

If 2 magi, one Theurgic, one Spirit Mage both bind a ghost, it almost certainly makes a difference in style as to the representation of the spirit as it hangs around the magus... (eg seen through Second Sight etc) but not much else.

Yes you can! By the time you have finished the spell research you will know one "thing" which the character refers to as a "name" but is actually a series of mystico-religious/magical formulae.

TMRE worked very hard to cut back on extra added Ability requirements... you need very few XP-sinks (other than Cult Lore which is specifically designed as an XP-sink cost for Initiation)

to require a magus character to have Magic Lore or Faerie Lore to think of "I'll use the name of Thor for Lightning" is beyond the requirements of TMRE - the research process assumes you will consult texts and cast spont spells (or whatever) to approximate things as you refine the Name.

It's the same sort of process as enchantment or spell design - ArM does not reuqire the player or character to specify exactly how they come up with the anwer, but the result is defined as "working"

That said, Magic Lore is excellent for flavour text, and an excellent tool for a magus with Name magic, and does help some other bits - just don't load it on where it's not required.

Phew!

Well said that man! -- that is exactly what is intended...

(Nor are you expected to have to search for, or risk running out of spirits for Invoke The Spirit of Spell XXX ... the only clash there is if you use someone's Lab Text to learn a spell which summons the same exact spirit.)

that's a task for the Player and the Troupe... use their knowledge and/or imagination.

For the magus in-character, it's not been a problem - they just spent 2 months slaving over thsi.

yes you could have the clumsily labelled "Apollo's name of Creo magic" and "Apollo's name of Ignem" magic - just as you could with a S&M item.
The ancients praised their gods in many different aspects, and the magician can draw upon all of those.

Yes - facets is a good (if out-of-period) analogy - the greater spirits have many names each, and within NoP even more "names" (where the names are broken down into formulae).

I suspect that we may have wasted some significant effort saying the same thing in different words, :laughing: :wink: since I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said above, and my whole previous point cam be boiled to yes, and therefore I expect many theurgic Mistery Cults (specifically the ones that pursue AtHoH) to have developed scripts for Inscription over the Soul, and now that you mention it, even Hermetic Alchemy, b/c both are so darn well useful to pursuing Ascension, the latter as a prequisite to Lesser Elixir (as a stopgap measure for more years to pursue the final mystery). Even if such virtues are strictly outside their focus on Name magics.

This line answered all my questions. Thank you!