Newbie Solicitation for Advice (#3?)

Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

It'd be a problem for the sorts of sagas I run, which mostly just highlights that the sorts of sagas you like are different from the ones I like. To me, having the major boon hand the covenant one of the two or three best books ever written on a topic will lead to suboptimal results, as it will tend to mean that every magus in the covenant reads it, because, while it may not be their area of interest, the benefits are just too good to pass up. It also means that, until everyone has exhausted that book, there is a subject that the covenant has absolutely no interest in trading for. It would also, I think, paint a target on the back of the covenant: a bunch of young upstarts have one of the three best books on some art ever written... why wouldn't a Flambeau archmage find a pretext to come turn them to toast?

Also, if the equivalency is "a major boon should give you one of the best books ever", why not apply that same thinking to other areas of covenant creation? Should a single major boon give you a level 9 aura?

Overall, I think it's far better to scale a major boon such that it is quite beneficial, without being exceedingly rare.

But I suspect, if we continued this discussion, we'd have other broad disagreements about the power level we prefer to play at.

42

Sorry, resonant?

43

Which is where SG choice is relevant. How do you come up with such a scale however btw? Even by RAW, you can have the problems you fear.

sigh :unamused:
I very much doubt you have even the faintest realistic idea about the "power level" we´ve played at.

44

Resonant books are books that include muystical stuff, like an ignem book with the tongue of a drake as a page marker, dragon scales as the covers and has been written with the blood of the phoenix. It is a feature introduced in the Covenants supplement.

Xavi

45

And Direwolf wins the Constructive Comment of the Day award again....

46

And you certainly dont. People run around making assumptions about things they have no clue on, and then use it as a "guilt by association" accusation/dismissal? Yeah, real fun.
I mention that we tend to run with a bit more XP... "oh horror and woe, overpowered game alert, everybody HIDE!"
And then people ignore such little details that i´ve mentioned that i´ve redone a lot of base guidlines and R/D/T variables to stretch things a bit between minor things and UBERstuff, or how Might creatures around here are actually able to survive combat with magi, even powerful ones.
But hey, i´m running with a bit higher XP overall so obviously that damns me for ever and ever as lord of the overpowered munchkin society...

:unamused:

Most likely, except for those running very underpowered games, we probably have magi far less survivable/powerful compared to their environment than most.

47

All perfectly reasonable. That was constructive.

48

I think you're both right and wrong here.

If we use the 'creating a magus past apprenticeship' rules from character creation then a magus with affinity could achieve these kinds of scores with about ~20 years of solid study on just that art.

Erik has done a wonderful service with Ranulf as an example of such a specialist. IIRC he's sitting at around ~30 in his chosen art at gauntlet+90, so he's still got a little way to go.

So yes, you are right that it is possible to hit those kinds of arts totals within a few decades. However, unless the magus in question is exceptionally focused to the point of complete obsession with art score and living in an environment that lets them do this, it's unlikely to happen 'easily.'

With all that said, we can probably also agree that the starting-magus-creation guidelines tend to be less effective than in-play progression. By how much varies extremely from saga to saga. On the collorary, though, an in-play magus needs to acquire the study source - which in itself may well slow them down as they need to write tractatus or whatever to have something to trade.

49

I have noted that pretty much all players who seriously tries to focus on something tend to be able to reach an average of 30-40XP per year even with one season used for "the good of the covenant" or the lab(which can often be the same), once they´ve got themselves going.
So yeah, you COULD say that again... :mrgreen:

That is where the size and degree of cooperation of the player covenant comes in. If it´s large and cooperative, that wont be an issue at all. If not, then the magi will have to spend 2 seasons per year doing other things(like extracting Vis to pay for more books for example) instead of just 1. That still doesnt slow them down as low as 20XP per year though(mostly at least).

Exactly. That´s part of my earlier point, that just because the player characters are not alone in being able to do something doesnt mean they wont be alone in actually doing it.
And of course its also the reason why superhighend books isnt THAT common. And even though it´s possible if not totally likely that there exists supergood books for all Arts and the Hermetic Abilities, they wont be available to all, probably not even being known to exist outside of the writers covenant.
Of course, trying to find out WHO might have such highend books and negotiate for access is another fun thing.

Yup, remember though that Ranulf isnt truly seriously focused towards being able to write about it, although i would expect a "spell collection" from him to be very appreciated by other Ignem enthusiasts.
He simply doesnt see it as his calling in life to write a truly magnificent book about his preferred magic, but rather coming up with new and inventive ways to use it for ANY kind of "problem solving" and useage.

Still though, my point about how it CAN be done in a few decades was just to point out that some NPCs WILL do it but more likely after many decades, because even with decent focus they probably wont stay THAT focused all the time.

Which is why i think the "Exceptional book" should be a Minor Boon(with a slightly better Major version that takes it to or close to the "absolute max"(which doesnt really exist but anyway, as a figure of speech...)). :wink:

50

You treat as fact something that is highly saga dependent: proliferation of CrMe specialists who are interested in assembly-line CrMe effects, prevalence of vis, willingness of magi to take time to cast rituals that strengthen others, surcharge for the privilege, why this isn't done to every Apprentice before gauntlet to make sure they're all Int +5, etc, etc. If you run your saga such that Com +5 is a trivial occurrence, great, but that doesn't mean that the RAW says it is so, because the RAW is very clear on what's possible, but not on what's common, and is actively flexible on how high-vis a saga will be.

51

:unamused:
Who said anything about "trivial occurence"? I said that they´re relatively easy to get. That does not equate to "everbody ARE getting them".

And yes, it IS a fact that they are not hard to achieve if you really WANT it. You need to have a saga that is really damned awful in knowledge and exceptionally poor in Vis to make it a seriously hard thing to get.
And how much of a specialist do you really think is needed to reach a casting total of 45 for a ritual? If the "buyer" helps developing the spell, that shouldnt be a big problem either.

And you´re last sentence is just funny because with it you support me just perfectly while demolishing your own objection.

52

If your position was "according to RAW, one can get to Com + 5", you're quite right, I agree with you in the entirety. I was under the impression that "relatively easy" set the bar higher than "is possible".

But, you're right, I put words in your mouth by assuming "relatively easy" meant "trivial". Instead, I should ask: relative to what?

53

I still say that it is against your essential nature. Besides, control of those rituals is MUCH stronger than control over the best sumas of the OoH, so it might be that only a single covenant has them fully developed. Story potential galore

54

In my games, expect house Mercere ensuring that there is a tax.

Anyone "selling" the casting of those rituals has to pay twice the magnitude in vis to House Mercere. So, effectively, any ritual casting cost thrice the normal magnitude cost + the price for the service.

House Mercere justification? "God don't want you to be better, otherwise, he would have done you". It also ensure you that the Church remain distant, which would not be the case if all magi had +5 in the order (which is easily doable: ritual boundary version of int, and cast it at the ritual gathering, for the cost of 1 pawn of vis by spell casting of such spell... you are beneficiary! You may even say: free casting up to +5 for anyone helping you in lab or offering apprentice to help... suddenly you have 5 magi willing to help who send their apprentice and you only need 50 xp in leadership for a neat +40 if the apprentice are good... which you would decided, sufficient to invent the spell in one or two seasons whatever is your labtotal)
By this way, I have a magus who developed this kind of spell. He only asked for 1 pawns for each ritual casting (mastered, so without any risk). I ended up with enough vis to buy anything I wanted (especially books), and everyone attending our tribunal ended up with +5 in every characteristics); then Archangel Michael came with 100 of his Aspects, and the Rome tribunal was destroyed by God. End of game...).

That refrains magi from selling. It only let the really ready to pay magi and those who decide to invent that spell for themselves - and, because of the "tax", they often only learn personal version because they don't think it will really sell, since Mercere do the same, but only ask for thrice the price (they don't need the "payement for service since the tax is their payement").

And if anyone opposes it, either they take a dark secret, either they face a wizard's war from house mercere and Guernicus (and, by consequent, the Trianomae Bonisagi).

55

Problem here is that Direwolf isn't (exactly) wrong.

The Characteristics enhancing rituals are based trivially on guidelines given in the core rule book, pages 130 and 148 respectively.

These rituals can be developed perfectly hermetically from first principles (meaning guidelines, range/duraton/targets given in the core rule book).
There is infact no reason at all why they would be somehow associated with the house of Mercere ("what, you mean those non-Gifted letter-men?") at all - if house Mercere wanted to claim any of these rituals as ther own secrets, they'd have to devoulge more about their little cult of heroes than I (for one) understand them to do.

They have the advantage that they already posses the lab texts, and so can invent these rituals as single season project, assuming they have lab totals high enough. But there is nothing to prevent any magus interested in the Art of Creo from inventing them himself, from the ground up.
It might take him a few seasons - years even, if he needed to work on hs labtotal first. But it can be done without even knowing that the Mercere have already have magics.

Indeed it can be done in a saga that uses no books besides the core rules book.

At this point, I cannot see how the Mercere would justify putting any restrictions or taxes on these effect.
I know if one of my players developed a ritual of this type and someone (eg house Mercere) tried to forbid their use, most of my players would invoke the Code - specifically the bit about deprivation of magical power.

56

The problem is that they are momentary rituals. If you make them yearly rituals most of the problem of abuse gets mostly solved. You get plenty of warping and it has an end date after which you return to your natural form.

Xavi

57

I can see what the game balance problem is, easily.
But many of the restriction people wish to put on them are just silly and arbitrary, which is all my argument was about.

58

Was this the 4th edition mastery?

By 5th edition RAW, each mastery level reduces the number of botch dice by 1. Casting this spell in a +0 aura and rolling a 0 is 12 botch dice (one for each pawn of vis spent on the spell), and most casters are probably casting in an aura so add a few more. The only way you're going to see this down to 0 botch dice is when it is cast by a Mercurian ritualist who has a decent gold cord strength or cautious sorcerer as well as some time invested in mastery.

In sagas I've seen, the 'what if we botch?' is typically the reason people don't abuse these spells. One or two castings? Maybe. Boosting all stats to 5? That's just asking for trouble. A spell botch is not just some warping points; the spell itself also goes awry. One of these spells going awry should, IMO, be a rather bad experience for the target. Probably to the tune of a permanent characteristic penalty of more than -1, along with a minor flaw. Maybe the caster too.

As you yourself say, God says "no." I see botches being a fantastic place to express that.

That said, I'm sure there are many magi who would try it regardless of the risks. Just probably not all of them.

59

I've been staying out of the discussion about characteristic increasing rituals because we've been through this argument here before and I don't really have anything to say that I haven't said before. But since we're still talking about it, what the heck...

Direwolf is right that these magics are quite doable and very cost effective according to RAW. Yet, they never seem to appear in the Ars Magic world as seen through published supplements. So we seem to have a conflict between the technical rules and the game world as envisioned. Some will want to chose the rules in this conflict. I would instead choose to retain the spirit of the game world and change the rules.

I have two reasons for this. The first one is general power level. Magi are already overly powerful for my tastes. This is just a matter of taste though; there's nothing inherantly better about either a high power or low power game. My other reason is that I'd prefer not to roleplay superhumans, either PCs or NPCs, in this game. Once you have a Order made up of the supremely intelligent, or communicative, or awesome (i.e., presence), it becomes hard to play them as normal flawed human beings. I want crotchety old wizards who get into misunderstandings and have trouble getting along, not fantastically beautiful, understanding, and social demigods. That's for other games.

60

You are right, but personally, in practice, I don't see it as being a huge issue.

Say, you want to increase your Com from 0 to +5.

If you are casting the ritual yourself, you need to invent a level 55 ReMe ritual, and then cast it 5 times, which requires 55 pawns of vis. This is all perfectly possible, but it does mean that you are either very highly specialised in ReMe, or an archmagus, or have a team of three or four quite competent assistants working for you in the lab. And it means that you have a lot of vis. You can do it with less vis, if you invent each of the intermediate rituals (one to raise from 0 to +1, one to raise from +1 to +2, etc) but the smallest amount of vis required is 45 pawns, and that requires you to invent five different rituals.

If somebody else casts the rituals for you then it is a level 60 ReMe ritual required, and it requires 60 pawns of vis (or 50 pawns if you step up through the "small" rituals), and you will get 5 Warping Points too. And that's not counting whatever it is that you need to pay the caster.

In a low power saga, this is likely at least two years worth of vis production (maybe considerably more) from the entire covenant, even assuming that the covenant harvests the right sort of vis. It seems unlikley that the magi in a low powered saga will have enough resources to dedicate to this. They might be able to do it eventually by saving vis over a large number of years; but remember this is just for one characteristic, and they might well have better things to do.

In a high power saga, the vis required is less of a problem. It is still probably a reasonably significant investment, and the magi might have better uses for the vis. However, in a high powered saga, it is expected that the magi can do important and powerful things --- that is the point of a high powered saga. So, I can't see why it is an issue there either.