I've been waiting to broach this until the initial commotion of the start of the saga settled down, but several months ago, in a conversation with Erik Dahl, the author of RoP: Magic, he raised some concerns about Vrahos (yes, he was lurking in the saga). Some of the concerns are just concerns about how he thinks a saga should flow, so take those with a grain of salt, but he does note that we've interpreted a couple of rules incorrectly. I'll just quote his original text, though before I do that, let me say that I defended our decisions about how Vrahos and other familiars were created and played, and our decision to increase the number of XP's required for Transformation of a magic character.
Also, here's a quote from a later email:
OK, like I said above, I don't see any need to change our house rules, and I'm not overly troubled by the design philosophy used for Vrahos. However, the free No Fatigue and Needs No Sleep Virtues are not what the rules intend (though yes, they make logical sense, and maybe Vrahos can take them the normal way), though I realize that affects his progression, including his pre-game progression. In addition, the fact that XP's can't be saved up for Transformation probably affects several of the covenant's magic animals--I'll have to go back and check both Viola's familiar and the cats.
Also, has Tasia resigned herself to the fact that her Binding power will lead to constant suspicion of infernalism?
I'm really at a loss on designing the lab. From the power scope of chargen and your comment about story seeds, I am guessing that supernatural V/Fs are okay, but I'm not really sure.
Plus, there aren't as many Rego V/Fs as I thought there would be, and the whole "Partially outdoor" lab design concept I originally had doesn't give the options I thought they would, and cost a lot of upkeep.
So....are things like Greater Guardian, Greater Horde and Inexhaustible Supplies on the menu for lab design? Could you generally provide more framework info on lab design?
In general, try to limit yourself on the something-for-nothing Virtues. But by the same token, something you have to work for to gain is acceptable, and some things might come with attached Flaws. For example, Viola's lab might have Faerie Ingredients, but that will come with some annoying Flaws that represent the less useful actions of the faeries in the regio. Also note that a lot of the Supernatural Virtues add to the lab's Warping score--a score of up to 3 is pretty tolerable, but beyond that it gets to be a serious hindrance to producing consistent effects.
I think this went from Tasia's character design mid-process, didn't it? Vrahos is bound via the Spirit Familiar virtue from the Terram Cult (which I think she had even when callen was also considering binding).
I hadn't realised about the not saving up transformation xp/not having partial transformation (and I don't think the rules make it at all clear, although I suppose there is precedent for not saving it up in how experience points usually work. Not for the rule against partial transformation, though.)
That was sorta my point of confusion, actually. Your lab design doesn't include anything that wasn't provided by char gen or roleplay already. Scott said something about story-generating VFs, and I wasn't sure if it'd be kosher to make up a lab design that required stories to finish. See the 1st draft I just posted in the Character Dev thread for what I mean.
Ouch... Well, first, this may sound rather scathing since we (my pen and paper group) very, very specifically brought up issues with Transformation way back when and the understanding from him is just showing up now? It's like telling your friend to put on his seat belt in case of an accident, getting hit by a drunk driver, and then having your friend sue you because he sustained extra injuries because his seat belt wasn't buckled. I know you said take this with a grain of salt, and normally I have a lot of respect of Erik Dahl, but this feels very unprofessional to me. I just want to be clear about the tone of my comments.
I find some of what he wrote suspicious. Some of what he has written here is basically in direct contradiction to the actual rules in RoP:M and RoP:tI to which he refers, too. He needs to go back and reread the books and issue errata if he intends what he says. (Just discovered his name is the first on RoP:tI, too. Heh.)
He doesn't understand at least one of the Goetic Arts or the core rules. 5 points is the specification on what it takes to reach 1 in a Supernatural Ability. The Goetic Arts only need to reach 0 and are Arts. If you get 5 experience points you would be at 2 with an extra 2 points towards level 3.
He needs to go back and reread because he totally misunderstands this part of the book. Basically he's saying generally everyone should go back and cross out some of pages 36 and 41 and all of page 42. Not only that, we should very thoroughly black out Reduced Might and pretend it never existed.
He should have written "generally speaking a starting character should have Might a little less than the number of Qualities it has taken."
Well, first it does depend on whether you go with Grog level or Companion level. My groups usually use Grog level because they aren't as independent characters as Companions typically are. In this case we set Grog-level as the default, and I guess he didn't see that. Regardless, normal (not "legendary," centering around medium) Companion levels are 5-15 and Grogs levels are 0-5. His acceptance of 15 and not of 5 is contrary to what is written. He is taking above average as average. Why not take average as average?
And yet it is reasonable for a magus to give his own vis and his own time to give a familiar a power through the bond that the familiar might want? Not only are they friends, they are both True Friends, too. Plus, that Quality to which he refers extends Vrahos's own lifetime by extending Tasia's. Finally, Vrahos could earn vis by using the power. (I've had specific plans for this with a companion I made elsewhere.)
He has a severe misunderstanding of Binding. (He must not have written this part of RoP:tI with his repeated mistakes.) What he's saying is not at all true in regard to Binding and Familiars. Summoning (and Spirit Familiar), not Binding, allows you to bind a Spirit as a Familiar. Binding is a whole other thing.
This is written nearly opposite to what is repeatedly written in RoP:M, which makes it fairly nonsensical when combined with Intelligence (not Cunning). With Cunning I would totally understand this. But if that's what he wanted with Intelligent beings, why did he repeatedly write it so differently. Or maybe someone else wrote those parts and he just doesn't understand them.
Well, he's blatantly going against the book here. Let's look at practice, a valid way to transform. You can practice with 4 experience to gain a new quality, which costs a miniumum of 5. You can practice with 5 experience to do a 20-point transformation. So for practice to be a valid way to transform you need to be able to spend some of the experience at a time.
There is also precedence for the saving of experience for such changes. The rules written prior to RoP:M, to which the RoP:M rule were made to match, include just that.
First, what is Needs No Sleep? I can't find it. That he wrote "and" is even more confusing, like he doesn't even know what No Fatigue is.
As for No Fatigue, we all went through this before.
Sorry, I misunderstood. I'll take a look and see if I can be more helpful.
Edit: The Vole part sounds cool. You could build up to it starting with things like Lesser Horde before going to Greater Horde. I would say put in the seasons to get the virtues and those would make cool virtues.
Thanks I am still not sure if this is the sort of thing Scott was talking about for picking lab VFs. I'm perfectly willing to spend the time and stories getting them all, if this is the sort of thing the saga is looking for.
It's been a while since I had the conversation with Erik, but I think I remember having the impression that he'd read an earlier version and didn't see all of the later discussion. And yes, you're right about the Binding--I forgot she'd lost that.
As I pointed out to Erik, the editing of the book is really awful, but apparently that is how it's supposed to work.
Yes, I remember now that you'd changed it after we discussed it (and yeah, I should double-checked that before posting). What about the Virtues, though?
The strange this is that that is explicitly not how it works for the transformation thing on which Transformation is based, nor is that how it works for Abilities and Arts. The only case similar to it is using the Gift to acquire Supernatural Abilities, but then the Supernatural Virtues for those Abilities have you start at 1 in the Ability, something which is not necessitated elsewhere.
Plus, as I pointed out, it is internally self-contradictory if it is supposed to work how he says.
OK, it's not that I doubt you, but just for my edification, could you elaborate on "the transformation thing on which Transformation is based" and "internally self-contradictory"?
No, about the latter one I wrote I have no clue what it is. I can't find it, even when I use the pdf with all the virtues/qualities. Where is Needs No Sleep?
RoP:F (Do I have the publication order backward?) explicitly states experience can be accumulated toward Transformation. There is no explicit statement in RoP:M about this one way or the other.
There is an implicit statement in RoP:M that experience can be accumulated. That's due to Practice being a valid way to do Transformation. According to Erik's desires it's invalid, but the book says it's valid. So according to RoP:M alone Erik is wrong. That's why I said he must have been overruled.
We lost power over 24 hours ago and probably won't get it back for a couple more days, so I have very limited access right now. I'll let the bunch of you hammer out the spell details in the Haunted Covenant thread.
Any spells I cast for the flooding will happen after the ghosts. I will try to post die rolls for Gregorius's lab and the Lamps of Significance before the weekend is out, and then I am ready for the ghosts to happen.
As I said elsewhere, Viola will be done exploring the regio by the end of the night of the party, so she can join the Haunted Covenant thread as she desires.
I am still not sure if this is the sort of thing Scott was talking about for picking lab VFs. I'm perfectly willing to spend the time and stories getting them all, if this is the sort of thing the saga is looking for.