ooc

Retired Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: Solitude
141

Ah. Well. Had the knight appeared a bit less prone to just killing the spearmen, things might have gone differently.

As it is, it looked like we were expected to just massacre the spearmen to rescue the couple. I guess we aren't bloodthirsty enough.

There were other options, which Cornelius tried to pursue, but I guess they didn't fit with the hook you were willing to provide. We seem to have different expectations as to what constitutes interference with mundanes. :confused:

P.S. Anybody who plan on not reading the spoiler? :wink:

142

Well there were other options, but most of them died with the first spear-man dead. I still feel frustrated we couldn't talk between us before the first death to elaborate a plan. I understand PbP is slow already, so you probably want things to move faster, but I can't play smart, impersonating, making illusions etc.. If we're forced in the middle of the action.

143

Oh lol, so I suppose I was somewhat making the right decision in terms of what the GM wanted to do but oh well it was still a bit poorly planned, perhaps bastion will make a comment later about how the knight could have been useful to us.

By the way cat, your actions seems like a good way to get yourself attacked by the Knight.

As much as I admit that my action wasn't necessarily the best, but I feel like suddenly walking into a scene of combat requires some more fast thinking and while playing nice and smart is usually better, I really don't see how that would have achieved more than just walking away in the first place. It seems obvious to me that Pralix had wanted us to kill the eight men and recruit the Knight and Nun.

But if nothing else I suppose we have an idea of how the lot of like to play now.

144

Well, the ACTUAL answer was "immobilize the whole group, then talk it out" - but unfortunately, yeah - the knight got a kill-shot off before we could do that. At that point, it's a murder rap, and only an equivalent magnitude of crime can justify that as self-defense: kidnapping, rape, diabolism, or something along those lines. But unfortunately, upon investigation - it wasn't a morally grey situation. Even by modern standards, the soldiers and the bishop were in the right, and the knight and the lady were in the wrong.

Had that come out before the killing started, St. Avery would have simply handed the woman back to the spearmen. That would have likely saved some lives, but I admit that's about it. (That's enough for St. Avery, though.)

That being said - it was a good enough scene, and some decent drama and character building.

145

I could certainly argue the status of the moral grey-ness of the situation, but for the sake of moving the game forward I won't.

Oh well lesson learned: "ask questions before shooting fireballs"

146

Just to let you know I was complaining about to the first beheaded soldier, because If we were given the time to elaborate a plan we could act together : I could silence the nun,then next turn put to sleep the soldier group while another magus put the knight into sleep. We could then move the lady for interrogation away from the group for interrogation, mind read the knight and soldier to get both side of the story and either recruit them, let them escape or let them wake up and finish their job after I mind sweep all of them...

147

Not sure what you're referring to in terms of the "first beheaded soldier" but as I said at this point I'm more in favour of just advancing the. Campaign

148

I need a day or so to get the tribunal itself together again (I have my handwritten notes buried under tones of paper somewhere, I hope). Next stop will be tribunal. There will be accomodations, but it has been a long tradition to create your own non-permanent places to sleep (huts? tents? towers?) to impress other magi. Other cheap parlor tricks to show how accomplished you are? Show them off! Tribunal was chosen so that the moon is favorable (noon moon just over).
Grab your books and be prepared when the next ic post comes.

149

I can cast the illusion of our own covenant, that's probably appropriate if showing of is in the tradition, but real accommodations won't be my specialty.

150

My (Rego + Terram + Stamina + Gestures/Incantations + Aura)/5 might be enough to Craft Magic up some real basic accommodations...like, a stone hut. (EDIT - unfortunately, my Creo Terram sucks, so we'd have to get some rock from...somewhere.

Heh - we could build that, then put an illusion on the outside to make it look more impressive. :slight_smile:

151

I could also make illusions of servants for moon duration but they would only move under my direct unspoken command, so It depends how intricate the commands can be, if Pralix allows me to give complex command like welcome guests, show them to the waiting room, then that would be very nice :wink:.

152

Craft magic rules are in HoH:S, pg. 60.

Watching someone actually build this sort of thing in his backyard (Not in terms of size, but basic technology) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P73REgj-3UE&list=PLGnWLXjIDnpBR4xqf3FO-xFFwE-ucq4Fj&index=2

So, that's my plan: have St. Avery build a square roman villa-style structure; have a dry pit around the outside (to source most of the dirt from), with a pretty thick outer and main walls; probably 10 feet high or so, and 3 feet thick laid out in a square, made from adobe/mudbrick. The north side has a large meeting hall, flanked on each side by rooms for the magi. The west side has the servant rooms, the kitchen, as well as a stable. the east side is for storage and additional miscellaneous rooms. The South side is the entryway. The roof is made using the wood from the huts, with adobe tiling - not strong enough to walk on, but can keep out the rain just fine.

If he runs out of wood (which will be the main issue), he can have one of the other magi creo up a bit - for interior separation walls, doors, or (pure wooden) roofs over the servant and/or storage quarters. (ie, make sure there isn't any natural adobe tiles sitting on top of magically-created wood.)

Note that a base 3 effect can summon a tree for conc duration. (So a lvl 5 ReVi Maintain the Demanding spell can maintain it for a month.) So we may have to summon a bunch of tall, skinny trees and rough-hew them to create beams for roofs and whatnot; doable, but may take a few hours.

The spells in question are essentially just Rego Terram craft magic to create the adobe walls and tile; Rego Herbam to move and pull apart the wood huts for buiding material. The base for Stone is 4, and this is mostly dirt and clay (which would be a 2 or 3); working with processed plant products is ReHe 1, so that should be pretty darned simple. St. AVery can /5 spont any lvl 4 Rego effect, so as long as he's not working with stone he can actually work pretty fast. And making adobe and digging ditches and builing a 1-story structure...really isn't all that hard. (Complete amateurs can do this after a day of training - it just takes time.)

Each room has a fireplace and chimney, as these are actually pretty easy to build with adobe. CrHe firewood is easy enough to come by (Bastion can make it, and St. Avery can maintain it) - furniture is unfortunately limited to clay brick counters (in the kitchen) with open-air storage underneath, unless someone wants to try to /5 spont a lvl 5 "work with unrefined wood" to try and make cabinets. Although in a fit of inspiration, St. AVery will attempt to build heated sleeping surfaces, as shown in the video above. (Heated floors were a thing for the Romans, so it's reasonable that St. Avery could be familiar with the concept.)

In looking at the Craft Magic rules - in terms of Finesse rolls, most of this would probably be trivial (3) or Easy (6) - compared to, say, forging a sword, which I'm assuming is Average (9). Of course, I didn't take any Finesse, so it'll be just his Intelligence(5) - but thankfully, this likely isn't a stressful situation, and adobe (by its very nature) can be recycled back into your next batch if you screw it up.

153

Cornelius will observe, but he has absolutely no skill or magical knowledge that can help build better accomodations. :laughing:

He can lift rocks and pieces of wood, though, if the other magi are unsatisfied with the pre-existing wooden huts. But seems to me like a big waste of time and risk of botch through spontaneous magic. :unamused:

It is doubtful that we can impress the other covenants with our building skills. None of our magi are built that way. Of course dressing it up a little with a few Imaginem spells is perfectly fine with him.

So unless you need him, I think a better use of his time would be to meet and get to know the various magi of the Tribunal's covenants.

154

@bitter: Use the illusions you want. Set yourself a limit you y<ourself consider fair when it comes to detail.

@Kevin.Not bad!

@all: Roll the dice! I think it's 1. create wood, 2. make villa, 3. pretty it up with illusions.

155

That's brilliant !

156

@Aegis at Tribunal:
none of the other dwellings have an aegis.
There are pros and cons to creating one, but I'll leave figuring them out to you guys.

157

Pro: Aegis can repel things like demons. They'll probably go elsewhere.
Pro: Very showy. Makes you seem like you have vis to waste.
Pro: May start trend of conspicuous consumption involving Aegis's at tribunal.

Con: No one will come over.
Con: Getting good deals is really hard when everyone thinks you have vis to waste.
Con: Elizabeth will be quasi-useless while recovering fatigue.
Con: It won't have the penetration to do much of anything.

158

We can have a big bowl of visitor tokens at the front gate. I don't think that'll actually be a problem.

We can be upfront about how it's cast, unless it's a secret for some reason. (Could very well be, in the whole "I will keep my powers a mystery" sort of thing.)

It costs 4 long-term fatigue to cast, correct? When does Tribunal start? If we've got here a few days early, she can probably sleep it off over the next few days.

Looks like you have a Current ReVi ceremonial casting of 20 (7 Re + 7 Vi + 1 Int + 1 Aura + 2 AL + 2 Ph) - so it'll probably be lvl 5 penetration, if you're not unlucky. However, you'll still get the -10 Anti-magic aura effect. Which is at least something.

...we really need to learn Wizard's Communion.

EDIT - Using Circular Wards, St. AVery can ward all the interior buildings (Rather than the courtyard) from Magic - which honestly probably isn't as useful as Demonic or Farie wards, but he hasn't learned those yet.

159

Thanks!

Well, all of the magical effects are /5 sponts (including creating the wood, at least for Bastion - I believe he's got a lvl 15 ability in Cr 12 + He 0 + Aura 1 + Gestures/Incantations 2); that's enough to get skinny trees usable as poles. (Base 1 +1 Touch +1 Conc); St. Avery can /5 spont a lvl 5 Maintain the Demanding Spell to keep those poles around for a moon.

The only actual magic rolls involved here are Finesse; in looking at everyone's stats, Elizabeth has an (int + Finesse) of 5, and enough Rego to /5 spont woodworking with processed wood products. (Seriously - it's a lvl 1 spell, including Touch.); Bastion and St. AVery both have +5 Int - looks like Bastion has enough Rego to work with Clay (3), but not rock (4). So they can probably work together for most of the villa-building, if Bastion wants to. If not, St. Avery will do it all himself. Note that there are a lot of rocks in this field, so it'll probably be a lot of "moving mud/clay out of the trench, Rego-ing it into brick, and layering it as a wall, then pulling rocks out of the trench and layering them in the wall with clay mortar" a few dozen times. That's all pretty simple work, with no real consequences of failure other than "recycle the adobe, and try again" (Well, a wall might fall down - but that's a pretty easy Rego fix - these are pretty darned thick walls.) - so, even untrained in Finesse, both Bastion and St. Avery can do that without any real difficulties.

The only thing that will likely require semi-skilled labor (6) is the dismantling of the huts for recycling their wood - that should probably be done by Elizabeth, who actually has the Finesse skill, and thus a significantly less chance of botching.

That being said, here's 100 Simple Finesse rolls; the roll itself is Int + Finesse+1d10, which is 5+0. But they're simple rolls, and aren't 0's considered 10's on a simple roll? I forget. Anyway - if they're 10's, then there's no way to fail the roll for simple (3) and semi-skilled (6) labor. But it's unskilled, so maybe they've got botch dice?

http://roll.coyotecode.net/lookup.php?rollid=148935

if those 10's are potential botches, I'm going to assume a potential 2 botch die for each - http://roll.coyotecode.net/lookup.php?rollid=148938 - so, 3 botches. I'm going to assume this is "the wall looked OK, but when we stacked more on it it became unstable, so we had to redo that part of the wall, and it took longer.

EDIT - St. AVery is going to lay out the villa so that all the internal rooms are circular enough that they can be warded with Circular wards. (Apparently, Circle wards don't have to be perfect circles, as per the Hermetic Geometry rules in TMRE; they just need to be 'mostly circles' or 'close enough to circles that if you squint you can tell') - so it probably looks a bit more like a castle than a villa.

160

I'd really wanted to invent a create a corpse spell for manual labour, but oh well.

Can you explain what guideline you're thinking for those spells?

Perhaps level 1 Herbam:

Could that reasonable be a log as well? For example if it was +1 Touch +1 Conc +2 Group would be level of 5 I could create a pile of logs on a roll of anything but a botch, which could then be lengthened by Avery.