The problem comes when you want to write a book as then you need Classical Greek 5 what no long is possible to substitute with Romaic Greek from what I remember.
At last I somehow remember that when you use a language to substitute for a other language the best you can ever reach is 4 no matter how high your language skill is.
Also there is the age limit when you first can have a skill at 7, beside that the difference is only 10 exp. when compare one ability at 7 to two ability at 5.
Good point. I'm not sure what language the tractatus that Poenitens wrote are in.
At last I somehow remember that when you use a language to substitute for a other language the best you can ever reach is 4 no matter how high your language skill is.
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Can you find citation for that? Things are so spread out in ArM that it's hard to find that sort of rule wherever it's squirreled away.
Very true. You'd have to be 30 years old when you finished your gauntlet to have a 6 in Romaic Greek.
So, I've been toying around with Ars Notoria, trying to figure out how it works, and frankly, I don't see how you did it. You glossed over the numbers for reciting the rings, so I can't check them. But I really don't see how you got to the ease factors for reciting the rings.
You have a base of Int + Ars Notoria + Modifiers for reciting a ring. At the start, you have the following numbers:
Int: 2
Ars Notoria (as of first recitation: 5
Modifier for Optimistic: +3
Modifier or Compassionate: +1
TOTAL: 11
The EF for reciting a ring for the first time is 6 + 3*ring + 1/season.
We'll assume all first recitations are for a single season to keep the EF as low as possible.
The EF for reciting first ring = 6 + 3*1 + 1 = 10.
You have a +11, so you should be okay (unless you botch; you really ought to post die rolls where you can botch).
The EF for reciting second ring = 6 + 3*2 + 1 = 13.
You have a +11, so you should be okay (unless you roll a 0 or a 1).
The second ring also ups your Int to +5 when in effect. We'll assume you manage to keep it in effect for all future recitations. That ups your total modifier to +14.
The EF for reciting third ring = 6 + 3*3 + 1 = 16.
You have a +14, so you should be okay (unless you roll a 0, 1 or 2).
So far so good. You've rolled well and managed each ring on the first try.
At this point your Ars Notoria goes up to 6, which raises your total modifier to +15.
The EF for reciting fourth ring = 6 + 3*4 + 1 = 19.
You have a +16 (+1 for specialization), and it's starting to get tricky. You need to roll a 4-9 on the die, which is only a 60% chance.
The EF for reciting fifth ring = 6 + 3*5 + 1 = 22.
You have a +15, and it's really chancy now. You need to roll an 8 or 9 on the die. It seems like you'd have to try a lot to get this to work.
At this point, your Ars Notoria rockets up to 9. That makes your total modifier +18
The EF for reciting sixth ring = 6 + 3*6 + 1 = 25.
You have a +18, and it's still really chancy. You need to roll an 7-9 on the die. It seems like you'd spend more than one season trying this.
The EF for reciting seventh ring = 6 + 3*7 + 1 = 28.
You have a +19 (specialization in 7th ring), and now you need to roll a 9 on the die. That's a 1 in 10 chance, with the possibility of a botch on each roll.
Now, perhaps you were fasting (I saw no indication of that, nor no rolls), or you were chaste (again no indication and no rolls), but I can't be sure.
All of this also assumes that Poenitens never committed so much as a venial sin during all this time, which is really quite impressive. (Though I'll admit that there's no way to easily track sin during pre-game times.)
Am I missing something? Are there some bonuses I haven't accounted for? Because right now it seems like the chances of success on all seven ring on the first try would be vanishingly small.
Finaly found it again TSE 29 say:
For me this read like you can't be fluency in a language you not direct have and resulting from this not write a book when just substitute a other language for it.
Also thanks Trogdor for having a closer look at our character and point out where we made mistakes. Although its annoying it is better to have this sorted out before the game starts.
I fear this may cost us our really good tractatus as Poenitens looks to find seasons to learn Classical Greek.
wrong with his way of towns we can send him to our school
with https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/father-gabriel-grog-eastern-priest/11684/1 this language problem could be solved via teaching. (although he can't expect 1 to 1 education with our main teacher a teaching source of 16 is still top level)
I don't know what you mean "with way of towns we can send him to our school." Do you mean to imply that the +3 bonus from Way of Towns would somehow counteract the negative social effects of the Gift? If so, I don't think it works like that. First off, it only applies to rolls, not to SQ calculations. Furthermore, I imagine that even if it negated the -3 SQ by making the teacher like him (which doesn't seem to be the case based on the description of the virtue), I think it would still impose a -3 to the SQ of anyone else in the class from having that "creepy" guy in the class.
Second, there are numerous places in the various source books that note that a mere bonus to a roll does not counteract the negative effects of the Gift. Yes, it can counteract the -3 penalty that occurs sometimes. But people will still treat you as if you're strange and unlikable. For example, when referring to the +3 bonus from Aura of Beguiling Appearance, the spell description says "The social penalties caused by The Gift are not negated by this spell; the caster merely seems to be suspiciously over-friendly." Throughout the books the authors have emphasized that the social penalties for the Gift are notoriously hard to overcome. If a simple virtue or a spell could overcome them, then then it would take away a central conceit of the game.
Also, having him learn the abilities after the game starts doesn't address how he learned Ars Notoria or wrote his tractatus.
I agree its still worse then someone without gift but it should improve the general acceptance with town-folk-
yes for this Poenitens need to learn Classical Greek earlier. Although the Education virtue could help him as it is stated in TSE 29 that with education you can take Classical Greek as your mother language but I'm not sure if he can free up a virtue for this.
Of course that seems like a terrible virtue tax for learning Ars Notoria.
One must learn Ars Notoria after the gift is opened but before gain the 2nd point in any one art or the source quality from The Book of Solomon and The Keys of Solomon is not enough.
(the openend art alone reduce the training source of 20 from this book by 15 so a apprentice might learn it right at the start but never later)
Because you need to be a expert of dead languages to read this book it is nearly impossible for a hermetic magus to actual have Ars Notoria unless you become a apprentice after study in a school or university.
With his paren Linguist from HoH:TL 25 could be a alternative virtue to educated but it still need some rebuild for the apprentice time.
Side note: I personal suspect if a paren invest so much time to educate the apprentice in different languages that he can learn Ars Notoria I suspect the paren hope that the apprentice find a way trough initiation to teach Ars Notoria to his paren.
I assumed that Poenitens was Chaste, and that his Higher Purpose also counted. So he gets a +6 modifier. I didn't roll for Ring 1, I just assumed it as the Gauntlet. As for behavior, he was inducted into this service in a quite young age, and is very aware of correct behavior. As a magus, he had a terrible experience (getting a decrepitude point at 48), encouraging him to behave properly.
The initial rolls for Rings 6 & 7 are really tough. But I did make them. If you want, I'll go through and re-calculate the whole thing.
Poenitens has a 4 in Latin with a specialty of "Hermetic Usage," so he has an effective 5 in Latin, and can write books.
Ars Notoria requires a 4 in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean and Artes Liberales. That's 200 XP right there. You get 50 extra for taking Ars Notoria, but I had to take Skilled Parens, in order to have space for anything else.
If you want to play a character with Ars Notoria, you've got to completely build your character around it.
You know that Hermetic books in Latin have nearly no use in a magus society that use Classical Greek Greek instead of Latin to cast the spells and educate the apprentice?
Edit: TSE make a big difference between Romanic Greek the spoken language and the old language Classical Greek that is still used in education. Because we play in the Tribunal written about in TSE this difference is important to us!
Assume that when other books then TSE talk about Greek they mean Classical Greek and not the living language Romanic Greek.
(Unless you have the Educated Virtue you have Romanic Greek as your starting language and not Classical Greek)
Technically you probably need to roll for that. But I don’t have a huge problem with it. He probably ought to have an appropriate personality trait.
Now I realize what was tickling in the back of my mind. Something was bugging me and now I see what it was. Poenitens has three personality flaws. The rules, alas, say you only get two.
Based on the above, he ought to have a +5 mod.
Again, technically you ought to roll, since you could botch. But as his chance of failure (and botching) is only 1 in a 100, I don’t see it as a huge problem.
Being aware of proper behavior shouldn’t be the problem. All good Christians know how to behave. It’s following through on the not sinning part that’s hard. Not sinning (even a venial sin) for years is quite an accomplishment. I suppose the proper way to look at it is to say that he did sin during that time, but just timed his recitations for when he’d had a streak of good behavior.
If you say you made the rolls, I trust you. Unfortunately, his Bonus will probably go down by 1 because of the loss of Higher Purpose (or Compassionate). I’m not sure if you remember what you rolled and whether it would have made the new bonus.
My question is whether Romaic Greek is sufficient for Ars Notoria, or whether Classical Greek is required. The description is sloppy and only says “Greek.”
Clearly. The requirements at gauntlet are punishing.
Technically that suffices. It’s very odd in Thebes to write your works in Latin. But I can’t see anything that would prevent you from doing so.
Given that all other languages are ancient or already dead languages it must be Classical Greek or alternative Romaic Greek 6 what with -2 is the same as Classical Greek 4.
Edit: I suspect the split of Classical Greek and Romanic Greek was added in TSE to give the Thebes Tribunal not to much advance compared to a normal hermetic magus who need to learn Latin.
Also I think (nearly?) all books even 1220 are written in Classical Greek and not Romanic Greek because the language of the educated is Classical Greek.
Edit2: Isn't it actual already a big bonus that Educated could be worth 125 exp. for a hermetic magus of the Thebes Tribunal because Educated also allow you to replace you mother language with Classical Greek?
Thanks for picking that out. Removed Compassionate Flaw, and replaced it with Visions. I'm keeping Higher Purpose, since it's tied to the game theme.
So, I don't mean to be a jerk about this, but it seems like you glossed over a lot of rolls that had potential botches. Every roll for reciting a ring is a potential botch roll. And it seems that over 60 years you probably recited them an awful lot. Enough times to make the chance of a botch statistically significant.
Let's look at the numbers with your highest Ars Notoria value for a reference point. The value for AN would obviously be less throughout much of Poenitens' career, but we'll start here as a baseline.
Each ring has an EF of 3 + 3*ring + 1/season; and you are guaranteed to roll an 19, unless you botch (20 with ring 7). So, assuming you went with the guaranteed success, you'd aim for an 19 EF. That gives us the following:
Ring 1: You can get this to work for 13 seasons, or a little over 3 years at at time without any trouble.
Ring 2: You can get this to work for 10 seasons, 2-1/2 years, at a time without fail.
Ring 3: You can get this to work for 7 seasons, nearly 2 years, at a time without fail.
Ring 4: You can get this to work for 4 seasons, 1 year, at a time without fail.
Ring 5: You can get this to work for 1 season at a time without fail.
Ring 6: You can get this to work for 1 season 70% of the time.
Ring 7: you can get this to work for 2 seasons 40% of the time.
Granted, once you learn the 7th ring you can recite the other rings without botch, assuming that you successfully recite the 7th ring. But that still leaves a lot of time before then when any recitation of a ring would come with the danger of a botch.
You went 45 years with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rings known. That's 180 seasons. You note that he's generally under the effect of all 5 rings once you know 5 and all 6 when he knows 6, so I'm assuming that's the case for when he knew lesser rings. That's 14 recitations of the 1st ring, 18 recitations of the 2nd ring, and 26 recitations of the 3rd ring.
He went 30 years with the 4th and 5th rings known. That's 120 seasons. That's 30 recitations of the 4th ring, and 120 recitations of the 5th ring.
He went 15 years with the 6th ring known. That's 60 seasons, and 60 recitations of the 6th ring.
Once he gets to know the 7th ring, things get a lot easier, since then he only has to worry about that one. But even then, it's not guaranteed. By my calculations, Poenitens has a +20 with the 7th ring [5 (Int) + 9 (Ars Notoria) + 1 (specialzation in 7th ring) + 3 (major flaw) + 1 (minor flaw) + 1 (chaste) = 20]. With an EF of 26 to make it last 2 seasons, that's a 40% chance of success. You say he'll try up to three time for a ring, that means there's a 21.6% chance of him failing all three times, or a nearly 80% chance of success. That's good, but still says that one out of five seasons we can expect the 7th ring to not be in effect, meaning that all the other rings can potentially botch.
Now, I know that my numbers above are wild estimates. You could recite each ring for longer durations with a decent chance of success. But over time that would require more recitations to account for the inevitable failures. No doubt there's a sweet spot for rolls, probably around the 70-80% chance of success. Also, I was assuming a 9 Ars Notoria for the entire 60 years, when it was actually lower for most of that. So the lower AN score would have translated into more rolls.
I guess my point is that by my (very, very rough) estimate, Poenitens would have had to have made something around 270 rolls all with the potential to botch. Even cutting that down by 1/3 for estimation error, that's still almost 200 rolls. Given that a botch occurs about once in 100 rolls, we could expect that he would have botched about 2 times (give or take) over the course of his career under generous estimates. That's not something that's easily glossed over.
Ars Notoria has some really good benefit, to be sure. But it comes at a cost, and part of that cost is the chance for botching. And we do a disservice to game balance if we ignore the chance of botches.