Poenitens of Jerbiton

Retired Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: What if we joined them
61

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.

62

Poenitens has a 4 in Latin with a specialty of "Hermetic Usage," so he has an effective 5 in Latin, and can write books.

63

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.

64

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)

65

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.

66

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.

67

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.

68

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?

69

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.

70

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.

71

I suspect that Ways of the Town is the reason he ignored potential botch here. So the first time he reciting a ring he spend the full season in the town and for the later recitation he just have to visit the town for a few days.
Unless we go with a very strict ruling what pertain to a town is he easy can avoid to botch as Ars Notoria only fix the season but not the place where you have to reciting the rings.

What can kill this concept is that the art score is considered a supernatural ability in some places of the books and if you have to reduce your Ars Notoria by the summed score of your arts then better forget to ever success in a ring.
The only way I right now see to avoid this if we are on the strict side is that you also have to take Holy Magic what make the art scores alligned to the divine and so they no longer reduce from the recitation.
(I always wondered why the Angel Eiael in RoP:D 29 have the ability to use Hermetic Holy Magic if Ars Notoria have nothing to do with Holy Magic but if you need Holy Magic to even have a chance to recite a Ring as Hermetic magus then this make sense)

72

I guess the real question is what are "rolls that pertain to your area of understanding?" Clearly it can't mean every roll that happens to be made in a town or city. Would it apply to spells that happen to be cast in a city? I always figured that it applied to things like bargaining in a city or dealing with city folk or knowledge about a city. I would have thought that Ars Notoria recitation is not "pertaining to" an understanding of towns and cities just because the ring happened to be recited in a city.

I'd be curious to hear what other people feel should be the metes and bounds of Ways of the (Land).

The limit of subtracting your Arts only applies to the SQ of you learning a new supernatural ability. Once you know the ability, it advances normally and can be used without restriction. The rules on learning Supernatural Abilities are on p. 166 of the core rules. So, once Poenitens learns Ars Notoria, he's good to go. His Arts will no longer get in the way,

Interestingly enough, you can't learn Ars Notoria from reading the AN books, no matter how good a tractatus they are. P. 165 of the rules specifically says that [a] character can only study a Supernatural Ability from a book if he already has a score of at least one in that Ability," while p. 166 of the rules specifically states that "[t]he initial teaching in a supernatural ability must be by Training or
Teaching."

73

Is there a other place where your own supernatural abilities give you a penalty beside the SQ on learning a new supernatural ability? I don't remember any one beside Ars Notoria.
If you look at Hedge Magic, Miraculous Effect, Solomonic Magic and even the special Magical powers of Ex. Misc all are Supernatural and now tell me why the Hermetic Art are not Supernatural when all other form of Magic from Gifted and Ungifted is!
Even Holy Magic and Ars Notoria are supernatural/hermetic virtue. So why is there a penalty from Art for learning Supernatural Ability when the Art it self is not also supernatural / hermetic?
I know the implication with my interpretation also mean that there is also a minor or major supernatural virtue for each art but that sound correct to me with how everything is handled in the books I have read so far.
(A gifted get the ability of one set of Supernatural Virtues for free at 0 once the gift is opened and Hermetic magic is just one of the sets)

For your problems with learning Ars Notoria it have it own special rule that you have to learn it from the The Book of Solomon and The Keys of Solomon that in my opinion overwrite the normal way. And the Teaching Score of 20 is just enough to teach this ability to a new hermetic apprentice.

74

The penalty to SQ for learning any Supernatural ability is the only one I can recall. It applies to all Supernatural abilities, including Ars Notoria. When they refer to the penalty in Ars Notoria, I assume they were just restating the rule from the core book.

My understanding is that Gifted people get one free supernatural virtue. All magi of the Order take the (unwritten) hermetic virtue that lets them learn the Arts. This is confusing because it's not listed as a specific virtue, though it's implied to exist. Once they gain this virtue, magi can learn all of the Arts as accelerated abilities. I don't think there's a virtue for each Art, just an overarching virtue that allows you to learn all Arts (probably the best single minor virtue in the game).

Why are things this way? My guess is that it's mostly because that's the way the game was set up to allow magi to be powerful but not overwhelmingly powerful. It was probably a rule to focus supernatural abilities on non-magi. I think the idea was that there would be Gifted hedge magi who might learn a handful of supernatural abilities.

That's a good point. The specific usually overrides the generic.

75

There is the special rule for Ars Notoria that all supernatural ability belonging to the divine are not including in the penalty you get from Supernatural ability and that is a other reason why I think in this case the hermetic arts also add to the penalty unless they are in some form aligned with the divine.

Also the following quoted text from Holy Magic might point that alone from the view point of Sin a Ars Notoria user absolut want to learn Holy Magic:

(keep in mind there some Holy Traditions that have Holy Magic as favored ability and so True Faith could be a good major virtue)

76

I ignored botches on Ars Notoria rolls for the same reason we ignore botches on spell casting during our pre-game careers: it adds nothing to the game. Should we come up with a chance that players succumbed to Twilight? Doubtlessly, I did botch at least once on my rolls. I did penance for it, and it's resolved.

77

That's a fair answer. I get so caught up in monitoring every moment of time that I sometimes lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Thanks for the grounding.

78

I just went through posts again and noticed this. Hm. Ok, my specialty in Greek is "Archaic Forms" so I have an effective 4 when trying for Classical Greek. Updating yet again.

79

I just wanted to confirm. Poenitens' version of Stamina of the Heroes is a Circle spell, right? And he'll be willing to include others in the castings, right? (Maybe for a contribution of vis toward the expense)

I ask because it's a spell I was considering, but don't want to duplicate effort. (I assume our magi talk about their various projects.)

(Did I ask this before? I have this odd feeling of deja vu.)

80

Trogdor, yes, you did ask this before, it is a Circle target, I'd be happy to include more in the circle - all the mages if they so desire. Poenitens is quite willing to cast it with a couple days notice, and when someone else provides the vis. He's got enough vis to cast it once by himself.