Yeah, but it also means that it makes absolutely no difference to her, personally.
Jonathon,
Are you willing to make your mage statted to be primary caster of the Aegis and take all the risks involved with casting of the aegis every single year?
What a loaded question!
Sure. I am on record as saying I can go either way towards the Mastery mitigating botch dice issue. And regardless of the way it goes, if the assembled magi want Talia to do it, she'll agree to do it. That'd be a hoot.
Keep in mind, her character isn't finalized, and I don't plan on altering her to be especially good at Rego Vim magic. I've changed Weak Parens to Weak Magic, so her penetration is going to be horrid.
Keep in mind, Aegis/Wards in this saga must penetrate. The Aegis we have, is a 30th level Aegis. Probably need every player magus to commune with her to get a decent level of penetration, let alone the 30 matching the level of the spell.
So, sure, she'd do it. She and I both think it'd be a hoot.
fweeeet!
Okay, I've been following the Stress Die Mastery thread on the main forums as best I can, listening to both sides (who, by and large, have made good points). And here's what we, by which I mean "I," am going to do, and my reasoning.
Ritual Spells are like Formulaic spells, except for the differences noted. One of the differences is that Ritual Spells are always cast with a Stress Die. However, a Stress Die does not necessarily mean that it is cast under stress. For example, a Formulaic Mastered spell states that "in a calm situation there are no botch dice."
So. A Ritual Spell always uses a Stress Die, as explicitly stated in the raw. In a calm situation, there are no botch dice. In a stressful situation, you roll botch dice if the initial die comes up 0, with modifiers to the number of botch dice as normal - -1 per level of mastery, -1 per level of Gold Cord with your familiar, etc.
The vast majority of the time, Ritual Spells will be cast in a "calm situation." Aegis of the Hearth (under normal circumstances), CrCo Healing rituals, etc. There are times, however, that even Rituals may be cast in Stressful Situations. If it looks like a Ritual may be going to be cast in a situation that may potentially result in Botch Dice, I will let the player(s) know.
I've also been trying to follow the discussion on Might Stripper Soak vs. RaW (although, to be honest, I've found myself zoning out at times), and even after several re-readings, I've seen nothing to sway me from my original position, although I have (I think) tried to keep an open mind about it. But since it appears to me that the two sides aren't budging, and since the poll is pretty lopsided (wow, it's only been a day since I put it up? Seems so much longer than that), I'm going to make a ruling.
We are going to go with the Rules as Written. No Might Soak. If a spell penetrates, it reduces the being's Might Pool by the spell level until the Might Pool reaches zero, at which point it reduces the Might Score. Note, also, that a creature's Magic Resistance is the same as his Might Score – if you reduce its Might Score, you reduce its Magic Resistance. I don't know if this latter is raw, but if it's not it's now a House Rule.
If, during play, it becomes apparent to me that this doesn't work, then we can revisit the question, and any characters damaged/killed because of this will be redeemed. (If your character gets killed because you tried to give Trigon a super-atomic wedgie, though, that doesn't count.)
Finally...no more House Rules for a while. Let's get back to getting our characters together, including Companions and Grogs (I know not all of the magi want to cook all their own meals, let alone cook for everyone else), and work on the Covenant-building. I may post some background stuff, answer questions, say something if I see something wrong or something that needs corrected, but that's about it.
Locutus Sum.
Uh, still waiting on your interpretation of Flexible formulaic magic, yet another area of dispute and disagreement.
I've actually rethought my original ruling (mainly because it didn't click that it was a Major Hermetic Virtue). Yes, you can use FFM to modify the target's Size Modifier up or down (if the spell already has at least a +1 Magnitude for Target Size) one magnitude. In addition, you can also modify Magical Senses (p. 113-114) up or down a level (so, you can move a Hearing Intellego spell up to Vision or down to Smell). Because it stands to reason that if you can jigger the size, you can jigger the sense.
I just realized that my character needs finesse, so he can make the zombies cook. And wash. And clean. And everything. But until then, we may need a few grogs.
to something else:
I've asked the question before: What landscape surrounds this covenant (ways of the ....)?
I wish I hadn't read this while eating breakfast.
Forest. Trees. Lots and lots of trees. And some fields scattered around for the sheep.
And a Loch!
Just want to speak on the topic of Mysteries right quick.
I have no problem with characters being initiated into Mysteries, whether at chargen or down the road. The first thing I ask that that you keep me in the loop – don't spring mysteries on me.
I'd like to think I'll be easy to work with on Mysteries. If you want to be Initiated at CharGen, talk to me, let me know what you want and how you intend to accomplish it, either in play or through backstory. You might have to walk me through it a little bit if something doesn't make sense to me, but like I said, I'm easy. Plus, we have three old-ish npcs, who of whom belong to Mystery Cults (a Bjornaer and a Merinita) who may or may not be of use.
Hey, 10 years post apprenticeship is more than enough to initiate mysteries (hey, I would even throw in an 11th since it was spent totally as heartbeast without ever using magic or taking human form.), just need to have the Bjornaer lore, the minor flaw from the one initialation and either the major flaw or loss of major virtue for the second initiation (inner heartbeast)
Speaking of the Covenant's grogs:
- By tradition, each magus is entitled to one personal servant (maid, butler, valet, what have you) and one guard (shield grog).
- Most, if not all, of the locals have the Covenant Upbringing Flaw, which entitles them to have Latin and Order of Hermes Lore at chargen. If they take Order of Hermes Lore, it shouldn't be more than 1, maybe 2, unless they're intimately involved with the goings-on of the magi (either individually or as a group).
- Some of the older covenfolk who would come into regular contact with the older magi suffer Warping, due to the fact that Faileas (who is no longer) would use The Enigma's Gift as punishment.
Thoughts and stuff about Kiva.
No Disguise?
Organization Lore: English nobility: wouldn't that be Area Lore: England with a Specialization: Nobility?
All in all I like the character. Ties in well with Talia, I think. But I can definitely see which way this campaign is going, now 
You're thinking D&D 
In Ars, it falls under Guile: "This ability also covers disguising yourself, and pretending to be something you are not." Needless to say, Disguise is Caoimhe's specialty in Guile I just hadn't filled those in yet.
Oh, now it's my turn to think a D&D skill as an Ars Magica ability! Area Lore for an entire country would be really broad and only give very general information-- and I was looking for something to explain that she knows how to pass herself off for English nobility, to someone who doesn't speak Norman or English, anyway-- except now I think about it, that would be Etiquette. Hmm. I'll change it to something. Actually, maybe I'll drop her Latin to a 3 (with a specialty in Conversational), and put that with the 15 points in the Org Lore to give her a language skill.
I had the idea that the reason she'd gotten caught was when she'd been posing as an English noble (to an Irish guy who wasn't going to know the difference), faking the accent really well (but still speaking Gaelic), and was unfortunately thwarted when some random dude walked down the street while they were together, and said "Oh! A fellow Englishman! I need your assistance, have you a moment?" in Norman-- and Caoimhe went, "Uhh... Merde."
The name is Caoimhe ni Suilleabhain, I just added the modern Anglicised spelling so everyone would know how it's pronounced
Is it necessary for my Companion to take the Venditor social status major virtue? I'd like for him to grow into the position, so to speak, not be one, and an apparently successful one that the Major Virtue suggests. It appears the Virtue comes from Mysteries Revised.
HoH: MC, and he doesn't have to take Venditor if you don't want...main advantage I see is the Academic Abilities and 50 xp. He can take Merchant (Free Social Status Virtue) or something else.
Okay, looks like we're making progress. I've got full covenant build points from everybody but ladyphoenix (of which I have 48, near as I can tell), darkwing (who is missing), and The Fixer (who is swamped irl, best I can recall). I only have personal build points from Arya and qcipher so far.
So, let's[size=200] shoot for Saturday next (14 April) to start play.[/size] I'll get a prologue up in the next day or so. If I can get everyone else's covenant and personal build points, as well as more Boons/Hooks/whatever for the covenant by the end of the week that would be awesome. Unless you want me to build the covenant.
Can we get the Exceptional Book boon?
Just got my covenants book back yesterday though I have idea on some of my points. I still have a lot to spend.
Thought I'd bring this discussion over here. While it is RAW, I certainly don't ever believe that was the intention of the authors to penalize someone who masters a spell. It is entirely counter-intuitive that someone with Magic Addiction who has put effort into mastering a spell is worse off than someone who hasn't mastered a spell. I stirred the pot over in Spell Mastery and Ritual thread in the main Ars Magica forum, because it is clearly an example of where the authors intended for it to be a stressful situation, but instead said stress die, much like my interpretation of the use of stress die in the Ritual Magic thread. I think it should be stressful situation for Magic Addiction, definitely not stress die.