Precedent for murdering a town?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

Sorry to upset your delicate sensibilities :stuck_out_tongue:

Real characters have their own motivations and aspirations separate from their players' meta-knowledge. My character is power-hungry, arrogant, and has a deep disdain for mundanes- they're little better than livestock, or pets. I like to put myself into my characters' heads, and make decisions as they would, not as I would. Fun characters are flawed; they are shades of gray, not black or white. I find it uncomfortable that you are so bothered by the idea of someone wanting to act in a fantastical manner while playing a fantasy game. What do you play tabletops for, if not to immerse yourself in a fantasy world? I want to become a powerful, feared archmagus the likes of which these lands have never known. I want to make powerful allies and even more powerful enemies. I want to be spoken of in legend, and be revered for my mastery of the art of pyromancy. I want to combat cunning beasts and collude with impossibly powerful beings, before dying in a beautiful, all-encompassing blaze. Perhaps you think it's fun to manage a small church's library for 200 years and tell tales to travelers as you sip tea on your veranda until you pass peacefully surrounded by weeping grogs and companions, but that's just not what I find interesting.

What I do find interesting is that you think the character is so horribly evil. He certainly doesn't think he's evil, and I'm willing to bet there are a good number of magi who wouldn't bat an eyelash if they heard he had burned an entire town of mundanes to the ground, as long as it didn't affect them. Where is the fun in a world where everyone acts like superman?

The world needs Lex Luthors.

edit:
I keep re-reading this and thinking I sound like a dick, but I promise I'm not trying to :blush:

42

That is wonderfully okay :laughing:
As long as you know you are playing the bad guy. You don't sound like a dick. You sound like a supervillain, one that happens to be a dick. Just like Lex Luthor.
Fabulous. Brilliant even! And you got talked into buying them off instead of killing them because it was more pragmatic. Just like Lex :smiley:

But it doesn't matter if he thinks he is evil or not. He is evil.
Play the game the way you guys want to. I am the one being a dick by telling you blah-blah-blah.
But you did ask us to weigh in on the feasibility of the idea, give our opinions on how other magi might react.
So I say that Superman always wins, and he will beat you Lex.

You remind me of a player i once had in my game who focused on shady magic, dealt with evil spirits and such. Great anti-hero/villain type character. Excellent Tytalus magus. Problem was that he kept trying to impose his gnostic personal beliefs and mysticism upon the game, and would get irate when I told him that, though it is fine playing the villain, do realize that the character's soul is damned.

43

Agreed with the gist of your statement here, but to be honest, I'm not seeing a lot of gray here. I see a lot of black. Murdering a town is pretty black. Murdering a town and saying that they were in the way on your path to ultimate power is perhaps the blackest of black.

This brings up an important point, what does everyone else at the table want? If you're the only one who wants that, it may be an event that takes the character out of the saga or he becomes an arch-villain for another saga. The question isn't what you want to do, it's whether you and everyone else at the table finds the stories interesting. At the point he becomes the most feared arch-magus, then what? Does he still have significant weaknesses which can be exploited and can lead to interesting stories? It is great to have a vision for a character, but sometimes the player needs to compromise his vision to the needs of the troupe.

Quite right, it's not important what's interesting to us, or even you, it's what's interesting to everyone at your table. It's one thing to write fiction and create a character that overcomes many obstacles and becomes powerful, it's yet another thing to do this in a game, where everyone has their own goals for their character. If everyone is happy with your plan, great. If there are players whose characters just don't go in for that kind of thing, then what? How do you resolve your character's motivation against their character's motivation? Who wins?

Most evil people don't think they are doing evil, or rationalize their behavior. Acting like Superman isn't necessarily fun, I'll agree. Being Batman can be really cool, though. And the most interesting bad guys are the ones who do bad things for good reasons that you don't quite understand.

44

Evil in this case isn't a matter of perspective. It's a matter of "You're doing something that will irrevocably stain your soul". As a result, what you are doing IS Evil. Your character may not see it as such, and as you rightly point out, there are others out there who would not. Not just magi either, some of the mundanes wouldn't either, so long as they weren't affected. But it IS evil. Those who have 'Sense good/evil' will see the stain on your soul.

And there ARE magi in the order who value mundanes. And they WILL come after you.

Yes, a good story can use a Lex Luthor. But don't go playing Lex Luthor and get upset when superman shows up to spoil your plan to steal all the cakes.

45

To me this sounds like the dreams a Tytalus parens expects his filius just out of gauntlet to have. And like those of some Flambeau, whose parens did not explain to him House Acclaim properly.
This magus' path to archmage - if he finds it - is quite different from what he imagines right now. :mrgreen:

Cheers

46

You all seem to be under the impression that I think my character should be immune to all forms of prosecution.. I don't. I want the consequences, I want the drama. I want people to be afraid of how powerful I'm becoming, and I want them to feel like they should maybe stop it. The world needs Lex Luthors, but what is Lex Luthor without Superman to strive against? (This is a bad metaphor, I hate Superman and most of the DC Universe, so let's switch it.) The world needs Jokers, but what is the Joker without Batman?

My group all has their own goals but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who has thought out the next hundred+ years. And if my group's goals differ so far from my own that I can't accomplish them without stepping on some toes? I'm by far the most powerful (offensively) in my group, being able to cast a 30 damage pilum with up to 7 magnitudes of penetration (and that's just now, a confrontation 20 years from now would see me with considerably more firepower). With their sad parma scores of 1, they can't hope to stand against me. If needs be, I can just ask someone into my sanctum.. where it is certainly legal for me to put them down like the dogs they are :smiley:

Also, where is the fun in every character being so friendly with each other? I trust my covenmates, but only about as far as I could throw their asses (and with a Str of -2, that ain't too far). We work together to better the covenant, but ultimately we each have separate ideas of where we want our characters to go. This feels real to me, and much less like the characters are just pawns of some all-powerful meta-beings who collude with each other during the week and enact their plans on game day. If you were actually a mage, would you really let everyone know about your deepest desires?

Besides all of this, I've already decided to NOT murder the town, so you've got to stop harping on the same point here. I agree murdering a town is probably not the best thing, which is why I asked y'all about it, and decided several posts ago to not do it. To reiterate: I no longer want to murder the town, please stop writing me books about why murdering a town is evil. I understand.

Here's a tidbit that might give you an idea of the kind of character Artorias actually is- my covenmate started selling magical items to the local noble which has helped the Holy Roman Empire to quickly position and move their troops, giving them a distinct advantage over others. In-game, I only knew that he'd been up to something fishy, and that we for some reason have a stockpile of several thousand pounds of silver. He recently caught wind of what he's up to, and immediately sold him out to the Quaesitors. Artorias is absolutely disgusted with the idea that his covenmate is selling magical items for mundane profit. This is truly a deed deserving of death. I'm trying very hard to gain a good reputation in the order, and I really can't risk him bringing me down 2 years before Tribunal. It's looking like I will become the Hoplite that will be tasked with taking him down. And I'm totally okay with that. He's less okay with it, but he's a good sport and doesn't act on meta-knowledge like some might.

You guys have never played a mage of questionable morality? How can it be fun to always play the pillar of virtue? I also think the world is purposely set up to allow for questionable morality.. Flambeau the Founder stormed across the continent demanding people join or die. I imagine Artorias is of roughly the same mindset.. join me or die.

And yes OneShot, I realize the path to archmage-hood is attained through politics and not murder (okay, maybe a bit of murder here and there). Which is why I'm playing the long-con. Everyone will love me before they come to fear me.. if I make my move too soon I won't be able to protect myself. But if I make enough friends and kiss the right rings, I will find my path to archmagus open before me. Hell, I've already got 2 out of the three endorsements I need to be considered a master, and I've been out of gauntlet 4 years. Think of me more like Kevin Spacey in House of Cards than the Joker. The world needs Kevin Spaceys :laughing:

edit:
I would LOVE for superman to try and take me down. I was in a campaign not too long ago (a mish-mash of 3.5 and mage: the awakening) where we became so powerful and power-mad that the DM started throwing righteous heroes at US. That was so much fun.. and eventually my cohorts were murdered in an epic battle and I was imprisoned in a large gem for all eternity (as I had become pretty much immortal at that point, with a few lucky rolls on the d1000 table).

47

Even villains need allies, and henchmen, lots of henchmen...

48

First, Shania Twain said it best. That don't impress me much.
Offensive fire power isn't everything, and a magus who goes off flinging his magic indiscriminately is likely to find himself outmaneuvered politically. I have a maga who is ~3 years out of gauntlet and is flinging The Incantation of Lightning reliably with 2 magnitudes of penetration (but can boost it much more). But she can hold her own in Tribunal debates, too. She could likely overcome the magic resistance of all of her sodales in the covenant she's residing. But what's the point of that?
Your character is vulnerable to a magus from your own House of the School of Ramius, someone with a powerful magic resistance to fire, and the ability to quickly and easily do bodily harm upon you. Plus it gets hard to fling firebolts when someone is swinging a sword in your face (EF 12 sta+concentration roll if you're dodging his attacks). Or someone like a character I made where she's excellent at counter spells and wicked fast, and has a team of grogs who goes in to defeat the monster/bad guy while she's shutting down its powers. That +30 Pilum (which is really a lighter version BoAF) is defeated by a fast cast Mighty Torrent of Water in pretty spectacular fashion. And then she teleports your shield grog away from you 15 paces into the air. And then her Immortals come in to slice and dice Artorias as his shield grog plummets to the ground...

Well, you know your group best, but I've seen even good groups fall apart when someone pushes the, "This is the way my character would genuinely respond" button once to many times. Sometimes you have to consider whether everyone else at the table is having fun. Is it fun to be dominated by one player all the time? You know your gaming group best, but you presented your character's plan. What's more interesting is what is the covenant's plan? How does your plan mesh with the covenant and/or every other member there?

So, you're saying the covenant has the silver, not this character? And you've sold out the character to the Quaesitors, but are the beneficiary of all the silver? And you think you're going to be asked to be a hoplite? It's not certain that the maker of these devices would be Marched, often a fine is more appropriate. And were I the other player, I'd make sure that everyone in the Tribunal deciding on his fate knew that it was the covenant that benefited, and not just him personally. You sold out yourself. You see that, right?

Questionable morality is one thing. You kicked off this thread something much worse than a questionably moral choice. I think the reason why I'm fixated on your initial desire to kill mundanes to fuel your plans, is that you're just going to do whatever is the most expedient thing on your path to ultimate power. The character, in a game I run, would be ripe for being tempted with infernal powers and promises. And I don't even do that much infernal stuff.
I don't go in for playing the pillar of virtue, per se. My magi are generally selfish and see to their own desires, but mostly want to be left alone to pursue their own goals. Sometimes goals of my magi and others align. Sometimes not.

There's a school of thought that Frank Underwood isn't so spectacularly gifted or brilliant, but that everyone else is just incompetent.

49

That's one step further from simple dreams of power towards archmage, alright. But there is some competition in House, Tribunal and Order to be 'loved', to 'make enough friends and kiss the right rings'.

How does your magus compete here, which price is he prepared to pay?
Will he become the 'useful villain' of some bigshot, while trying to claw his way up? Will he attempt to be the darling of all the older magi, to gather bennies quickly? Will he try to appear useful to many, while deceiving most - and risking to be caught by some? Will he put his life on the line again and again, just to show off as the Hoplite everybody wants on his side in Wizard's War or Wizard's March?

Cheers

50

Yes, I've done a lot of study and introspection since I started the thread. My initial reaction was to just burn anyone in my way, but I've come to realize you catch more flies with honey than vinegar (you don't really, but for the sake of the argument let's say you do). My goal isn't really to be evil, it's just to become powerful. The most powerful, in fact. There are bound to be conflicts, and I can't wait to play them out. But I'm pretty sure I can do it without drawing too much unwanted attention to myself.

As for the rest of the group- we tend to backstab each other a lot. Outside the game we joke and discuss our characters, but in game we're more like the cast of Game of Thrones- smiling at one another while grasping a dagger behind our backs. Sorry, I guess my motivations make a lot more sense when you get a feel for how much a buncha bastards we are to each other. Stepping on each other on our way to the top is a common theme.

As to selling myself out- the silver is all hidden in the ground far away from our covenant, and only he and I know how to get there. (I followed him last session and was able to figure out what he was doing- this is how I became aware of his actions) I plan to manufacture a situation where he forces me to murder him, and where I wouldn't be blamed for my actions. It should be easy enough, as his character is proud and impulsive. Then I just feign ignorance as to the location of the money, and draw on the supply throughout the rest of my career.

My covenmates couldn't stand against me if they wanted to. Perhaps your magus might have a good chance against Artorias, but if you think your puny swords will help you when they're turned aside by my terram ward and are melted into a puddle while your companion is wearing a coat of flame with 10 penetration on it, you might change your tune :3 You're also going to need to break through my 5 parma, and with 2 penetration I just don't think you've got the firepower, friend.

As to becoming a Hoplite- the book states that someone who gains a reputation for helping Quaesitors will be considered a Hoplite. I am close (read: gonna bone) with one Quaesitor, and am assisting another in his investigation of my covenmate. I'm making the right friends.. with some luck my plan will start to fall into place within the next few decades.

Frank Underwood is the devil himself. He could sell fire to a Flambeau, and his words drip from his mouth like infernally-tainted honey. If posters were a thing in the 1200's Artorias would have one of Frank hanging in his sanctum :laughing:

edit:
OneShot- Since I'm a lowly novice, I plan to ingratiate myself to the older magis at first. I've already made a somewhat-ally of Murion of Durenmar (ally is probably too strong of a word.. she doesn't hate me?) by contributing several powerful spells to her library and befriending her pet Guernicus, Winfreda. Everyone wants something, and I plan to deliver. Is there a mundane issue you need resolved? The man with the fire hands will help. A powerful beast you need slain? Ask Artorias, he'll kill anything. A magical item retrieved, an ancient spell uncovered? I'm your frigg'n guy.

As I've decided not to murder anyone outright (though I'm sure I'll be forced to at least a few times in my career), there's nothing for anyone to get upset about, except that I've become more powerful than they are.

The beauty here is that I don't need to deceive anyone. I'll just be the all-around good guy who works hard for the Order and who helps those who ask. I can gain power in this way without stepping on anyone's toes. And when I finally do reveal myself as the Dragon King and sit atop my throne of flame, everyone will be like, "Good for you, Artorias. You earned it. Couldn't have happened to a better guy."

51

You think they are coming after you with only metal weapons? You're positively cute. :smiley:

And any spell you cast is likely getting shutdown with a fast cast spell to counter it, she has PeVi counter spells for all the major offensive forms. And she's wicked fast, but also Cautious with Finesse and Cautious Sorcerer, so her spells are going off. And even with a 0 her Quickness +Finesse is 12.

Edit: I forgot she's also a fast caster, but RAW can be reasonably interpreted to not apply this to fast casting but only to initiative. My feeling is that it also applies to fast casting, and if so she's really going off at initiative point 15. She was designed mainly as an exercise to see how far one could push the fast casting rules. On an average roll of 6, she's getting off fast cast spells at 21, 15, 9, 3 and possible -3, because I have seen negative initiative totals.

52

And if that doesn't do it while she keeps you distracted I know a merinita who can summon up fleets of air faeries to attack, plus an ex miscelania who can create a bear each round. Bears are funny about not using wood or metal... sure they only have sun duration, but do you expect to fight all day?

53

The thing I love most about bears? They're flammable :3

54

Only if you can get your fire squirter working, though...

55

Sure they are, but while you have flaming bears...
sorry, had to pause after that statement, the air faeries, the vim magus are still coming after you, and you still have more bears being made...
of course a lot of it comes down to how he battle begins, but "I don't need to follow the rules because I'm so tough" can likely lead to being marched. Otherwise you are looking at attrition through multiple wizard wars as you offend a lot of people. Personally if I were in a wizard war with this character I would ignore direct confrontation and look to sneak into his lab while he's out (probably following a report I am readying for a fight with him), steal his books and enchanted items, then set it on fire. That will cost you two seasons minimum to set it back up.

56

Well, I wouldn't destroy his items, I'd use them as an AC to penetrate his vaunted magical resistance...

57

The real point that silveroak and I are trying to make is that you will not be invincible, even if you are very powerful.

58

Why would I want to be invincible? There's no fun in that. The immortal man falls into depression as he watches those he loves wither and die before him, and a character so concerned with proving himself the greatest magi would certainly feel similarly if no one rose up to present a real challenge to him.

Good luck sneaking into my volcanic tower though.. it's going to take you a long time to learn the spells necessary to be able to survive long enough to even try to get past my front door :smiley: Besides that, you're going to have to spend a few decades specializing your character specifically to battle me and to survive the torrents of mundane magma I throw your way. Sure, a band of PC's would probably eventually prevail over me.. if you spent a long time preparing for our battle. All I really have to do is 7-league step my way back home and wait for you to get bored, if things aren't going my way.

You also detail a battle involving three specialized mages.. do you think I would be battling you alone? My covenant would come to bear on you and burn each of your laboratories to the ground. I will raise a volcano just outside your Aegis if you cross me. Don't cross me :slight_smile:

59

Yes, because you've even said as much. Who do you think hired us to take you out? Those declarations of Wizard's War you thought they were sending to us were in fact promises not to do any such thing. :smiling_imp:

60

Hahaha that would certainly be an interesting turn of events! They probably wouldn't have a problem obtaining arcane connections for me either.. hmmmm perhaps I'll need to come up with some contingency plans for each of them :smiling_imp: