Hey everyone - I'm wondering if anyone has a collection of pregenerated characters for new players? I'm currently looking at that as a project, since I need a few throwaway pre-gens for something I'm planning early next year for new players.
I'm ideally hoping to have 1 magus for each house at about +30 years, using minimal/none rules outside of core book. (Might just advance the pregens in the core book.)
I'm looking at making a few myself over the next few weeks as time permits, but was hoping that someone else has a stock of them I might be able to sneak numbers from.
Magi of Hermes has some really cool concept explorations and advancements, but I'm actually looking for a relatively basic semi-generic set of characters I can hand to a completely new player and be used in a one-shot. I can't see grabbing the experimental Bonisagus and the weaver Ex-Misc and then sending them on a Provencal demon hunt.
I'd suggest combing the games here, as well as the saga sites listed on durenmar.
As an example, you can find some other at Andorra although, depending on your saga, you might with to change the age or xp a little.
In the same vein, I stated 5 tremere concepts, with xp similar to what you can find in the core books. You can probably change at least some of them to another house
It is possible that the alternative is not to use more rules but to make the characters closer to gauntlet. It is still worth asking what makes a magus abstain from further initiations for 30 years.
Not every Magi of the Mystery Cults undergoes Initiations of his House. Some because none of them fit their concept, some because they haven't raised their House Lore to 4, so are not deemed worthy yet to be initiated.
Honestly, I have a Verditius about 22 years out of Gauntlet. Who has not pursued House Mysteries yet, for two (2) reasons:
Lack of need. So far, there really hasn't been a Mystery that would've come so much in handy that it would've been worth the time, instead of just collecting XPs or building devices. Sure, Enchanted Casting Tools are nice, but why not just make a Lesser Device to cast the spell for me, no risk of botching? Items of Quality? Cool idea, but is it a "better" use of my time than making a charged device? Especially considering the time and resources I'd need to devote to actually initiating the Mystery? Not so far. Etc.
Hubris.Quite honestly, I couldn't be bothered.
In my experience, it is usually better to introduce new players via characters that use only a single book, rather than multiple, for their first character. And it doesn't actually appear to be a matter of pages or amount of information necessary. It appears to be correlated specifically to the number of books, meaning physically separated objects, that are necessary. But this is just the casual observations of a single individual, not some systematic study. Your mileage may vary. I've certainly seen exceptions myself.
Yeah, I'm probably doing core book, and maybe 1-2 odd virtues (Like Linguist, easy enough to understand) Though I don't PLAN to add new virtues, I want to leave a little bit of options open.
To further expand a little on my observations:
If you're introducing a single new player into an existing saga - especially if said player is already:
Experienced with such concepts as rules and roleplaying, usually in the form of a veteran roleplayer new to Ars Magica
AND
Known to and familiar with 1 or more other members of the troupe, typically by having played long campaigns with 1 or more other members of the troupe, in other games.
then is might work with more than 1 book for the first character.
If even one of these conditions are not met, succesrate drops, in my experience.
I've also started poking at the idea of taking the pre-gen magi in the Core book (who I know you all love and adore for their mechanical power) and seeing how tricky it is to advance them into the next 15 years. It's interesting, because without a saga to be in, I have trouble deciding what spells they would feel a need for.
Some random chart (or charts) with things like
"What kind of problem do I face?" with 2+ ways to resolve it (spend xp in a mundane skill, develop a spell...)
You may ignore it, but it gets bigger over time, requiring bigger investments.
For example, these 5 years, you must put 10 points into Folk Ken or create a lvl 15 mentem spell related to emotions. If you don't, for each 5 years thereafter, this increases by 5xp or levels.
(totally random and not thought-out numbers)
