Hi,
AM5 is good in many ways, but starting a campaign quickly and smoothly is not one of them. The pre-game preparations for an AM saga often take longer than the saga itself! Matters are far worse when the campaign involves magi with experience after Gauntlet.
In this post, I do not discuss the larger problem, regarding the time it takes to decide what the rules really are and the time it takes to create a covenant. But I do offer suggestions specific to higher level play. Really, many of these problems do not happen when using the rules in the core book, yet many players do not like these rules because they bring different problems.
Overall character creation process:
The GM or group should decide on a default Aura, a set of default gains for a season which can be any of {study xp, teaching xp, training xp, adventure xp + vis, exposure xp plus some vis, exposure xp plus some number of Mythic Pounds}. I recommend leaving xp generic; for example, a season of studying philosophy or studying Ignem or studying to master a rare spell is worth the same amount of xp. Finding an apprentice or familiar costs 1 season of exposure with no other gain; it can also involve seasons of adventure but that has the usual gains. Note that the absence of most activities involving exposure xp and all lab activity is deliberate.
The GM of group should decide on a standard amount of vis and money available to each magus, per year of activity post-Gauntlet. There should be a standard longevity ritual that effectively costs nothing (it does cost something but it all comes out in the wash), though a magus can also make his own. If you want to allow magi to start the game with stuff they have acquired, especially enchanted items, establish costs for these up front.
Now create a magus who has just completed Gauntlet, as usual, except that the limit of 10 virtues and flaws is not used, as described below.
The magus then gets to live for some number of seasons, up to the start of play. Reserve some number of seasons to be used for lab activities. Spend all of the other seasons on the "default gains" described in the first paragraph.
Choose an appropriate Warping Score and apparent age.
Do not roll on the aging table. Not even once.
OPTIONAL: Use some of your reserved lab seasons now. You do not have to use any of them! At any time during play, you can stage a flashback, during which you spend a lab season using your start-of-play stats and develop the spells and items you need/want. This does interrupt the flow of the game, but also gets things going much faster, since it postpones much of the usual blather that keeps a game from starting. It also helps players get used to the flow of that particular saga, creating magics that work in context.
Recommended pre-game lab use: Seasons training apprentices; unless the apprentice enters play you can probably just account for the seasons for your character. Creating a talisman and attuning bonuses. Creating a super longevity ritual. Probably other things I have missed. Creating spells and items that you know are essential and that are worth delaying start of game to achieve, especially spells that are to be extremely mastered.
Your magus is now ready to start play.
-
Magi can have as many virtues as they like, of whatever kind they like specifically including Initiations and Major Hermetic Virtues, but they must be balanced by flaws. These virtues may be due to initiations or twilight or journeys to the magic realm or gifts from God (or Satan); it doesn't matter. The extra flaws simulate botches, bad twilight, aging mishaps (think of the flaws as an alternate aging mechanic), initiation sacrifices, curses; it doesn't matter. Do not use initiation scripts, but explicitly do require the specific flaws that are mandated for specific virtues, such as Glamour or Criamon paths; the initiation occurred as normal but the process is being handwaved, because the mechanics do not lend themselves to pre-game prep.
-
Optional but recommended: If a magus exceeds the normal v/f allotment (10 total, 1 Major Hermetic Virtue), at least one of the flaws must be a Major Hermetic Flaw.
-
No pre-game breakthroughs from the PCs.
-
As always, a virtue or flaw or rule can be banned from a saga even if it exists in a book, and entire books can be banned as well. Worthy candidates for leaving on the cutting room floor include Faerie Correspondence, the rules from Covenants governing correspondence xps and lab improvements, the Variable Power virtue from RoP:M, and the alternate Merinita Outer Mystery. You have been warned.
-
Assume that lab texts are available for all spells explicitly listed in the main rulebook for reserved lab seasons. Guidelines that seem explicit are not explicit! However, spells with a "General" level should be treated as though a lab text is available at the desired magnitude. Assume that every other spell, including those in supplements, and every enchantment effect, need to be invented from scratch by the PCs.
-
Do not allow any activity that requires rolling dice before the start of play.
-
If you allow magi to start play with a familiar, establish universal criteria up front and stick to them. Simple, and strongly recommended: A being whose Might exceeds half of a magus' lab total to bind it will always refuse the familiar bond. Mildly recommended: The base creature will always be either a "normal" animal (lions, pigeons, snakes, boars but not dragons, rocs or unicorns) with some power-ups, or a creature whose statistics have been officially published, unless the magus has a virtue such as Spirit Familiar or Faerie Magic that allows a weird familiar. Recommended: Be strict about familiars that players design, but be lenient about familiars that come straight from a published source, because starting with a published familiar takes less time. Very very highly recommended: For some old-edition flavor, encourage players to take normal animals as familiars: For every level that the lab total exceeds the minimum binding requirement of a magically-aligned normal animal with no Might (not zero Might but no Might at all, effectively a normal animal with animal rather than magical qualities), let both the magus and familiar gain either 1 magnitude of effects instilled into the bond, 3/4 a seasons' worth of default study or training xp (divide, round up), or 1/8 of a minor virtue or animal quality (8 full levels to gain); the familiar and magus get different benefits from this, but the magus' benefits should make sense for the chosen animal the familiar's for the chosen magus.
-
When creating a covenant, don't bother with books. Just provide seasonal SQs for general categories. I recommend a "normal" SQ being 10 across the board, but a wretched covenant in a low-powered saga can be significantly worse and a dominant covenant in a high-powered saga might do much better. Or, you can spend time generating a covenant library.
-
If you use a flashback to experiment, the surprise effects occur as the spell is being cast. So a modified effect or fatal spell flaw only starts to happen now (the spell seemed to work correctly before...), a triple botch in the lab becomes a triple botch right now (maybe worse, if the casting roll also botches), and so on. Surprise! On the positive side, you are not likely to destroy your lab.
These rules will produce magi of similar power to magi that have actually been played, but the exact benefits will be different.
Magi that have been played are more likely to have imbalanced v/fs, but have also risked death. In a similar way, initiation scripts that have been played though can fail or have side effects or have unforeseen sacrifices, whereas initiation scripts that have simply been assumed are pure benefit, except for compensatory flaws: A script with 3 dangerous Quests is not dangerous at all if they all occur before play. Sacrificing your beloved Talisman means nothing, and there is no risk of something bad happening while you create a new one. Etc. It also saves time: I have noticed that a lot of time is spent justifying optimal scripts, maximizing journeys to the Magic Realm, and so on. By simply permitting all combinations of (permitted) virtues and mystery virtues (because let's face it, players can always come up with a story to justify this, so just let them) but forcing these to be balanced.
On the other hand, magi can develop exactly the magic items and Formulaic spells they need during flashbacks. That is a very, very powerful benefit. Also, all of this lab activity benefits from the magus' full scores, and possibly a fully-powered familiar (which also was bound using the latest lab total). A magus developed over time is likely to be much less efficient.
It is also downright helpful not having to worry about death from old age during character creation.
So, magi with higher Arts and more spells, but not as many extra virtues. Sounds good to me.
Problems are largely amortized rather than solved, but that is a real benefit if you want to start playing.
Anyway,
Ken
There are other design philosophies.