redcap Rilcheau - development

Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: Light of Andorra
1

Age 26 out of gauntlet-
Int 2 Per 1
Pre 5 Com 1
Str -2 Sta -2
Dex 1 Quick 1

Flaws:
urser(minor -1)
ambitious(major -3)
Lycanthrope(major -3)
busybody(minor -1)
blackmail(minor -1)
incomprehensible(minor -1)

Virtues:
great presence(minor +1)
great presence(minor +1)
redcap(major +3)
linguist(minor +1)
puissant leadership(minor +1)
affinity for leadership(minor +1)
good parens(minor +1)
magic items(minor +1)
well traveled(free +0)

Abilities:
Occitain:Provencal 5
Area Lore: Nice 2
Spanish 4
French 4
Basque 4
leadership 7+2
intrigue 4
Latin 5
Ancient Greek 4
Folk Ken 4
philosophae 4
medicine 4

Personality traits:
Maniupulative: +3
Polite: +2

Enchanted items:
aura of enobled presence: 2x a day, environmental trigger (sunrise/sunset): level 14
posing the silent question, unlimited usage: level 30
loss of but a moment's memory: unlimited usage: level 30

2

Leadership 9?! :open_mouth:

9 seems high for any ability at 26 years old; what justifies him having a leadership that high?

3

actually 7+2, with affinity and puissance

4

Okay, that makes more sense. And I get that with affinity the rules "allow" you to have a 7, it just still seems very high to me for someone to have at the young age of 26. But if I'm the only one that thinks so, then ignore me.

5

Sounds like the sort of leadership someone like Alexander the Great would have (there's a guy with affinity and puissant if ever I saw one!).

6

Alexander would be twice that. Easilly. Puissant, Affinity, Majr Essential Virtue, Presence +5 Mythic, and unbund by the limits of age. And Mythic Blood, for he was the son of Zeus.

7

Would it be possible for Rilcheau to have been assigned a sanctum in the Mercere tower, possibly as an appointed custodian of the portal (I'm not certain what special negotiations may exist for the portal he might need to be aware of)

8

There's some confusion as to what the Mercere tower is for. Originally, Marko said that it was a tower Andorra had to dedicate to a gifted Mercere magus, should one join the covenant. I remember that particularly because all the other towers were full and I thought that it gave Lucas a tower to use if he ever came back to Andorra. I had assumed that the Mercere had one of the buildings inside the castle.

Now it isn't so clear as to whether the Mercere guildhall is in the tower. I'm confused.

That having been said, I'm assuming that all the Redcaps stationed at Andorra have sanctums. I mean, it goes with being a magus, right? I certainly assume that Cecelia has one (though that's in Sa Dragonerra).

9

Okay, because Rilcheau will use his lab- for philosophical research instead of magical...

10

Hey I just noticed a couple of things you need to look at...I didn't say anything before because I wanted to check and make sure I was thinking of the right thing.

First, the flaw you have listed as Urser, is actually Usurer (that's what I wanted to check on and make sure I knew what you were trying to say). With that, you need to have some ranks in Profession: Accounting per the box in the Merchants section of the Houser Mercere chapter. Also, you forgot to list the level 4 negative reputation of Usurer that you get for that flaw. That's really important since Usurer's were basically hated in the Middle Ages.

11

I'll take the ability post gauntlet, 2 years at 24 points a year (2 seasons free study and 2 seasons exposure per year), 30 points into profession:accounting for level 3,
3 formulas: tonic of gold, Inception:Does N have a dark secret? (base 5, bianary, level:5) and smoke oil, and 3 points into Area Lore:Andorra

12

He ain't that far.
Presence +5? Check.
Puissant and Affinity? Check.
Major Essential Virtue? Is that the thing that would allow him to replace his Presence of +5 by a +6 in specific situations? Not that much of a difference
Mythic presence would be the biggest change, once per day.
Unbound by the limits of Age: That's just House Ruling, so you can't judge the character on this.
So, IMO, the comparison is quite accurate.

My question would be: What's the point of such a high Presence + Leadership, especially for a supposed spymaster type? (If that's the character mentioned in the other thread. If he's supposed to be the greatest leader of men in ME, my post is irrelevant). As ever, a little less focus would probably be a good thing for this goal.
=>
I'd lower a little leadership, take some guile (to lie and cheat!!!), maybe some charm.
You could consider lowering presence by 1+ point, taking social contacts, or Great Characteristics and improve Com or Intelligence.
Maybe trade either Affinity or Puissant presence for the same thing in Guile?

13

28 agents is the point. He is a spymaster, not a spy.

14

You can also use Intrigue to determine the number of agents under your command (as per Lords of Men, pg. 22). So that might fit better than being the consummate general of all things.

15

Leadership is still required to impress the potential agent.

16

Sigh...

What we're trying to say is that, maybe, not every character needs to be a hammer + nail combo...

If you want andorra to have a spy network, which is, IMO, a great and important idea, it may make more sense to have, say, 2 or 3 more balanced grog spymasters, each with their own smaller network*, than yet another "best of the world" character who just happens to settle here to disappear in the background. 16 + 16 > 28, for example :wink:

  • One could be specialized with nobles, another with the church, both having Social Contacts in their area of expertise. And you may have another with contacts in neighboring covenants, should you wish it so.
17

I ask for the two of you to find compromise.Siveroak, Fixer has a point. Fixer, Silveroak does do a lot of work for the saga, givea ittle leeway.
And, as I understand, the guy is a Redcap and not a memberof the covenant. Roberto is planning to make Bernat Spymasterof the Andorran Guard, a Warrent Officer in charge of military intelligence. It could be interesting to see how two or more intelligence networks interact. Arachne should star up her own network too :smiley:

18

His "exceptional" leadership is not high enough to lead a football team, but it is being insisted he is so unbalanced as to be comparable to Alexander the Great. I have trouble seeing this.

19

No way! She's too busy, and it's outside her duties!

I dunno what's this comment about a football team... ???

Silveroak, my problem is not with the skill level per se, or with the one character. It's with everything that surround it.

In short, if I had to ask you a question, it would be: Must each and every of your characters be totally optimized for one given field, to the detriment of others?
It feels a little like having Kennedy, Da Vinci, Klauzevitz, Musashi, Marylin, Elvis (Thus Cannonball's comparison with Alexander the Great)... all come up right after the other to hole themselves here. One is great, 2 is awesome, but after a while, it gets tedious, ridiculous, and makes every other PC looks lame in comparison, especially as these characters are, at best, seldom played.

Can't you just relax and do a character that is just good instead of awesome? And if you really want characters that have a score of 7, what's so bad in having a 40-years old guy with a score of 7 (without affinity!) instead of yet another genius who is just as good at 25?

This is why I suggested you make 2 or 3 less-optimized grogs under, say, the command of Fleur. If your goal is to have a huge spy network, it works better, without feeling like a "better" version of El Hassan just came to serve us. And grogs, by definition, are background characters. Not companions.

This will be my last post on this character (or at least I will try :confused: ). If you haven't understood my points already, it's useless, a waste of time for us both, and can only... I have not the words... Make you feel bad needlessly. Like you see one of my posts, you know I'm gonna disagree, and your heart sinks in. So useless and damaging.

20

We have a fundamental disagreement about what these 'optimized' characters mean then, because to me Alexander, Elvis, Roosevelt etc. are simply well above the scope of the character creation rules. the rules aim for a particular range of characters from average to somewhat exceptional, but I do not see these characters- any of them- in the league you are implying, any more than a newly gauntleted magus is ready to take on a dragon head to head. Where I stand 5 is average for your chosen field, 7 is above average, 9-11 are pretty good. You seem to thin that 11 is best in the world, even when I have made one or two characters that I consider great (still below world class) with scores at 15.