Not Roberto, except the Aegis idea. All other examples are things that did occur in the dim and distant past; to Antonio of Flambeau (Carmelo) and/or Rodrigo of Mercere (Scott J). So it quite concievably could happen again. I don't plan out everything. Stuff just happens sometimes.
The Aegis idea is something Roberto is indeed planning though.
And in the distant past, in the previous edition could one just not decide to use vis and turn a spell into a ritual? Mind you, I don't recall the exact mechanics. And I, too, used the Field Aegis as a story element in Bibracte, long before you joined.
Re : creating a Field Aegis under the seasonal rules
Since the Aegis is more or less a Ritual spell adaptation of the Parma, maybe a magus could adapt the standard "protection of another" fold to work with one, allowing an existing Aegis to be temporarily projected into a small area around an arcane connection at a cost of vis or something? Maybe the other folds in TL could be adapted with the right insight too.
In 4th edition, you didn't turn spells into rituals with vis. You simply boosted Duration (or other parameters) by sppending vis equal to the magnitude. For example, CrCo20 The Chirurgeon's Healing Touch was not a Ritual spell at all. It was R: Touch/Near, T: Sun/Instant, and T: Ind. For the cost of 4 pawns of vis you could boost the range to Near or the duration to Instant, or for 8 pawns you could do both. It took only a round to cast in all cases.
As a side note, I do not favor "story elements". It is an aspect of this edition I have learned to live with. I run old school style, like an AD&D game, a giant sandbox.
But that is neither here nor there.
No offense, but I dislike this idea as well. I honestly really prefer the status quo on this.
If you did not quote the only part with allow you to rebuff my point, you would see that I am still waiting on your proposal for lesser ritual... as long as you have not post it, my point remains.
You want me to agree with you on something which is incomplete. I won't.
There are example in Magi of Hermes of character who are rather lonely. The magus travalling North Africa and Desert is to some extent self-reliant, the sea-mage is another one. They might have a home base, but they spent a significant amount of time away of their covenant. I want to be able to create magus who can do that, including casting adequate rituals relatively "easily" (ie within a manageable timeline - risks of botch might be there, but time factor is more important).
So you need a specialist at least once, as well as each time you want to improve it. What about other rituals (CotMT, Illusion of the Misplaced Castle, The Shrouded Glen) ? It means that several outsiders will be aware of the covenant defenses. In fact, Illusion of the Misplaced Castle become obsolete, no point in spending a season for a Sun duration Ritual. As an emergency rituals, it is no more applicable.
If you cannot do something that you could do before - no matter how narrow - it is reducing option. One PC (slightly paranoid, but it seems to be a common trait amongst my players, maybe I am to blame), designed a special tattoo ink using vis to store wis in his tattoos. It is not fool proof, but his method is not know, so unless carefully scrutinised, it will work.
+1 & Infinity.
JL, old Broseph, this sums up everything I have been trying to express all along.
As for the self reliant magus, maybe there is and maybey there isn't such a thing, maybe there can be or maybe their cannot be such a magus.
But a player should be allowed to try to be if they so desire.
Two anectdotal experiences on that subject. The first from ArM4 and the second from ArM5.
In the Mythic Nineties, I used to most often play one-on-one with my buddy Carmelo. Like two or three nights a week we would hang out, party a bit, and improve Ars Magica. He played Antonio in the original Andorra saga. Once in a while another buddy Scott would come by and play Rodrigo, but mostly it was just two of us. So playing Antonio, Carmello had to be exceedingly self reliant. He had to know a variety of attack and defense spells amd how to deal with opponents as a lone magus with maybe a few grogs. He had to cast the Aegis (from text, which was no big deal back then). He had to be able to heal himself. He had to be able to solve most every problem on his own.
Granted, we were hippies in the 90's, and problems I threw at him were not always too complex. But still, the point is that my early-early Ars Magica experience is based on the concept of a self reliant magus.
Fast forward to the modern day. A character you know well and admire (I know you do, don't lie). Roberto of Flambeau. Three different covenants and two Alpha storygides. I put him in my saga recently to preserve him but have hopes of yet one day trasfering him to someone elses saga.
Self Reliant.
By no means do I mean to imply he is all powerful and never ever needs anyone's help. But he has never been permanently ties to any specific group of other characters, or any specific paradigm other than cannon. The way I try to play him, he never expects more than his fair share and pulls his own weight. He doesn't depend on someone else being a specialist in an area he never plans to worry about studying. He is still young, and if I get to develop him further as I plan he will know a level 20 Aegis an cast it to penetrate if need be in another saga. He won't overshadow the healing specialist but can serve as a backup healer (like Elan in Order of the Stick 
). He will have those fabrication rituals and a broad spectrum of offensive & defensive & utility spells.
Not stat boostong rituals though. I also think it is a cop out, though I never discouraged it and it only came up once years ago. Maybe as a Familiar enchantment that can be turned on and off. Going Super-Sayien now and again might be fun.
That was a tangent. I'm sorry :mrgreen:
...
but this is the same no matter what version of Ritual magics you use. If the characters can not invent the spell they must hire someone to cast it for them.
Uhh, no, your point is completely invalid I've specifically made a mention of Greater Ritauls and Lesse rituals, with the mention that only Greater Rituals (which I specified) would take a season. I excluded healing from the Greater Rituals, so you can deduce that healing won't take a season. I did speculate once about different timing intervals, even a minute per magnitude, so there is a fair amount of evidence within this thread that healing rituals will not take a season. So, including them in your reasons to not like what I'm doing and giving it the reason that it would take a season is wrong.
What I want you to do is to recognize that what I'm doing has not made healing someone take an entire season of a magus's time.
What exactly are all of these rituals that need cast? For what it's worth, they all require that the spell be invented, and with a few exceptions they don't get recast very often. How many Mystic Towers does a magus (a self-reliant one need?) How much disposable Terram Vis income does he have to put one up wherever he desires?
You make the Aegis, or Shrouded Glen or Bountiful Harvest once for a given area (the same duration as it takes to invent the spell) and you pay for upkeep. If you don't pay for upkeep, you recast it, similar to the Longevity ritual. In your case, you have to know the spell. In my case, anyone who can read the lab text for the given location can start the ritual and/or maintain it.
No, that is not it at all. It's not even close to what I said. But you could hire a specialist to create your Aegis for you, just like your hire a Longevity specialist to create your Longevity Ritual. Does he know how it works? Sure. Does that offer him some advantage? No, because he's not involved in the casting of said ritual.
Uh, what? So, one character stores vis in his tattoos? Setting aside whether it's possible under RAW, so? This character has vis in his body so that he can cast a variety of rituals as they exist under RAW, just in case? How many ritual spells does he know that he can take advantage of this capability?
I'm not stopping anyone from trying to do anything. Some things will have to be done differently, which is no different than it was in the transition from on older edition to a newer one.
In fact, I'm opening up the possibility of having and maintaining an Aegis to a much broader range of characters. Jerbi Jerbiton moves to the city, finds a nice house in a lacuna with no Divine aura, he hires an Aegis specialist to come and design his Aegis in a season, because he's too busy living the life, and when it's done he pays the man and casts the Aegis and keeps it powered as long as he lives in that location. Is he not self-reliant because he hired a specialist to do a one time job?
It's the classic make or buy decision. As a chef, you can appreciate that you can make almost anything and it would be good to eat, but sometimes, and in some situations, it's a lot easier to go to McDonald's, buy the rotisserie chicken, or whatever. Sometimes you don't have a couple of hours to roast a chicken, but you really want roasted chicken, ya know? And, while I love a crispy skin on a chicken, sometimes I need chicken now, and put up with the rotisserie chicken and rubery skin, because it is good enough.
Mark, let me tell you something. No, I don't like Roberto. Here's my other tangent.
I think Roberto is a bit of a Mary Sue. You've even described him as your proxy, in Ars Magica, it's how you wish you were. You are too close to Roberto, and I can't tell where you stop and he begins. Now, I understand that people like to love their characters, but it is hard when bad things happen to them and makes it much easier to take things personally. And that's why I always try and put something into my characters that I dislike about them, so I can come to a place and handle it when things turn south for the character.
Hi,
Costco rotisserie chicken is yummy! Just saying. Neither I nor my gf is able to do better, though this may say more about our culinary skills than anything else. For $5, it's cheap too. So any rules mechanic that is like Costco rotisserie chicken must also be good.
McDonald's, not so much.
When designing game mechanics, it is important to keep this in mind.
Anyway,
Ken
Now you get it.
That is your standard answer every time someone disaggrees with you. Just dismiss dissenting opinions as irrelevant.
Yes indeed! JL, it is the time factor that kills it for me. It totally messes up logistics. Both as a PC and SG. And any sort of magus is a myth. It is rediculous to call one fiction more of a myth than another when they are both based on unreal concepts of magic and a society of wizards.
Or learned. Spells can still be taught.
Maybe not in your sagas. But in others they do. If you were just discussing an HR idea, that would be a different matter. But you are advocating that everyone should conform to your standard and appeal to your aesthetics. And that is just bogus.
As many as the player decides. That is not for you to determine for a saga you are not part of.
Again, this is not your decision for someone else's saga. Maybe a lot.
In everyone else's case, anyone that can read the text and uses it can cast it in any location. You have failed to demonstrate how your idea is better than RAW, or even half as good.
My God, JL, take a step back and realize how Orwellian you sound right now.
Quoted for TRUTH!!!
Not yet, but you want to. You want to stop people from casting an Aegis in the field. You want to stop them from conjuring a ring of towers in less than a week. You want to stop people from doing all sorts of things. As I said, if this was just an HR idea it would be different. But you have stated your desire to impose your manifesto on everyone. And that is unconcionable and I cannot appove or condone that.
Did I mention Orwell yet? Read 1984 and Animal Farm. You are spouting propoganda buddy. Step back and check yourself.
Now for the rest, I would like to apologize to everyone else. JL has chosen me as a beloved rival, and I refuse to hold PM debates with him. But I am a bit twisted in that I do enjoy debating with him.
Here I can safely say you have no idea what you are talking about. I'll just leave it at that.
Didn't say you liked him. I said you know him well and admire him. I know you do :mrgreen:
You are Roberto's biggest fan. You follow all his adventures, you look up his past actions in previous games. You use him as an example all the time. You've studied my posts going back years and it feels kind of freaky sometimes.
I would even go so far as to say you love Roberto.
He is your very favorite character of all time ever. Deny it if you want. We both know the truth.
And I know you wish you had the power to kill him off. Yep. Not someone else. You want to be the one that does it, for so deep does your obsession run.
No idea what that means. But the name is Maryanne, thank you very much.
(long story and I ain't sharing)
There you go again. Memorizing off the cuff remarks I made Lord knows how long ago. Freaky bro.
And honestly, I would not want to really be that guy. He had a miserable childhood, lives a hard life, has bigotted opinions concerning women and alternative lifestyles, doesn't get laid even a tenth as much as I do (and that ain't a lot), he has no social life, and all sorts of things that I am so glad I am not.
I will help you figure it out. I end at the fingertips, he starts at the keyboard as I type. He fights in wars and has dangerous adventures. I drink and womanize. He is not nearly as intelligent as I, and I am not as strong nor as good of a fighter and I know no magic. I am real, he is fictonal.
Mark, there's so much wrong in your post, you're quoting me badly out of context that I'm not even going to attempt to rebut each individual point.
As to my ability to recall stuff, yeah, I can. If it is noteworthy, I'll remember it. I forget important stuff all the time. I don't forget how you like to manipulate me. I have, as you suggest a freaky memory.
Calling my "sound" Orwellian? You are attacking me, not my idea. Now, that, coupled with quoting me out of context is Orwellian, dude. I'm going to refuse to debate you on this any longer. Well, you present facts to me in such a way to come to a conclusion that you would like, rather than something that is closer to the truth. Who speaks propaganda? Who throws down the bombast in an attempt to defend his ideas.
Whether it is in PM or otherwise, saying I have chosen you as a Beloved Rival is puffing yourself up to a level even Roberto would admire. You moved from attacking my ideas to attacking me, by calling me Orwellian, saying I declared you a Beloved Rival. And you don't get what I'm saying about Roberto, like your statement about me not knowing what I'm talking about regarding cooking (you don't know me, you don't know what I have done in my life), you don't know what you're talking about, and leave it at that.
Hi,
I didn't realize there would be so much passion around ritual magic house rules! Or around being agreed with. Or something.
That said, I think I learned something very important from this thread: Marko gets laid! From time to time. Way to go, bro. 
Anyway,
Speaking of ritual magic, it occurs to me that Creo Pot Roast is ritual magic than neither I nor my girlfriend has Mastered, and our spell seems to have unstable experimental side effects. Maybe we're using the wrong kind of vis....
Pot roast starts with the cut of meat. I like a chuck roast.
Season liberally with salt and pepper, brown both sides for about 4 minutes each on medium heat in a good quality cast iron dutch oven (enameled is fine). If there is a nice ridge of fat on one side, I like to sear that down for another couple of minutes Then add 1 cup of a good drinkable red wine, I like Cabernet for a pot roast, and veggies with a large chop: the mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery), bay leaf and thyme sprigs, and a tablespoon or two of tomato paste. Add potatoes, if you like and roast for a few hours or until the roast is your desired degree of doneness (I like a probe thermometer to reach 145 Fahrenheit for roast, a fair bit less for steaks.). Rest the roast for 15 minutes, then slice.
I like Jeff Smith's pot roast with dill pickles, which he claimed was Polish in origin. Whether or not it was true, I still like it, but it can be an acquired taste depending upon how much you like dill pickles and sour cream...
I apologize for going overboard with my rhetoric. And I am not as passionate as I seem. I was just having fun. Like a shark I smelled blood, and went in for the kills.
If this was all just about an HR idea, then I was out of line. I was under the mistaken impression that this idea was being proposed for the RAW of a potential new edition.
Well, no, I am proposing it for a new edition, should it ever come up. The premise being that Ritual Magic is poorly integrated within the setting. As it is now, rituals are no risk and largely of bookkeeping or incredibly risky if the SG says it is so, or rituals are just always risky, depending upon your reading of RAW. If a rule is never used, or just ignored, the rule is unnecessary. If it's applied capriciously or haphazardly (botch dice on some rituals, but not others) then it has all the hallmarks of an unfair rule, because sometimes a ritual isn't a risk, and other times a ritual is a total risk. I'd like a system that handles the riskiness of rituals a bit more consistently than SG/troupe fiat.
As an SG, like you, I'm not a fan of telling players no. Saying that OK, it's a risky ritual and so you have 15 botch dice (exaggeration) is nearly the same as saying no, especially if the PC does botch. The idea being, well, you knew the risks is cold comfort to me as a player or the SG. Time for rituals, is rarely a factor under the current system. And whether or not you see it, there is little difference between spending time learning an Aegis under the RAW now, and working an Aegis as I propose, with the notable exception of the field Aegis. The other example you provide of a ring of towers, could be down by a formulaic spell, if they didn't need to be as elaborate, and would last long enough for a field operation. If a person is working the ritual for their covenant I could be convinced to allow some flexibility to allow multiple castings in the area, though they would all look identical, and they only work in the area identified by spell text...
I don't have a good answer for the field Aegis, but then I have this idea that magi should be safest at home, and when they go out into the world they have to deal with stuff in a less than optimal environment. I mean, if someone wants to spend a season and can zip back and forth between the point in the field where they want to cast the Aegis and their lab, I'd be fine with that. It's also representative of the objective that ritual spells extend the power of magi in powerful ways that formulaic and spontaneous spells can't master.
Just because the current RAW allows something, or you did something in the past doesn't mean it is a valid reason for the status quo.
Hi,
If this is in response to me, no apology needed. I was speaking about the conversation, not about one or the other of you. (And, fwiw, I am totally on your side regarding this rule.) I've been reading both of you for years, find that you both hold strong opinions (not at all rare on a gaming board!) and until this conversation never let the river flood over. No harm done.
It's not as though you called anyone a Diedne! 
By the way, I'm still waiting for your Creo Pot Roast ritual! /97389791234789
Anyway,
Ken
The apology was ment for Jonathan. In my enthusiasm I got a bit to viscious with my rhetoric. I know I am totally right about this. But I could have been more diplomatic.
Thing is, as was stated, this is more than an HR idea. It is an agenda to change RAW if and when a new edition is ever written. And I feel compelled to oppose that.
If it ain't broke (and it ain't), don't fix it.
But seeing the writing on the wall, I have no worries that this idea will gain any traction amongst the powers that be.
I am very sorry that I am unable to find a more diplomatic way to word this. It is just not a good idea. However, I will agree to disagree and leave it alone (for now).
Yeah, my brilliance is unappreciated by most, and attacked by Marko. Given Marks past exploits, I find it comforting, to be honest.
Current Ritual Magic might not be broken, I mean it works great when the risks are handwaved away.