can you add a quarantine area across the river
How's this:
KEY:
- Manor House
- Kitchen
- Kitchen Garden
- Bailey
- River Tower
- Lake Tower
- East Longhouse
- West Longhouse
- Cabins
- Cattle Barn
- Sheep Barn
- Smithy
- Stable
- Mill
- Granary
- Smoke House
- Well House
- Ice House
- Guest House
- Boat House and Dock
- Quarantine House
So, I was running some numbers and it looks like our base Loyalty is around -2. (The covenfolk are not precisely satisfied with their lot, but will not betray their masters under most circumstances, unless offered appropriate inducements. Knowing that if the covenant fails they will lose their home and sustenance is usually enough to keep them in line. They are still wary around the magi.) We might squeak in to -1, though. That assumes base Loyalty from our various Gifts, adding in bonuses from our +1 Living Conditions and our autocrat. (Do we have a turb captain?)
I was wondering if we wanted to do anything to pull our loyalty up from its negative value. (Maybe give better equipment or raise wages.)
I purchased a Turb captain. I will get him written up.
I was trying to figure out finances as well, and to do that I need to know a little more information. The main piece of info is how many people we have. The bare minimum is as follows:
Magi: 6
Companions: 2 (apprentices)
Specialists: 7 (autocrat, 2 soldiers, survivalist, 3 teachers)
Craftsmen: 4 (Blacksmith, Carpenter, Glass blower, Weaver)
Dependents: 1 (Henry)
Grogs: 6 (one shield grog for each magus)
Servants: 13 (the minimum number for the above covenant members)
Teamsters: 8 (the minimum number for the above covenant members)
That's 45 people minimum. It assumes no laborers, no teamsters, no dependents beyond Henry, and no horses.
After that, there's the question of how much we'll pay for labs. 1 MP/year? 3 MP/year? I started with the assumption of 1 MP/year and figured we could always go up from there if we had extra money.
Then there's weapons and armor. We don't have that many grogs, so 1 MP/year seems right.
This gives us a yearly expenditure of 87.4 MP, which is well within our means, since we make (or will make once we're set up) 200 MP/year.
That tells me that we can afford more people and better labs. Furthermore, since we brought people with us, it seems to me reasonable to assume that we have more than the bare minimum of people. Just to get some numbers to work with, I looked at the following numbers as seeming reasonable. Feel free to shoot down my numbers. They're just meant to be a starting point for discussion.
Magi: 6
Companions: 2 (apprentices)
Specialists: 7 (autocrat, 2 soldiers, survivalist, 3 teachers)
Craftsmen: 4 (Blacksmith, Carpenter, Glass blower, Weaver)
Dependents: 15 (this seemed reasonable)
Grogs: 15 (one shield grog for each magus, plus 9 additional grogs)
Servants: 15 (the minimum number for the above covenant members)
Laborers: 10 (a number I picked out of the air)
Teamsters: 7 (the minimum number for the above covenant members)
Horses: 4 (this seemed reasonable)
That's 72 people plus 4 horses.
I also assumed 3 MP/year for labs, moved up to 2 MP/year for weapons & armor, and tossed in half-again wages for the covenfolk, since we had the cash. That all lead to a yearly expenditure of 125.5 MP, which is still well within our means. We could pay the grogs double and still be in the black by a fair bit. We could also hire more covenfolk. I just figured that 72 people was more than enough to start out with. That's each of us bringing 11 people along with us. Some may have brought more, some less. Of course, if people think they brought additional people with them, we could always up the size of the covenant by even more. We have the cash.
Given these numbers, what are people's thoughts?
Dull, rainy day at home, so I'm working on a backlog of Ars Magica stuff.
Just to tally things up, we have the following vis sources:
Creo: 0
Intellego: 4
Muto: 3
Perdo: 4
Rego: 4
Animal: 2
Aquam: 0
Auram: 0
Corpus: 5
Herbam: 0
Ignem: 0
Imaginem: 3
Mentem: 2
Terram: 4
Vim: 11
It looks like Angarr didn't buy any vis sources with BP. Was that intentional? Also, from the tally sheet on Google Docs, it seems like some people have BPs left over. I'd imagine now is the time to use them or lose them. Maybe they could be used to shore up some of our empty spots on vis.
Using Trogdor's second formulation - Calpurnia brought a large number, about 20 of servants and dependents.
Costs will be a bit less for weapons and armor, since Calpurnia has spells that will create swords and armor. She also has spells that will improve production at the blacksmith - metals can be treated like pottery, and at sundown, will regain normal hardness.
Are you using detailed costs for the Labs? We have a glassblower and blacksmith, which means we can have Superior Equipment and Superior Tools for each of our labs. As we progress, we will eat up extra money in labs.
Despite Calpurnia's Blatant Gift, base loyalty will improve slowly as our covenfolk get used to all the mages. Paying 50% extra wages will be worth it in the long run.
The budget I was running only had 2 MP/year being spent on weapons & armor. It can't go much below that. But every bit of savings helps.
I didn't go into exactly what each lab would look like. I was just looking at what the maximum cost for the labs that the covenant would cover. 0 Upkeep is 1 MP/year, +1 Upkeep is 1.5 MP/year. +2 Upkeep is 3 MP/year, etc. I was figuring we could afford to pay up to +2 Upkeep for each lab, however a maga gets there. Superior Equipment and Superior Tools is +3 Upkeep right there, which is 6 MP/year for each lab. Do we want to pay that much? (We can afford it, at the moment, I think.)
Alas, even with 18 MP/year cost for labs (each of six labs costing 3 MP/year), the maximum that the glassblower can save us is 20% of that (i.e., 3.6 MP/year). The glassblower could potentially save 6 MP/year because of his ability level. But any given craftsman is limited to saving up to 20% of the total lab cost, no more. I listed the blacksmith with the consumables since that would save more money (4 MP/year rather than 3.6 MP/year). It's not a huge difference, but why not take the extra savings?
As for Superior Equipment and Superior Tools, I wasn't sure that Ability levels of 6 in Glassblowing and Blacksmithing would be sufficient to justify that. Ability level 6 is solid, for sure. I just wasn't certain that it was "superior." Superior Equipment talks about Venetian glassware. It didn't seem to me that a guy with Glassblower 6 was making Venetian glassware. And Superior Tools says that the tools were made by a master craftsman. Again level 6 didn't seem to me like "master" level. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
True, it'll go up by +2 points/year up to the total penalty from the Gift. But that's still 15 years or more to totally offset the GIft penalty. Thankfully the Living Condition bonus, paying half again wages, and having a magus and apprentice with the Gentle Gift helps a lot. I redid the numbers with some of the mods I missed and it looks like we can get up to about +10 Loyalty points (i.e., a Loyalty Score of +1) with all our bonuses.
But that does lead me to a question I had. Do you include apprentices in the tally for Base Loyalty? They're Gifted, so logic seems to say that they'd influence Loyalty. But they're also considered Companions and not Magi. In the end I added them into my calculation for Base Loyalty. I can easily take them out again if my understanding was incorrect.
Another thing that occurred to me as I was driving today is that we need to decide what language we want our grogs to speak. After all, we've brought them from a variety of different covenants across Mythic Europe and some of them can't even talk to each other. With luck we'll have enough educated people who speak Latin that we can get messages passed. But we'll want to unify them with a language. I confess that I don't know all the origin places of people, so I'm probably forgetting someone. But here are thoughts on possible languages:
- Latin: if we're going to have to teach a bunch of people a language, we could always just make it Latin to allow the magi to speak to the grogs as well.
- Finnish: This has the advantage of being the local language, and means that the grogs will be able to speak to the locals. Even if we don't pick this language, no doubt some of the grogs will learn it by necessity. And any grogs Angarr brought might speak it already.
- High German, English, Low German(?), Magyar(?), or any other language some of the grogs already speak: This has the advantage that some of the grogs already know the language. It has the mixed advantage/disadvantage that it's not spoken locally. That would give us our own private language, but would mean that the grogs couldn't speak with the locals.
I was thinking Finnish or Latin would be the best bet, since we've got to teach a good number of the grogs anyway. What do the rest of you think?
Yes. Vis seems to have been covered. My first draft long ago had a source and I removed it due to duplication.
Quick suss:
- is that apprentices count against loyalty as Magi do. More weirdos means worse attitudes.
- for the Language suggest Finnish as standard and Latin as an additional language for those who can benefit or must interact with the Magi. The benefits of local fluency outweigh the time IMO.
So, Faeries, as explained under the RoP:Faeries book don't really make me excited. Most notably, the idea that they don't exist, or act until some mortal interacts with them, and until that time, they are just in stasis. My desire is that we instead treat Faeries as being trapped within their story, that they may not change their story without interaction from mortals that provides them an opportunity to change. This gives faeries something of a rai·son d'ê·tre, or rather it allows there to be an actual one, that doesn't rely upon a convoluted back story to rationalize how a faerie seems to be initiating interaction.
I'd also like to change PeVi spells that strip might. Make them remove might points, rather than Might Score. Might Score should be static, and different from available Might Points or Pool. The fact that PeVi might stripping spells exist and the DEO text states that the spell can be used to kill a demon. How does that work, reduce might to 0 seems to be the implication, but if we reduce might to 0 with a spell that suggests that a creature with might could theoretically end itself by using up all of its might while using its powers. It's unlikely, but possible, especially for low might creatures. There's even a discussion of Might Score and Might Pool on page 184 of the core rule book, that the creature's might pool regenerates, while the might score does not, so PeVi stripping spells should be permanent and unrecoverable if the creature escapes. Does anyone else thing that's a bit of a problem? I think it makes more sense that might strippers remove from the Might Pool, and not the Might Score. I'm fine with killing a creature with a might stripper if total might pool removed is equal to twice the Might Score. For example, a might 10 creature requires 20 points of might to be used or stripped from it, which destroys the creature. This way, you can't really one shot a powerful might creature by having a PeVi 10 might stripper with 90 penetration mastered for multiple casting with an ability score of 8 that lets you kill Might 90 creatures in a single round, you'd need two rounds... And it gets a chance to run away before your next chance.
Otherwise, why has Durenmar put up with that faerie for so long? Seriously they couldn't just make some charged items that wipes the faerie out and gives them to grogs?
That sounds fine to me.
That makes sense to me.
That will make creatures with might twice as difficult to kill. But as long as you keep that in mind when making up challenges for us, I don't have any problem with it. We just need to recalibrate how tough might-based enemies are.
Wouldn't that be 180 xp into spell mastery of a single spell? (90 if you have Flawless Magic). That's a lot of xp. Do people really spend that much on a single spell?
Well, there are alternative ways of killing creatures, probably more preferable ways if you want to take their vis.
Depends. I have a character who intends to get to a score of 10 in Incantation of Lightning Mastery, she puts XP into it every time she can, right now she's at a score of 5, which means 6 lightning bolts, which is usually enough to kill something, but we ran into a dragon recently, and being larger definitely makes the +30 damage less of an issue.
It's certainly something to strive for. But 180 xp is 36 seasons, which is 9 years, assuming you can put 5 xp into it every season. (4.5 with FM). I guess I'm used to PBP games where getting through 9 years is a real accomplishment. The game you're in must go at a faster clip than I generally see.
Well, it is a hangout game and she's 20+ years post gauntlet, but for most of that time she had Master of None and couldn't spend xo I an ability or Art more than once a year.
I have no problem with either change.
Nor do I.
Approaching the Fae as creatures rather than stories works better to my taste, so go for it; but then I'd say its your saga your meta-verse JL.
I'm ok to have Might stripping work any which way, as long as it's nailed down early.
So, I was looking at tower floor plans and managed to find one that's close in size to a mystical tower. It's not prefect. It's a little short and a little wide. But it's an authentic 12th century tower design, and those are hard to come by. What would you think of this as a design for the River Tower? I know it's just fluff, but I always feel better when I have something concrete to help me add flavor to my posts.
