Saga design parameters and power level

Retired Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: A Bonfire of Tradition
60

Forst, a general show of what I consider an OPTIMIZED FIGHTER COMPANION in my real world sagas. Mateu de Besalú, Knight Hospitallier - development. It was created for the Light of Andorra saga, that is high power and basically makes everybody Wealthy during character creation, but that is it. He has 4 virtues and flaws, and a further virtue in the form of a +2 attack and defense sword. That might help you understand some of my hesitations.

Basically the problems I see is with getting a whole bunch of supernatural abilities easily. Or not that easily, but getting them anyway. Opening the Gift grants you something in the scale of +10 to +20 virtues for free, and changes completely the focus and capabilities of the character. Same if you can go around initiating supernatural virtues for no cost.

The forest paths and other initiations that require heavy costs for the characters I find to be quite OK (without having played them ever, mind you, so this might not be true in real gaming).

So maybe what I am doing here is putting a ban on Opening the Gift or Acquiring Virtues without a corresponding equal level flaw. Your core character is that, your core. If you are a priest of Arduinna, or an Ars Notoria franciscan that is what you are it is not a "level 1 character" that will raise to level 10 branching into other D&D classes. You can get more virtues and flaws, but you are not getting initiated and BAM! suddenly you also are a Gifted Natural Magician, an Amazon or a Gruagach.

The initial characters that you are creating are far from useless. More than 2 went all the way to get a +9 (plus characteristic) in non accelerated abilities. I am not overly concerned about that, but this is the focus of your character, and I expect it to remain the focus of your character for the saga.

Learning abilities that make no background sense (Wilhelm, I am looking at you and your Mechanica for a necromancer) is also extremely discouraged. And it would have a heavy cost as well. Maybe focusing on material beings diminishes your connection to the dead, dunno.

So, if you want initiations, they will follow the lines of Initiations for Ungifted characters or forest paths. They will come at a cost. I think this is thematic to the approach of the saga and I do not feel that it substracts heavily from what I expect from the characters.

Initiations are well and good. Free virtues and character swaps not so much.

I hope you understand what I am saying and it makes sense to you.

61

So mechanically, unless it is a Supernatural Ability that is being Initiated, all Initiations require an equivalent level Flaw as an Ordeal, yes?

62

All supernatural stuff requires an ordeal. They are like intiation scripts for unGifted characters.

63

Some Supernatural Ability Initiations do not require an equal level Flaw for an Ordeal.

Based on what you have just said, however, your ruling on this is: All Initiations must include an equal level Flaw as an Ordeal.

I can live with that as opposed to what I interpreted your initial post on the matter to mean. :+1:

EDIT:
My suggestion on Opening the Gift, is to automatically nuke all the character's Supernatural Abilities if he has his Gift opened. This way we still have the option to join a hedge tradition without having the burden of previous supernatural baggage.

64

What if you're not picking up a Virtue? For example, what if you have the Gift and a total of -15 in penalties and find someone who can teach you something like Premonitions with a Source Quality of 20? This is, of course, inherently limited since you not only need to get the teacher but it also gets harder the more you improve what you already have as well as the more you learn, unlike initiations which generally get easier. I'm pretty sure this was mentioned above somewhere.

65

Premonitions is a Virtue. It confers the Supernatural Ability Premonitions

Sorry for the derp

66

Both Premonitions and Second Sight are Supernatural Abilities tied to Minor Supernatural Virtues.

EDIT: I see, that you found it yourself!

67

No, it's just like Second Sight.

" PREMONITIONS
...confers the Ability Premonitions..." (p.47)

"PREMONITIONS
...This Ability... (Supernatural)" (p.67)

Even if it weren't, that wouldn't invalidate the question. Insert any appropriate Supernatural Ability.

Edit: I, too, see that you caught it. You don't need those Virtues to have the Supernatural Abilities. You can just learn them.

68

I "mispoke" and corrected my previous post.

Essentially I believe @Xavi means that the only way our characters are going to get any additional Supernatural Abilities is by getting Virtues through Initiation which will require an equal-level Flaw as an Ordeal

69

@callen @OneShot

To be clear, this is how I read what Xavi meant in this post.

  1. Characters with the Gift can no longer get Supernatural Abilities through Teaching, only through Initiating a Virtue
  2. All Initiations require an equal-level Flaw as an Ordeal
70

I can see how you read it that way, but Xavi also mentioned separately learning Abilities that make no background sense, and this may well be learning Abilities that do make background sense. And never did Xavi actually address this case, which is why I wanted to gain clarity on it. What happens in the case when there is no Initiation, you're not gaining a Virtue, and the Ability you are learning does make sense?

71

Separately, how did Xavi get that nice weapon table in there? I suppose I could go reply in that thread, copy the code, and delete the reply. But I'm not in that game and so feel doing the non-existent reply would be in bad form.

72

Hmm? There are two ways to do it. HTML, like what I did with the table to illustrate the languages in the vicinity of Triamore, or by BBCode.

73

Thanks. I have a fair amount of coding background (C, C++, Java, and lots of stuff I haven't touched in ages), so knowing which languages to use should solve it quickly for me.

74

Supernatural abilities are only available if you have the associated supernatural virtue. I had never thought that they could be learned without that. IMS you cannot train a turb of grogs to have second sight, they have to actually have it. That's why they actually require a virtue for starters instead of being general abilities...

75

Gifted characters can learn them within limits (ArM5 p.63 Supernatural Abilities, p.166 Learning Supernatural Abilities).

Grogs are never Gifted (ArM5 p.17).

76

So did I get it right?

77

If I understand you correctly, you do not need to introduce any house rules here.

Just assert your role as SG, with the right and duty to control existence, availability and stats of all the books, teachers and initiations for Supernatural Virtues. Do especially not accept any teacher NPCs from the many books as existing and available in your saga before you checked them. You did that already for Arduinna.

You gave us your ideas already, how you wish to exercise these rights and duties. It leads nowhere to here and now establish precise rules and numerical limits. They will anyway still change as and if the saga progresses long enough.

For now it is important to get it started and the characters ready.

78

@MalakhGlitch yes you got it right. I think the saga will be better with that up front. I might be wrong here, and we might correct it in the future, but for starters I feel much more confident with that goalpost there.

Cheers
Xavi

79

A bit late since I wanted to have Nature Lore magic from the beginning, but I just browsed through Ultima Thule again and the Finnish Wind Wizards are a very easy conversion.