Saga Discussions (OOC)

Retired Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: The Heir of Laimunt Valley
79

Now that I have a bit more time to think of some more points for here.

Combat Rules
I strongly support using a more narrative or faster approach to grogs fights or lower stakes combat. A friend told me about one PbP he played in where there was no dice-rolling, and people simply reasoned out the expected outcomes of an encounter given the circumstances. I heard it worked really well, with there only being a handful of times where people disagreed and had to hash things out. I think that kind of approach could work well for really simple things. Eg "The heavily armed and highly skilled martial companion makes short work of the opposing group of conscripted guards, taking a light wound unless they get some magical assistance".

Absences
We should alert others if we have an extended period of things happening or an expected amount of absence. I would think that whatever acting Story Guide could control the characters of absent players, although that's an important point to agree on.

For disappearances, I like waiting for whatever one posting period is and then having the SG take over a character.

Text-Formatting
I have no strong preferences for any specific kind of formatting, but I think we all need to agree to do the same thing.

Dice-Rolling
I don't have a preference here.

Creation of a Wiki
How much information and research do we want to include for the saga? Having a dedicated wiki to keep track of large amounts of people, places, events, and so forth could be beneficial. That said, I am in favor on sticking with the forum here and its wiki feature until we deem a time when it's necessary to do something else.

Story Frequency and Duration
I already mentioned one idea I have for a long spanning game. I personally sometimes like to really pack adventures into important years or around big events. I think in my current running saga, we put like 6 adventures into one year where the Albigensian Crusade really flared. That's not something we would need to do every year or all the time, but I like the option of really making events fly every so often.

Confidence
I like the idea of letting characters restore confidence at the end of a year.

House Rules
Can we get rid of the Swim Ability and just fold it into Athletics? It seems unnecessarily siloed off to me.

I like switching the Tremere house virtue to Puissant Certamen.

I think this is unnecessary. The bonus from having good stamina is nice, but it gets dwarfed pretty quickly by everything else involved in spellcasting. It's not that much of a penalty to have a worse stamina than another character, especially considering all the other areas you can gain or lose on your spellcasting totals.

80

House rule proposal:

Tracking fractions for experience points. Instead of rounding up (or down), we record the fractional xp on the character sheet. So if you have an affinity and put 3 xp in the corresponding Art or Ability, you write 4.5 xp on the character sheet.

1 Like
81

And that would include recording quarters as well when needed. I'm not a fan of the rule, myself, but I can certainly play fine with it.

Since we do have at least one character with Sympathy Traits, one of my primary house rules is that Sympathy Trait adjustments from rolling 1s and 0s are limited by Warping Score like all the other methods. It's fairly innocuous while keeping things from exploding.

Meanwhile, for myself we should look at Craft limits with Excellent items. There is nothing I have ever seen that exempts anyone (e.g. someone using Rego craft magic) from the bonus to Excellent items based on Craft score, which makes sense in that magi cannot create what they cannot imagine, and without enough Craft you can't imagine how an item can be that much better than a Superior item. The other side is Verditius Magic. If you use Verditius Magic to make an item, you can even go beyond what can be done in a normal workshop, which I like to keep within that same Excellent limit based on Craft, but just set to that limit automatically to reflect this. Mostly those will place limits on me more than anything else. The more important part is that they'll prevent things from exploding.

82

Yes, quarter points too. There are a few situations where that happens (the Linguist virtue is one).

I'm certainly in favor of things not exploding. :wink:

This is about magically crafting a mundane item (such as with Rego Craft magic from Covenants p.49) vs the maximum bonus that an Excellent item can provide (City and Guild p.69)?

I'm not sure I would base that on the Craft Ability of the caster. Why not simply use the formula from City and Guild (Total Bonus Limit: Craft Ability / 3, rounded up) and substitue Finesse for the Craft Ability? Maybe at -1 to the Finesse score to represent the usual added difficulty?

83

Rego and Creo craft magic as well as Verditius Magic. But, otherwise, yes.

This could be done. At least it puts a limit on it. However, there are four things I like more about the Craft limit rather than the Finesse limit.

  1. Finesse has a tendency to somewhat explode, both due to needing only one Ability for everything and to other factors that compound it.
  2. It makes Verditius magi not so stupid. Otherwise they would necessarily approve of nearly all Rego craft magic, except when they need their runes, due to the lesser explosion pointed out in #1. But my character liking Rego craft magic will buck the canonical trend.
  3. You're not supposed to be able to create with magic beyond what you understand without it. So saying you're better at magic (Finesse) and so are better at what you understand without it seem rather contradictory.
  4. The only listed limit is based on Craft, and I like changing rules as little as possible.
84

It doesn't need to be an "either or" solution. I think the formula in City and Guild does not mention Finesse because, well, the whole supplement is about craftspeople, not magi.

But we could simply say that a maga doing Craft magic can use Finesse (at a penalty) instead of Craft when using the formula from City and Guild. The penalty can be worse than -1 if we feel that isn't enough of a divide.

But if the maga has the relevant Craft ability, then she can use that when calculating the maximum bonus.
It doesn't change the Ease Factor to get the desired result (that is already taken into account in the Rego Craft section of Covenants), just the maximum bonus an Excellent item can provide.

85

I was hoping someone else would comment. Maybe I just need to wait longer, and I'm being impatient.

If we do allow Finesse, I would suggest -3 or even the time-based penalty which goes from -3 to much bigger. Even at -3, though, it's going to hit on all my points above that I dislike, but it will be mitigated some. Even at -3, it's probably not worth developing other Crafts much at all, just pumping Finesse.

86

We could also simply rule that the best that can be achieved using Craft magic alone is Superior items. For anything better, you need the relevant Craft Ability.

87

What if you have the relevant Craft Ability and use craft magic? A&A certainly suggests you can get some high quality with craft magic.

I'm writing so much about this because it's pretty important to my character. I'm currently planning on making high-quality mead quickly via craft magic and alchemical reagents. I'm also building toward making great glassware and maybe tools similarly. Then we can be drinking tasty mead from beautiful, clear-glass goblets.

88

That's why I wrote "Craft magic alone". I probably should have written "with Finesse alone". Basically, you can do it with Craft magic, but the maximum bonus still uses the Craft Ability formula from City and Guild.

So no score in Craft means a Superior item at best (an "Impressive" craft task).

With a Craft score of 4, you can use Craft magic to produce an Excellent item with a total bonus of +2, while a Craft score of 7 is required for a total bonus of +3 (a "Remarkable" craft task).

Beyond that, we are reaching the level of "Almost impossible" craft tasks.

89

Cool. I thought that was what you meant by "Craft magic alone," but I didn't want to assume. Meanwhile, I just want to make sure I'm not making a character who cannot do what I've planned her to do at some of her core stuff.

Ya, I won't be hitting Craft such high Craft scores to manage beyond Excellent +3. I already have too many places I'm putting xp. I probably won't exceed +2 except when doing my direct Craft Ability stuff with Verditius Magic, maybe even then. I'm focusing her more around being a scholar and pushing magi-tech sorts of stuff than having her truly excel in any Craft.

90

With the new errata of Inventive Genius, if you don't use a lab text you get +3 to your lab total.

So am I correct in thinking that it applies to:

  • Vis Extraction
  • Develop a new Longevity Ritual
  • Bind a Familiar
  • Empower the Familiar Bound
  • Opening the Gift of an apprentice

None of these lab total receive any benefit from a lab text. Should they really get a bonus from Inventive Genius?

91

Another question. Flexible Formulaic Magic states that the magus can "raise or lower the casting level of the spell by five to raise or lower one (only) of Range, Duration, and Target by one step" so long as that doesn't violate the normal limits of formulaics.

Am I correct in assuming that he can also keep the level the same but change one of R/D/T to an equivalent one? D:Conc to D:Diam, or T:Room to T:Group, for examples?

And that for Target he can also add a magnitude for greater Size of the target?

I just want to get confirmation from the troupe, so no one is surprised if/when that happens.

2 Likes
92

I think it's fitting for many of those. I don't think vis extraction creating anything new in that sense, so that one seems odd. Longevity Rituals, Familiars, and Opening the Gift require new formulas for each one rather than just developing one thing and using it repeatedly like you might do with a lab text to make several copies of a magic item. So I could see it applying to those. But I'm flexible on all of them. Even with all these included, I still think Inventive Genius is worse than Puissant Magic Theory except for someone who just loves experimenting.

1 Like
93

I would think it should be "by up to five" rather than "by five." That would solve the Group <-> Room shift. That also solves the problem of not being able to modify a level-4 Formulaic spell, for example.

I'm fine with Size being alterable as something included in the Target parameter.

1 Like
94

The FFM sounds fair as explained by Callen, as does the Inventive Genius virtue.

1 Like
95

Agreed for FFM, up to 5 sounds good.

I think IG should benefit from anything that produces a lab text, which would coincide with Callen's comment above but give a simple rule - Excluding vis extraction but not the others; I'm not sure if opening the gift provides a text so that may be a flaw in my idea.

96

Did we come to a definite decision about the start date, including the season? The season isn't so important to me right now, but as I work my way through some history, the year is very important. Here are the Hermetic dates I'm looking at, going from hopefully well before we start to well after, but probably within character lifetimes (starting early to account for possible Strong Faerie Blood or other older characters).

Tribunals: 1158, 1161 (extra one before the Grand Tribunal), 1165, 1172, 1179, 1186, 1193, 1200, 1207, 1214, 1221, 1227 (one year early due to the Grand Tribunal), 1234
Grand Tribunals: 1162, 1195, 1228
Verditius Contest: 1162, 1180, 1198, 1216, 1234

97

1205

I suggest that we stop advancement with 1204 and coordinate arrival sometime in the first two seasons of 1205.

1 Like
98

Works for me. Thanks.