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.
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?
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.
Finesse has a tendency to somewhat explode, both due to needing only one Ability for everything and to other factors that compound it.
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.
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.
The only listed limit is based on Craft, and I like changing rules as little as possible.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
