So Silveroak's familiar is inherently different than ours in that it cannot get powers (i.e. spell-like things); it perhaps can, however, start with other kinds of qualities (e.g. fatigue mastery). He wants to know whether his familiar is a blank slate initially or already has powers, and whether he can improve with experience. In other words, can his 25-might familiar get xp to buy new qualities or improve old ones?
I think familiars' mights should be roughly "filled up" with qualities to begin with. I also think Silveroak's familiar should get the same xp as everyone else and just be limited to qualities that are not powers. But I don't feel particularly strongly about this.
I certainly want to be fair to silveroak, who spent vis and seasons of initiation to get an awakened familiar. But I also want to be fair to the other players. The rules technically say that an awakewned creature turned into a familiar doesn't get powers. I'm willing to break that rule for silveroak, but only if the other players don't mind.
As silveroak points out, the awakened creature can start off with qualities, just not powers. Even without powers, a 25 Might familiar with 25 qualities is going to be pretty darn good.
I also understand that xp can be used to buy qualities for magical creatures. But I note that it is only xp "gained from practice,
adventure, or a teacher who possesses the desired Quality." The question, then, is how much of the abstracted xp would be gained from such sources? (Obviously it all could if there is no Might penalty to learning, since it could all be xp gained from practice.)
In the end, I'm wary of the familiar tail wagging the magus dog. If all xp can be used to buy qualities, then in a single cycle (140 xp), a familiar could gain 14 Might from qualities. In three or four cycles the familiar could potentially be ~50-60 Might (60-70 Might for sileveroak). That's angel/major demon level, and I don't want that. A familiar might also buy Improved Abilities every other season, effectively gaining 25 xp/season instead of 5 xp/season, which also is not what I want. The same could be said for Improved Characteristics/Great Characteristics, which could lead to a familiar quickly having +5/+6 in all stats. Again, not what I'm looking for. Soak could go through the roof, as could Confidence, combat abilities, etc. It wouldn't take much to turn ~500 xp (=50 qualities) into a truly fearsome creature that would be the match of any magus. I don't mind familiars being good. But I don't want them to be of the power level of a major demon.
That's the dilemma I'm trying to deal with at the moment. Any thoughts from the troupe on how to address these concerns would be appreciated.
Where are the rules for these awakened familiars? And the XP spend? I'm not familiar with them and would like to read them before giving an opinion. I recently read RoP M and there is a lot to decompress in it.
5 xp may get a minor quality, but it also gets a minor inferiority along with it. In reality doing this would require twice as much xp to hit the 10 threshold.
The answer is to trust in your players. Silveroak (and I), will make powerful but not game breaking familiars. We are well aware that even in a high powered game, there are lines not to be crossed. So let's see what he arrives at and judge then.
I was seeing the issue as alogic table I wasn't certain of:
Before awakening the familiar is just an animal
in one season it gains might and intelligence, and cannot gain powers. Because the mystery cult were defined before qualities were a thing they were not mentioned.
I was envisioning as my assumption that the creature would get no qualities on awakening, but develop 1 every two seasons of independent study until it had 50 points of qualities, which might include powers
The other three squares of that logic puzzle were:
they do get qualities when they awaken, but do not advance without a SQ that is higher, or by studying with the magus (which would be fine, and mean qualities faster, less time required for study but the only powers are enchanted through the bond)
They do get qualities, and advance at 5xp/ season normally (which would probably go into abilities instead of qualities)
they do not get qualities and do not advance without better SQ sources, which is the ruling I definitely want to avoid.
It would seem that your assumption is that the familiar starts with non-power qualities. Are we on the same page at this point?
Where do you get 50 points of qualities? I thought at Might 25 Ook got 25 points of qualities.
In thinking about it I believe the right way to go about it is to say that you can start with qualities that seem reasonable (e.g., Increased Characteristics, Improved Attack, Improved Recovery, Improved Abilities for 'animal-appropriate' Abilities, etc.). As an awakened animal, Ook might be tougher, faster, stronger, etc. He might even get the Gift of Speech upon being awakened, since that seems like an 'awakening' sort of thing. But he can't have powers or vis mastery or any Virtue that doesn't make senses. I don't want to go though the list and say yea or nay to each one. But use your judgement about what seems reasonable for a newly-awakened monkey.
But you can leave as many Might points as you want unaccounted for to be filled in later as you suggest, two seasons at a time (if I understand your suggestion correctly). These can be filled in with whatever you want.
So, for example, you might spend 12 of your available 25 qualities (based on Might) buying Increased Characteristics and the like at the start, then spend 26 seasons adding 13 qualities for things like powers and such.
Oh, and the 5 xp/season abstraction would also apply to Ook. In other words, he'd still get 5 xp/season not otherwise occupied (like doing lab work), just like any other familiar.
I agree that creating the end result will answer almost everything we've raised here on familiars. That said now ive read the sections:
I don't follow why an Awakened creature wouldn't just buy the additional Qualities using whatever XP mechanism we decide universally for familiars. The Awakening rules allow for it to start with Might or not depending on the creature and your choice. If it doesn't start with Might then it uses the normal rules meaning a -3 starting Int. I don't recall what might is assigned then, perhaps none, perhaps chosen.
The qualities in RoPM cost XP and the advancement option is open to any magical creature. They shouldn't be spending two seasons to add a quality in addition to earning XP in those seasons. Just buy them with the XP after spending the seasons earning the XP. The XP can be spent on qualities without penalty, but still needs to be earnt.
Spec the creature before awakening, that determines if it had might and its baseline for abilities like Cunning vs Int. Then awaken it as normal, then decide how you want it to advance.
Btw- What type of creature? I think you're looking at a monkey, by the name? Part of the awakened rules strongly imply that the creature is essential to its environ. If you've chosen forest then isn't that more a jungle concept? A tree or traditional forest creature is more thematic.
insufficient sleep and children vying for my attention while I write my reply.
The rules for awakening indicate in converts its cunning into int, and gains a might based on the aura it was raised from.
The point of 2 seasons is that is enough xp to raise a quality, I was never indicating they were happening in parallel. I had explicitly stated in fact in a previous post that I would be using two season because it as xp based.
I was planning to use the base stats from Lord of Men, and already specified that.
As to forest it says forest, not deciduous forest. Monkeys inhabit a number of different biomes, all of which fit under the categorical heading of forest.
@Trogdor- yes that does make sense and sound reasonable.
Personal ad placed in the "Tribunal TImes": Beaver familiar seeking correspondence with other magical familiars. Available Cycle 1 Year 4, willing to discuss any subject. Must be interested in tales of Atlantis.
Seriously, any reason we cannot correspond with other Atlantis Magi/familiars, assuming our back story includes meeting them?
Love it! - Magic Theorist Owl seeks similar for correspondence and other discrete discussion. Located in southern Scottland, have wings, will travel. Cycle 1, Year 3.
Although we need to know when Trogdor's characters started spreading the word about Atlantis, because cycle 1 is probably too early. Great point Kuiti Itijin - we could start writing in crossovers with other player characters. Constantine is Scottish born and raised, and would have probably traveled to each covenant in Loch LegLean before his gauntlet, and a handful in the isles, perhaps a few others in central europe. Feel free to write him in.
Meliai is also Scottish born and raised, what travel she has engaged in is not generally through civilized lands, though she has probably lent a hand with her forest region network to traveling magi as her covenant service, so anyone coming from Scotland to elsewhere may well have met her. Some of her adventures may well involve similar travel (initiation quests, obviously the monkey was not native to Scotland...) but these have likely involved less civilized areas...
Haestus lives in Provencal, but travels extensively to Triunal to sell charged items; he likely has been to Loch Leagan, Stonehenge and Normandy tribunals and would have met Magnus and you guys at one of those.
On that note, is there any RAW for pricing charged items?
I imagine that Haestus would set up a consignment booth for minor magic items, things generally too small for the Verditius to bother. When someone comes seeking a particular effect, Haestus will make it and voila, a day or two later "someone just happened to have one to sell". He does not advertise his craft magic, but should be able to sell some at every tribunal. I figure he would sell charged items, and Lesser Enchanted Items of level 10 or lower for Corpus, or level 5 or lower for other Forms.
I'm out of the hospital now, and starting to catch up on the last five days. Seems like there's been some real movement here. I'll try and get to that today after I've sorted things out at work.
You're correct that cycle 1 is too early for Atlantis plans. I was thinking that the whole idea started around the beginning of Cycle 4 and has been building since then. Magnus was interested in Atlantis before that. But Cycle 4 is where the possibility of raising Atlantis seemed real. I'd say that it's certainly possible for people to know each other earlier - particularly the Scottish contingent.
Correspondences get more difficult. You'd have to pick a subject and coordinate seasons of correspondence to have it make sense (each corresponding in the right season about the right subject). I'm of a mind to keep it abstracted with the adventure correspondences, but let magi/familiars have crossover adventures as they wish. I'm certainly game for that.
FWIW, I picked Summer in the seventh year of the cycle as being the time of the Scottish tribunal. That's fairly arbitrary, though. So if anyone has a better reason for it being another time, I'm game with that. I just wanted to have a fixed time for it.
So my idea for a character is a Bonisagus who is interested in witnessing the creation of new Faeries for a new land. Her major contribution to the project though would be expertise in longevity, not just longevity rituals, but controlling the environment to greatly improve the living condition. Great for creating a new Atlantis where magic makes everything better. The other part of the concept is riding a giant wolf familiar.
Question: If I adventure for 10 build points, may I use that to get a ship that costs 100 MP (as per Covenants p. 5: 1 bp = 10 MP)? If I may, do I need to use my specialist seasons to build them? Do I get them when I build them (as an income source), or do I only get to use them when start play ("10 BP toward a future covenant", as per instructions).
Phrased differently: What is the relationship between the 10 BP adventure and the 10 MP adventure?
A - We're doing 6 or 7 cycles of dev before start of play? (As Kuiti Itijin mentioned 7)
B - The Vis and MP gained each year are kept by the Character? My intent is to arrive with vis and MP of that amount as my character's assets.
Can we buy "normal" mundane things easily, without using the special skilled tradesmen option? Carts, horses, gear, even houses, etc.
C - Can the BP from the Find Something activity be carried into play undeclared specifically, or should be outline what it is? If it needs to be declared a discussion will be good to help spent it wisely (for me anyway).
D - I've assumed I don't need to spend a season buying magical items from a Verdi, as they can be commissioned without huge effort?
I have made a correspondence with a Verdi to help rationalise it a bit.
E - Now that we have so many more players than we first thought - is anyone making a socially/politically strong companion or Magus?
I've included Gentle Gift in my Magus specifically to trade/walk/barter unhindered amongst mundanes, but I'm contemplating moving the mundane social stuff to a companion character to (a) make XP spend / virtues efficient and (b) not triple up on concepts if others are going that route. Thoughts?
F - I have a number of servants and npcs in mind that will come with my character. I'll note any special stats or skills.
Do we just keep it reasonable, or should there be limits?
e.g. I'll have a lab assistant, a trusted aide/scribe, a shield grog, several servants. Plus families.