Table Talk - Development

She has Magic Lore 4. Specialty Sigmundo, or Dragons of the Pyrenees, or something else for an appropriate specialization?

I can just see it now: Vibria clambering over the rubble into Sigmundo's cavern, a look of sheer unadulterated awe on her face. The wyrm turns to face her. "Who dares intrude on the sanctum of the Dragon of the Tome?" he rumbles, smoke wisping from his nostrils.

"Great-great-grandfather?" Vibria almost whispers.

We may want to revisit the rules for familiars, too. I'm thinking of this a lot while I'm thinking about Guillermo's familiar.

As for Guillermo himself, I should let you all know about my plans. Guillermo was apprenticed as a Squire of Seneca in the School of Delendo. Despite his specific training, he has a natural inclination towards understanding the intricacies of magic in general (i.e. things like Vim and Spell Mastery).

Do we need a healer in the covenant? That had not been my intention, but he will be decent at Creo and have some other things that lend themselves to healing rituals. But I frequently play healers in Ars Magica and so may well only give him one or two rituals as back-ups.

Just use RAW for familiars.
I swept away all my old HR's, and just reintroduced a few that work well (e.g. wards, 10xp season average, etc).
Vibria, well, we shall see what happens :smiley:

I'm actually excited about my character. It's a good feeling.

Groovy :slight_smile:
I have two I feel that way about: Roberto and Carmen. Hell, I have played Carmen from infancy since the 90's!
I look forward to meeting Vibria :slight_smile:

Vibria's character sheet is up.

awesome! i dig this chick :wink:
some abilities seem frightflly low though. particularly magic theory n parma magica and order of hermes lore.
I will go over it in more detail when i get off work (on break at the moment).

I'm playing her as just out of gauntlet, that might be part of it.

Oh' very well then. This is a very well designed starting maga then!

Thank you.

I finally came up with a great gauntlet for a Squire of Seneca to become a Knight of Seneca. Guillermo had to lead a volunteer group of four grogs through an obstacle course successfully (meaning complete it with all of them intact). The course included physical obstacles (like deep pits to cross), magical things to deal with (such as a wall of fire), and a beast to slay at the end. I figure this works especially well for the Knights of Seneca since Guillermo had to use physical skills (like Athletics), social skills (like Leadership), mental skills (like Profession: Tactics), and magical skills (combat spells, dispelling, etc.).

Mark wanted me to run this by you all:

Minor Magical Focus: manipulating his own spells
This would apply to about half of MuVi. It would apply to a couple ReVi spells, like Maintaining the Demanding Spell. It might apply to a couple random spells elsewhere, but they would be few and far between. The only other one I can think of off-hand would be Boreal Flames, and that only when used on his own spells. That should keep it well under the single TeFo combination limit.

What do you think? As Mark finds it "tweaky" (not quite sure I'm interpreting that as he wants), I'll probably drop it. But I figured I'd do as he suggested and run in by you all first.

If the troupe says it is cool then I am fine. By "tweaky", I mean I dont understant where you are headed with it and I am suspicious. So I defer judgment to the troupe :slight_smile:

It does seem sufficiently restrictive to fall under "Minor Magical Focus." And, since it only applies to his own spells, it would also only double the lowest art on a given spell some of the time, which could be tricky come time to figure the CT. Just want to be sure you're doubling when you're supposed to and not when you're not, and vice versa (which is the trap that I would likely fall into if I took that mMF).

I'm fine being upfront about it. I'm trying to get him doing meta magic well. There are too many MuVi variants, though. But with a good enough MuVi spont (plus the 4 botch dice if you want to do it in one round) you can do a huge variety of things with fewer formulaic spells. This does not require the focus, just that the focus could easily add a magnitude to a sponted spell.

Still, I'm tempted to drop the focus anyway, and I could shore up his defenses with a better Parma Magica.

At the same time I should run the guideline question I gave Mark to make sure we're in agreement on it. It's the last ArM5 MuVi guideline. Perhaps an example is best. Let's say I want to change a CrIg5 formulaic spell I'm casting on someone into a PeMe15 spell to erase a memory. What level MuVi spell do I need to use?

And now, for something completely different.

I've left Fulminara pretty blank, so far. I had thought that she would have had to be Archmage, because of all the Supernatural Virtues that Elena had. But looking at her sheet again, she only has Greater Immunity as a Supernatural Virtue...technically. I'm thinking that she would have been born with Mythic Blood, which is a Hermetic Virtue (which comes with free Minor Magical Focus and the fire-breathing ability for no extra charge). The Affinity with and Puissant Ignem abilities she could likely have gained during her apprenticeship (in fact, since Puissant Ignem is a House ability, she would have, using the rules for that in the Apprentices book). So, that means that Fulminara would have to have pretty decent Teaching scores to give Vibria those abilities. I'm rambling again...is any of this making sense? :smiley:

Also, I've left her covenant of apprenticeship blank. I'm thinking that she would have been apprenticed in Iberia, possibly in one of the Reconquista but it could be Roman or Neutral. Or she could be from Provençal or Normandy. I'm basically leaving it available for Marcus to decide what fits best with his plans.

It looks to me like you'd need at least a Level 15. It changes less than level +1 magnitude of the Vim spell. If it's a level 5, that's half of level 10. +1 magnitude makes it Level 15.

I am passing the MuVi buck to Perigine :smiley:

I do not own Apprentices, so I do not know what you speak of. Only worry about core rules for your character. Use those rules if ever we want to flesh out the design of you mater.

As for Iberian Covenants, I have a list in this saga forum which needs to be updated and upgraded. We can add new covenants and be a bit creative. The only one I have ever used in game is Barcelona, which I treat as a Hermetic Cassablanca barely being managed by the Jerbiton who dwell there that cope and adapt the best they can.
We can also change dates, say push Campomartes back 50yrs and flesh it out for Guillermo's backstory.