Keep the concept, by all means! And remember, you have 20 years post-apprenticeship to work with. Plus, with Nature Lore, you're not limited to a +10/-10 balance of v/fs. And with initiation, you can spend a few seasons getting an imbalance of v/fs.
All I'm saying is that you can do what you want already, without the extra xp2. (And you can get these xps with other virtues, or just by being older. Though these admittedly might be hard to come by if you also plan to stack an Affinity here, turning the 3xp into 4.5*xp, which highlights the issue here.)
I'm not feeling religious about this. Just an opinion--a solicited opinion. If everyone else is fine, it's fine. I'm all for playing weird concepts! (It's the new mechanics that feel wonky here.)
Im not sure I'm understanding what you mean by xp2 and the affinity only pertains to my single terram art score not to the Nature Lores, its just a reflection of his affinity for earth magics. he is intended to be a moderate generalist in arts with slightly more on Terram. The wilderness Lore is intended to be its own ability which only functions like 3 separate Nature Lore it doesnt multiply xp to the ability or give me 2 or 3 the xp. It could also be further moderated by using a specialisation notation for effective ability level so that if the experience for the ability was derived predominantly from one of the categories, say Mountain, then he might be effectively increased in that terrain but deemed at the lower level(s) for the categories for which he has devoted less frequency. Thats another way to ameliorate the issue without changing anything.
I should also mentioned that the tragic flaw really is a tragic flaw. His "Driven" Flaw (to unify the realms or aid the one who will (or however it might finally be worded) is also a death sentence. Part of his achieving whatever it is that he is destined to do is culminated in his own sacrifice. So there is no illusion of endless power acquisition or personal glory, more one of resigned and dispassionate action.
others might mistake him as some kind of martyr but to him it is part of the necessary cycle, death/rebirth, the circle of the cosmic order until all is reunified to the One true state. Whether he is the catalyst or merely a piece in a longer chain of causation remains the elusive answer.
Anyhoo, your points are noted and ready to see what can be done if the consensus continues to call for modifications.
I know. I could live happily without the Faerie-raised Magic, actually (she's only used it once, and I could change that easily enough), and just go with the Innate Spontaneous Magic--just say that the faerie nature manifests itself a little differently in her than in other faerie-raised magae. Before my previous saga broke up, I was moving toward changing it so that she had the Diedne Magic Virtue, and explaining it as a hidden lineage....Mark was't too fond of that, though.
As for the problem of converting the old "package" Virtue--I don't know what to do about that without skewering the character, but it did come with balancing Virtues and Flaws.
I feel completely fine with an imbalance of v/fs of the kind you have; some initiations just do that.
Innate Magic feels balanced to me. No complaints.
Question: Is this character in line in terms of xp? Fourth Edition gives more xp than Fifth, and I don't know how you've accounted for things. Just asking; it's probably reasonable (and if it's not, just add two or three years to her age.)
Her age, 24, seems way off; I assume that she's actually 40ish and the 24 was her starting age? Given her set of v/fs, I would expect to see some Warping.
Grimoire: Are these spells adjusted for 5th edition?
Weird Magic: I'd feel more comfortable if you play with the rules for this as written. This die causes Warping and can cause Twilight. It's a botch die. Botching a transformation to a wolf with this die might not be dangerous, but still take the effect completely out of your control--more than bunny rabbit ears on an otherwise completely functional wolf. The version you describe doesn't seem like a Flaw (and is far more lenient than Weird Magic as written.)
Strange Magic: I don't see this Flaw in the rules, so don't know what it's an alternate version of, but it looks more than fair to me, assuming playing with Weird Magic as written. Hell, with Weird Magic as written, this is completely nasty--probably a major flaw.
Faerie Wine Casks: Not represented by v/fs. I'm fine with it; just noticing. Acquired during an adventure?
I notice a complete lack of House Merinita Lore, which doesn't seem consistent with the amount of Initiation Viola has had. (Easily remedied by adding a year or so to her age...)
OK, since I've discovered there is a development thread, let's put Viola here....
Let me say a few words about where Viola comes from. In the saga for which I created her, I wanted her to interact as little as possible with the other magi, because I was the Alpha SG, and I didn't want to use my SG position to dominate the the council discussions. She kind of grew into a schemer, though, but she's still very independent, and not likely to play well with others.
At the core of her personality is the fact that Viola is a faerie (or at least, half one), but doesn't especially like faeries. She's very attached to her human side, to her creativity (she's dabbled in art, specfically Illumination), and so the Becoming mystery that's attractive to so many Merinita is anathema to her.
All that being said, she is very fond of nature (the very concept of "nature" is alas sort of anachronistic, but she's weird, and anyway it does follow Merinita's original teaching), and concerned by its loss to expanded human settlement, not just for the practical reason of preserving magic auras and vis, and not because of the losses to the faerie realm, but because she values nature in itself.
She does not, however, believe that fighting human settlement directly is a good idea--that's a losing proposition, and morally questionable in any case. Therefore, she became obsessed even as an apprentice with the idea of winning humans over to the value of nature, and she wants to do so in a way that survives her own death. She's made herself into something of a lab rat, and wants to enchant devices that will subtly aid her cause.
There are some notes on the 4th to 5th conversion (which is not-unproblematic) in the other thread, where I mistakenly first posted all this stuff.
OK, here are her 1208 and 1220 character sheets, and advancement from 1208 to 1219. Obviously, nothing is set in stone yet. I'm not sure how you guys are getting beautifully formatted stuff on here, so I'll just post links to web pages:
Here's what I'm saying, and I'll raise what I think someone else said.
a) If I take Nature Lore three times, and raise each of them to 10, I have spent 275*3=825xp. If I combine them into one Ability and raise that to 10, I only spend 275xp. (My observation.)
b) If I take Nature Lore one time, I have immense power over some aspect of the natural order. At a high enough level, I am unassailable in my domain, but limited outside. If I take it three times, I am a demigod, master of forests, mountain and plain, and lesser beings can huddle in their pathetic cities and deserts. (Someone else's observation.)
And yes, you have a tragic figure... but surely you hope him to survive the whole saga?
(One problem that arises from adapting books to games is that books tend to focus on one protagonist, and games work differently. I run into this problem myself, I admit....)
Really neat concept brewing here, I like the idea (although I suspect he’ll be poorly liked by the magi of the covenant, and my magus in particular ). My biggest question is how he ultimately becomes a quaesitor. Where’s the Intellego?
I’m still digesting everything Scott put up. The virtues jumped out at me as well, but I need to look at it more.
Brief comments about my own concept:
I think I'm going all the way with the Major Focus. I saw the writing on the wall when I thought it up... lots of stuff you can do with heat, and he's the sort of character to think them up just for fun. I think that was where it was going all the time, but I was balking because I wanted to play with Flawless Magic. Ah well, some other time.
I'm going to have him move to Andorra about 6 years post gauntlet. Mark, is it OK if I create NPC Knights and/or involve yours his backstory? I need someone to put the idea of joining them into his mind. Perhaps the amicus of his parens, or something.
I think in terms of character creation, 4th is close to 5th, though in 5th Artes Liberales and Philosophiae become necessary skills (though Viola had studied both to some extent out of interest in them, even in the 4th version), which spreads the points a little more broadly. She only spent 3.5 years under the 4th advancement rules, so the effect is minimal--the biggest thing was the 4th Exposure rules, which let you learn a language or Area Lore while doing something else at the same time, and that explains her scores in Gothic and Greek, both of which are spoken around her old covenant, and some of her Area Lore. Mind you, all of that stuff is useless in the current saga.
Two more things tone her down a bit, relative to the other characters in this saga: she's only had 15.5 years of advancement, and she spent 12 years training an apprentice.
Her starting age was 21--I'm not sure if it's possible under ArM5, but in ArM4 apprentices could sometimes gauntlet in under 15 years. She was precocious and took 12 years (under ArM4, the Int +4 made her study very quickly; under ArM5, the Study Bonus has the same effect). By 1220, she's 36 years old (and still 14 years from aging rolls).
Up to the point where the saga fell apart, she had managed to avoid botching (she did pick up a Warping point or two during the last story, but that was never finished); part of that was the ArM4 rules, which let her divide spont rolls by 2 without using Fatigue, a rule which allowed her to avoid a lot of stress rolls. The 1220 version includes 24 Warping points, for the 12 years of advancement.
In general, she's scared to death of Warping, and does everything possible to avoid it--because of her natual longevity, her lifespan will be determined by Warping, and she's well aware of that. You'll note the Golden Cord is the strongest of her three familiar cords, because it reduces botch dice.
Yes. And Mark added a requisite to one of them.
It's not clear from the description in the book that Weird Magic is supposed to cause Warping--Mark's interpretation is that it doesn't. My problem with Weird Magic is that it's a really cool Flaw that never actually comes into play: you have to roll a 0 in the first place just to make a Weird Magic botch possible, and then you have to roll another 0 on top of that--no matter what circumstances you're in. The upshot is that you almost never see a Weird Magic botch (one time in 100)--indeed, in the 3.5 game years she was in play, it didn't happen once. What I proposed to Mark was that the Weird Magic die be rolled for every. stress roll, but not result in Warping. That way, it happens much more often, but the effects when it does happen aren't quite as severe (at least not long-term). I agree in any case that the results should be significant, and mar the spell.
Mark made this one up, to have something to use as an Ordeal when the character already had Weird Magic. You'll notice it's what I proposed for a change to Weird Magic, above. It would be far too deadly, I think, with Warping.
Yes--it's mentioned in her background story.
You don't actually need a house's Lore to be initiated into the mysteries of that house if you were trained in that house (it's in the second paragraph on pg. 4 of Mystery Cults). I had her learn it later, though.
Suggested virtues and flaws for magus Inkognito Ex Mercere that goes along my mercurian magic theme.
Virtues
Mastered spell (free house virtue)
Flawless magic
Puissant Artes Liberates
Puissant Philosophiae
Puissant Finesse
Special circumstances (ceremonial magic)
Metod caster (large gestures and loud voice)
Cyclic magic (day, positive)
Educated
Flaws
Pagan (major Story flaw)
Suceptible to the divine
Humble (minor personality flaw)
Temperate (minor personality flaw)
Cyclic magic (negative, night)
Twilight prone (not sure about that one)
Later in his life perhaps the first year after gauntlet I want Mercurian magic. Any suggestions upon a suitable drawback for such a powerful virtue? I wanted it from start but there are only 10 points of virtue&flaws.
Make it one Ability, but whenever it's used, it has to be multiplied by 2/3, always rounded up. In XP terms, that means that, to get a certain amount of capability, the character needs to spend about twice as many XP's as he would for one of the single Nature Lore Abilities--but it's still about 2/3 as much as he'd need for three separate Abilities.
Ooh, Twilight Prone is nasty. Well, you'll have Mercurian Magic from the start of play, and that's what counts.
Slow Caster? Necessary Condition? Warped Magic? A vow? Depends what you want. Or just take 12 points of Warping and declare it a positive Twilight effect?
What would everyone think of substituting the Innate Spontaneous Magic for Faerie-raised magic (the spell invention and Spell Improvisation, that is), and making it come with Strange Magic (that is, a "botch" die for every stress roll, regardless of the roll, but no Warping from it)? That would get rid of a Virtue and a Flaw.
This is soemthing aking to a solution i posited in the other thread (that seems to be have been hijacked for development discussion as well). Basically we could do it like that which might reflect the fact that the "Animal" category may coincide with either of the Mountain or Forest categories in any given adventure but it would not be both types of terrain in one xp allocation.
IF it occurs that both Animal and Mountain, for argument's sake, were to gain xp during an xp allocation, the 2/3 rule would kick in AND the xp would have to be divided (under the functional ability level notations "A/B/C") between the two with no fractions rounded up so xp allocation would always be uneven and his functional ability levels would thus NOT be monolithic but more reflective of whereever he has devoted most time to.
This would make overall advancement in the Tradition much more incremental despite its thematic breadth. This i could work into it very well. I could gladly even make Mountain the least adept category of the three as he would have not spent as much time in actual mountains as he would have in forests or interacting with Animals.
A magus with 20 years and belonging to a mystery cult can easily have lots of v/fs, and maybe even an imbalance. I don't see a big problem here. <Except maybe that I'm doing way too much talking! >
Even my dislike of your take on Weird Magic is just aesthetic; I have yet to see a PBeM which ended because the magi passed onward.
considers The question that I might ask is, "Do you want to play this character?" You wrote that you designed him for a saga in which you were ASG, yet you no longer have that constraint.
Perhaps I sacrifice a year, take mercurian magic and a vow to follow the Cult of Mercury. That leaves me with 19more years to go. I am thinking of changing twilight prone to necessary condition but I fail so imagine something suitable for a mercurian magi.
That's true--and since she'll have been advanced fewer years than the other magi, they may all end up about the same on that score.
My take on Weird Magic has always been that it happens so seldom that it's not only boring, but not really very weird....My biggest impetus is simply that I want to see it happen more often; but that doesn't work if it's going to cause Warping.
Well, she's a character I really like, and I put a lot of thought into figuring out what she'd do with her life. Because the old saga was slow and then fell apart, I never got to play out all the plans she had. I'd like to get that chance now.
Mark, I just realized that some of the members of the cult would probably have an "initiate others" specialization for their Merinita Lore--you should specify that in the member listings (a "vary script" specialization would also be significant).
). My biggest question is how he ultimately becomes a quaesitor. Where’s the Intellego?