No volcanic pressure, good. It is a big mountain, room for lots of strangeness.
As for those spells...
Sometimes the two spells total 50 levels where his LT was 55 or something like that, so that seasom could have come at an earlier time. All I had meant to say is that the seasons of lab activities could have been interspersed, not necessarilly all bulked together. And remember, that Cold focus did help a lot. The only super-munchkin thing I did is set up a lab optimized for spells as like one of the very first things he did.
NP. Dragan's MT specialisation is inventing spells as well, although I wont have near the amount (not even likely half) the number of spells invented as does Marcellus. Ill be happy to get the few things I have planned past muster.
All of your pre-game spells can be learned from lab text, so long as a copy of that text is in circulation. That was the gist behind my wiki rule. I still need to post these spells to the wiki before the sheet can go up in the approved thread (though I really should make Xavi do it, grrrrr.....) Marcellus would have easilly been able to learn his giant-modified spells from the Giant Blooded magi of Loch Legan (as he mentioned in his background).
This is not news to me nor does it really follow from the point I was making. Regardless of whether one uses the same TeFo, one still needs to have at least twice the lab total for all combined lab activities in order to complete them in a single season.
Not at all. He only needs to equal the combined total if using Lab Notes. And as I have said many times, all of your pre-game spells can come from Lab Notes.
For those who were settled at a covenant perhaps. For those of us who travelled alot and only had periodic stays in various covenants, much more difficult. But your point is taken.
Even better, you learned from notes that are not here! You mentioned you are part of a small sect? I suppose that they share specific spells with their members, with the presumption that you would pass them on to future sect members. That would explain Lab Texts for sect specific spells you possess. You may have travelled about searching for such notes, left behind by Ex-Misc magi with no heirs. In fact, that is an even stronger motivation to have moved you around from place to place.
Thanks for your ideas Jarkman. I've been away from this for a day or two now... so I'll get back to work on this tomorrow I hope.
The only thing I have time to address right now however is the Chthonic annotation. This raises a question for me in regards to Chthonic magic.
Does using Chthonic Magic's ability to add to your lab total infernally taint what you produce during that season? That is what those annotations were supposed to represent, noting the fact that I used Chthonic magic to boost his lab total and get them both done in the same season... under the impression that I had to have double rather than being able to use the lab text assumption.
And the absolute maximum might he can summon in a relatively safe setting, with an AC, is still rather high post revision. ( Pre + Rego + Vim(2) + Aura + Penetration ) ( 1+20+20(2)+X+20 = 81+aura+stress die ) This would put his safe zone without an AC at about 30, with an AC at 40. Invoking Chthonic magic would add ten ( +20 to that total ) to both of those for 40/50 being manageable when he has privacy and isn't concerned about being overheard/caught etc. And of course he could always tempt the gods and pretty much commit self destruction by going above those limits. Well, now that I think of it, he could summon something that he didn't double just to converse with it... just if he tried to do anything else it would start provoking the concentration checks etc. So... for all intents and purposes it is a bad idea I think.
I'm going to go back and revise my spell listing slightly in light of that now, but it shouldn't be very serious changes anyway... as I didn't have many seasons allocated to spells anyway.
Is there a baseline set of abilities for ghosts / spirits? I mean... they are all incorporeal and invisible unless they have something that lets them become otherwise right? Anything else? Where can I read up on them?
No aging for familiars. Otherwise a prototypical long-lived cat-loving mage would always have red-rimmed eyes from crying over the last dozen or so lost familiars.
Is the consensus that I should ditch the leadworker virtue?
If so, any suggestions for something to replace it with? Or perhaps simply take that season and apply it to spells, ditching a flaw?
What exactly does the hermetic version of summoning ( from the spell guidelines in mysteries ) do? I assume that as the default spell is of concentration duration that if you stop concentrating the spell sends it back wherever it came from? Or why have a duration greater than momentary? Does it provide any control over the creature? My general assumption is that it does not, and you have to use something else to achieve that.
I'd also assume that, like the demon conjuring spell from the infernal book, you can effect the summoning within a circular ward if you have one. If you had such a circle in place could you then use that to contain the creature, no longer needing concentration? Or would the creature still return to point of origin if you lost concentration?
Could you integrate the hermetic style of summoning with the goetic summoning circle, to contain your summons, or would -have- to use a hermetic circle? Would you need concentration then? Would a hermetic circle ward, containing a creature, count as a 'summoning circle' for purposes of goetic powers? Or could you draw a summoning circle around said already contained creature and automatically thus contain it?
The cross-application of Rego Vim spirit magics seems to be kind of a gray area where each one was designed as a stand alone system and without a great deal of effort to develop the mechanics of a spirit specialist pursuinig and integrating some of the techniques.
Right--the crow in question has no mystical connection to the character. It doesn't seem far-fetched, though, to presume that magical animals live longer than the normal ones.
I don't know if Animal Aging is even part of the rules! When does an animal start making rolls? But yeah, I can imagine that magical animals would age at a slower, human-scaled rate or slower, and faerie animals might not age noticeably much at all.
I've printed this out and red through this and it's really interesting. I'd always liked the non-Hermetic gruagachan/trollsynir (can't wait for Hedge Magic obviously) but I think this character captures the giant-kin archetype really well, so kudos to Xavi even if he is a bit slack at posting (although the main forum posting of the character's development was interetsing to follow).
In fact I think all the magi characters are pretty well developed and distinct, so well done to all really and special mention to JeanMichelle for his companion/grogs and Max for his Mercer House staff ideas.
I have the following comments on Marcellus/Glacius:
are the Arts listed his starting Arts only? They look too low to allow invention of some of the higher spells outside the Frost/Ice focus even with the optimised lab/lab texts etc. (I haven't done the math).
I'd agree there are a lot of spells, but many of them are very low level and don't have any Mastery associated unlike some of the other builds in the Saga. They're all seem tied to the "frost giant" theme. It might be worth listing the spells that affect the larger form (ie have increased magnitude to accomodate a giant-sized individual) separately to make it easier to keep track of. I'd even list the Magic Focus spells separately for a similar reason.
When you do the combat stats, having a separate "giant-sized" statblock (like Bjornaer presented often have a Heart Beast statblock) might be useful for the same reasons as for the spells above.
I cant see how Close Family Ties fits with the character or story. I would have thought Dispassionate (GotF, page 40) might fit with the Ice Giat aspect but it doesn't allow you to have strong personality traits (greater than +1 or less than -1). Perhaps it might only affect you in your giant form as a Twilight Scar or something?
There was a 4th edition mechanic from LoFaI that tracks a trollsynir's warping into a troll by assigning it a Personality Trait which builds via a pyramid XP gained through warping/experiences etc. I'll see if I can dig out something I wrote about an ArM5 version of gruagacha/trollsynir (Marko might remember this from our hedge magic banter of old...). Hedge Magic may well cover this but it's a while off release yet.
There looks like there's some detail on Magical Giants in RoP: Magic that might be helpful for this character. I've found some stuff on Basque giants (possibly tales about pagan Basques changed through oral folklore) and the Basques extended almost to Andorra in the early Middle-Ages/Late Antiquity so some of that might be chasing down. I'm not sure about Catalan giants, they're more in line with Occitan/French folklore I think.
Anyway,
Looks good as a concept. Loved the role-playing on return from the griffon-hunt - real Flambeau stuff, LOL.
Since I helped build him, I'll adress a few of these
No, those are his full Art scores. He gets a big boost from his lab (+7 spells)
Close Family Ties represents his Family; wife and stepdaughter. Dispassionate is good, but he wouldn't start with that. A Twilight result will cause that eventually though
That may be interesting to look at . My plan was to grant him a Virtue or Flaw directly relating to giant-ness with each Twilight Episode.
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Marcellus would have easilly been able to learn his giant-modified spells from the Giant Blooded magi of Loch Legan (as he mentioned in his background).
. My plan was to grant him a Virtue or Flaw directly relating to giant-ness with each Twilight Episode.