The Best and Worst Virtues

Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

Oh,

If you do go down the MM road, I heartily recommend a virtue like Cautious with Artes Liberales. Great for removing the last 2 botch dice from unmastered rituals. Mythic Stamina is a good alternative, though some GMs will balk.

MM+Cautious(AL)+Cautious Sorcerer reduces rituals by 5 botch dice, potentially to 0 (for rituals level 40 and under.) This magus really wants a familiar. :slight_smile: Other magi can take the same botch reducers, but the MM can cast those big rituals without risk, and huge rituals with low risk. That can be huge. (MM provides power and safety at the cost of versatility; LLSM and DM provide versatility at the cost of safety. Note that DM does nothing to improve the safety of spont/2 spells; botches and Warping are possible whenever DM is used.)

If he is a generalist, then virtues to enhance AL, Phil and MT might be nice. But there aren't enough points to make all that work well, either virtue points or xps. Verditius magi benefit more from Phil than AL. An applicable faerie correspondence adds to Phil, AL, Penetration and a possible Mastery Ability!!!!! (For anyone counting, the correspondence is added thrice to the casting total and once or twice to Penetration.) Any ritual or ceremonial caster can benefit from this, though a Mercurian is more likely in a position to churn out rituals.

Hermetic Choreography speeds up ritual casting, though not by enough to make the virtue shine. Not bad but not great. Ceremonial casters like it more, I think. Either way, these spells are still cast out of combat, when there is a good span of time. Now if it were 1 round/magnitude, yeah.

So MM+Cautious(AL)+Cautious Sorcerer+SFB+HC.... That's a ritual magician to be respected. 1 or 4 more virtue points plus a free minor virtue: Strong Parens? Book Learner? Cyclic Magic? Performance Magic? A minor focus? And this guy's sponts might take a little while, but the faerie correspondence might add twice to the casting score. Or ditch SFB and the correspondence and recoup 3 virtue points.

(The Schism War was ended by a handful of Merinita Mercurians who killed off all of House Diedne using Symbol Magic. They never left their covenant and didn't need ACs. Mercurian Magic + Folk Magic + Symbol + Bloodline... ftw. And no one in the Order has a clue, even to this day.)

I'm impatient, so MM isn't an easy virtue for me to use. But over the long haul, this is a very powerful virtue. Admittedly, most sagas don't last very long.

Anyway,

Ken

42

That's a very liberal interpretation of Cautious with Ability. I would never allow it IMS, because the botch dice in the ritual have nothing to do with the Ability. Botch dice in a ritual come as a result of vis, or the environment, and not as a result of using Artes Liberales. Also, it's a casting total, and thus a spell roll and not an Ability roll, you can cast the ritual without using Artes Liberales, but you can't work the ritual if you have only Artes Liberales. Go with Cautious Sorcerer and pay 5 xp to master the ritual and be done with it and you can remove even more botch dice.

43

it seems that MM is the virtue that people say " if you had this type of saga" If there were other mercurian magi playing. If you took these other virtues it would make it easier. For a major virtue, that does not cut it. Take other virtues to make your major virtue easier to stomach? Really? To male it pay off you need to get powerful enough to cast rituals or be in game that has other MM players. If they just got rid of the spontaneous magic limitation, it might almost be worth 3 points.

44

The fact that people are arguing over it should be a clue that it's neither a 'Best' nor 'Worst' virtue. Nobody is arguing that Flawless Magic or Flexible Formulaic Magic aren't great. Nobody is arguing that Secondary Insight and Elemental Magic aren't bad. Mercurian Magic is definitely over-costed, as written (we throw in the Neo-Mercurian Road Magic as a freebie), but that doesn't make it a horrible, horrible virtue, just one you only take if you're taking your magus in a certain direction. The real problem is that Ars5 only has +1 and +3 Virtues. Ars4 had everything from +1 to +7, IIRC.

45

Of course you can do as you please in your saga!

But I don't find it very liberal at all, simply straightforward. Ritual magic is an application of AL; the better you are with AL the better you are at the ritual. Not everyone can use this application, but that happens. Cautious with AL removes botch dice that pertain to the use of AL. Botch dice that pertain to Aura, to vis, to distractions.... the rules offer a blanket reduction. The same way that familiars offer botch die reductions without "except for those involving vis."

YMMVs, and that's fine.

46

You are not making an Artes Liberales roll. You are making a ritual casting roll. The ability is no the primary feature of the roll, it is but one component. That Cautious with Artes Liberales could remove all remaining botch dice for something that is a limited part of the whole just seems off. Of course, you can say YMMV, or YSMV, I just don't believe the RAW allows for what you say it does. Using Artes Libarles doesn't add botch dice for the ability and the text of the virtue says, "You roll two fewer botch dice than normal whenever you are required to roll botch dice for that Ability."

47

Artes Liberales is part & parcel of Ritual casting in ArM5, so I think it is a fair interpretation to say that it applies. It is also fair to say it does not. Gray area, YSMV. But I do not think RAW supports one idea over the other with absolute definition.

48

If there weren't a virtue of Cautious Sorcerer, I would tend to agree. There is. If Spell Mastery weren't an option, but it is.

I want to play a magus with MM, Cautious with Philosophiae, Cautious with Artes Liberales, Cautious Sorcerer, which means I remove 7 botch dice from all ritual rolls, which for a MM means a 14th magnitude spell can be cast pretty easily without being concerned about botching...

49

I would agree with JL on this one. You do not make a Artes Liberales roll to cast a ritual spell. Your knowledge of it helps but the virtue is quite clear on when you get to subtract 2 botch dice and that is making a roll with the ability.

50

Having spent 6 virtue points to be able to do this, you deserve it! Every magus has a schtick; this one's yours.

51

If you allow Cautious with Artes Liberales to remove botch dice from ritual casting, it follows that it will also remove them from Ceremonially Cast Spontaneous spells. People are likely to vary on whether they consider this to be a problem, but it's worth taking into consideration.

52

Yes, and I'm ok with it. Others probably aren't.

53

Even if you allow Cautious with (AL) to reduce botch dice for Ritual and Ceremonial casting I'm not sure I'd call it a best choice. In fact I consider Cautious with (Ability) to be a fairly weak virtue in most cases. By removing 2 botch dice you're talking about at best a 1.9% effect on any given roll.

Cautious with (...) really only seams to "pay for itself" when it's an ability that is rolled constantly or a botch translates into almost certain death. Like Single Weapon or Engimatic Wisdom.

Cautious Sorcerer is a little better removing 3 botch dice (so 1% better then the ability version at it's best) and it does affect all spell casting and lab work so it's a lot of rolls and the "most important" rolls for a Magus.

Not that I would never use a Cautious(...) type virtue. They are a good way to define a character. They are just not what I'd call Best Virtues.

Edit: Refigured math slightly and reparagraphed.

54

Totally. A Mercurian with Hermetic Choreography is likely to use the virtue more often than most: Magister in Artibus with Caut AL is a bit silly, except maybe in a saga centered on advancing knowledge without getting in trouble with the Church :slight_smile:. Being the guy who can cast big, safe ritual and slow spontaneous utility magic is a Thing, character but not saga-defining.

55

It's useful if you're taking Life Linked Spontaneous Magic alongside it, as that's a case where a botch can kill you, or at least leave you seriously injured.

56

At a glance I'd agree with you, but I can give 2 cases where I would (and have) consider(ed) it.

  1. Single/Great Weapon - as you've mentioned. I've seen a number of combats end with one participant botching a defence roll and that was it.
  2. Supernatural Ability - especially when the character is build around just one or 2 supernatural abilities, eg a non-Gifted Sahir. It will be rolled fairly often and botches are likely to be very bad[sup]TM[/sup]
57

Absolutely any character built around one main high value, high power, ability should probably have Cautious with for that ability. As well as an Affinity and Puisance. But in order of usefulness and power at least one if not both "I'm better at this virtues" are probably higher priority then the "I'm safer at this virtue".

Weapon abilities are probably the best possible use for Cautious with since you roll the ability over and over and botched defense rolls are so ungodly bad. You loose all bonuses including Characteristic, Ability, and Weopon Bonus. For a dedicated melee character Cautious with probably is a Best choice. For a tricked out shield grog with tons of modifiers stacked on it might even be higher priority then Affinity or Puisance. I'd also allow Cautious with Leadership to apply to group combat rolls even though Leadership is not the ability being rolled.

Oddly enough for a Certamen Specialist Cautious with Parma is not a bad choice. Yes you will have to participate in dozens of Certamen for the Virtue to be likely to come into play. But like melee combat the botched defense roll is basically a stick a fork in you your done situation. Not that loosing Certamen is usually as bad as being bifurcated by a claymore.

58

I don't think this works - Parma is added to your resistance total rather than your defence total, which means there isn't a roll associated with it. There isn't an ability attached to the Defense total - it's just Per + Art + die.

59

Agree +20 :smiley:
In fact, I think that is the way I plan to handle it in my saga if it ever comes up :mrgreen:

60

Yeah, I and I disagree.