It seems to me that the limit to the number of enchantment spaces that can be opened in one's talisman is a crippling limitation for any immortal magus. Considering that each XP bound to the talisman effectively consumes one opened space, I don't see how an immortal could go about increasing his preferred arts.
The limit is highest Technique + highest Form, which gives an experience allowance barely sufficient to raise them both by one point, leaving room for only two further experience point, ever. Things get worse if he wants to learn any new spell or round out his arts.
Is that by design, have I overlooked something, or should the limit just be disregarded for immortal magi?
I have nothing against making it difficult for immortals to make further progress, but such an absolute limit screams for a house rule.
Now, I know it is bad form to rely on an example to infer that the rules should be broken, but looking at "Improving the Elixir after Transformation", the example show an improvement of 20 points, sufficient for boosting a level 80 enchantment to a level 100 enchantment. Granted, it could mean that she just takes much longer to create the Elixir than she would have cared while mortal (i.e. up to 100 seasons), but the text attributes that to an Art increase. That increase certainly looks more significant than a mere 2 points.
That would indicate, at the very least, that the talisman's open space limit has been overlooked in that case.
Even though it's a bit unlikely, I worked from the assumption of an initially "empty" talisman. It does clash a bit with the idea of "items of great power associated with fabulous spirits and enchanters" the appendix talks about, referring to these talismans. An immortal magus would probably not waste talisman enchantment spaces on mere powers when they can use them for learning, not when they could just enchant "ordinary" invested devices instead.
Oh, well, if a character ever reaches that point, I don't think house-ruling the limit away as part of the new insight gained by the immortal magus to be much of a stretch. It would at least bring the Greater Elixir and Living Ghost in line with the opportunity for progress offered by Ascendancy and Becoming: slow and expensive, but not crippled by a hard limit list that.
Sounds like someone misplaced his talisman, and with it his memories.
Well, it does look like I left my talisman somewhere else while working on this bit...
It wasn't intended to impose a hard limit of (Te+Fo) spaces as a cap on the XP and spells learnt, and the error on my part was overlooking that limit!
It seems very reasonable to say that given enough time and Vis you can enchant an Immortal's Talisman with as many spaces as they desire, so they can carry on learning slowly and expensively.
That makes it completely impossible to advance at all. There is no reason for the rules even to be there.
Neil's understanding (and apparent intention), that the capacity of an immortal's talisman should be unlimited, makes things significantly different than I had thought with my one xp per level missreading. I think more interesting too.
My reading allows the immortal (assuming scores of thirty) 600 xp in an empty talisman (perhaps half that much if the talisman already has some effects in it) and forcing them to make that alotment last them the rest of eternity but they have the option to gain that xp at a rate of about 1/2 as fast as a living magus (one season study, one season enchantment).
Neil's idea lets the imortal learn as much as they like but at a snails pace (making it very much like guardian of nature) learn one season, then enchant a level 40 effect the next season to give you an advancement average of 2 xp per season.
To make Neil's intention work there will have to be a house rule or errata to the effect of "enchantments in a talisman to fix experience gain do not count towards filling the capacity of the talisman".
yes, well, duh.... my saved RTF files, and the reports from live readers suggest that we "forgot" to ensure that it was ever actually written down!
Gah!
Second erratum (following the classic first noted "Chapter Number" for Ch. 4).
I don't think "remembering enchantments" should occupy no space - text text rambles on enough about needing to spend Vis & time to prepare spaces to receive them (and that was intended as a major cost!).
I guess the simplest change is just to allow the Immortal to keep opening more and more spaces?
Or possibly that's a (hidden) benefit of Inscription On The Soul/Great Talisman?
Those unlimited spaces could be restricted to memories, otherwise immortal magi might not bother with The Immortal's Grimoire unless they really need penetration and especially if they're not ReVi experts. A Verditius would definitely not bother, needing both a casting tool and his talisman to cast a spell he's thus learned. Might as well directly invest it.
Incidentally, a would-be immortal without Inscription upon the Soul would do well to learn and master a spell to teleport his talisman to his hand before he achieves immortality.
I prefer it to be a benefit of the immortality ritual. Great talisman can already be extremly powerful for a minor virtue. (Or a benefit of having both immortality + greater talisman or inscribing the soul)
