Verditius Runes

Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

There's only one process mentioned in the revised version.

Here's a rearrangement to make that clearer. Does it work?

Verditius magi are initiated into the Outer Mystery of Verditius Magic, which allows them to incorporate craft abilities into their magic. To do this, the magus crafts the item from raw materials as part of the first season of enchanting it. For a talisman or standard invested device, this is the season in which it is opened for enchantment. For lesser enchanted items and charged items, this is the whole process. If crafting the item would normally take the magus a season or less, this does not increase the time required for the enchantment. If crafting the item would normally take more than a season, the process takes a whole number of seasons that is at least as long as the time it would normally take the magus to craft the item. For example, if it would normally take the magus four months to craft the item, then it takes him two seasons to craft and enchant it. No matter how long this takes, it only includes the first season of enchantment.

As part of this process, the magus may add details that enhance the Shape and Material bonus of the item. These details give an additional bonus to all the item's existing Shape and Material bonuses equal to the creating magus's Philosophiae score, for the purposes of enchantment. These bonuses apply in the season that the details are added, as well as in the future. Other uses of Shape and Material bonuses, such as the casting bonuses from a talisman, use the standard bonus. Other magi refer to these details as Verditius Runes, but they are far more complex than that suggests, and do not normally look like actual runes. The total bonus from Shape and Material and Verditius Runes is still limited by the magus's Magic Theory score. Other magi get this bonus if they instill appropriate powers into an item created by a Verditius.

The magus uses the magic of the enchantment to shape the item. This does not require any Craft Ability, although most Verditius magi will use an Ability that they have, and the final form may be impossible to make by mundane means. For example, a Verditius magus could set a gem in a wooden lattice so that the gem cannot be removed without breaking the wood, without having any breaks in the wood to get it in. The final form must be able to sustain itself by mundane means once created; in particular, it must be strong enough to bear its own weight. If an Ability score is needed, use the magus's Finesse in place of Craft.

However, most Verditius do use mundane craft as part of this process. This is because a magus who does so may add his score in the relevant Craft Ability to all Lab Totals for enchanting that item, both in the first season and in the future. Thanks to his mystical link to the item, this bonus is always his current Craft Ability, even if it has improved since he crafted the item. Note that only one Craft Ability can be added to the Lab Total in a given season, even if the magus has more than one applicable to the item. The applicable Ability may, however, change over time — the magus should add his highest applicable Craft Ability. Other magi adding enchantments to an invested device do not get this bonus, even if they have the same Craft Ability as the creating magus, and even if they are members of House Verditius.

If the magus creates the enchanted item in this way, the number of pawns of vis needed to open the enchantment is reduced by the magus's Craft score, to a minimum of one pawn. The magus, or any other magus, may invest effects in the device as if he had paid the full, normal cost to open it.

A Verditius naturally reinforces Verditius Runes as part of the enchantment process, even when working on an item that has already been enchanted, and so if a Verditius working on an enchanted item has a higher Philosophiae score than the earlier Verditius enchanters, the Verditius Rune bonus increases. This also applies if a magus increases his Philosophiae score between seasons of enchantment.

Addressed now.

1 Like
42

This reads much better. There is a problem at the end, though:

the number of pawns of vis needed to open the enchantment

What is "open the enchantment"? I know this was in the original text, but it shouldn't have been. The terms used before are "opening the item to invest effects," "opening an item for enchantment," "open it for enchantment," or most commonly some variant of "preparing the item for enchantment." The critical bit is every time we're opening the object or preparing the item (direct object), and doing so for enchantment (prepositional). We're not opening the enchantment (direct object). We do see "investing the effect" and similar, though. So we have to assume either "open" is "invest" or "enchantment" is "item." Later in the paragraph we read "open it" with the last reference for "it" being the item, so that lets us know in which direction the error was made. But if we're changing it, let's clean up this error.

While on this, it would be nice if the language were consistent about "opening" v. "preparing." But as long as the direct object is the item and the preposition refers to enchantment, I think it's clear.

.

Now, there is one peripheral point that has not been addressed at all: what about the quality of the item? I know this isn't in the core rules, but this shows up if you read C&G. The only way this section on Verditius Magic works is if the Verditius automatically hits at least Superior regardless of Workshop Total.

If a magus is enchanting a crafted item — be it a boot, blade, or broom — the item must be of at least superior quality. (C&G p.70)

But we know this (though technically you could use worse at penalties) and we know that the magus can craft stuff beyond what is normally physically even possible (in even the best workshop with the best assistants) with this Verditius Magic method. So I've chosen to interpret this as the magus gets the maximum possible Superior/Excellent bonus for crafting this way. I think the most consistent way to interpret it is that it's automatically Superior since we don't see bonuses for Excellent showing up in the examples later, but then we run into issues where the Verditius would be better off using Rego craft magic and forgoing Verditius runes in many cases, and that flies in the face of what I think is stated but cannot currently find about Verditius magi and Rego craft magic.

I'm not saying you necessarily want to address this here. I'm just pointing out it is a big question about Verditius Magic that is never really addressed.

43

That's an easy fix.

So it can't be addressed here. The revised rules have all the material necessary to apply these rules if troupes want to. (Anything in a supplement is optional, if only because not every troupe will have the supplement.)

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Yup. I just figured it was worth mentioning here to put on the radar.

45

You know, I don't feel that tying the Verditius Runes bonus to the shape and material bonuses of the base item really fits with Verditius runes. I don't think the intent was ambiguous, I think tying it to a list of existing S&M was deliberately avoided. Take the casting tools, for example. They are made "in a form that appeals to them", not "in a form that reflects the form of the spell". Verditius runes are then used as part of the Enchant casting tools mystery, to add Philosophae to the lab total. If Verditius runes could only expand the bonus already given by the shape and material of the item in the base mystery, then it would stand to reason they could only be applied to enchanted casting tools if they were in a shape or form that was somehow relevant to the spell. Errata'ing the main mystery as you're proposing makes the inner mystery nonsensical.

Verditius runes are used in other inner mysteries of the house. The Elder runes, for example, are described as more potent but less flexible than Verditius runes (HoH: MC 127). Yet, it seems to me that when the mystery applies to 13 arts, that's pretty damn flexible already. And it can be used on any type of items. That also seems to imply to me that verditius runes apply accross the board, not just when you picked a sympathetically relevant item, otherwise by definition the elder runes should have been described as more versatile instead of how they were described, since they can let you get large bonuses to a boots of pilum of fire, which under your revised version, the verditius runes wouldn't help with.

Lastly, consider how the game treats other virtues which are similar but different from verditius runes. I'm refering to Design and Inscription bonuses from BS&S 95 which requires the craft magic virtue. You basically draw symbols of stuff and it gives you a bonus similar to S&M that disregards the base item. Verditius runes is like that in my mind, except that your list of potential bonuses is not limited to a standard list.

2 Likes
46

It does feel more like a complete reworking of the virtue rather than a clarification.

47

I don't. I remember why I changed casting tools that way, and I don't remember deliberately avoiding tying the runes to S&M bonuses. I don't remember that bit of writing specifically, but looking at what I did write, and knowing how I tend to write, I'm pretty sure that I did intend them to be linked to those bonuses.

I realise that being the author is a bit of an unfair advantage in arguments over authorial intent, but there you go.

Not nonsensical, but it probably does need errata. Or a special note about casting tools being inherently linked to the spell blah blah blah. It's a Mystery Virtue, so that is certainly possible.

Lesser runes apply to all fifteen, and there is nothing limiting them to one Art, while the elder runes are individually limited.

It gives a specific list of symbols, with the bonus offered by each symbol. It's not "here is a universal +6 bonus to everything".

This is the problem. The applicability of Verditius Runes is clearly supposed to be limited. The language of the text makes that clear; if this was supposed to just be an excuse to say "add Philosophiae to all enchanting Lab Totals", it would have said so. The text also talks about Shape & Material bonuses, and I can easily see how I might have thought that made the limitation clear. No-one noticed the lack of clarity in playtest, so it got through. That's why I think the limitation was supposed to be to S&M bonuses. No other alternative has any textual support at all, and I am sure that if I had intended another limit I would have said at least something about what it was supposed to be.

I have asked for proposals, but the only suggestion has been "whatever the troupe wants", which is not clear enough. I am still willing to consider alternatives — whatever I may have intended twenty years ago, we can change it now if that fixes a problem. We have been doing enough of that recently, after all.

Given the lack of clarity of the original, any clarification is going to feel like a change to some people. House rules are an option if the clarification breaks something in your saga. People are probably playing this in mutually incompatible ways (including people not on the forums), so there is no clarification that will avoid conflict with every saga.

48

No, that's fine.

You're making my head hurt from having to think about connecting all individual spells to a relevant casting tool just in case I one day want to get the inner mystery and enchant them. Having to think about relevant S&M for your spells is all cool - if you have potent magic. But even potent magic rarely applies to most of your spells.

It's not a virtue per rune though. Only a Muto Terram specialist would say having 36 possible TechForm bonus for a given item is less flexible than having whatever shape and material bonus you carved the item from. Yes, you choose where the bonuses will be when you craft the item, and you don't have them all at the same time. But a choice is still more flexible than being stuck with no choice.

We concur. That's why this list of bonuses is given by a virtue that poseurs have (from a Verditius point of view)

The part that I see that would lead you to say that it is supposed to be limited is this section: "Most Verditius magi creating such items do so in a way that means that the item is attuned to the powers which will be instilled in it." There are different ways to read that. One reading is S&M, which is very restrictive. One reading is all lab totals, which you obviously don't like. There are in between reading. For example, you could decide to tie it in to a number of arts in a way similar to elder runes, or I suppose, that the verditius needs to provide a list of the type of enchantments in advance that he will want to imbue in an item (although the later adds chores on the player if it's too specific, especially for attuned items and talismans which aren't always enchanted in one go). I could see verditius runes giving the bonus to an item which would cover two focis, one major and one minor, chosen at the creation of the item, which would make it more flexible than the elder runes they're compared with, for example, and which wouldn't conflict with the enchant casting tools mystery.

49

Ultimately, linking Verditius Runes to S&M bonuses won't change a ton. It forces Verditius magi to use some specific materials. But when it comes down to it, it's still not that hard to apply S&M bonuses to anything. Let's say you want some totally different TeFo effects in an item. You could use birch wood, mercury, silver, a magnet, and pepper/basalt/red gold; now the Verditius Runes apply to any enchantment you can think of. That's a worst-cast scenario, and there are still more options than those three if you cover the specific effects other ways. So Verditius magi will need to be a little more particular, but that's about it.

50

Well sometimes you're a jeweller, and combining random metals and gems makes sense, and none of this is really relevant. And sometimes you're Peter von Würzburg ex Verditius (GotF p. 85), who's specialised in enchanting wine with magical effects, and etching a bottle with runes is more intuitive than turning your glass holding the charged items drink into an elaborate jewelry because bottle doesn't resonate with anything else than container, and transforming the wine wasn't the point - drinking it to activate the enchanted effect was.

51

If Verditius Runes turns any S&M into a shape bonus, you can etch ☿ to get any level of MuAq bonus to your bottle.

If that's how the runes behave, you are pretty free to reach a result. It's also neat because it creates a sympathetic connection between runes and ideals. I never cared for that House, so my understanding is iffy but I find this inspiring.

52

And the reference to "appropriate powers" at the end of the paragraph.

It is clear that this is not supposed to be a general bonus to any sort of enchantment. It is not clear what the limit on the scope is supposed to be.

S&M at least has some textual basis, and I suspect that it is what I meant. This might well be a clarification rather than a change.

The other proposed limits are not bad in themselves, but they are definitely a change, because they are not mentioned at all in the original description, and they would have to have been if they were the intent.

For setting reasons, I do not want Verditius to be able to ignore S&M bonuses in general. It is not ideal if those bonuses motivate everyone except for the overwhelming majority of item crafters in the Order. This is an argument in favour of tying to S&M, but it is not particularly strong, as Magic Theory is likely to be higher than Philosophiae, and so Verditii would still benefit from S&M bonuses.

This pushes me towards the current proposal. It is clear, and may be just a clarification. If you want something different, at this point you need a specific proposal, with an argument for why this particular proposal is the best change to make.

53

There is one important question that remains unanswered: Does this actually need any clarification?

As it is, I sincerely doubt there is any group out there that assumes Verditius Runes are tied to the existing S&M bonuses. At least that is an interpretation I have never seen in any discussions about Verditius magic prior to this thread, while the interpretation that Verditius Runes apply to, in practice, everything, is one I have seen mentioned often and which hasn't been questioned.
If I am correct about this, then publishing an errata that ties Verditius Runes to S&M bonuses would be a change for the vast majority (all?) of players.

"Most Verditius magi creating such items do so in a way that means that the item is attuned to the powers which will be instilled in it."
Alright, so the Verditius magus will attune the item (add Verditius Runes) in such a way that it is attuned to the powers that he intends to instill in it later. No real need to specify exactly how the item is attuned - it is attuned to the powers that he plans to instill later, whatever those may be.

For the case that a Verditius mage creates an item that another mage will later instill powers in, a stricter definition of what powers are "appropriate" might be useful - but since that other mage is unlikely to have high scores in both Philosophiae and Magic Theory it doesn't really matter if any and all powers are deemed appropriate - the bonus won't be all that high anyway.

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54

My reading of the original was that Verdituous runes were engraved or imprinted in some way on the object as it was crafted and counted as S&M modifiers themselves, the same way a silver comb with a decorative apple shape on it could get the bonuses for apples, and faced the same limits as any other S&M modifier.

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56

Yes, this is the simplest way to handle things.

57

What does the other magus's Philosophiae have to do with anything?

I am a bit stuck about what to do here, which is why I went quiet. (That, and the weekend.)

On the one hand, people have come up with wildly divergent readings of the current text, making it clear that it is unclear, in ways that have a real impact on play.

On the other hand, most of the people who seem to care don't want it to be clear, and this seems to be, in part, because the most popular interpretation is one of the few that is clearly excluded by the existing text. (The bonuses clearly do not apply to everything.)

An option would be to say that the Verditius runes give the item a S&M bonus for "enchanting" equal to the Verditius's Philosophiae at the time he inscribes the runes. This is clearly a change, but it might be closer to how people are using the rules.

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58

I'll say I far prefer clarity even if it's not the interpretation I would like. Why?

  • If things aren't clear, players in the same game may well not realize they're playing things differently. If this isn't caught early, it can really mess up some characters and have wasted a lot of player time.
  • If it's clear what a rule says, and you don't like it, it's easy to make a house rule. If the rule isn't clear and has many interpretations, then people won't necessarily realize they even want a house rule or should have come up with some clarification for themselves at the start.

So, is there truly a downside to editing it to make it clear? Is there truly an upside to not editing it for clarity?

Your post above, with the couple edits made after questions/suggestions, is far clearer. It's also clearly more what you intended, and as such it's nearly the same as what was written before. Sounds like a win-win situation, regardless of whether I might like or dislike specific choices.

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59

Although I've never identified the Verditius Runes bonus as being a S&M bonus, that is essentially the way I've understood it.

I'd prefer if the Verditius Runes bonus was described as being "similar to a S&M bonus", rather than actually being one. It would avoid the potential argument that one can craft an item of quality with Verditius Runes and then use it in the lab when enchanting other devices and apply the bonus to lab totals.

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60

There is, truly. The downside is extra work for the editor (who has to write the errata) and for players (who have to keep track of the errata in addition to the text in the book.)
The upside is mostly a mirror of the downside - players don't need to remember that there is an errata for that part of the rules, and they don't need to flip back-and-forth between the rule book and the errata.

Personally I think it can be left to each troupe to decide what powers are "appropriate" for the Verditius Runes in an item created by a Verditius mage. The use of the word 'appropriate' does make it clear it doesn't apply to just any and all powers, but it is also 'clearly unclear' so to speak which powers are appropriate and which are not, meaning that it is clear that some kind of judgment call is needed and that the risk of players in the same saga using different rules should be small.

If it is decided to explicitly tie Verditius Runes to existing S&M bonuses, as you say it would at least be clear what is intended then and people can change it if they don't like it. And while I am not sure I like that rule, I don't really dislike it either.

61

You might reread what David wrote. Verditius Runes as he wrote only provide a bonus to S&M bonuses and only "for the purposes of enchantment."

To the first point, he's already written it. Read above.

On the second point, is that really true? You're saying it's a downside that instead of being confused, there is a new explanation that helps clear up the confusion, and that having that added clarity in the errata is a negative versus being left with confusion? If the rules were really being changed in any significant way, sure. But as far as I can tell, the only significant change is a future tense to a present tense, and that opens up what some people wanted anyway.

If this is such an important upside, are we then deciding we should just never write errata? I would say David is extremely aware of this, and yet despite that he's still put in the effort to rewrite this section.