1)Exactly how much do my silversmiths give to my lab totals as forge companions? It says "In game terms,
each forge-companion may add +1 per 5 levels of Craft Ability score he possesses to the maga’s Lab Total."
So does that mean Silversmith 6 gives +1 or +2? Would a Silversmith 1 give anything? Cuz, I really want to dump those extra 5 points into the summa.
Any thoughts or opinions on Crystal Dart vs Invisible Sling of Vilano? Meaning, for this character specifically.
Mastery specials on the two spells? Is there an option to maybe give Baroque Peasant Hut a bonus to finesse rolls? Any better ideas for Sling/Dart?
I'm inclined to go with a strict rounding, so you wouldn't see any benefit for a forge companion until they have an ability score of 3, which would be +1. +2 would be achieved at 8. Forge companions aren't a great way to build lab total, and Verditius have many more ways at their disposal.
Depends, do you want to be a finesse maga or a brute force maga? Crystal Dart is going to require penetrating for those with MR. Vilano does not, but requires the finesse roll to hit. So it comes down to where you want to allocate XPs for Viscaria over the long term. From my 30,000 foot view with a Rego crafting synergy, Finesse is the way to go.
Precise Casting would apply in both instances, and may be taken multiple times. Each time you take Precise casting you get a +1 to finesse rolls. So master a spell for 15 points with 2 pics of precise casting, move your Finesse score to 2 for another 10 xp and for 25 xp, you have an effective +5 to your chance to hit, and also can remove opportunities for botching finesse.
Well, the min-max'er in me wants to pout, but I'll accept the ruling.
Hrm....now I need to hunt down a complete list of all our specialists.
I see your point with the Rego craft synergy. I am convinced, good sirrah.
Precise! Definitely need that for Baroque Peasant Hut. I think she should probably keep at least her first mastery level of Sling as Fast-cast, since it is her only offensive spell. Hrm, unless I want to switch those mastery points over to Hands of Grasping Earth....well, I will sleep on that.
Two other quick notes before I go a'bed tonight:
Between Viscaria's Seasonal Activities in 1221, her allusion in a letter to the Siege of Alms, and JL's comment that he has little to no information about Spider's Rest worked out, we could assume that there is a Verditus with Enchant Casting Tools living in Spider's Rest, and that they know of at least one regio (see HoH:MC pg124 for the script to learn ECT). I had not intended that consequence, but it is a deduction we could make from the available facts.
While working for my character in Albion, it occurred to me that Viscaria would really, really love to have a Terram-related Magical Focus. I think she's got the math to invent her own script for gaining a Minor Focus, but I dunno if she could pull off a Major one without an existing script, and probably a Mystagogue as well.
Now, I know JL is swamped with Real Life(tm) right now, and I just joined the game, so I'm certainly not looking for that to be Viscaria's First Adventure, but I thought it would be worth mentioning. Maybe we can plant some seeds for a future Quest or something out in the regio.
Also occurred to me while working on the Albion character: I have no idea how her Imbued With Terram would affect wandering around in the Terram Province of the Magic Realm. Has anybody actually played with those rules?
Spider's Palace (if I miswrote this earlier, let me correct it now) is a tiny covenant according to The Lion and The Lily, beyond that I don't have anything worked out. One magus and two guests are usually here. Marcus has relationships Florum and Spider's Palace, being from Flanders, and can easily get you a get spot. I would prefer to avoid the ECT for now. It could be a reason you're coming to Mons Electi, too. Onesiphorous has ECT. Whether Mad Max can make it back or I run him for a bit, well that remains to be seen. Bottom line, find something else to do before creating ECT.
2)If you want a MMF, whether minor or major, I can work something up, but it would be a bit later. And it's going to come at a high price.
To be clear, I know that's what you said. What I'm saying is that I'd like you to grab something else instead of ECT, and it's a another reason for you to come to Mons Electi.
Spider's Palace has 1 permanent resident magus, and then Florum sends magi there on a rotation to keep it a legit covenant. It also has room for a couple of guests. You're looking for reasons for Viscaria to come to Mons Electi, not getting ECT from Spider's Palace is a perfectly GOOD reason to come. And there's plenty else that can be done during that time.
Okay....this gets a bit tricky, then. I've already established that she's going to be occupied in a way that can't be distracted that season. It isn't a huge deal to ret'con that, but I would prefer to tweak things on this end rather than that end cuz I'd just show up with another enchanted item.
Onesiphorous has pretty much all of the Verditus Mystery Virtues, and you seem to be saying not to take anything he can teach me later. You also seem to be suggesting that I shouldn't initiate in a Major/Minor MF this season. Obviously, I shouldn't take Faerie Magic, the current goal of the character.
Should I take some other mystery? Planetary Magic, maybe? Maybe she's teaching Hermetic Alchemy to someone? Although, she doesn't really have the stats for that. Learning Verditus Lore?
OoHLore? That last would actually be most in keeping with her established reasons for coming to this tribunal in the first place, but it wouldn't explain why she was so busy. Yes, something in line with her Driven Flaw would be best. Any suggestions from the crew?
Not sure which season you're referring to. 1222 hasn't been planned, and 1221 it's pretty easy to find something to subtitute. Why are you at Spider's Palace, what are you doing for them to allow you to stay Summer, Fall and Winter 1221?
No, doing some sort of intiiation that allows an MMF is kind of a big deal. I want to do this carefully and with more thought. Magical Focuses are one of the most powerful vitues in the game.
I'm not sure why the push on going deep in your mystery before you get a chance to play her very much. And remember your comment about specialists being generalists. It may be time to go deep down a rabbit hole and invest. Heck, read the terram book and boost your score in 1221, or consider how you're paying rent up at Spider's Palace... If you're a generous guest you might get something out of it. If you're a poor guest, it might come back to haunt you. Or stay at Phoenix for summer/autumn packing, spending winter in Flanders (that's crazy, just so you know: leaving perfectly warm and comfortable Iberia for Flanders in Winter).
Oh, no particular reason. I was just improv'ing. I knew that I was already in Normandy for the Tribunal, presumably tracking after some clue about the identity of her mother. It didn't make sense for her to only spend that one weekend at the job, especially since it's unlikely that it would have led anywhere (mostly all she was doing was being social and hoping someone would say something like, "You're the spitting image of...").
Okay, so we shift that around a bit so that her Adventure! is the Tribunal in summer. She stays at Spider's Palace, and enchants for the rest of summer. (Her Lab Total, by the way, is way more than 46. It's closer to 55 for CrAu without a dedicated lab -- which means she could be crafting any kind of CrAu 20 effect for Spider's Palace and still stick the Summer Breezes in The Luggage. Higher, if a Lab Text is part of the deal.)
Let's say she takes a break in the Fall, reads from the book again. And then in Winter, does something for Spider's Palace that they want to be super secret and takes up all her time. Hrm, maybe she's working Overtime in order to fulfill their request? Lab Total for InTe would be 81 if she's working overtime....
~nodnod~ That's how I would like it played as well.
I think picking up 2 mysteries over 15 years is a reasonable pace. But it's not really about the mystery virtue. It's about the Mysterious Mystery-ness. I like the way it plays out: she meets them in Summer. In Fall, she sends a letter saying, "Dammit, it looks like I need to be here for a while, can I have a job?" Only, she can't start work right away because she'll be Mysteriously Indisposed(tm) for winter.
That's the element that I'm looking to keep.
Tangent: while crunching these numbers, I notice that I didn't give her any Correspondence XP. May I go back and do that? 9 years * 4 seasons = 36 xp to MT.
S'Cool. I have updated the sheet here, and on my home computer, with the last few days worth of adjustments. I also tweaked some specialties, and made corrections ( VFs for having a familiar, etc)
Of particular note, I made these changes to my build points:
35 Terram Summae, Lvl 25, Q 10 “Iron Bones,” by Norbert Gunthar Verditus, in Latin.
6 Silversmith Forge Companion (Chastity)
1 Silversmith Forge Companion (Patience)
(Sorry, Arya, but JL is right - I need to specialize in the things Viscaria is supposed to specialize in.)
Well, I always understood it as meaning +1 per 5 full points.
IMO, the only advantage of Invisible Sling of Vilano is that it ignores MR. I chose it for that exact purpose.
Unless you plan to fight against Magi or Creatures with Might and lack penetration, Crystal Dart is preferable IMO, as it never misses.
For Crystal Dart, Penetration, fast casting, quick casting (can be taken multiples times), learn from mistakes.
For ISoV, Precise Casting (can be taken multiples times), fast casting, quick casting (can be taken multiples times), learn from mistakes
Baroque Peasant Hut, take precise casting.
Better ideas? What do you mean? Taking another attack spell?
Well, he IS kinder than me
To tell the truth, I hate self-initiating as practiced by some guys on these forums with a passion, and mostly agree with Timothy Ferguson on this.
But then, why don't you rework her before play in order to give her a focus? You don't need to play exactly the same viscaria as in Phoenix, especially as she wasn't really played.
That being said... Well, I think it may be possible for Viscaria to join some cult or subcult that, at some point, will give her what she wants.
Another way would be for her to discover ancient magical secrets that, once she's studied them, would, for a price, attune her to some element of terram (yeah, using mystery rules ). Or to make some pact with a potent spirit that'll suffuse her with power (idem). Or she could bask in the energies of the magic realm.
It just shouldn't be easy
But then again, I don't think you're the kind of guy to say "Ok, I spend a season and gains a MMF, woot!"
AFAIK, this has no special effect, but I can very well picture viscaria as being way more visible there.
Oh, and a agree with your final conclusion: If viscaria is to be a terrae magus, she should study terram!!! Concentrate on it and 2 techniques, with the goal to bring other techniques to 10, and you will really see the difference.
So, the Ferguson quote fails to affect me in any meaningful way because, not having seen any of these twink-monkeys on the Forums, and having spent a lifetime mocking my tree-jiggling, crystal-hugging hippy friends, it never occurred to me to treat Mysteries that way.
Viscaria already belongs to a cult. A mystery cult so big, it has sects. She is designed to chaff against and ultimately succumb to the cost of the power they provide: Hubris.
Remember that Viscaria is a physically and emotionally abused child grown up and given vast amounts of power. Her Air- and Fire-aspected natural self has been weighted down with a giant chunk of Terram Spirit that drags her down into a practicality that is obsessively focused on defense. She craves some kind of connection to her mother -- a light hearted Fae spirit (according to her daydreams) to soften the impact of her Pater.
It took me quite a few virtues to set that all up the way I wanted. For her to have the MMF/mMF to start with, would have upset the balance in my mind of the forces pulling at her. Does she stay locked up in her sanctum, pulling money out of the ether and checking the locks on the doors, or does she go look for her mother? Does she build another wall, or does she get to know the people she's locked herself up with?
(deletes a long tangent about character design and Freud)
Point is, it doesn't make sense to me for her to start with the Focus. I never intended for her to draw an initiation script out of the ether for it. Given my experience with the folks in this game, I assumed that the most fun way would be for her to get some Verditus to mail her a set of instructions and leave her to figure it out on her own. So, she'd be acting as her own Mystagogue, but she wouldn't be inventing the script out of whole cloth.
She doesn't have the stats to make up the script herself, anyway. You need like a Mystery Cult score of 9 or so just to develop your own script for a minor. I don't know who came up with the examples in the book.
Also, since it's a choice she struggles with, it'd almost be preferable if it was a reward she gained without actively seeking it out. (Watch me go all Shock on Viscaria, and develop player goals which contradict the character's goals.)
Although, the possibility of somehow connecting the quest that leads her to that reward with the Spirit of Terram sounds like fun. I know she's just started in this saga, but I really want to emphasize what a horrifying thing that Virtue is.
Her pater grafted an Earth Elemental onto her soul because he thought it'd be an interesting experiment. He kept her locked in a cage and made her eat an Earth Elemental for half a decade before anyone helped her.
That's gotta frack a kid up.
Especially when every Terram-aligned being she meets punishes her for being the victim.
On a lighter note, I just realized how stupid it is to pay 1 point for a specialist. I could dump it into Vis Stocks, but then she's got 6 points of that which feels like a useful number to do things with....
Yeah, there's a reason I'm not playing tabletop these days. After moving to Chicago, I just don't have the energy to separate the wheat from the chaff when finding a gaming group anymore. My crew back in Pittsburgh, we'd been playing together for over a decade, and really understood what we were all trying to achieve.
So, consider my verbose explanation above me saying, "trust me, I get it. I feel the same knee-jerk reactions."
Getting back to the original thought, I did the math and here's one set of values that passes the self-initiation script for a major virtue. To be clear, now that we've all agreed we feel the same way about how Mysteries should work, this is meant as story seed generation. It is NOT a request to have this done any time soon, or even at all.
(pause)
Actually, I think the coolest thing would be if some giant Terram Spirit offered this path as a way to redeem herself in the eyes of the Terram Realm, or something like that. Although that would actually be for replacing her (Minor) Imbued With Spirit of Terram Virtue with a Major Virtue, which is a +3, and therefore a different script. Definitely want her to spend time being forced to deal with the consequence of that virtue before losing it though.
Int 1
Lore 4
Recent Minor Ordeal 3
The bonus she gets for having gained Hubris when picking up Major Philosophic Alchemy
Sacrifice 35 lvls : 6
Sacrifice your Talisman or a 7th+ magnitude enchantment. If I were SG'ing this script, I'd force her to either give up some item she really favors, or build something specifically to suit. Eg, make a magic item which fixes some supernatural damage or something.
Sacrifice time 1
Usually scripts giving this bonus require her to spend a season teaching others The Way. Note that this is the bonus she gets as the Initiate, not the Mystagogue.
I actually can't remember why she has the Prodigious Plant Pot. I think the original idea I had was that it would let her grow the special lumber needed to make clear glass, back in the iteration when she was a glass blower.
Dumping that, and re-thinking the vis stocks and the 1-pt Specialist (who is really an anti-specialist), that gives her 17 pts to play with.
I don't really understand what you mean, but, for what it's worth, here's an idea, based on what you said about her.
The elemental energies viscaria ingested are, in a way, still alive with her, bound to her life force and suffering from being cut of the magic realm. Even more, and unbeknowst to Viscaria, each time she uses her "Imbued with Terram" power is like torturing the spirits, ripping bit after bit of its being.
So, say, she encounter this Terram Spirit who doesn't tells her the truth, but still, understanding that she may be innocent, put her on some quest whose real goal is to make her understand what happened to the spirit and what she is doing.
Along the way, she will have a chance to contact the (mostly animalistic) elemental inside her, and, by forswearing her power (despite a quest-related temptations to use it!) and breaking the ties to her old self (sacrificing her talisman), to make peace with it, thus losing her "Imbued by Terram" virtue.
But this is not the end: Sometime later (from one season to a year), the damage has been healed, and, through their truce, viscaria discovers, to her amazement, that the elemental has fully merged with her, allowing her to work some terram-related magics with much, much more power than anything she could have imagined before, in effect granting her her focus. Through peace and understanding, she'll have achieved what her pater never could accomplish with force and torture.
Funnily enough, this makes her quite similar to Hiems, which is a personnification of Cold. Maybe she could lose her minor virtue, gain her focus, and "gain" Terram Monstruosity? This'd be quite appropriate in this story, and (again!) quite ironic, as, despite her terram-related appearance, she'd regain her free spirit.
Just ideas and suggestions, bouncing ideas around. What do you think of it?
That's a good spin. Although, since she doesn't have a talisman, I was thinking that she would need to create some kind of enchanted item using her internal supplies of vis. For example, maybe she makes a Terram-based version of The Tireless Servant, using only her internal vis (ripping the terram spirit out of her body and putting it into a stone creation). She then has to give the The Tireless Servant to the Great Earth Mother, who gives it the same duty that was once held by the spirit which was merged with her soul. Basically, she makes an faux-elemental, and the Great Earth Mother makes him a Real Wooden Boy.
So, while debating on what to do with these build points, I had a few silly ideas, to go with the general perversity of Viscaria's unnatural connection to Terram, her creepy spider familiar, and penchant for picking up "strays:
How many builds points would it take to make Bob The Skull?
Can Vin Diesel The Shield Grog, my forge-companion, and any other members of my traveling party also be inhuman? She does, after all, come from Phoenix, with its inhuman residents. I was already assuming that the forge companion is a dwarf-blooded. Maybe Vin Diesel is a very short cave troll or something?
Probably best for them to be as humanoid as possible. There is a fair amount of mundane population to deal with. Jormungand has problems because he conjures dead bodies from mid air, and then his spells can't affect them because of his Restriction. Let's not get too crazy, there are people that are used to a Gently gifted magus (Apollodorus) and by and large nothing too bizarre has happened since others have arrived, except for Jormungand. Go far a field and the stories will change to reflect the need to integrate. It's a troupe issue to decide, though..
