What Resources/Power Would a Group Need to Destroy Order?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
21

By my reading, this is harder than it looks.

The Volkyv needs +6 of applicable sympathies to use both R: Symbol and T: Symbol. Sympathetic Influence uses Pre + Leadership + Simple die and a confidence point of every use, so even getting 15's for +2 is dodgy (multiple tries will get it), and 24's are basically impossible (need Pre+Ld of 14 and roll of 10, or lots more confidence). Managing to string together 3 different sympathies that align to hit the whole Order of Hermes is a stretch, and SIX is pretty much impossible (and the Personal Influence would fade before he got all six +1's).

Next, there's all that Grant(ing) with Evocation. That's a Warping Point or Confidence Point every time it's used, AND he needs Sympathy with the villagers to create the effect and is limited to (Sympathy x5) for doing so. The first person he has to grant Ceremony (Base15, +1M Touch, then Duration Sun+2M minimum to be useful = 30), so he needs +6 applicable Sympathy with that villager just to do that for Sun Duration, then he has to go on an Grant enough Sympathy Traits to that person as well so that they eventually can join in on the grand ritual (requires 6 points of Sympathy from everybody if my reading is correct, as everyone in the Ceremony counts as the caster for effect considerations - which is what allows the effect total to be boosted so high due to Sympathy stacking). Without adding in Evocation, that person will contribute, on average, +1 to any Ceremony use (Ceremony score 1+1 for Specialization, -1 per participant, add Communication, averaging 0 - and Sympathy Bonuses don't apply to Supernatural Abilities).

Then you start having to do this string of events to multiple people, each time it costs everyone a confidence point (they're run out fast) or accept a Warping Point (they'll warp fast).

So for all that work (Warping and Confidence), on a per person basis you get 1+Communication. Out of 40-50 villagers, how many have +0 or higher Communication? If we assume 1/2, that's +25 to the rite, up to maybe +40 for those folks with +1 Communication or better. You're not busting the Order with that.

Unless I'm reading this wrong. A large group of Volkyv together could do this, I think, but a lone guy using Grant faces some serious hurdles; giving people Ceremony by itself isn't enough.

Edit: Even managing the 30 to Grant the Ceremony for Sun is likely beyond the lone Volkyv's power, given how Methods and Powers advance as Abilities (starting at age 35 means 5 max in each, so stress + 5+ 5 + Communication + Aura makes a 30 troublesome, 35 for Moon duration very troublesome. Granting that same person Puissant Ceremony is equally difficult. Then you're getting Communication +3 per person, and you'd need about 10 of those people to approach using Grant to give Evocation (65 for Moon Duration) to one person. I don't want to think how many Confidence and/or Warping Points would be incurred getting there, even accounting for bootstrapping.

22

Re-reviewing Wizard's Communion and Aegis of the Hearth has left me slack-jawed at just how much Might a creature needs to do anything to a covenant of the oldest and most powerful Magi. Assuming one of them knows their way around ReVi, an Aegis level above 100 isn't even a big stretch. That... Is "go away little archangels" level. Holy frick-frack.

I mean, I guess destroying everything in the Order except the oldest and most powerful Magi will still result in them collapsing from a lack of resources and those old Magi eventually just dying of aging or passing into Final Twilight. But... DAAAAANG.

This is giving me so much saga inspiration, for some reason. But a game exploring this would be too dark and probably require to old of Magi for my players to be interested. Ah well.

Any other thoughts on what kinds of powers/resources somebody would need to bring down the Order for good? I'm looking a bit more for true breakage; civil war works, but just making them disband due to being an outdated system is a bit counter to the point of the discussion.

23

A level 100 Aegis is going to have 1+20+n botch dice, where n is the number of magi involved in the Ritual Communion. Even a strong Golden Cord, Spell Mastery and Cautious Sorcerer combined will leave a lot of botch dice to deal with. There might be more botch dice because of the conditions for casting. The duration of such a ritual probably require more; working magic for 20 hours...

The Vis cost, when combined with the risks of botching the ritual, suggest that a high level Aegis will be cast only in times of emergency. The highest level peace-time Aegis is probably between 8th and 10th magnitude, with a few exceptions for the paranoid covenants flush with Vim Vis.

24

Let's see. As I said, it was quite some time ago, but I think I can reconstruct it fairly well.

More than that: they must be sympathies applicable to the target. So if you have a sympathy with Fire, and you are trying to ward the target from Fire, the sympathy does not count towards helping you with Symbol.

I seem to recall the character got either two +3s, or (more likely) three +2s (or perhaps he had already a sympathy that was somehow applicable, and only needed two more at +2 or so).

The character did have highish Presence and Leadership, I think for a total around +7. Remember that you can explicitly apply any extant sympathy as a bonus to the roll, since it is, after all, a Leadership roll. I think the character had an applicable sympathy like "devoted to his god" or something at a fairly highish level - maybe +4? This means that a 4+ on a simple die would give that 15 necessary for a +2 trait. Yes, it did cost several points of Confidence, almost all the Confidence the Volkov had.

As for sympathies that align to hit the Order of Hermes, remember that the symbol must include the entire Order and only the Order, but the applicable sympathies can hit something quite a bit wider. So, "followers of Hermes", "sworn, rightful vengeance", "magicians and their servants", "people responsible for (this includes the entire "clan" of the offender, i.e. the Order)" all qualify.

Yes. The Volkov was ready to accept a lot of warping on this. I think he got a way with less than half a dozen points.

No. He needs Sympathy with the effect. So, for example, if he had a sympathy with "sworn, rightful vengeance", any effect of sworn, rightful vengeance applies. Sympathy must encompass the target only to get the benefit of Symbol.

Note that with the same magnitude as T:Ind he can pull off T:Circle.
And D:While(Condition) (e.g. while involved in the Rites to bring down the wrath of the god on its enemies) only has the same cost as D:Concentration.
So the target is 25.

With a few helpers with the best Communication in the village (say half a dozen helpers, with a total Com of +10: +3/+2/+2/+1/+1/+1):
Volkov's Communication +2
Evocation 5 (including specialties)
Grant 4 (including specialties)
Ceremony 5 (including specialties)
Faerie Aura 4
+10 Communication bonus from the helpers
-7 7 participants, including the Volkov
all you need is avoid rolling a 0 on the stress die (the total is stress die+23).

Once the Volkov has done this, Granting every adult villager Ceremony with a score of 1 (and a relevant specialty!), he can involve the entire village in subsequent castings, getting a total of stress die+(Volkov stats + Aura=20)+(80=40 Ceremony abilities at 1+1 specialty)-41(41 participants)=stress die+59, so it's a breeze to Grant everyone:
Puissant Ceremony
Evocation
Puissant Evocation

This is a total of 4 castings, plus 1 more for the big one to turn the Order into vermin, paid with 5 warping points.

No. As callen correctly pointed out, sympathy cannot add. But you can get an average of up to +8/villager by Granting each Ceremony and Evocation (with the appropriate specialties) and Puissance in both.

And it seem pretty clear that the other participants do not need to have the appropriate sympathy requisites, since they do not even have to know the appropriate Method or Power. The fact that they are "treated as the caster" is something different: it means, among other things, that they do not get warped by self-targeting with high magnitude effects, and that they can control those effects that allow caster's control.

1 Like
25

Yes, I'd thought about some of those others, too. I'm sure it made for some interesting NPCs. I would have eyeballed the number of Bjornaer differently, but I like your thought process. (24+ using Stamina + Heartbeast + Aura + Confidence + Stress Die would mean probably mean a roll of 16+ for a magus just out of apprenticeship or about 4%. With some experience in Heartbeast that would grow quickly. Hmmm... How many times can one try?)

Yes, me too. I'd been contemplating a similar type of scenario as an interesting starting point for a game.

26

I'd allow only one...

27

Well, obviously you're reading it differently than I am, but what seems very clear to me is that the effect is limited by the caster's Sympathy Traits x5. If the ceremonial participant's Sympathy traits don't add to this (i.e. if they aren't required to have 6 sympathy for the Symbol part of the effect, their sympathy should not add to the effect total limit), then the caster has to have +20 in applicable Sympathy for a level 100 effect. I just can't see stacking enough +1/+2 sympathy traits to get there without being ludicrously permissive. "Order of Hermes", "Out of Proportion Vengeance" and "Turn to Snails" are IMO about it in terms of what can apply to this spell effect; stuff like "Magicians and their Servants" is too broad (bigger than a Minor Magical Focus), and "Punishment for Crime X" or "People of Magus Y" don't necessarily apply or are redundant (just a re-phrasing of "Order of Hermes", really).

28

I'd personally estimate the number of Bjornaer and let them roll once per day, with half of those who didn't succeed + the number of botches dying each time. That's A LOT of die rolls, though, so if I was trying to roll all of it to leave a calculated number of survivors I'd probably round it and roll for them in groups of ten. More likely, of course, would be me leaving it as an unknown variable so I can introduce however many Bjornaer might be positive influences on the saga (whether as antagonists or allies or something else).

29

Sure. In this case, 21 for a level 105 effect.
I wouldn't allow the sympathies of the "helpers" to contribute.

First of all, as I mentioned, the character had some "pre-existing" sympathy traits, both positive and negative. These can easily exceed +1 or +2. Remember that negative traits also count (e.g. a -4 traits provides 4 points). And remember that Sympathies can also be circumstances such as "during a storm" or "on ground consecrated to ".

I can't really remember what the character had. But if I had to hazard a guess, it would be something like (at the cost of 2 Major Flaws, 1 Minor Flaw and 1 Minor Virtue):
Starting Warping score: 2
Faerie Antipathy, Major Flaw -> -5 Antipathy (spiders?)
Faerie Antipathy, Major Flaw -> -5 Antipahy (new moon?)
Faerie Upbringing, Minor Flaw -> Can raise Sympathies 1 higher than "normal".
Faerie Background, Free Virtue: Sympathy +2 (places favored by the pagan god), Antipathy -2 (places inimical to the pagan god)
Faerie Sympathy, Minor Virtue: Sympathy +4 (service to the god)

So carrying out the rituals at the "bad" time of the month, in a "good" (or "bad", in fact) place for the pagan god, for something in service to the god yields 11 sympathy points and allows effects up to level 55.
Transforming the Order to vermin, after acquiring 6 sympathy points related to the Order through ceremonial influence, yields another 11 points (5 from vermin, 6 from the Order), allowing effects up to level 110.

Not sure. Beasts of legend is a minor focus after all. But it's just an example.

Well, I really can't remember, but I guess you can get three +2 sympathies covering the Order as:

  1. (Harm to) the pagan god's enemy tribes.
  2. (Harm to) folks sworn to the evil foreign god, Hermes.
  3. (Harm to) folks I have sworn rightful vengeance against.

Remember that, because the Volkov was getting these sympathies through ceremonial influence, he could really taylor them to his needs; and though the three categories may (partially) overlap in this particular case, they are distinct. So by my reading, they can all be used - just like you could use sympathies in swords, blades forged by your own hand, and weapons you took human lives with, even if you only forged and used swords.

30

I suppose that would be impractical most of the time... Though, wait, 20 hours? I thought Ritual spells took fifteen minutes per magnitude, so a spell with 20 magnitudes would only take 5 hours, not 20. Same number of botch dice, of course, but not quite such a time investment. A short enough time, in fact, to do the Ritual and still enjoy the following feast on the same day!

... Assuming the entire group casting the spell doesn't automatically go into Final Twilight. :confused:

Yeah, okay. Still, having the capability to pull that off in an emergency is a pretty incredible defensive layer to account for.

Ah, the subtleties of power. The united Church and Royal Crown could barely pull off a win, as is the assumed case for all the mightiest dragons/giants/whatever working in concert. Yet here we sit discussing the intricacies of a single not-even-all-that-powerful person taking a village of literally powerless people and using them to practically annihilate the Order in one smooth stroke. That's just... Ack.

31

Huh? The church could do it just as easily as long as they were pious in the process.

32

I did mean sans miracles direct miracles, of course; there was no question that God's direct intervention would simply end the Order. Just based on the powers they have available to themselves through Holy Methods and Powers, combined with the Divine assistance they'd be likely to receive (a few powerful angels at least, probably a lot of lesser Divine creatures too) they'd be able to accomplish it but have a really tough time of the process and could potentially also fail. I mean, True Faith does provide copious amounts of Magic Resistance, which helps and conveniently provides more juice for Holy Spells, but then you run into the same problem the Order has; it's not really a win if the only ones left when the smoke clears are the top twenty or so most faithful and powerful Clerics, with everyone else dead or otherwise occupied with no longer existing.

Again, with miracles... God just sort of smashes the Order into cute little bits and the only difficult assignment the Church has is scraping the exploded body parts off their new land. But without them it's a pretty even match as far as I can see.

33

Yeah, sorry, I missed dividing again by 4. I have a problem with math. :smiley: Still, 5 hours is not an inconsiderable amount of time, and the vis cost of 20 is pretty steep...

34

But Ceremony is available to them as well. And with the size of the church, they should be able to gather together a lot of those with Ceremony at the same time if they decided to go after the Order. One leaderless Ceremony with lots of those with Ceremony and someone with Invocation Wonders or something like that could be just as good as what the Hedgie did. No need for all the miracle stuff.

35

Egad. Does the Neg Sympathy subtract only from Non-Supernatural, or is that a Positive Sympathy thing? Even then +5 botch dice on everything makes for a very short lifespan. Negative Sympathies are super-bad.

It seems really broken that flaws let you cast more powerful effects, though. Somebody didn't think Faerie Wizardry through. Though the fact that all these Granted virtues are Charmed Virtues, can they really all activate them without the charm being exposed? Especially if all the virtues are being granted at once with one spell, they'll all know each other's activation charms and they'd all fail. Could you give everyone involved a different charm, and keep it secret, in one casting? Those involved in Ceremony might be considered OK to know the secret (since they are considered the caster), but at a minimum you'd need to grant Ceremony to each person privately (+40 Warping Points for the Volkyv and 40 chances to botch with +5 botch dice) and thereafter hope they can keep all their methods of activation secret.

36

Even if rule it implausible for a lone Faerie Wizard to blast the Order out of existence. It does seem that an organized group wielding Faerie Methods would be quite a threat. A highly cognizant and powerful faerie god type leading a faerie tradition and a cult of worshipers floor could conceivably wipe the floor with the order. Or they could wipe just about any other organization in mythic Europe.

37

But is that a good story (for the faerie)?

38

A highly cognizant faerie isn't really limited to acting out stories. They can make plans and take actions outside of stories or even better manipulate situations so they fall into their own narrative. So they can have the same panoply of reasons for their actions as any other antagonist character.

39

Aren't faeries bound to stories, or, in the case of highly cognizant faeries, seeking out humans in an effort to change their role? And based on that (my limited understanding) such a faerie attempting to destroy the Order would be acting upon another human's behest, more or less, or would be doing this to attract the attention of magi of the Order in an attempt to change the role.

40

From a strict reading of the text, all sympathy applies only to non-supernatural stuff.

Hmm, probably. I can't really tell: that Volkov was the only character with Negative Sympathy that we ever saw in our sagas ... and he certainly outlived his saga :smiley:

Well, you just stated that negative sympathies are super-bad... and now you complain that they are too good? :smiley:

Nah. First of all, yes, you could make it secret even with a group casting. E.g. give a secret trinket that must never be seen to each of the targets, and must be rubbed to make the Virtue work.
And personally, I'd rule that any Charmed Virtue being granted to a group is a "group secret": it's lost only if the secret escapes the group.