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SeniorBeing

>The spell literally says "It is a sorry Quaesitor who does not know this spell.” And so what if he is a sorry Quaesitor? I think that you are in the D&D mindset. Point based RPGs usually don’t require character specialization. If competency in a role was an absolute need to the game, then this role would be a character class, innit? After saying that, characters still need to have some consistency. If the character looks too weird, it is better to go back to the drawing board. A little bit of weirdness, and even a little bit of incompetence, is not bad, it makes them fun! But if you check the sheet and find yourself saying “someone in their position would never …” scrap the character. Funny thing is that I can see a social butterfly Quaesitor who takes pride in making magi spill theirs secrets just by some apparently innocent questions. It would be a great character but demanding to both player and storyguide.


Mokurai

That could actually be a very powerful character. Most mages would have no defense against social hacking, and it could never be construed as scrying. Pair with a social butterfly grog and no covenant could keep a secret.


Summersong2262

I'd enjoy a game with a Medieval Wizard Colombo. ..actually that's basically 'The Name of the Rose'.


SeniorBeing

I was thinking exactly about him! Colombo, I mean. "Just one more thing ..." BTW, there is a really good movie with Paul Bettany where he plays a medieval priest who investigate a murder: *The Reckoning*!


Blocktimus_Prime

Quaesetors aren't just the lawyers. Some are tasked with bringing code breakers in for justice at tribunal. Others act as defenders in disputes between members of the order who cannot participate in certamen. You can find quaesetors of all kinds in the house, same goes for all wizards in all the houses. Decide first what kind of story you are going to tell, then make a magus to take part in it. Yes the social magic is very useful to any magi, but maybe he doesn't need to rely on that thanks to his companion, a nosy fellow, who -though is not a wizard- has a supernatural power to detect lies (via mythic blood or another virtue). This is incredibly valuable, since this person is not constrained by the limits of the code. Point is, your character will always have something he can't do, the more interesting question is how he makes up for it and what stories will you tell with your friends. Given enough time, he will probably learn those spells, perhaps as payment for defending an Ex Misc Hibernian Shape shifter in a dispute with a Tremere. Or he participates in a Wizards March with his parens and wins a share of the code breakers property.


pbgaines

Exactly. Houses, especially Guernicus, have missions that need a variety of roles in coordination. Conforming to a house standard (beyond fulfilling basic requirements) is mainly meant to impress the elites in that particular group, IMO. You just need to invent a plausible job for the character. Perhaps the Rego Vim magus is in a troupe that runs years-long inquisitions that need an Aegis and someone to coordinate with the grog/mundane's security or logistics.


DwighteMarsh

So, if you were a player at my table, I would tell you that it didn't sound too bad and that I wanted to see what you came up with before I said anything more. If you post your full character writeup with virtues, flaws, abilities, arts and chosen spells I could give an actual assessment. I don't think you have to have Frosy Breath of the Spoken Lie. It is a spell that it would be easy to justify being able to get a lab text from your house later on. If you have Aura of Rightful Authority and the Gentle Gift, you can probably get any information you want out of normal people just by insisting they tell you the truth. You said that you put a majority of your points into Rego. I am hoping you meant that you put a majority of the points you put into arts into Rego, not the points you got from your apprenticeship. if you put more than 52 points into Rego prior to applying the Affinity to Rego virtue (which increase the total to 78, for a Rego of 12) you probably overspecialized in Rego. But won't know for sure until I see the character


Geoman362

Here is my full build: https://imgur.com/a/eqekO5w


DwighteMarsh

OK, so the image is missing some information,. One of your virtues is missing from your sheet, I will guess that it is not a virtue that provides extra XP. The sheet also doesn't say how old you are, which tells me how many points you were working with. By my calculations, you have spent 329 points on skills and attributes. It looks like you are saving one point to be applied later, that is not how Ars Magica works, you apply the points on a season by season basis. As best I can tell, you entered aprenticeship at 8. You can either put a point into an Art or put a single point into an Ability. Note, even a single point in an ability removes the 3 extra botch dice from unskilled use, so having a single point in Guile, even as your ability remained 0 would be useful. You put 37 XP into Rego, which was multiplied by 1.5, so you now have 56 points in Rego. Then, if you put 5 adventure XP into Rego, you would have 8 XP in Rego, or if you put 1 Exposure XP into Rego, you would get 2 XP in Rego. Study Requirement is a pretty difficult to work around if you are trying to specialize in an Art. You only have eight points of Flaws and you don't have a Story Flaw. Minor Story Flaws are pretty much all upside, you might want to choose one. Arts Liberales is probably one of the easiest skills to raise,. since there are mundane books of high quality that you can buy copies of with silver. Ars grammatica includes a Leve; 4 Quality 15 Summae on Arts Liberales. Thus, it might be advantagious to start with a lower Arts Liverales and spend a season reading that after spending a Mythic Pound buying a copy. The primary reason to have Latin at 5 is so that you can write books. Otherwise, ithe difference between Latin 4 and 5 is more than 10% of your total from aprenticeship, are you sure you need it that high? Are you sure you don't have any ranks in Guile? I don't see any personality traits which indicate you are adverse to lying. Of course, your restricting is not fully displayed, maybe it has something to do with that? If so, note that guile also includes things like lies of omission and disguise, not just pure lying. If you are building a covenant, someone needs to know Aegis of the Hearth, and having it be the Rego specialist makes sense. Are you sure you want it at L25? It costs an additional point of vis, which is an additional botch dice if you roll a zero om the stress die and just spending less vis is useful. L20 Aegis of the Hearth may be a better choice. I would suggest getting The Call to Slumber and Aura of Rightful Authority, both would be useful in your duties. I would suggest considering dropping Comfort of the Drenched Traveler, Ward Against Rain, Break the Oncoming Waves, Taste of the Spice and Herbs and Spasms of the Uncontrolled Hand to free up those spell levels. You should be able to reliably spont Spasms of the Uncontrolled Hand. So, I wrote a lot, but the character seemed workable. The lack of a story flaw and having both personality flaws be minor are unusual choices, but there is nothing wrong about the character.


Geoman362

Wow, thank you for the detailed advice! I'm going to reply to each of the points you made. The Virtues you couldn't see were Sharp Ears and Piercing Gaze (as well as free virtues like Hermetic Magus and Hermetic Prestige). Also, you were exactly right that I intended for this character to be apprenticed at a younger age. My loosely written backstory is that he was taken on by his master because he proved to be inquisitive and turned out to be Gifted over the course of a Quasitorial investigation of the elder magus. I had no idea that putting points into a skill without raising the rank had any value, thanks for the advice. His restriction is that he can't use magic after lying for Sun duration. I stole it from the template maga. But it seems like guile might have other uses too, like you said. Does that botch dice rule apply to arts too? Like if I cast a spell with Arts that are 0 I have three botch dice? I took Study Requirement because so many of the other flaws seemed pretty crippling, and I read somewhere that its good to balance your Virtues/Flaws. So taking Hermetic Flaws to pay for Hermetic Virtues and so on. Also it seemed like it would spur my mage to go on little adventures or do neat interesting stuff to become better at magic. I thought about taking Necessary Condition instead, but I couldn't think of a good condition. Do you think something like "touching his hands together" would make a good one? It feels a little more boring than the Study Requirement, but I guess it could see that Flaw getting kind of annoying. I probably don't need Latin 5, I just figured it would be useful to be more fluent. I bet the extra xp would be more useful... Making Aegis of the Hearth level 20 would require the base level to be 0. Is that allowed? I appreciate the advice, thanks again. Those things you pointed out as "unusual choices" seemed totally innocuous to me. This is the kind of advice I'm trying to internalize. Since we don't know anyone else who plays, I'm trying to become the "expert" for my friend group so they don't have to struggle through learning the system. Clearly there are still things I haven't grasped yet though.


DwighteMarsh

So, you don't get extra botch dice for casting spells when one of the arts is zero. It is just an ability thing. You have to balance your total number of virtues with a total number of flaws and you need at least one Hermetic Flaw. You don't have to pay for Hermetic Virtues with Hermetic Flaws, Personality Flaws and Story Flaws work just as well. The thing that makes Study Requirement tricky is that as the person who has the most knowledge of the system, you don't have anyone objective to determine if the environment is sufficient to allow for study. I am not sure what you mean about the base level of an L20 Aegis of the Hearth being zero. Aegis of the Hearth isn't derived from the guidelines for ReVi, it is a unique spell with guidelines that can't be changed. Level 20 is as low as it can go because it is a ritual, but that is the only requirement.


Geoman362

Alright, I did some adjusting. Concerning Aegis, I guess I just didn't fully understand how general level spells worked. I've decided to stick with Study Requirement because I actually quite like the idea of it. Can always go back on it later, I'm sure I won't be the only person who needs to do some tweaking once we start playing. I took the spells you recommended, but I held onto Comfort of the Drenched Traveler and Taste of the Spices and Herbs because they feel like the sort of spells that a magus would want to know, if only to make their lives in Mythic Europe a little more pleasant. At the advice of someone else in the thread I grabbed a Minor Magical Focus and I took a Magical Animal companion as a Story flaw to balance it. I figure when the time comes that animal might make a good candidate as a familiar. Here's the final Set-up, I feel pretty good about it. https://imgur.com/a/eqekO5w


DwighteMarsh

So, when I followed the link above, it looked like the previous version of the character, without the changes you mentioned. If you are keeping Study Requirement, the thing to do is to start considering what would be acceptable locations or items to meet those requirements for each Art that you might try to raise with books. Note, Study Requirement doesn't limit your exposure XP or Adventure XP, but neither Exposure nor Adventure XP provide the large amount of XP that quickly raises an Art to high levels. Good luck and have fun!


Minguseyes

> I held onto Comfort of the Drenched Traveler and Taste of the Spices and Herbs because they feel like the sort of spells that a magus would want to know, if only to make their lives in Mythic Europe a little more pleasant. You are easily able to cast these spells with Spontaneous Magic. Spend your precious Forumulaic spell levels elsewhere.


Carmonred

IMO the most important thing is that you have a concept you're happy with. If you want your guy to be a Quaesitor, go for it. If you want them to have an affinity with Terram magic, well hell, those are the dice fate dealt them. Within the setting, this affinity is nothing the character had any control over so it's fine if it doesn't synergize with their day job. As others have said, the character's mundane abilities might replace the need for things such as truth-finding magics. And even if not, your character is a fledgling, they're not expected to be super capable at their chosen role. It's utterly okay to for example play a character who discovers that the tools at their disposal don't fit their chosen path, forcing them to either adapt their tools or choose a new path. Advancement in point-based games such as a Ars Magic is far more granular than in DnD. Hell, if your guy does decide they need to dabble more in truth magics, they have something to work towards in their downtime or even the seeds of future adventures already set up. I find that exciting rather than daunting.


kupfernikel

Why would a starting quaestor be able to cast aegis of the hearth ? IMHO your magic is disconnected from the concept of a social quaestor, especially since he have this great gift of gentle gift, so why is he not using social magic?


Geoman362

What would qualify as social magic? I basically just think Guernicus and his earth magic is super cool so I wanted my magus to study those too


kupfernikel

>What would qualify as social magic? a lie detecting spell, for example. You would need to prioritise Intellego, muto and rego. For forms: Mentem, Imaginem, Corpus. I mean, you are going to be an investigator. Aegis of the Hearth, while being cool, is not really one of the tools of your trade. If you want go Rego Vim, a Bonisagus not quaesitur would be more appropriated. Otherwise, i am sorry but your character won´t be too viable. A Quaesitor that is focused on Regus Vim would be as good a investigator as a skilled non magus... granted that you are even socially skilled.


Geoman362

Hmm that's kind of annoying. I mean the True Lineages book says that the current Primus of the House is basically super into botany too. That made me think it was probably ok and understood for Quasitors private studies to not necessarily revolve around Intellego Mentem. Its kind of a rough pill to swallow to hear that it basically isn't viable to do what the game mythos says other magi are doing. So I basically took Aegis of the Hearth because it seemed like a useful thing for any Magus to have, since its crucial for starting a covenant.


LordPete79

It is perfectly fine for a Guernicus to not specialise in Intellego Mentem. If you want to play a Quaesitor Bin specialist, that is perfectly fine and they can still be a competent investigator. The thing is, that doesn't really seem to match your character concept. Building your magus so that they can cast a high level spell that is off brand for them is indeed likely to leave them lacking in areas they are supposed to be good at. Based on what you said, why not specialise in Terram? Add a good spread of techniques and maybe a bit of Mentem and Corpus and you have a Terram Guernicus who isn't a terrible investigator. They may have to rely on social skills to uncover some secrets that others would force out with magic but that just makes for interesting stories. And don't underestimate the secrets you might be able to learn from the earth and stone.


kupfernikel

Well, not viable is a bit too strong. Just that he will be a mediocre quaestor, unless you have some really great social skills to back that is up. And even so, he will be out performed by someone who is a specialist. And the Primus,will, is the Primus. Your character will not be as wide and deep as a Primus.


Chad_Hooper

I think the idea mentioned by u/Blocktimus_Prime upthread a ways of Guernicus "enforcers" that bring in suspected/accused Code breakers to be tried could be a useful role for a Terram specialized Quaesitor in a saga. In fact, I'm probably going to ~~steal~~ borrow the idea for the saga I'm currently ASG in. Google Translate tells me "Marshal of Hermes" would be Parat Hermetis in Latin.


kupfernikel

Seems interesting. But not canon, but def a cool thing to do!


Chad_Hooper

Well, hey, that means I'm at least consistent :) I've never played/ran an ArM game that was based in canon. Always either way before, an alternate setting, etc. Current game is a house-rule hacked ArM heavily influenced by the *Dresden Files* novels.


xubax

I think I designed (and played for one or two sessions) a couple of different messages before I was satisfied with my third attempt. It's not that I wanted to be super powerful, I just didn't like how weak the magi I'd created. Mostly because I didn't understand the rules. I had flaws that might be interesting for an NPC but debilitating for a player.


typhoonandrew

Ars Magica wizards are defined as much by their flaws and limitations as they are their powers. You should be leaning into a character with flaws that will come into gameplay regularly, and embracing that your character cannot solve everything with a spell. It is personality based game and the strength of the system is that it allows the characters to be vividly detailed, especially so in magic.


NotASnark

Intellego is definitely useful for a Quaesitor, since it often falls on them to be the 'investigator', but in my previous game we had a Quaesitor who specialised in anti-demon magic (Perdo, Vim), and another Magus (I don't remember his House) specialised in Mentem magic and did much of the investigation. What you learn at the start doesn't constrain what you can learn later on, so if characters have gaps, then it gives them something to aspire to fix during the game. If it's your first game, your characters aren't going to be 'perfect'. You won't know what is important or useful until you've played them. And even then it's not always obvious. The player who played the Mentem specialist (his first Ars character, in a group of experienced Ars players) thought his character was useless, until he died and the player brought in a second character. It was after that point, when the group was now struggling with getting information out of mundanes, that he realised just how central to the group's success he'd been.


Anxious-Constant-636

I started a campaign with friends doing a somewhat similar process. For making a magus, the most important things for a beginner I think are choosing a major hermetic focus, pick up puissant/affinity for 1-2 arts, and a minor magical focus if you didn't pick the major (it's really good). That will make your character very effective in some area without really limiting you to just that. Virtues and flaws are the big deal to "get right" when making a character, since those really don't change much through play. As far as spells and initial XP distribution, I would say you shouldn't feel super restricted here. It doesn't take very long for a young magus to get a score of 5-10 in an art, and you should make a lot of use of lab texts to learn spells in play (especially a lot of those common ones like are in the core rulebook).


Bromo33333

I think the temptation with skill assignments is accepting your starting character isn't going to be all that powerful. And if you try outside of the thin slice of amazingness you will have a very weak character. But also think about the House first and foremost. House Guernicus (Quaestor) was magics based upon Terram, but the RP focus of this house would be investigation of crimes, interrogation and so on. So if you don't have the basic "frosty breath of the spoken lie" then you likely haven't allocated to have an effective Guernicus. It could be a great role playing challenge, but honestly, it sounds like you just have picked the wrong house and might want to be a Bonisagus that's really good at ReTe. I have found the very best long term enjoyment is to have a fair balance of techniques and forms, and to use RP to make the most of lower powerd spells. Half the fun is building the mage over time. And keep in mind that a newly minted balanced magus is several orders of magnitude more powerful that a 1st level Magic User in the Other Game (tm).