Mage RP.

Rashar

Just curious, since the topic was brought up, as to what your thoughts are in regards to mage RP and specifically the boundaries (or lack of) when compared to mechanical skills.

For years my favorite characters in books / games have always been mages, and I'm pretty drawn to the whole theme of them. It seems to me there is a somewhat different view as far as some Aetolians are concerned, though.

Obviously I've been wolfing it up for the last however long, but before that I frequently did the same sort of things as Meltas, portraying at least a some level of general ability to manipulate elements and such. It seems like with all the things a mage can do, that shouldn't be far out of reach.

I also don't feel like it would be absurd to be able to RP at least some of the things we can enchant an item to do, but this really could be my lack of understanding as far as enchanting goes. I get that there is more of a ritualized process involved with enchantment, but I sort of attributed that to the act of actually putting it on an item semi-permanently. 

Thoughts?

Angwe

The view I've always held of 'arcane' magic in Aetolia is something barely controlled and far from well understood. This view precludes Cabalists, who expend a great degree of effort in understanding the extremely dangerous, yet logical and law-bound forces they deal with.

tl;dr: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FunctionalMagic

Magi practice Force Magic, Cabalists practice Rule Magic, Shamans/Luminaries/Templars/Indorani practice Theurgy.

The 'magic' that Sentinels practice isn't so much 'magic' as a combination of mysticism (brought on either by ancestor worship or plain ol' self confidence) and practical scientific methodology combined with physical discipline, not unlike the what martial artists such as the Daru and the Sentaari are capable of.

I'll let someone else get into Carnifex, if this whole tangent isn't enough of a derail already. I find this subject fascinating and apologize in advance for bringing the thread off the rails.

Rashar

No worries, I'm really interested in hearing what people have to say. I very, very rarely see anyone using emotes to portray any sort of magic-based abilities at all, and I kind of want to know why.

Angwe

The kind of 'magic' Angwe would do, except for when he's trying to channel @Haern's power, would likely involve a lot of chanting, beating drums and burning incense or mixing various reagents into resins, powders or poultices for 'medicine'. And yes, he does that kind of thing sometimes.

Sentinel 'magic' has less to do with outside forces and more to do with one's own mindstate. 'You can become the avatar of the predator's rage, if you let yourself go' sorta thing.

Ciarelle

Rashar said:

Obviously I've been wolfing it up for the last however long, but before that I frequently did the same sort of things as Meltas, portraying at least a some level of general ability to manipulate elements and such. It seems like with all the things a mage can do, that shouldn't be far out of reach.

I also don't feel like it would be absurd to be able to RP at least some of the things we can enchant an item to do, but this really could be my lack of understanding as far as enchanting goes. I get that there is more of a ritualized process involved with enchantment, but I sort of attributed that to the act of actually putting it on an item semi-permanently. 

I'm fine with some level of mage/element-manipulating RP provided it's in keeping with what they can actually do. If an Ascendril-trained mage were to start throwing around spells seemingly borne of earth, I'd start cringing.

I have Ciarelle do a lot of little things in RP scenes - for example, she uses a variation of Oscillate to make music  because I honestly don't see why, if she can embed a crystal vibration to make a bunch of discordant and annoying noise, she couldn't manipulate it into something more pleasant-sounding. Months ago, I included a stronger emphasis on practicing magic in the Ascendril purpose and I added tasks where you could earn points basically for creating and showing off your own elemancy spell (hence some of the comments in the quotes thread really annoying me).

Beyond that, I suppose I start to feel like the limits are being pushed when:

1) It's a bit OTT - and this is a personal thing, my OTT line and your OTT line might be very different.

2) It's a bit unnecessary.

I did roll my eyes at bit at the Meltas emote as well as laugh at the randomness of it because there's a bench right there, he was very much a part of the supporting cast in that scene and... an ice chair?! Also, Meltas making an ice chair - puns, all the puns.  Theoretically, though, I suppose he could do it - manipulate water and somehow lower the heat in the air either through fire or spirit, I vaguely recall Ciarelle and Aisling talking about it. Just because you haven't seen the RP doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Rashar

I don't know what OTT means.

Good ol' Google. Alright, we're good now.

Aarbrok

Aarbrok gets high and talks to himself, proclaiming to see omens, which sometimes he sees and feels...other times he embellishes.

Im more the clear the mind and let the voices roam kind of magic RPer with him.  Hes always had various 'personalities' as a character, and within those persona are different perceptions.  Different ways of drowning out the background noise allow a way of seeing for Aarbrok, in which he could manage to overcome or do things that he would not normally be able to do if he was stuck in his own head so to speak.  Some of those persona are terribly frightened, others filled with bravado.

He is more of a channeler sort, he calls upon spirits, shadows, nature as a whole.  Success depends on a matter of focus but it would not be obscene to see him incredibly focused and call upon something he shouldn't, he tends to get in over his head alot.  I think though with any scenario of extreme magic, conjuring, spiritual or the like, there needs be focal points to call upon such things, and concentration.  I wouldn't willfully conjure up something in a way it should not be done, without likely RPing myself screwing it up somehow and getting hurt.

NOTE: Aarbrok gets hurt ALOT.

Also, I now see Meltas like this....

Moirean

Well, I have a forcefield made out of souls and an arm that lets me chill in Toz's head, so I may be hitting that OTT Ciarelle mentioned... >_>

I tend to stick to stuff that's at least implied by the skills and existing lore for the most part. I often just spin out an existing skill to give it more body. Some examples of stuff I've done:

- One of my alts used to summon condensed water from the air into rain to create scrying pools, back when she was a mage.

- Moi "wears" illusions pretty heavily, ie her entire Imp form and she can make illusion encompass more than just sight (sound, taste, the whole sensory experience) but to make them that realistic (or to subject other people to really in-depth ones, like the one she did for Rashar in her house, it's quite taxing, so she can't maintain that level of "magic" when she's really tired or emotional or etc.

- As far as Sentinel stuff, I've always viewed it as just super heightened senses mixed with a tiny dash of druidry. Even the metamorphosis stuff I treated as a sense of a sort, like your perceptiveness to nature is so heightened that you can sense and mimic the animal spirits, whereas stuff like firstaid (the old woodlore clotting skill), I'd treat as basically enhanced concoctions, with a bit of glowing green "magic" augmenting the herbal remedy.

- Moi's father (not Gillbert, her "real" father, ie someone who exists only in my head/Moi's backstory) was a mage who specialized in time manipulation before he went crazy/Dr. Frankenstein. He developed spells that expanded the use of the stasis enchantment onto large objects...including people. Moi finally turned to his old spells when Bene vanished and she was left with a newborn (for anyone who ever read that log, there's the explanation of what was going on with the baby).

Most of this stuff has clear limits in my head. Illusions get tiring, stuff like the stasis spell mean you can't disrupt the room it's cast on, etc, ie magic has costs and doesn't just come from nowhere. That's partially a reflection of Moi's backstory (use of magic destroyed her father) and my own aesthetic when it comes to how I like seeing magic used in fantasy - I prefer it as not just some absolute magic, but stuff that has its own rules and explanations...it's just that those are fantastic or maybe even hard to determine ones, and that's what makes it "magic" and not normal reality.

Brae

Moirean said:

- Moi "wears" illusions pretty heavily, ie her entire Imp form and she can make illusion encompass more than just sight (sound, taste, the whole sensory experience) but to make them that realistic (or to subject other people to really in-depth ones, like the one she did for Rashar in her house, it's quite taxing, so she can't maintain that level of "magic" when she's really tired or emotional or etc.

I think anyone who uses illusions for any length of time would say that they can do the same thing with illusions, and long term subterfuge masters could probably do much better. I think illusions are pretty far from 'magic', but I've always treated them as a second nature to any character that can use them, rather than something they have to actively think about.

Rashar

Hmm. I gather there are probably different types of illusion, but at least for an Ascendril/Sciomancer it seems like they're partially magic based, since they're in the magic skillset.

Moirean

@brae: I'm not trying to imply that I'm some special snowflake with illusions, since you seem to have read it like that (although given Moi's history with the Syssin, I think it's fair to say she's more than just a casual user). Just saying I have the use have costs, just like physical skills would have costs.

Xavin

Rashar said:

Hmm. I gather there are probably different types of illusion, but at least for an Ascendril/Sciomancer it seems like they're partially magic based, since they're in the magic skillset.

They are. Or at least seem to be. Or rather, Ascendril/Sciomancer illusions are elemental constructs, since the spell requires a channel to Spirit/Air.

I Sort of like Angwe's explanation for the types of magic that the various classes practice, though I feel that that depiction is just too sweeping. At their heart, the mage classes practice elemental magic which, due to the nature of Aetolia's elements (or rather their apparent nature), is very polarized with Spirit and its supporting elements in opposition to Shadow and its supporting elements. There's a little cross-over when it comes to what the two classes can do, though. Both can make water, for example, but their methods are different. Sciomancers cast a spell called condensate which separates all water out of the air around them, while Ascendril seem to tap their channel with the plane of Water and literally summon pure elemental water to where they are.

From a traditional RPG perspective, both mage classes have a great deal of what is in the typical mage's repertoire. Light/darkness spells, including focused forms that can be used as an attack, flash-bang evocations, forceful blasts of elemental energy that don't harm but simply knock around their target, and area-effect abilities that cause harm in various ways. You can extrapolate from their that a practiced mage might be capable of a great deal, depending on their area of focus. That said, I personally feel that there are, or should be, boundaries as to what a mage is capable of. Ascendril and Sciomancer both seem to be heavily based on an evoker-style mage, which is to say they evoke various elemental effects and they are, more or less, one off abilities that don't persist all that long, though there are some examples of conjurations in their skillsets, with their elementals and the creation of their staves. So to me, anything that goes beyond what is explicitly laid out in the AB's of each class would take an immense amount of concentration and investment from even the most practiced, powerful mage.

There's a sticking point there, as well, because in most works where there are mages, be it other RPGs or fantasy stories, there are clear hierarchies as to the power of a mage. For example in D&D/Pathfinder, a mage's power is based entirely on how much practical experience that mage has acquired and, in the case of the book-studying wizard, how much research they have managed to pull off on their own or with the help of others. In Aetolia, however, every Ascendril is capable of the same things once they have transcended their abilities. Which begs the question what makes a mage in aetolia more powerful than any other mage?  PK ability? Character level? Those don't really come into play all that much. And, from my point of view, a non-combatant character is just as capable of being a powerful mage as someone who is out pking all day. It's just that they don't quite understand how to adequately harness their power in a situation like a fight. It could be tied to the intelligence of the character, since that does relate to their available mana and how damaging their spells can be, I suppose.

Aishia

It's a lot more fun to be sort of lax with these sorts of things. There are common sense lines somewhere, but you can as much draw them with the situation you're in(What you could do in an RP fight might be different than if you were relaxed and focused.) Probably using the same sort of sense that tells you not to emote ripping someones head off and punting it into the moon.

 I feel like I could grow plants and control them to some degree, for example. I have skills that suggest things like that. Vines flying all over the place and strangling people, skills that quicken the growth of things, shooting spores all over the place, growing flowers INSIDE YOU. Abilities related to prophecy, visions, ripping up animals to see things, HUNTING PEOPLE DOWN with gutbits and bone. Singing songs that make me MAGICALLY TELEPORT. I screw around with lightning so much it's not even funny.

 It's not entirely unfair to extrapolate skills or abilities that seem to exist inbetween the gaps in your skills, I think. Especially when you sort of vaguely can see how you might build into those sorts of things with abilities you already have.

Teani

Sorry for hijacking the thread, I'll be quick and don't want it to roll on beyond this simple thing, but I want to apologize to @Ciarelle for the post she took offense to, seeing as it was me who made one. I've not seen the recent changes in the guild (or heard of any changes outwardly either), but nothing like that was going on or really mentioned a few months back when I was part of it. It was bad of me to make the assumption few things had changed since then.

Veovis

I'm a little lax with Veovis' use of Hematurgy. As a Reborn vampire he has a modicum of control over Earth and a great deal of control over Blood, particularly his own. If I can make the Earth part when I need to recuperate, why can't I make it part to hold my scythe while I'm having a conversation with Moirean about whether or not I should lean on my scythe or not? 

Xavin

I would question how much control over earth a bloodborn actually has. The skills, from what I remember, don't really focus on manipulating earth so much as focusing on the blood. Teradrim, or -maybe- Sciomancers I could see doing that sort of thing.

Xiuhcoatl

One thing I always find amusing about mages, is that for a long time I thought stormhammer was you directing lightning from the sky to the target. Hence why the clouds get dark and unicorns.

Then I read the message and realized it's actually. 

Veovis

Xavin said:

I would question how much control over earth a bloodborn actually has. The skills, from what I remember, don't really focus on manipulating earth so much as focusing on the blood. Teradrim, or -maybe- Sciomancers I could see doing that sort of thing.

A modicum means a small quantity. It's by no means a large focus of the class, but they get their ritual weapons from the earth, and they can earthmeld & etc. Sorry if my vocabulary was problematic there. 

Mariena

I can't speak for other people, but in my own rp I will work off of what skills I have and go from there. 

A great example of this was when the Sciomancer's Master Crystal was cracking (again) and we had to figure out how to stop it. We had stoneskin as an available skill, so Mariena suggested wrapping a stoneskin layer around the crystal. It made sense that, if we could wrap supple stone around our own bodies, we could do so around another object. 

I have also used the shadows and air to create simple, translucent images in the air while explaining how the Sciomancer's skills interact with each other. 

When Mariena was VERY angry, whatever the closest element to her would react. Example: If she were in tunnels, the earth would crack and shake. If she were outside, thunder would crack and ozone would be smelled. 

As a shaman, things grow around her and she can manipulate vines/flowers/thorns and so on. Healing energy is also focused into people because she has that skill. She will randomly sing to call objects to her because if she can sing to pull herself to places, why not? 

Toz

Deathlore is pretty much a copypasta of Necromancy, but nerfed. So I'd treat its rules and regulations similar to Necromancy in almost every respect - souls are a little more 'useful' than essence in that you can build them into shapes and they'll stay that way (soul shield), you can eat them (soul consume) and heal yourself, or you can turn them into a weapon (soul cleaver), etc. I sort of treat them like silly putty - they can be whatever I tell them to be, but they're also half-hearted copies at best.The actual casting of deathlore abilities involves phrases/runes to control them, but it's also primarily a willpower thing - they do what you tell them to do because you TELL THEM TO DO IT. So long as you're strong in your orders and not an awful Deathlorist, I figure you can make at least a passable copy of anything. And the more creative you get (see: Moirean's arm), the more neat stuff you can do.

Jensen

For sentinels/haerns order I've mostly just used animal empathy in my RP. Though Jensen did have his defiance raven back tattoo slowly sprout real wings when he got endgame and racial flying, so that tied in with his faith. I know @xenia did a cool carni skill related soul tethered wings too. I liked that one quite a bit

Irruel

@xavin

I think age/study/practice does affect the power of a mage, or in fact any class.

Not in the raw amount of elemental power they are able to channel, because that is controlled by clearly understood mechanics (skill rank, intelligence, artifacts), but certainly in the amount of fine control they might have over smaller things.

I mean, if 100 years of study and practice doesn't let you figure out how to do a few simple little ice sculptures (or whatever your class's equivalent is), then you've probably been wasting your time.

Ciarelle

@Teani, while I appreciate the sentiment and would like to note that my anger was not at you alone, I want to stress this again:

Ciarelle said:

I have Ciarelle do a lot of little things in RP scenes - for example, she uses a variation of Oscillate to make music  because I honestly don't see why, if she can embed a crystal vibration to make a bunch of discordant and annoying noise, she couldn't manipulate it into something more pleasant-sounding. Months ago, I included a stronger emphasis on practicing magic in the Ascendril purpose and I added tasks where you could earn points basically for creating and showing off your own elemancy spell (hence some of the comments in the quotes thread really annoying me).

These aren't new things. They are mechanisms that have been there for RL months, were well-publicised when they went in and, given you were head of novices and apparently quizzing novices on the purpose and managing the tasks, I'm surprised that you didn't notice them. There have been events where magic use was called for or suggested, you and I even discussed the ceremonies that could have happened if you could have bothered emoting them and, on top of that, you were a leader - you had the opportunity, if you wanted to, to draw as much or as little attention to this aspect of things as you wanted.

There's also your own RP choices. No one has stopped you from carrying out this stuff before, and no one is stopping you from doing so now. One OOC opinion from Xavin on the forums on one particular magic trick isn't equivalent to a guild policy, and you've taken your character out of that guild anyway.

I'm sorry if this is hurtful to you, but there is a point where it's less about the lack of opportunities an org is giving and more about your own choices to do or not do something.

Excuse the derail, everyone else.

(Edit: trying to fix formatting)