• On Books
• On Spells for Regular Use

Rule Interpretations

Books and Advancement

1. Adventure XP is incompatible with any kind of productive work, including teaching, writing or copying books, lab work, etc. The only exception is mundane work which can be seen as an extension of the story.
2. Source qualities are calculated per season. Multiple stories in a season will still only give one XP award.
3. The source quality range for adventures should be extended. Long and complex stories should give learning comparable to excellent books. Maybe 5-15 would be a suitable range.

Virtues and Flaws

1. Personal vis source grants 3p/year if a technique, 4p/year if a form.

Laboratory

1. It is possible, in the same season, to invent some spells using a lab text and others without it. The calculations can be made by using lab text levels as a bonus to the lab total, and work out the inventions of all the spells as if not using a text.

Spells and their Guidelines

1. Realm aligned spells to reduce might work on all creatures with might aligned to that realm. However more specific versions can be created to benefit from a magical focus.
2. Versions of (say) Pilum of Fire with group target are possible in more ways than one.
   1. As area type effects. Arc of Fiery Ribons exemplifies this at a lower damage, but the area may be defined in different ways. Such a definition is fairly coarse though, and the magus cannot tailor it to hit a precise selection of opponents.
   2. By hitting a group of victims, each hit by one pilum, using the group target rules to define and limit the group of victims.
   3. Creating a group of pilums distributed among one or more victims, so that a given individual may be hit more than once. This requires extra magnitudes for complexity/flexibility, since the group of pilums is organised in quite an elaborate pattern to hit the selected victims. The spell description should make it clear which of these interpretations is in force.

Aegis of the Hearth

3. The Aegis protects the covenant, and it does not extend to the lunar sphere. Exactly where the magical boundary occurs above the covenant will be unpredictable and may vary.
4. Aegis of the Hearth can be invented with different size modifiers, even though range/duration/target cannot be modified. The base size is 100 paces diameter, but +1 (300 paces) versions are common in the Order.

House rules

1. A magus can fixing several arcane connections in a season, up to his Magic Theory score. However, it is not possible to fix one in less than a season, or combine this with other lab activities. The fixing process needs to be aligned with celestial cycles, but the process allows some parallellism.

2. Fractional xp carry over. In other words, when an odd number of xp is assigned to an ability/art with affinity, the half xp should be recorded and not rounded up.

   Note This can be problematic when several XP/quality modifiers apply to the same trait. Such cases should be checked for future sagas.

3. Untranslated lab texts can be read, and with a Int+Magic Theory roll, obtain Technique 6+, Form 6+, Requisites (9+ for 1st, 12+ for 2nd, 15+ for third etc) and Magnitude (roughly 9+ exactly 12+) and as such 4 Magic Theory rolls should be made. This whole process takes 1 day per lab text and does not in any way translate the code of the writer.

4. Copying ability books, the copyist needs to accumulate points equal to 3 times the level (compared to art books where only points equal to the level must be accumulated).

On Rituals and Botch Dice

5. Rituals are always cast on a stress dice, no matter how relaxed the situation. (This is RAW.)
6. Practice of mastery of ritual spells yields 4xp per season. It is true that practice by repeatedly casting the spell earns 5xp, but this is not practical for rituals, due to the vis cost.
7. A Safe Casting mastery option can be learnt, but requires one to study a book which explicitly makes it available. It is not automatically available, and books teaching it may be rare. It halves the number of botch dice, before subtracting the mastery score. This is an idea which comes from one of the Folios posted on the Atlas Forum. QUESTIONED

Note These conditions makes it either risky or expensive to go seriously into rituals. For better or for worse, a ritual specialist may be unattractive.

Mythic Europe Interpretations

1. Most magi dress so that they are easily recognisable as members of the Order. This often includes badges and insignia, which are known to many learned people. Players whose character dresses differently, should be careful to state this.
2. The Irish year starts on 1 November (toussaints or Halloween), and the year is divided in two, with Summer starting 1 May. Matching this with Hermetic seasons, it is reasonable to let the year start with Winter 1 November, Spring 1 Februar, Summer 1 May, and Autumn 1 August. This places solstices and equinoxes approximately mid-season. The difficulty is, of course, that the Winter of 1220, starts 1 November 1219 by modern calendar.
3. The common calendar year starts with Spring from the Spring Equinox. Winter is the last season of the year, from Winter solstice to Spring Equinox.

Rejected House Rules

1. Teleportation is not discontinuous disappear/reappear behaviour, but rather ultra-fast real movement. This means that one cannot teleport out of a complete enclosed room, but has in practice no consequences for the speed of movement. An unobstructed path, not necessarily a straight line, is required.

   Note We did not really consider the smallest possible opening the target can teleport through. There is also a question of how this applies to teleportation in andout of regione. This should be reconsidered.