Hello!

I'm going to run a saga using the new AM5-rules. One of my players (we are not playing troupe style) wants to make her maga a potion master. I just think that the rules about charged items (that can be made as potions) don't satisfy her.
So, how would YOU make a hermetic maga, whose speciality is making magical potions?

-Haukotus-

The potion rules are actually quite nice, giving you lots of charges at little cost. The main problem is not being able to create things permanently, ie no permanent healing potions. If you really want to help things along, you could use the older rules and say that a healing potion could be created, but you'd have to do two things. One, it couldn't have a limited lifespan. And two, Raw vis equivalent to the magnitude of the effect has to be added.

I have a feeling that Hermetic Alchemy will be covered in future supplements though.

> I just think that the rules about charged items (that can be made as potions) don't satisfy her.

In what way do they not satisfy her. Your kinda leaving us in the dark here. :) Since your talking about being a potion master and not a healing potion master, I'm assuming the lack of vis addition is not the only thing.

> So, how would YOU make a hermetic maga, whose speciality is making magical potions?

Depends on whether you allow a hybrid of 4th ed rules and 5th ed or want to go straight 5th ed. If the former, bring some affinities back in, those are probably sorely missed, especially for Verditius. Or tweak the 5th ed rules and allow her to take major focus in A lab activity- charged items.

Looking at this situation here, I can see why 5th ed took out some of that. It's hard for me to see how magus is specifically good at making "potions" for all forms and techniques specifically, but not those forms and techniques. However, even within this framework, there is one way to become a potion specialist of sorts. She has a large collection of lab texts on instilling charged items. If newly from apprenticeship, she got them by working extra hard. If she's been out and about for a while, she got them in exchange for services rather than vis, etc. This is more the tools she collected than virtues, but it does put her ahead in making charged items. Then add on virtue Adept Labratorty Student, and she gets one to two more charges out of every batch she makes using lab texts.

Otherwise, determine an area that she's good at and pump the virtues into arts that help that area and MT, which helps all lab activities.

IMHO, potions/charged items really are a waste of a season, and vis if the former, unless you're trying to make money off of mundanes. But on that note, perhaps a potion specialist should have bargaining skill. :)

> in what way do they not satisfy her. Your kinda leaving us in the dark here. :) Since your talking about being a potion master and not a healing potion master, I'm assuming the lack of vis addition is not the only thing.

Sorry, I should have explained clearly :) Up to this point, I've only discussed with the player only once on the phone, but I got the picture that she would like to make her character more witch-like than a hermetic maga. So basically, 4th edition virtues Alchemy and Herbalism would be very suitable for her character, so I'm considering allowing her to have them. Or then she could be a maga ex miscellania and be from a tradition that's not so good at working hermetic magic, but can do more with magical potions than hermetic magi. Would you have any ideas for that kind of a tradition?

> IMHO, potions/charged items really are a waste of a season, and vis if the former, unless you're trying to make money off of mundanes. But on that note, perhaps a potion specialist should have bargaining skill. :)

I can see your point, but this particular character, as far as I've understood correctly, is more interested in her ability to make potions than to master hermetic magic, so it wouldn't matter that much even if making charger weren't that usefull :)

> Or then she could be a maga ex miscellania and be from a tradition that's not so
> good at working hermetic magic, but can do more with magical potions than
> hermetic magi. Would you have any ideas for that kind of a tradition?

I never got the Hedge Magic supplement, so I'm not sure. Maybe the charm maker virtue mentioned in WGRE would be another choice. As far as a specific Ex Miscellaneae tradition, I think you'll be inventing it. Since alchemy and herbalism help toward ANY magic item made in the proper way- greater and lesser investments included, if she really wants to specific charged items only, then I don't know if those are so good. The best would probably be to fudge the rules and let her take the lab activity charged items as a major focus.

A good standard ArM5 potion brewer could be simply a Verditius with a Craft: Brewing (or Craft: Alchemy), which adds to all lab totals with potions, if she brewed them herself.
Making her more witch-like could be done by giving her e. g.
- Mythic Blood from a very witchy, powerful and non-hermetic ancestress,
- Cyclic Magic attuned to the seasons (so it affects her lab totals),
- and a Major Hermetic Flaw like Short-Ranged Magic to further limit spell casting.

Kind regards,

Berengar

I don't think that major magical focus (potion creation) would be out of the question.

Taking a supernatural ability similar to the cunning folk charm stuff from Hedge magic that is focused on potions would be very cool.

Another choice is to develop spells for the character that involve imbuing liquids with abilities (probably with duration sun or duration moon) this would normally be quite impractical but if tou let the character have their magical focus benefit then it could work.

> Another choice is to develop spells for the character that involve imbuing liquids with
> abilities (probably with duration sun or duration moon) this would normally be quite
> impractical but if tou let the character have their magical focus benefit then it could work.

Hmmm. If you do it more as a spells thing, maybe something similar to that part of the elementalist virtue, except that you need not worry about requisites when aquam is involved, or animal/herbam/teram when being mixed into a salve, etc.

If she's going to mixing potions on the fly, relative to taking a whole season, an option other than spell focus, would be for her to have good scores in Artes Liberales and Philosophae. She would essentially be conducting cermonial magic, which represents the time sorting/mixing/etc the ingredients.