Hey guys looking for an opinion on a ruling in the Houses of Hermes: Societates book. At the start of the Ex Misc chapter it speaks of accelerated abilities and it says that it describes some abilities being accelerated. In my reading through most of that book I don't actually see the words "Accelerated Ability" Thrown around about any of them? If there is then not many of them are accelerated. The wording of that little box on page 104 Trips me up a little. So does that make all supernatural abilities through ex Misc an accelerated ability?
It means a few abilities get to advance on the Arts scale for xp - see Warding on page 112, Banishing on page 118, Sihr on page 135 - all of these mention that choosing the relevant virtue confers the matching Accelerated Ability.
Only abilities which are specifically mentioned as Accelerated Abilities get this bonus. This rules mechanic, and "Difficult Arts" where Arts advance like abilities, are used a lot for hedge magi and rival traditions.
Yep. It's one of the (major) advantages Hermetic magic has over other magical styles: Accelerated Te+Fo usually means that even a non-optimized Hermetic is rolling a base 20 or so for their specialization, whereas most other styles have the equivalent of a base 10. The other major advantage being Parma and Aegis, of course. (And being part of a social structure that can rely on Parma to negate the effects of the gift, thus allowing meaningful and mostly-trustworthy communication between Gifted magi.)
The main advantage accelerated abilities usually have over Hermetic TeFo's is that they can potentially be a specialization (such as Warding, as mentioned above) that doesn't directly map to a TeFo...although Warding itself gets pretty close to Rego Vim, of course. Thus, in their bailiwick, a hedge tradition may very well be a near-equal (or have some specific technique that is outside Hermetic theory), at least in versatility, to a hermetic...for a while, until the Hermetic sidesteps them somehow. (Which is fairly easy to do, considering the sheer scope of Hermetic magic in comparison to most other traditions.)