Apprentices: In my hands...

[Jonathan.Link]

@maine75man

Personally I felt there where quite a lot for such a thin book. (23 plus several, IMO good, flavor sidebars)

When I said some, I did perhaps undersell it. There were a lot of sidebars.

@maine75man

See I didn't see that. Most of the new rules that allow a Master to imbue virtues and flaws are a matter of choice. They are things a Master CAN do if they have the desire and ability. I haven't crunched the numbers but I don't think it's easy enough that there is even an assumption it WILL happen. Mostly the average master will have to be content with having their pupil develop along what ever route they normally would. With perhaps a little nudging.

Sure, the master can imbue the virtue, if he has it. He cannot imbue a virtue he doesn't have. If these are Hermetic virtues, I should think that a master can imbue any virtue he pleases, if he has the ability, otherwise to do so. I'm teetering on an HR that allows the player(s) a choice in a hermetic virtue or flaw that comes about as a result of opening the Arts, match major for major minor for minor, it doesn't matter, could even be 1 major for 3 minors or 1 minor for 1 major (these are all comparing virtues to flaws, respectively). It's going to be a way to define the character and what path he'll follow through apprenticeship. It seems mystical. The Master (as a character) shouldn't know what he's going to get out of this process of Opening the Arts. It happens, he determines the results, and then he plans out how he's going to work with what he's got going forward. Seems mythical to me, that's just my opinion. And if someone wanted to randomize results, I'd be fine with that.

@maine75man

Noble's Parma, but I'm not sure it was part of cannon as much as strongly hinted at, if even that. As I said before it seems weird. A sentence like "Use your common sense as to what Virtues can or can not be gained this way." wouldn't have gone amiss in that section. That being said I would think many of those choices are saga dependent.

When HoH:S suggests that Jerbiton search for Gently gifted apprentices and are willing to take less intelligent magi as a result, that really strongly suggests that Gently Gifted is innate. It's not explicit, but to my reading it's darn close to saying Gentle Gift is innate.

@maine75man

The way I see it before Apprentices there where no clear ways for a character to accomplish either task. There was no reliable way for a Magus to pass on their style of magic to the next generation or inversely to correct for their inadequacies. To me both seam like legitimate character goals but before this book they could only be accomplished by fiat. Now at least there is a frame work for the arrogant Magi to be able to pump out a pupil who practices magic "The Right Way". As far as passing on skills they lack goes, I see nothing wrong with Magi having to wade into the waters of Hermetic Politics to do so.

Perhaps I liked the ambiguity, the wiggle room to let my imagination flow.

I would never have come up with some concepts I did, or quite simply they likely wouldn't exist in a "real" mythic europe.
Concepts such as Tektonius, my Rigid Magic Unstructured caster, which came about as a result of the discussion of Unstructured Caster Hermetic Flaw. He can't cast any spells he knows! The other is Talia, who had deficient Ignem and the master didn't knowingly inflict that flaw on her, and tried to fix it, or she had it innately and he tried to overcompensate for it. Those concepts become less plausible when viewed through the lens of Apprentices.