Is it reasonable by the Rules to allow a child who was abandoned at birth in the forest to put 75 (/70) xp into Animal Ken as their native language, assuming they had that Virtue?
I'm trying to stat up an Ex Misc guantletting at 25 with that as their background, and struggling quite a lot for xp if they only have 45 xp + 75xp to cover Animal Ken and various "surviving in the woods" abilities. I can take more from Apprenticeship xp if necessary, but unsurprisingly I'd like to limit that.
On the face of it, the obvious solution is to give the character Feral Upbringing. However, as discussed previously on the forums*, that doesn't allow you to start with any languages or beginning abilities you could not have learned in the wilds, so whilst it might work at the beginning of an apprenticeship, it doesn't work for a full magus.
Do you really need 75xp in Animal Ken?
50xp, giving you a score of 4, and a specialty with one type of animals would let you communicate fluently with that animal type, and slightly-less-than-fluently with other animals.
I wouldn't allow it as it's a supernatural power. But I might let them use the EPs on abilities to survive in the wilderness, which is nearly as good. (Because you still have the 45 EPs from childhood to spend on it.)
No, I was only planning for a 50xp spend, but that still only leaves you with 70 xp for Area Lore, Athletics, Awareness, Brawl, Hunt, Survival, Stealth, so an average score of less than 2 per ability. Ways of the Forest makes that hurt a bit less, but I'd still like the character to be more competent in the wild.
Well, lets face it - if you are creating a young magus just past his Gauntlet he can be competent at magic, or competent in some mundane area. Not both, unless he has a lot of xp-granting virtues.
He just won't have enough xp to go around - which I assume is the problem you have run into.
Yes, to pull this off, you'll need at least Well-Traveled, and am not sure if there are other XP granting Virtues that can be spent on the relevant Abilities.
Meh, maybe not strictly by the book (though you could certainly make a case for it if going with year-by-year advancement), but I'd probably allow it in my games if the rest of the troupe is ok with it.
This is more or less Feral Upbringing, just without the restrictions on knowing anything you couldn't have learned in the wilds. I don't think there's a way to do it "by the book", though.
Sadly Well-Travelled isn't that useful either - the only relevant thing it gives are Area Lores, and I'm not intending the character to be particularly wide-ranging.
Overall it looks like there's definitely not a clear consensus that I can do it (and a fairly strong albeit not universal one that I can't), so I'll just have to live with the xp shortage.
The loss of native language is not that impactful. For gauntleted magi, it is a resolved issue that has no effect on their present situation and cannot count as a Flaw. They use Latin for everything anyway.
You could flavor it by reducing your native language to score 3 and play it as Sheltered Upbringing where you went from feral to "caged in" apprentice.
You could Puissant Animal Ken or pay for Latin/Academic through one of the xp Virtue if you find yourself short of your desire. (I'm just going through the motions, you've considered that for sure.)