Blessing of mars

Considering that there’s a blessing of Venus, shouldn’t there be a blessing of mars that allows you to use all weapons,even weapons that you haven’t seen before?

You can already use whatever weapon you want, but you get a penalty if you have no skill in it.
There are already plenty of ways to get a bonus to your various weapon skills-

You could always invent one.

Blessing of Mars (Major Virtue)
Through some ancestral connection or previous deeds, you have gained the favour of Mars. You have a natural facility for all weapons.

You receive a bonus 50% XP when studying any martial skill, including lore skills related to martial history. You are always considered to have a minimum skill of 3 in any weapon, no matter the actual skill.
You must take the flaw "Martial", in that when their is a martial solution to a problem you will be inclined to see the martial solution as the best solution.

While it covers a lot of skills, which character gets more than a good weapon skill and a missile skill? It's not much better than 2 affinities.

I've gone major, as an affinity with a weapon you could backstory that as a linkage to Mars, so to be a written virtue it would need more substance.

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I would think a blessing of mars would be more tactical than simply letting you be better with weapons. Perhaps the units you lead are limited in size only by your leadership score, they can be considered trained as a cohesive unit within a week, and you can have an amalgamated vanguard using the best attk, defense and soak scores within the entire unit.

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It had me thinking of others.

Blessing of mercury.

Through some ancestral connection or previous deeds, you have gained the favour of Mercury.To take this virue a character must have a stamina of +3, and communication and quickness scores of +1 or higher.

Your stamina is increased to +5.
You can maintain a comfortable running pace of 15 miles an hour for up to 2 hours, or 8 miles an hour for a day without costing fatigue.
You can memorise any message and repeat it with no errors up to a year from when the message was heard.

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Blessing of mercury sounds like a useful virtue for redcaps to me!

This looks more like Athena, IMO.
For Mars, I'd prefer something along Lee's idea, that increases your personal prowess.
Although I may be utterly wrong, obviously :smiley:

Blessing of vulcan(I forgot how to spell the Greek name)
Fortitude 3+ any craft at 1+
You can create any magical item provided it’s mostly metal in nature.
What do you think of it as a virtue & how might it be improved upon?

A virtue shouldn't give you the power to succeed at a project without having the proper lab total.

Then how would you build the blessing of Vulcan then?

I wouldn't necessarily craft a new virtue, and would probably use Touched by (Realm) from City and Guild p. 71 for a mundane craftsmen with a special blessing from the god of the forge.

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There are several ways to (correctly) spell Ἥφαιστος. In English, I believe the most common spelling is Hephaistos or Hephaestos.

Thanks for telling me the correct way to spell the Greek name.

The ones I see most often are Hephastus or Hephaustus, though ironically the spell checker doesn't like them.

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The blessing of Zeus would probably give (at least) resistance to electricity along with the trait (nymphomaniac)!

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The Learned Magician charm to give Venus's Blessing has several examples of other virtue/god combinations.
HM:RE p90

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