I am sure everyone goes through and looks at the creation rules and comes up with a few character concepts that are really odd or strange and that might be fun to be seen as an NPC encounter but too crazy for most players to have as a long term character.
For Example
The Botch Loving Magus
This would be best as a Criamon Magus
Flaws of Weird Magic ( +1 botch die ), Unpredictable Magic ( always roll a stress die ), Palsied Hands ( +1 botch die ), Careless Sorcerer ( +2 botch dice ), and Twilight Prone ( only one botch triggers Twilight )
It would be best to also have Cautious with Enigma ( -2 botch dice on comprehending the Twilight that you will be often visiting ) and Puissant with Enigma ( an extra +2 to the comprehend roll is going to be good ).
If you want to play with Twilight for all your worth then this would be fun but likely a shorter lived concept then others.
Another concept might be the Flaming Aura Magus
This could work with any house but most appropriate for Flambeau
The minor virtue is that the magi has a side effect that generates a +2xMagnitude of damage ( lvl 20 spell creates a +8 soak damage ) of radius in yards of magnitude -1 ( lvl 20 spell creates a 3 yard radius ).
It would be almost a requirement for the magus to have the Greater Immunity to Fire virtue.
The magus would be quite colourful to meet but the side damage of even a small spontaneous spell would make life very interesting.
I'd note that a mage who really wants to explore Twilight can do so deliberately, with a level 10 Creo Vim spell to get two warping points. Don't need botches.
We had a character called Dark Lars. The goal was to load as many flaws on him as possible without killing him. I recall he had an arm coming out of this back and where ever he waled he left footprints that were on fire. I forget how many flaws he had. Kryslin???
A knight, kidnapped in his youth by faeries while on his way to being fostered with some noble or other. They let him believe he had safely reached his destination and raised him, giving him perfect knightly manners (or so he thinks, watch out for those social faux-pas). Being now 75 (obviously unaging) they let him go, his education complete. He is convinced his whole life with them only lasted a few years, so don't expect him to keep his chronology straight.
There's story potential as he tries to get back to his mundane family, or with his sudden death leaving the players scrambling to find a new tame noble/turb captain/whatever.
Bear in mind that this character was 3rd edition, rolled, and poorly at that (all negatives). So, we decided to let the player load on as many flaws as he could, so long as no 2 overlapped, and run with it. Dark Lars had between 20-30 points of flaws. His presence was so hideous plants wilted, his footsteps burned, and when we were introduced to him, we immediately used most of our corpus vis to ensure we wouldn't have a crusade called against us, for harboring such an obvious agent of the infernal (which he wasn't).
The benefit to such a character was his touch (from the arm growing out of his back) cured short term fatigue levels.
He was eventually killed - I think the demon who did it considered it an act of mercy.
I just created a 117 year old Flambeau who enchanted his own shadow after his spirit was displaced into it while fighting a demon. His shadow acts as his Familiar now and is bound by 3 unique cords. He's forgotten how he performed this breakthrough now, and his shadow (who he calls Umbrus) ate the labtexts. Now he has a bit of an identity crisis and calls himself Umbrus, and even speaks in the 3rd person; "Umbrus votes this way!" "Umbrus will destroy you all!" "Umbrus wishes to leave.", or is he actually reffering to his shadow which is taking over more of his life?
Let me know if you'd like details, I'll be posting him soon on SHR.
The Gift may not, but masters will. "After years of training in theory my apprentice no longer actively hinders me in the lab." I'd guess a dumb Gift would make more sense as a failed apprentice ("his Gift is fine but his master dumped him") or as someone with a supernatural ability. Entrancement doesn't take Int, and you could call him Thrint or Kzanol for a Larry Niven reference.
We actually had a discussion on this with our group. The original suggestion to seperate good and poor apprentice's was to have them have an "IQ" test to see how much they would hinder the projects of a magi.
Another player pointed out that a low Int apprentice should be still trained as an apprentice despite what they did to the lab totals of their master because the alternative might be for the gifted individual that might have a really good stamina falling into the hands of diabolists which would train the apprentice to use their stamina.
I also think that being punished to train such an apprentice by a tribunal for some crime committed is a great way to hang a load stone onto a magi for a number of years as a reminder of the kinds of behaviour that the tribunal does not approve.
Of, course that leads to all the great jokes of what do you call such a person
Another fun concept is someone who has a supernatural gift like Animal Ken but instead it is focused on talking to furniture. The person though will tell you that furniture takes a long time to answer even simple yes and no questions ( like days ) but will complain that the furniture and rugs are constantly talking. Is this person delusional or does this person have a real minor talent?
That brings up a fun idea of having a group of grogs with fun minor talents like the "mystery men." Grogs that claim to have supernatural powers like getting not just angry but "furious." You could design a series of minor talents and have these be a special "adventure team" for the magi. Maybe they are the competition on a vis hunt from a rival covenant. Maybe another covenant sent them away telling them they were on a vis hunt to recover a griffin ( or other large beast ) and the covenant was simply "disposing" of the grogs when the players encounter them.
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