OK, since people are breaking the game using RoP:M, I thought I'd play.
Here's my concept for a Failed Apprentice, with a couple of Supernatural Virtues left. He has Greater Immunity (Deprivation) (page 44) and a single Lesser Power (page 45).
His Lesser Power is Grant Puissance in Magic Theory (page 38).
Because he has no Might, one Fatigue level is equivalent to five Might Points used on the power (page 45). He has five Fatigue levels, which he doesn't get back until the benefit goes away, but that's OK, he's Immune to Deprivation, so being unconscious for months won't bother him. Five Fatigue levels is 25 Might Points. For each Might Point, he can grant a single character +3 to a specific Total or Ability, Magic Theory in this case.
So he doesn't need any more stats, because he's going to spend his life asleep in a back room, granting my magus +75 to all Lab Totals.
(Various objections can be raised to this, but that's not the point. For example, it might only be +63; the description of Grant Puissance is not clear as to whether the 4 Might Points of cost count as part of the invested Might Points or not. I've assumed they do. Why would the Failed Apprentice do this? Well, maybe he wouldn't, so take the Immunity away, make him a grog, and the magus gets a mere +60 on seasons when he can convince the grog to use his power. Which, with magic at his disposal, shouldn't be hard. I"m trying to break the game here, guys...)
Actually, this power goes back to Guardians of the Forests, and has always been available for familiars. Nobody noticed in four and a half years, as far as I can see.
Of course, I do wish I'd spotted it before the book was published, but that was not to be.
Far be it from me to argue canonical reading of rules with the Line Editor--but not too far!
I reread this cunning plan, and found myself wondering if it really works, RAW. A power that grants a character a +3 does not necessarily grant him +6 when granted twice! If I use a spell based on the MuCo guidelines to grant myself +5 soak, a second casting of the spell will not grant me +10!
The power in question is based on the MuCo guideline "grant a minor ability." (Rules not in front of me atm, but I read this through carefully while creating Deborah, so I think I vaguely remember.) Invoking it twice does not grant a better ability, but the same ability twice. So my own reading of the power suggested to me that more characters could be granted +3, one by one. Increasing the ability would involve a different base guideline.
But that's just me! This is still an awesome, game-changing power, even the way I read it. Take it with variable power for bonus additional goodness! But if you see it differently, more power to you. More magical power! Mwahahahaha!
That's certainly a possible reading, now I look at it again, but definitely not the only one. I also feel that the emphasis on "single person" suggests that that version of the power only affects one person, so the multiple points have to raise the bonus that one person gets. And, since we're trying to break the game here, we have to go with the rules as written...
The Hermetic guideline is suggestive at best; this isn't a Hermetic power. So, again, not conclusive proof that it doesn't explode.
My main point is the Pokemon one, of course. In real life, we don't catch them all. Alas. This one might be susceptible to errata, however.
I spot several flaws with your evil cunning plan...
Puissant (Ability) only grants +2, not +3
Grant (Minor Virtue) is a Ritual Power
I don't think you could grant this particular virtue multiple times, just once per person for the duration. Some virtues can be stacked, like Improved Characteristics or Great (Characteristic). But Puissant (Ability) specifically states that it can only be taken once for a specific Ability (though it may be chosen again for different abilities).
I think a better idea would be to be able to grant a Minor Essential Virtue (clever with magic), giving a +3 to Intelligence for all activities concerning Magic. Or make it a Major Essential Virtue, granting +6. Stack that with Grant Puissant Magic Theory, and perhaps Grant Inventive Genius or something.
If designed just right, I could see him granting a +11 bonus or so, but not much more than that. And I'm okay with that. It isn't breaking the game, it is being rewarded for clever design. And I would want to flesh this character out a little bit more. Why does he have these powers? Why does he use them the way he does? What does he dream of when unconscious for long periods of time? And what happens if and when his powers grow? Is he a "Sorcerer’s Slave?", chained up in a dungeon adjacent to the wizard's laboratory?
I'm not using Grant (Minor Virtue), I'm using Grant Puissance, which is a different power.
Oh yes, get the bonus down to something reasonable (and costing more than one Minor Virtue), and suddenly this is an interesting character, with lots of story potential. Other magi will want him, which creates conflict. This is one of the things that makes the solution tricky; there are good concepts we don't want to forbid very close to the hideous abomination we do want to rule out.
I see this as illustrating the other side of the coin, where my thoughts about AM5 are the coin, my recent post plugging the virtues of AM5 are the one side of the coin, and this being the other side.
For all that I think AM5 is the best version ever, I also think that it has begun to crack beneath the weight of its extent. There are a lot more rules than there used to be, and also more kinds of rules. This is old school game design: Every game artifact that I consider important gets modeled by a rule. As these rules accumulate, they rub against each other in unexpected ways. They also get used in contexts for which they were not intended, and either don't make sense or don't work well as rules.
Thus, labor points as introduced in City and Guild as a unit of labor rather than value become a unit of value in Art and Academe (or Hedge Magic? No books at hand) for the cost of various materials. Thus, Covenants introduces correspondence, exposure xp from 2xp to 3xp, and lab customization rules that on the one hand prescribe the effects of specific kinds of labs (where a game with less history behind it might have more general rules that allow a player to describe his lab in any way that seems cool) and on the other hand makes lab work much, much, much easier because big bonuses are easy to come by. Thus, we have a strangeness in which the Koran is represented as a lucid and deep representation of Islam (I've read it, and it bears as much relevance to medieval Islamic law and theology as the New Testament does to Christian, which is to say very little); this is not only a case of each religion chapter not being sufficiently considered alongside the others but more fundamentally, a problem (imanvho) with the book rules themselves, that try to represent classes of books as understood by a medievalist with associated rules.
RoP:M probably represents the greatest stress on the rules. It begins with Aura rules that, if actually applied to a covenant, spell the end of stable magic auras. It continues with rules for traveling the magic realm that I read thrice and still am not sure I understand. We then get rules for magical spirits, animals and things that requires so much GM oversight that they might as well not exist; there is no sense in having a point based system that requires so much jiggering. And is there any real benefit to having three sets of incompatible rules for creating mundane, faerie and magic animals? Or a point based system that results in two different costs for an animal with the exact same powers and abilities and stats, say, a griffon, except that one is based on an eagle and the other on a lion?
I am glossing over my concerns here; features like the one that began this thread pervade RoP:M. AM5 has accumulated a lot of good ideas, but some of its simplifying mechanics and themes now feel encrusted with barnacles. At least to me. So I'm beginning to think about AM6, with simplified rules that still represent the richness of the setting, as brought forth in this edition.
Doesn't the Grant Puissance Power have a duration of Sun? So, for this to work he needs to either have a varient power with a longer duration or he needs to cast it every day. Which is not a problem. I'm not sure whether you can grant the +3 to the same person again and again. But that's not a problem, as you then just need to have a whole lot of people with the Power, each granting it once to the magus.
However, I think that the think that limits this exploding is that the target (the magus) should be gaining a lot of Warping Points for being continuously affected by a lot of supernatural effects?
I think that the designed character does not work for the concepts stated above. Make him grant The Gift instead. Teach the grogs some MT and suddenly you have 5 new lab assistants for your magus
While that might be quite useful, it doesn't really break anything. The RAW already expects a character to be able to be assisted in a lab. There's nothing stopping a group of 5 or 6 magi working together in a lab, without needing this power. And there is already a clear limit (the Leadership Score of the laboratory owner) that prevents this from getting out of hand.
Nope, it does not break anything. It grants a +20 or so to the magus, but that is it. The advantage is that controlling scribes is easier than controlling other magi in long term projects. I think that the +60 that David Chart was granting his aprentice is not possible as written in the rules, but that is a question on how you read the diverse rules I guess THe flying mundame with the power to cast pilums of fire is more game breaking.
In fact a lot of those are not breaking from a point of view of "power", but they break the game because of "flavor": it is possible to have too many superheroes in Mythic Europe that are totally un-medieval. That is the main issue here. A hermetic magus would stompt them 99 out of 100 times anyway, but having hermetics having to fight against superman and the X men is not exactly medieval. You can create a nice "Marvel vs DC" saga with ROP: magic, though. The lack of limits in who can have those virtues is what breaks down the mechanics and smells of powergaming (you can design a grog turb able to carpet bomb London to oblivion in no time, GO B52!....), not the virtues and flaws per se.
I'm not a fan of RoP:M, but I wonder if this isn't a matter of labels and demographics.
On the one hand, the superheroes Aquaman, Hawkman and Horseman, half man and half hawk or horse or fish, have no place in medieval Europe. On the other hand, centaurs and angels and merfolk, maybe.
Which brings us to demographics. I can use the rules to populate all of London with centaurs and angels, griffons too. Crowd out all the people. I have rules to create magi, which lets me populate all of Italy with them. I don't have to, though.
RoP:M lets you create entirely new bestiaries, and new kinds of near-humans. These things can have weird powers. And unlike magi, who automatically belong in most sagas even though they are no more medieval than Superman, these new things don't belong merely by virtue of being legal constructs.
This leaves RoP:M character construction either as requiring intense GM oversight, or as changing the kinds of characters that players create. A SG can easily translate the X-Men into beings that make sense in Mythic Europe (in some ways, the OoH is exactly that, a medieval Xavier Institute for the Gifted.) An SG can less easily deal with the fundamental mechanical problems of the book, except by deciding that none of it is binding.
That is not a problem, because you are defining MAGICAL beings. Those would have a Might score. The rules for them in ROP:M are fine, and they can be used as player characters. Those are great, and I really like the ideas in ROP:M for them, as well as the sections for enrichment, elementals, ghosts and airy spirits.
The problem with ROP:M is that it also allows NON MAGICAL dudes (like your average grog) to be able to throw pila of fire out of thin air for the cost of a minor supernatural virtue. This is where the system starts to get heavily stretched. You do not need to create your x-men as magi: you can create them as companions. Some can even be created as grogs.
/10.