Could a "failed apprentice", whose gift was almost completely destroyed by a grevious accident at his gauntlet, retain knowledge and use of the Parma Magica ability?
Rulewise, it would seem to be the case, since:
failed apprentices can have arcane abilities as starting abilities and
if their gift has not been completely destroyed, they are likely to have some supernatural abilities left - the parma (which is essentially a supernatural ability learned as an arcane one) would seem to qualify.
However, this poses the interesting problem of what would the order do with such a person - given that the one thing they are adamant about is that whoever learns the parma should join (or die).
Serf's parma, but I believe the final steps of the parma are only taught to an apprentice after he passes his gauntlet. If an apprentice's Gift was destroyed during his gauntlet, I presume that he wouldn't pass and thus wouldn't be taught the complete parma.
I don't see any in-game difficulties to giving this to them as a virtue.
From the perspective of making it fit with the published background (if that's important to you) a working understanding of Parma is not taught to apprentices until after their gauntlet so you'll need to finesse the story a bit to make it fit.
I thought it was customary to delay teaching the parma as much as possible, but by no means mandatory. For example, a Bonisagus who is "using" his apprentice to experiment on parma related magics might want to teach the parma earlier.
In the previous editions there was no rule on when Parma Magica is taught, but Ars 5 establishes that the final secrets of Parma Magica are not taught until AFTER an apprentices passes their gauntlet and because of that starting Magi have a Parma Magica of One.
My books are at the bottom of a pile of videos right now or I'd cite a page. Consider that there are no Roleplaying Police. You can ignore the 5th edition take on Parma Magica if you like.
Our campaign has been running since 2nd edition and numerous apprentices were taught Parma Magica while they trained. It was assumed that these apprentices would become Magi of the Order so there was no issue of them revealing it's secret. Had one of the apprentices failed their gauntlet, they would likely be made to take a special oath to not share the secret of Parma Magica.
Also I think in our game if a failed apprentice did share the secret of Parma Magica, not only would the Order kill the failed apprentice, they would kill EVERYONE who learned the secret even if required breaking other parts of the Code of Hermes (mundane affairs/fairy/ect). The secret is that important, that the Order would risk everything to maintain it. Finally the teacher that taught the failed apprentice who shared the secret would likely be at LEAST heavily fined if not Marched.
You know this got me thinking, in a non-canon game (who's isn't?) one could develop an Oath of the Apprentice. Such an oath could allow apprentices to learn the Parma Magica while they are training. It could include a variant on the line of please kill me should I share the secrets of the Order or something like that.
It would work against the principle of apprentices being the responsibility of the their master, but then you've allready established that we're talking about non-canon...
Yes and no. it is right that apprentices are the responsibility of their masters. Hence, I, as a master of a potential troublemaker would like to set some parameters to control the apprentice. Imposing a personal oath on him (I do that as a master, not as a member of the order of hermes) make him swear a solemn oath that basically says " you break it, and I and my buddies will make sure you live a short and painful life".
Seems perfectly logical to me it is not an Order oath, but an apprentice oath. Quite a difference. The former is to say that you will follow the parameters set by the order. The later is that you will follow the parameters set on you by your master.
we had apprentices in one of our sagas (the others were too short lived). we did not have anything like this, but the apprentices acted as if they had this set on them. basically it is the implicit assumption of "if I screw it up too badly my parens will not come to save my butt, but will come to burn it".
