(Note that a -3 to social rolls is laughable at most from a pure mechanical point of view if you are semi competent at social interaction; 2 spells at level 5-10 and it does not affect your socuial interactions anymore. So you'd better play it. or increase the penalty to -9 like we have done)
Xavi
-9 ? Yikes! So your magi are instantly lynched if they go out in public without disguising magics?
More or less. They suck at social interaction, so they lurk around while the companions deal with people. -9 is wehat we have found that affects people enough to justify the mistrust level explained in the background. -3 is simply handwaves as "well, you are not pretty" kind of penalty. -9 is a penalty
Cheers,
Xavi
the -3 penalty may be very mild but roleplaying it does work. Read the descriptions of how the gift affects people in the ars 5th mainbook. They very vividly paint a picture of how magi are viewed by others. My blatant gifted necromancer (with low socials and odd behavioural habits) should be literally getting chased out of towns by pitchfork and torch wielding mobs.
I agree that a -3 on social rolls is laughable, it's however not the only penalty a magus have. As he grew older, he gain warping points, normally strange side effects that intimidate even more the poor mundanes. And, seriously, there's not much social magus out there. As a magus is more inclined to study it's arts and spell rather than practice etiquette, charming techniques or talking to peasants (they must be sooooo boring for the average magus). This hinder him even much.
Not mentionning his wizard's sigil who manifest whenever he casts a spell and the weird latin-like formulaes and ritual "prayers" no very catholic he does every sunsets and sunrises.
Indeed, a -3 is laughable, but most magus can't or won't overcome this penalty anyway. If a magus takes his time to raise his social skills high enough, well he will only partially overcome the penalty, as he never will be trusted as someone else with the same abilities but without the gift.
A -9 is really harsh, I mean, how your grogs even let you boss them ? I'd run away the further the better from people like that. Indeed, the effect of the gift must be played, but I think some people overplay it a little. Well, just a though. 
-3 isn't really laughable, it makes easy tasks average, average tasks hard and so forth. There is always at least a 30% chance that it will make the difference between success and failure.
A -9 adjustment would make an average (6+) task something that could not be accomplished by anyone short of an expert with a good stat (15+).
My preferrence is to have social interactions be diffficult for magi, not impossible.
I do agree that playing up the NPC reactions as described in the beginning of the magic chapter is needed to make the gift feel like a big deal and to make gentle gift worth while.
My characters previous to the current saga ended up with social values in the 5-7. A magus has plenty of time to develop them. They walked into an unknown tavern and everyone greeted him with a toast when he saluted. Stupid as hell. This is why we developed the penalty.
Maybe -9 is really harsh (itr is, in fact), but -6 is the minimum that can work really well IMO. -9 works for us, so we will keep using it 
If you want to be a social mage, be gentle gifted, or develop spells of mass mentem effects. -3 is a joke. Oh, our Blatant gifted magi have a -15 
Erik, the -3 does not support the descriptions in the chapter. Hence the chance. We like magi being social morons. It works in our sagas. Not suprisingly our companions tend to be social types The +6 medium/ +9 difficult / + 12 feat division is an other division that I find quite amusing, really. An average task for us is higher in difficulty by at least 30%. Otherwise you start finding average people with 3 in an ability beat difficulty factors too easily in our opinion. YMMV
Cheers,
Xavi
It isn't supposed to. Magi get those reactions, and then they have a -3 penalty to any social skills they use to try to overcome them. They don't get those reactions because they have a -3 penalty to social skills; they get those reactions the moment they walk into a room in a new place. This is explicitly stated on page 75 of ArM5.
I fail to see why the rules do not support the siruation, then. Rules are supposed to model what is happening in descriptive terms, not be random add ons to the given situation. A -3 seems inconsistent then 
Xavi
Die roll modifiers are used when the character wants to do something. The effects of the gift are about the actions of other folks, not the actions of the magi.
Even a -9 modifier can be completely nullified by avoiding any situations warranting a die roll.
Can we switch this conversation to a different thread? It is sort of stinking up the newbie FAQ thread.
The rules do support the situation. One of the rules is that people have that reaction to magi with The Gift. Another is that magi have a -3 penalty to social rolls. Two different rules.
If you are playing in a game in which a magus with The Gift can be saluted with a toast in a new tavern, then you are playing with House Rules, because the RAW explicitly say that that is not what happens. The rules are not just the numbers, even though the numbers are important.
Done.