Gifted magical creature which is a familiar

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hi,
What I like about random npc generators is that sometimes, it brings interesting ideas.

A maga found a familiar after hunting, befriending him and finally bonding it with a lucky experimentation. It's a crow type, with the gifted quality and quite intelligent.
Because that maga was strongly inclined toward experimentation (due to a greater benediction, and a purpose to explore the magic behind auras, gift, regios and realms) she opened its gift to see if it could provide some breakthrough in her research about the gift and the ability to just create it from scratch (no positive result but well it was worth the try)
So now he has the gift open. It was quite complex task to open it (LT had to be higher than (30+might [+supernatural abilities*5[or min10/30 for minor and major virtues]]) x2, which amounted to a lot but with carefully selected helpers it was done.

Now the crow has taken the idea to read some of the covenant's book in the arts and I'm wondering theoritically if he could bond its own familiar.
My first answer was that: he has a familiar, the maga. But the maga has no might and I'm quite certain it disqualifies as familiar. I know that under the core book, there was a loophole, but nothing in the rules ever shown that an animal without might could be bond. ArM5D uses the same vague text: "The first step in getting a familiar is finding an animal with inherent magic. With inherent magic, the beast is likely to have a Magic Might score, which may be assigned based on the scores of comparable magical creatures."
But even if one were to say "might is thus not required" from that excerpt, remains the fact that a human is not animal in Ars, because of the soul.

And to add a degree of complexity: what if the magus would be under a MuCo(An) for at least one season duration? since Muto changes the essential nature, and that's the reason it can never be permanent, would it be okay? I expect not since the soul is out of Hermetic Magic field... but if the Soul is out of HM, then why would the binding of the familiar be able to consider it to be blocked by it? In my opinion hermetic magic cannot considerate the sould black and white ; in other words:

  1. If hermetic magic is not limited by the soul, then binding of a familiar is not blocked by a soul and it's just a matter of "nobody tried"
  2. if hermetic magic is limited in this case by the soul, maybe it's still imperfect in the guidelines, but at least binding a familiar was for that aspect, perfected.
    I have no memory of any book exploring that question in my mind at the moment, but perhaps you do?

For the discussion, I read the limit of the soul again and imo it provides no argument here:
"Hermetic magic cannot create an immortal soul, and so may not create true human life nor restore the dead to life. Most magi think this derives from the Limit of the Divine, although a significant number think that Hermetic magic's inability to raise the dead reflects nothing more than a flaw in the theory"
Animals have no immortal souls, and so may be created. Magical creatures and faeries are generally believed not to have immortal souls, and there are spells that appear to create them, but some magi believe that such spells really summon existing beings. Angels and demons are nothing but immortal souls.
It mostly refers to the creation (resurrection) but not binding.

Second, if the maga is the familiar, what of the value of the cords? are they simply the same as her? (it's obviously good for the crow since he has 0's arts, where the maga was a CrVi specialist with very high cords at the time of bonding - and I'm not even talking about the "increased potency" result of the experimentation which boosted the golden cord by a hard +1).

If the maga is not the familiar, and he obtains his own familiar, as per normal rule, the RM will be the lower of his own or the one of the familiar. ArM5D says: "The familiar uses the better of its Magic Resistance or the magus's Form resistance to resist spells, but this resistance does not stack with a Parma Magica. The magus may choose to use the familiar's Magic Resistance, but this does not stack with a Parma Magica."
But what about the RM of his familiar? would it be the lower of his own or the RM of the maga, which is higher than the RM of the crow (when parma is up) and thus the familiar RM is the magus form resistance.

To be clear and clarify the discussion,

  • crow RM10
  • Magus : parma magica 4 (mentem), and Vim16, Mentem 9. From my understand, the "16" is the Vim resistance from the magus which the crow would use (parma magica is not accounted. Or should the parma be counted so that the crow as Vim RM 36?)
  • hypothetical familiar of the crow, let's say RM 4 and is a dog for ease.

Would dog's RM be: 10 (crow RM) or 16[/36] (crow used RM due to the maga bond to it) against a Vim spell?

Now another topic we know that XP for abilities is reduced by the might (unless vis is used). Would that also apply to art values? nothing in the magic seem to answer. My answer would be yes.
I know that Magic theory is a weird topic because core always said that the familiar learns it (ArM5D still says: "They cannot, however, learn magic, although they can learn Magic Theory and serve as laboratory assistants, even though they do not have The Gift."), then magic said "but might reduce gain from exposure too" (RoPM52: "Magic characters can accumulate and spend experience points just like normal human characters, save for one important limitation: the character’s Might Score is always subtracted from its Advancement Total. (...)There is a relatively simple way for the character to circumvent this limitation, however. If the character consumes a pawn of magic vis of any type, he may reduce the penalty to his Advancement Total by two."
+ArM5D p376: "ADVANCEMENT TOTAL: Source Quality + Bonus from Virtues - Penalty from Flaws" and "A character can learn simply by being exposed to the thing to be studied. This is by far the least effective way to learn.
EXPOSURE SOURCE QUALITY: Two
These experience points may be split between any two Abilities or Arts which were being used consistently during the season."), which would say that core implied that vis was used each time, which was not stated.) but the arts are quite out of scope of all that discussion (ArM5D explicitly says that being a familiar is of no application, but here we add Gifted and open the familiar gift so it's back in the discussion).
Personally I read nothing saying that art XP would not be affected, even with an opened gift. However I don't remember a single canon Gifted magical beast with arts (even difficult ones) I could rely on as example, hence my question here.

Thanks for your answers,

Exar.

2

I'm going to give you a very simple answer, based on what I would do at my table, because ultimately, there are situations where you can read the rules in a loop and they won't answer for the simple reason you're looking at a hedge case the authors haven't heavily invested in for good reasons.

The familiar bond works based on complementarity: Two minds linked, but most importantly the complementarity of Gift and Might and Animal and human. It's a unique bond. Binding two familiars would be a breakthrough that would need to be researched. Now, this has a number of implications for the Gifted crow:

  • Since he became the familiar of a maga, the slot for the unique bond is already taken. If he wants another bond, he needs to break the first one, or pursue a breakthrough;
  • If he was not already a familiar, he might not be able to bind one, because of the principle of complementarity. His Gift would allow him to resonate with another's might - but he doesn't have the fundamental humanity to connect with an animal. And hermetic theory wasn't built to enchant cords between an animal and another animal, nor was it built to make cords between an ungifted human and a Gifted animal. Pursueing the possibility of an animal to animal bond or a gifted animal to ungifted human bond would be breakthrough material to me - arguably easier than a breakthrough to have more than one familiar.
  • I'm on the fence as to whether I'd allow the Gifted crow to bind himself to a Gifted non-hermetic wizard / a non-Gifted human with magic supernatural abilities, or enchant the familiar bond he shares with the maga (arguably, because the cords are connected to the Gift of the other party on one side, and to his Might on the other one). But you've already pointed out the vagueness of the text as to what magical essence the cords are connected to, so, I suppose if I accepted the concept of a Gifted animal opened to the hermetic arts at my table, I'd lean towards the generous side here and possibly allow both of the Gifted to make familiar enchantments. Not that I expect it will frequently make much sense to work separately on those.
3

"Familiars can learn Abilities in the same way as humans." This is one of the great incentives for a magical immortal to accept he will likely die with his Gifted.

4

Is it such an argument?
because advancement totals exist for both humans and might-creatures, but some things apply to it:

  • many virtues/flaws change it for human => if the familiar can learn as human, it means that many factors can change advancement total, as for human.
  • RoP magic gives a -might factor for might creature, that vis can mitigate.
    then familiar can learn abilities in the same ways as humans.

For me, that sentence you quoted alone do not hinder the fact that their advancement totals lose the values of the might, per nature one could say.

The only thing I find interesting in that sentence is the fact that, if it is said, I expect it to have a point. If "creature with might" learn as human, why insert this for familiar.
So maybe the bond "brings" a counter to the might reducing factor per self. That's... an idea for a house rule I may bring to my group because otherwise, the familiar just become teachers for magi in rp in the hands of PCs. And if the SG has to intervene, it is bothersome to handle X additionnals "N"PCs...

5

Humans don't have a penalty to their Might score. They also don't gain virtues by training. In most troupes, the way familiars are handled is that they get no penalty to their xp (but no one in their right mind also lets them bypass the might penalty to stacking xp that lets them learn new virtues). Such that an exposure season from being a lab assistant gives the familiar 2 xp, not 2 xp - might + vis buyoff. Most troupes don't give enough vis such that a huge amount can be spent on the familiar to let it learn MT anyway.

6

While at first glance it's an aesthetically pleasing solution, I do not think it's necessarily true: many of the benefits of the bond are symmetric, but not all. And it can open a can of worms. For example, a magus who becomes a creature of Magic Might has all its advancement totals reduced - and while there are workarounds, they are all fairly expensive; but if you assume that he is the Familiar of his own Familiar, suddenly that circumvents the problem and he can learn just as quickly as a magus without Might.

Frankly, I do not see why a magus' Gifted Familiar with his Hermetic Arts Opened can't have its own Familiar. That certainly seems true of a magus with a spirit Familiar who ascends as a Daimon, and can then himself be bound by e.g. his cult members as their own Daimonic Familiar.

7

My first point is that a familiar does not need a might score (unless this is new in the DE), so the magus lack of a might score is irrelevant.

However, the fact that Bjorner exchange the capacity for a familiar for a heart beats suggests that there is something specific about the bond and a human-animal relationship. I know back in the supplements of the dreaded third edition there were references to shamans and spirit animals which basically went one of two ways- you could bind the spirit of a (living)familiar or you could bind yourself to adopt the shape of your "spirit aimal". At minimum I would suggest there is something about the soul vs spirit that plays a role here. as such I would have to say that if it is possible it is going to require a massive breakthrough.

Beyond that, it is your campaign to decide.

8

While I would have liked your explanation better, HoH:MC simply says that the Bjornaer initiation makes one lose the ability to bind a familiar just because Birna did not care to have a familiar, so she chose losing the ability to bind one as an Ordeal.

9

I did say implies, and one could easily argue that is simply what Birna claimed. It is interesting that nobody in the house's history has ever attempted an alternate ritual with a different sacrifice or no sacrifice.

10

I tend to think that you can't just pick any sacrifice when designing an initiation, it's easier if it is mystically appropriate (even if there's no mechanism giving a bonus). So it may have been Birna's choice, but influenced by a "united animal or separate animal" mystic element that made it easier than other options.

11

Unless it was changed in DE it is cannonically possible to bind humans as familiars: in HoH:MC Faerie magic allows the binding of faerie aligned humans as familiars.