Has anyone statted up some Bjornaer great beasts?
I was trying to do a camel-leopard (giraffe) but ran out of inspiration when the numbers did not add up.
Have you designed a camel and a leopard?
This sounds like the set up for a fantastic joke!
You draw spots on a camel and call it Art?
Traditionally a camel is a Horse designed by a committee. 
There is just me doing the designing, no rest of the committee. And I am sure that there are official stats for a leopard somewhere, but now that I look I can't find them.
That's true, it could become a good joke!
But, no, it was serious!
If you have Houses of Hermes : Mystery Cults, you have the rules to design any animal. I'd say it is a clawed beast Size 0. So you give it the virtues, flaws and qualities you think adequate. Then, you gibe it the mental characteristics for clawed beasts and the physical characteristics you want (from the 7 pts like during character creation). Don't forget that some Qualities change some characteristics.
Alternatively, if you are satisfied with it, you could take the wolf, bring it to Size 0 and for every Size you augment, you give it +2 Str & -1 Qik.
After that, you combine the two for the Chimera.
From what I read, when you combine the characteristics of the Chimera,
What I understand is that the final Characteristics don't have to "fit" as if you made the beast "from scratch." The combination may be higher.
The Leopard is in The Medieval Bestiary, pp. 35-36. It's 4th edition, but the stats are the same and the Virtues, Flaws, and Abilities are (relatively) easily translatable...or, at least, it gives you a good starting place.
I realise I may not have been very clear.
I am soon to use a land-based Bjornaer great beast, and so need one statted up.
Not having one available, I tried to think of a fantastic beast known to the ancient Romans - the Giraffe, known in the Real World as Giraffa camelopardalis, from the mistaken belief that it was a cross between a camel and a leopard (hence camelopardalis. The Romans occasionally had them in the circus during the time of Julius Ceaser, but they should be practically unknown in Mythic Europe.
Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to stat magic creatures properly, some sort of math failure.
Can anyone help?
Which part have you failed with?
Deciding on what level of Magic Might, and sticking with that value all the way through. Can't maintain a constant value. :blush:
If a great beast has approximate Magic Might of 5 * HeartBeast score, what is an appropriate score in HeartBeast?
I tried it with 8, then halfway through dropped it 4, then raised it to 6.
I'm still not certain what the problem is, are you trying to match this with a value from ROP:Magic?
That is the book that I keep trying to use, when I can find any spare time from work and life.
It almost gives one too many options to use.
I think you can do it two different ways : directly as a magical creature with RoP:M, as you try, or from a Bjornaer magi that you create with the age you decide at final twilight.
With the second option, if you take the "standard" twilight gain of 2 points per year after gauntlet, it would make a magi ~ 138 years post-gauntlet. However, the magi would have trained in many fields that would not be useful for the Great Beast, such as the arts, Parma Magica, etc. So, you could even not bother with it and decide arbitrarily how much time the magi would have invested in "useful" fields, such as Heartbeast, some mysteries, etc. and give it appropriate experience points in these fields. 1/3 ; 1/2 total xp, maybe? Plus some virtues or refinement of the inner beast.
Also, you can "waste" a number of years on lab works. Maybe even design it a talisman that could still be useful for a Great Beast. In the end, it would give a Great Beast with "appropriate" stats.
I don't know, however, if it would take more time this way than with RoP:M, but it is an alternative.
For familiars, the procedure that I have been using is thus:
- make up the base creature with the rules from HoH:Mystery Cults (or pick one of the pre-generated ones), this gets you characteristics and some Ability totals.
- Give it the Virtue Magical Animal and one of the Magic Creature "Social Statuses" (Magical Friend, Magical Monster, etc).
- Assign whatever Personality, General and Story Virtue/Flaws I think are needed (or the base creature implied) so that you end up with up to 10 points of Flaws and up to the same number of Virtues.
- Assign a Might (modified by Size).
- Buy whatever magic powers you want for the creature as Qualities (you get Might points worth of Qualities) --- usually I underspend on this.
- Take the creature XP points (depends on Season) and minus the XP spent on the Ability Scores of the base creature.
- Spend the remaining XP as seems useful.
- Done.
Now, possibly I've missed something, but this works quite well, it gets me generating creatures relatively quickly, without going around in circles looking at all the options. It seems to me that this should work fine for a Great Beast too? I guess the difficulty might be assigning the number of XP, and whether you want to buy "redundant" Scores in Arts, etc. Perhaps, rather than the season dependent XP total, take the total XP a magus "should" have at the age he became the Great Beast?
The stats for camels are in Magi of Hermes, under the Alexander of Jerbiton entry page, 10-11 concretely).
Cheers,
Xavi
Your choice of a 4-8 range is consistent with what is stated in RoP:M -- on p.99 we read:
In terms of Heart Beast score, there are relatively few examples in the books of Bjornaer magi (MoH has three Jerbitons and three Flambeau, but not a single Bjornaer!). But Falke, the Bjornaer prima, is given a HeartBeast score of 3 in GotF; this means 25-44 xp above the 5xp at the initial score 1. Falke is a young maga: her Gauntlet was in 1194, meaning she gained her Heartbeast either 29 or, far less likely, 41 years before. From this we can extrapolate a very rough gain of 1xp /year in HeartBeast score. Thus, a magus who falls into final twilight 120 years after his first Ritual of the 12 years would have a Heartbeast score of 6; an ancient, legendary one who did so 200 years after his first Ritual would have a Heartbeast score of 8. Which is consistent with the RoP:M guidelines!
So, this is what I'd use:
Magic Might 20 -- the weakest Great Beasts, possibly weakened by Acclimation.
Magic Might 25 -- a relatively weak Great Beast, but still a creature of puissant Might.
Magic Might 30 -- an "average" Great Beast, a powerful magical creature.
Magic Might 35 -- a powerful Great Beast, quite possibly the greatest of its species.
Magic Might 40 -- the greatest of Great Beasts, these are truly the stuff of legends.