So, I've been hunting and no luck. I figured either HMRE or RM would have something general on apprenticeship for non-Hermetic traditions, such as assistance in the lab. Other than Opening the Gift and unGifted requiring initiation, it looks like it's probably specific to each tradition. Anyone know otherwise? I figured I should make sure I understand things before finishing building my companion.
Smerfs parma - Check Hedge Magic.
Are you thinking of a Tremere? Or perhaps a Flambeau? Just wondering.
Beatrix and your magus will have some things in common. She has a goal to do that with Redcaps with a different sort of focus, and she's planning on doing that sort of thing with corpses. Her intent with Redcaps is more to give them control of effects so that they can activate more magic than they would have been able to if given enchanted items. It could well mean we have a lot of spells we could share. Inventing spells and then teaching each other can be far more efficient than just inventing spells on our own. Beatrix requires D: Concentration on things and nearly requires T: Individual because penetration is an issue and because she wants to provide individual control only available that way.
Yes, HMRE. That's one of the two I mentioned I've been searching through. Any idea where?
pg 11
Wow, I must be blind! I see the stuff about working with Vis. I see the stuff about character types (Gifted Companions, etc.). I just reread the entire page and somehow missed it.
Thought you were looking for character creation. Since only gifted characters can help in a lab there will not be much there on that as the core rules work. The rest is by abilities tied to the tradition.
All of the Folk witch characters have an ability called Folk Witch Magic Theory (pg 39).
Gruagach training is listed on pg 56.
Non-Gifted characters follow initiation rites like any mystery cult (pg 14). Pg 12 and 13 have all the rules for advancing. They would need the Lore in their Hedge tradition like any other mystery cult.
Cool. That's what I expected, but I wasn't positive. Thanks.
I have Rónán and Beatrix through apprenticeship, to where they can be commented on if anyone would like.
Beatrix is complete through apprenticeship. I need to finish writing up her post-apprenticeship advancement as well as her children (grogs). I need to write up her history. I have a lot of it thought through and just need to put it down on the page.
Rónán is missing some specialties at the moment, but should otherwise be good up to the beginning of the campaign. I decided Alchemists of Oxford made a lot of sense. As Cambridge wasn't much until quite recently, Oxford seemed a suitable place for Robert of Chester to have ended up after returning from 'Spain' several decades ago. Meanwhile Robert of Chester was a central figure in bringing alchemy to Europe at the time. I also need to work on his four wives (grogs).
In theory any gifted person with magic theory can be a lab assistant, so if you teach a hedge mage Hermetic magic theory, they can help in the lab.
As long as it is Hermetic magic theory or their tradition has been integrated.
I'm torn right now as far as making up a companion because I can't see any logical reason to make anything but a magical companion.
A regular companion gets 10 Virtues (balanced out with 10 Flaws), and 360 xp in Abilities (assuming an age of 26). Obviously an older companion will have more xp in Abilities, though I doubt they'd go above 450 xp (assuming a maximum age of a companion being 32).
Compare that to a magical companion. A magical companion gets 10 Virtues (balanced out with 10 Flaws) and 360 xp in Abilities, plus 15 Qualities (for free), and some number of additional Qualities (balanced out with an appropriate number of Inferiorities). Each of these Qualities can potentially be used to buy a Virtue, so a magical companion actually has the potential to have more Virtues than a mythical companion. Qualities can also be used to increase Abilities, with only 2 Qualities required to get the companion above the 450 xp max for a starting companion, and no upper limit on how many Qualities can be spent in this way. Plus the magical companion has the option to have magical powers as well as other very impressive abilities. Oh, and the companion is also immune to aging and Warping as well. And they can reach level 6 in a characteristic, which a non-magical companion cannot.
Yes, there's the limitation of learning. But as we've seen, by buying down the companion's Might (granting even more Qualities), it's possible, through Might legerdemain, to minimize that limitation as well.
So I'm left with a real quandary here. Why would I pick anything but a magical companion? I can see that the decision might be hard if I had a concept that I was really keen on that precluded that. But with all of the options open to me, it's just as easy to pick an concept that's a magical companion as not.
I don't know if we want our covenant littered with magical companions. But as I said, I can't see any logical reason not to pick a magical concept for my companion.
Thoughts?
Not that it totally handles things, but your math is off. You get 120 experience up through age 5. (360-120)/15=16. So at age 21 you have 360 experience. 11 years later, at age 32, that would be 525 experience. I think you missed that Magical beings do not get a language for free, so they have to spend a good portion of their starting points to cover that. The same thing happens with Feral Upbringing, where you have the same number of points but they've been rerouted away from Living Language.
However, that does not necessarily solve the issue since it only costs 1.5 points of Qualities to cover that difference and your issue is with something greater than 1.5 points. Perhaps the problem lies in reducing Might at all? If Reduced Might were not available for PCs and similarly PCs were not able to reduce their Might beyond that starting point of 15, would that solve the dilemma? That would mean no bonus 10 Qualities for the advantage of Magic Might 5 relative to a standard companion. It would also ensure tougher learning penalties so non-Magic companions would definitely progress better.
That's one of the biggest issues with RoP:M. It treats lowering Magic Might as a penalty, while it really is not a penalty at all. In many ways it's more of an advantage. So you improve your situation with Might and in return you get an extra 10 points of Qualities. Usually you have to take penalties to reap the rewards.
Certainly it seems to me that, if you're looking at it through these kind of min-maxing eyes (and this one's bad enough now my eye has been directed at it that I agree with Trogdor), then Reduced Might isn't really an Inferiority at all. If you're looking at magical characters the way the framers probably intended, it is.
If one of these magic humans has their might stripped, don't they die?
True. But when have you ever seen that happen in a game? Is that a realistic danger in most ArM5 games you've been in?
I tend to look at things less from a min-max standpoint and more from a capabilities standpoint. The more capable a character is, the more likely he or she will be able to contribute to a story, and so the more likely that they'll get to participate in that story. (And stories are the currency in any ArM5 game.) Consider, Superman is in more issues of the JLA than the Elongated Man. No surprise there.
Realistically, even setting aside buying down Might, a magical character is going to be more capable than a non-magical character during the realistic lifetime of a game. Those base 15 Qualities come for free with just having Might. Yes, over the course of 20-30 game years the learning penalty would be felt. But how may games go 20-30 game years? For the realistic future, any magical character will be more than the equivalent of a mythical companion. And even at the end of those 20-30 game years the non-magical character would only just have caught up with the magical character. It would take even more game years for them to finally get better than the magical character.
This just makes me wonder why, if mythical companions are not allowed, magical comanions are. Likewise, if magical companions are allowed, why would I not make one?
To be fair, I haven't been involved in a lot of games with a lot of magical beings that aren't animals. Said animals are also probably familiars, and their agency as a character is usually bound with a magus character. If the animals aren't a familiar, then they might well be part of the companion flaw... There's also the issue of PvP violence. Are we worried that a player (a magus) will another player's companion with this? But if you broaden this to the wider Order, this is definitely a problem that creatures with reduced might would have to contend.
It's almost trivial for a Hermetic magus with very little training to strip a might 5 creature. While they might not have the spell, casting it spontaneously and having some penetration at the Might 5 level is not at all hard. Ignoring the Aura, because it adds equally to defense if in the same realm, a quick back of the napkin calculation for creating Dragons Eternal Oblivion 5 on the fly: on the averages (assumes die roll of 6 and Sta 1, which is halved to 3.5) needs only have Pe+Vi of 4 or more, or a Penetration of 2 or more to have penetration and the character is dead. The penetration ability isn't halved when added to the die roll, unlike the Arts. A lot of beginning magi have Penetration 2, because it's not that expensive.
But just because something's not been done before doesn't mean it's not an implication of the rules, or an excuse for it to not be done in a saga. Or so I've been told...
In my view, a character with low might would be very cautious when dealing with members of the Order.
from another thread...
95% of RoP:M should be only used by the SG. There are way too many things that over power/min-max. Qualities and Inferiorities are the top of that list.
But if Magical Companions are allowed then I can see a hoard of them coming to Scotland.
No more cautious than any character has to be when dealing with members of the order. How many wizards do you know that can't trivially end someone's life? "They can die if a mage decides they want to kill them" is a broadly true statement whatever the character! Doesn't really matter if they're a magical human who can have their might stripped, or a normal human who just doesn't appreciate being on fire. Mages are dangerous.
Which is something that absolutely should inform people's interactions with them, I agree. To your average person, they're really quite scary. Though so are grouchy, touchy nobles with a lot of guards within earshot.