[size=150]Original Research/Breakthrough Proposals[/size]
So, I think this is the thread to post this in for Troupe discussion.
My character, Ancel, is a part-time theoretician and I had built into his background that he would be doing Original Research. His field is integrating exotic magic rather than trying to break a Lesser Limit or whatever his more stuffy Bonisagus colleagues are working on. Historically, he's spent time in the Rhine and the British Isles, so that gives you an idea of the kinds of hedge traditions he may be exposed to.
Jonathan.Link suggested I put it up to the troupe to talk about what kind of project he may be working on. To keep this straightforward, I'm thinking that something out of the Hedge Magic (Revised Edition) or Houses of Hermes: Societas books would be easiest since they're pre-defined and folks can know what they're looking at. Here are a few I've picked out:
- The Comprehend Magic supernatural ability of the Pralicians (HoH:S pp. 128-129). Probably a Major breakthrough.
- The elementalist virtues (of which there are several) from Hedge Magic (Revised Edition). Elemental Medicine, Philosophiae, and Theurgy are listed as Minor Breakthroughs. The Elementalist Arts (earth/air/fire/water) are Major Breakthroughs, as, I assume, would be Summoning, Controlling, and Refining. Adapting the latter would mean a minimum of two Major breakthroughs before any useful additions to Hermetic theory are available.
- Folk Witches are widespread and can provide some useful magics. I'll avoid the Energy Magic one, since restoring fatigue is a big limitation to Hermetic magic. However, Subtle Opening as a Minor Breakthrough would be interesting -- it provides absolutely no benefit to existing trained magi, but allows future magi to learn non-Hermetic magic more easily be removing the penalty for existing magic. This is a Minor Breakthrough. Sense the Mystic would provide Second Sight to those who learned it. (Major Breakthrough)
- Gruagach traditions offers Flexible Formulaic Magic -- not so much the Virtue itself, but the ability to learn a new Mastery called 'Flexible Formulaic Magic' that lets you adjust the parameters of that particular spell. This would be a Minor Breakthrough. The book lists two additional Breakthroughs that could make Flexible Formulaic Magic teachable, while a second could make the existing virtue level variance increase to +/-10 levels instead of +/-5. These are each a Minor Breakthrough.
- Alternatively, Ancel could decide that the real challenge is to bring in existing known talents and knacks (i.e. Hermetic Virtues) into Hermetic Theory as a way of unifying magic and making these individual quirks more widely available. (Inspired by this thread from last year.)