I'm a bit confused about how to deal with Traditions in my campaign.
How does Traditions functions exactly?
I know that if you have True Faith, you can learn divine abilities, and those you learn within a divine Tradition doesn’t give a penalties for those you learn outside of the Tradition.
I think that if you have at least one infernal warping point, you can learn infernal abilities, and those you learn within an infernal Tradition doesn’t give a penalties for those you learn outside of the Tradition.
But… Say a PC maga, trained in Hermetic Magic and without any Tradition yet, gains an infernal warping point. If she joins Daughters of Erichto (RoP: The Infernal, under the name “Witches of Thessalyâ€), can she learn within a few seasons Summoning, Commanding and Hex? Can she learn Chthonian Magic for free?
Or does a player has to start with a Tradition to gain its benefits?
Okay, here is the catch. All of these magics are supernatural abilities. This means to learn it, there is one of two requirements
it requires a teacher/study total to be high enough or that you undergo some sort of initiation script (ordeal, etc).
THe ordeals are covered very well in mysteries and they give you the virtue for the ability and once you start learning it, you can keep learning it.
For just being taught though, your study source quality has the total of all your other supernatural abilities subtracted. IF you have hermetic arts, then the subtraction is the total of all your arts. Scores in favored abilities do not affect the learning of other favored abilities.
For example, a mage of priory of St Nerius will holy magic would not subtract their arts totals from attempts to learn intervention or purity (favored abilities for that tradition) but would subtract from trying to learn Blessing (making it almost impossible).
Now someone joins a tradition and has no supernatural abilities, their tradition can teach them teach them the ability with no penalty to their source quality. Once she learned the first supernatural abilitiy (say hex to level 2), learning other ones subtracts total of the scores of all non-favored abilities from teaching quality (she started to learn summoning from a quality 9 source, it is quality 7 for learning that first level. If both were favored abilities, then it would still be quality 9).
So, according to what you say, an Hermetic Maga who joins Witches of Thessaly during game would suddenly be able to learn Summoning, Commanding, Hex and Chthonic Magic without any penalty for her Arts and other supernatural abilities, if she has at least one point of Infernal Warping?
Sounds quite powerful. I guess the reason is a special emphasis on these abilities within these groups. But then, why there is no Tradition within Order of Hermes? It wouldn't be unlikely Traditions exists within the Order which can teach you abilities without penalty? For example, a Bjornaer Tradition, nature oriented, which teach you Animal Ken, Wilderness Lore, and any 2 other abilities.
First off, you have to spend the xp to learn the abiilties. Yeah, there potentially could be such a tradition.
Keep in mind though that for hermetic magic not to subtract, hermetic magic has to be one of the preferred/favored abilities.
For example, Mage gets true faith and joins priiory of St. Nerius. THey can attempt to learn Purity but their normal hermetic magic subtracts (it is not a favored ability). They learn holy magic first and then their arts don't subtract because their arts are holy magic which is favored ability.
Basically the favored abilities do not subtract when learning other favored abilities. Your other supernatural powers still do and your favored sipernatural abiities subtract when learning your favored abilities.
The question has come up before. Hermetic magic does count as your set of favored abilities. So if you already are an hermetic magus, you don't get a free pass to the witches of Thessaly powers. On the other hand, hermetic opening of the arts already accounts for existing powers, so a witch might well keep hers and acquire hermetic "favored arts" on top of that.
You only ever get one tradition, be it magical, faerie, infernal or divine. Beyond that you need to find other ways to acquire power, like initiation, or the bestowing of powers by supernatural beings.
Right but to benefit from a traditions favored abilities, your hermetic wizard must have hermetic magic as one of that tradition's favored abilities or it will subtract.
It's my recollection that Divine and Infernal do explicitly allow magi who have presumably already had their Arts opened to join a divine or infernalist tradition like the Cantores or the Daughters of Erictho, and learn the powers associated with them. I also believe that it's split up by realm, so that while you can't initiate a second magical tradition after you've become a Hermetic magus, you can join a divine or infernal one as long as you meet the requirements for learning new Supernatural Abilities (for Divine, True Faith; for Infernal, mere willingness to corrupt your soul).
This may seem very powerful, since after all you can spend four seasons after joining and suddenly you've got four new powers. However, just like a mystagogue from the Mysteries, this assumes there's someone who's willing to just teach everything to the character without demanding anything in return. That seems unlikely to me; at least for the ones that aren't self-damning the character will have to demonstrate loyalty to the group and their goals, and will probably need prove himself to his teacher first.
For the Hermetic traditions like the Invicti or the Witches of Thessaly, I suppose it is possible that you could initiate some of the Supernatural Abilities as mysteries, at least the ones that can be easily associated with the magic realm (Holy Magic or Summoning, for example). I think the mystery cult initiation is unique to magic, though; divine and infernal groups don't seem to do it the same way. But it's the same sort of process, learning Supernatural Abilities or initiating Virtues, just the mechanic for gaining the powers is different.
