I just picked up Hedge magic !

Vitki have accelerated abilities,

Night walkers don't seem to have any sort of ability at all.

Natural magicians apparently have normal arts (and not that many of them) they seem pretty impressive

At a first read Through Gruagach have normal arts as well, and they have flexible formulaic magic only better, and they can spont, and they have only two techniques and four forms. I bet that I'm missing something they look too good.

Folk witches have only supernatural abilities

Elementalists have (apparently) difficult arts for their forms and normal arts for their techniques

When the open call book gets published I presume that we'll see lots of new spells. (not that we could ever have enough mind you).

Yeah, but a book of NPC magi is not one of my top priorities. Heck, I gotta figure out how to afford Hedge Magic! And besides, that open call was almost two years ago, and the magi contributed to it do not benefit from Societates. In fact, I personally was uninterested in that open call because information on 5th edition Flambeau was not available yet. And, though i dislike the rewritten history, the magic guidelines in House Flameau and elsewhere in Societates are true gems. All my current characters have Imperturbable casting or use a spell based on guidelines in Societates.

My vision of a new WG would include spells and items, yes, but the main focus (if this dream book were to come true) is a book on Hermetic Magic, on how spells are to be designed, expanding on the core and including all the periphreals that have crept in. A consolodated guidelines chart for all Art combinations, taken from Raw and sourcebooks, sand off the rough edges, clairify some ideas, introduce new guidelines (such as Healing, I house ruled that "Heal a Light Wound" actually means "Improve 1 wound 1 level" and so on).

Stuff like that.

I would be surprised if some of their Arts, probably the Techniques, were not Difficult Arts.

I don't believe that's true. I just don't know if I can say why.

True: their magic is innate rather than trained. It just works, or piggybacks on other abilities like Athletics and Awareness.

Yep, March 2007, right when I got my DJ gear. So a year and a half then. Societates came out in November 2007.

Yes, but I submitted the final draft for the Jerbiton chapter of Societates on 21 July 2006 and I was last to submit. It may not have been published, but it may have been available to affected authors on an as needs basis. I don't actually know if it was. I just note that it could have been and so the idea that the open call book will come out with a bunch of legacy characters in it may well be incorrect.

Yes upon further review the techniques of both Gruagach and Natural magicians are difficult arts

I'm especially curious about this. Hedge tradition PC themselves are not going to be much useful for our all-magi group, but having yet more magical secrets to hunt for our Hermetic Indiana Joneses PCs would be most useful. So what Hermetic Integration (and possibly Mystery Initiation) has to offer from the various Hedge Traditions ? E.g. Integrating the insihgts of Elementalists and Gruagachan ? And how the integration of AM Rune Magic would differ from the integration of Vitkir Rune Magic, if any ?

OK, that would means that, mechanically, Goeticists (is that right?) treat Realm Lores as "difficult arts" and the "Forms" of their magic (Ablation et al. would be the techniques) even though they really are abilities (i.e. can be trained/practiced, which arts cannot).

It's starting to make a little more sense.

Another difference between an Art (Difficult or otherwise) and an Ability (Accelerated or otherwise) is that an Art + Characteristic is useless. Arts don't do anything by themselves. It doesn't matter what your character's Corpus + Int score is, he's never going to staunch a wound with it or discern a disease with it. It's only an Ability + Characteristic that's useful for those types of things, or Art + Art if he wants to create a magical effect.

As John has commented, nominally, totals are generated as either:
Art + Art + Characteristic + Bonuses (+die)
or:
Ability + Characteristic + Bonuses (+die)

That is, Arts are used in pairs, Abilities are used by themselves. It's slightly more messy than that as sometimes "Bonuses" are Scores in Abilities (such as the bonuses for Ceremonial magic).

The reason that "Accelerated Abilities" and "Difficult Arts" are then required is so that the alternative XP progression chart can be used. This allows you to have characters with Abilities that have large numbers for Scores and Arts that have small numbers for Scores. Which you might want for various reasons (the big one being controlling whether the Penetration tends to be large or small for a Supernatural effect).

Probably. Alternatively, they could have been re-organised so that they were used in pairs.

Probably.

Salvete Sodales!

Erik Tyrrell wrote:

Being in Germany and probably having to wait two or three weeks for my own copy, I am happy to oblige.

I am especially intrigued how far they have changed the capacities of learned magicians in comparison with their 4th ed. equivalents (natural magicians).

If I remember correctly those were able to construct spells and rituals spontanously as long as they had time (like in ceremonial casting), could construct minor artifacts with permanent duration, had the option to brew potions including longevity potions and finally were the only ones who could turn mundane species of herbs and minerals into virtuous ones, therby eaily producing tons of vis. For all this they used a total of artes liberales, philosophiae, attribute and bonuses and compared this to the hermetic spell guidelines. Actually they were far down the road to munchkinism, and so I hope (and expect) that their power level has somehow been downgraded.

Well, obviously they don't use their academic skills any longer for their magic but have a set of 3 difficult and 3 normal arts (if I got you right). So it seems they have to specialise a bit instead of improving all their magical abilities in one go. So I assume that they will probably get lower totals. But I wonder whether they can still (at least theoretically) cover the same wide area of magical feats as they did before. Are they still Hermetic Magic's closest relative or have they lost some options?

While I am hoping for answers,

Vale,
Alexios ex Miscellanea

I've now had a chance to read the Gruagach chapter through. I haven't run any numbers yet but it looks pretty sharp.

I'm poking my way through the elementalist chapter now and I have a question that is not forthrightly addressed in the text (that I've found).

[size=150]Does an elementalist character using theurgical summoning need to penetrate the might of the elemental that he is creating? [/size]

Since the elemental is created by the magic from existing elemental materials (which presumably have no might) I'd imagine that the answer is no. Yet from a balance perspective to keep elemental summoning in line with the formulaic spells based on the Mysteries revised guidelines and the abilities of sahirs I'd imagine that the answer is yes. (yet the sahirs and hermetics are summoning an existing entity, not crating one out of summoned materials. Perhaps the creo animal , create a magical animal guideline would be a better comparison)

Are they summoning Spirits of Elements (as per TMRE) or Elementals (as per RoP:M?

::grumbles jealously about people with books::

I made no conscious attempt to replicate the abilities of the Natural Magicians in Hedge Magic, 4th ed. I read the chapter many, many years ago, but never referred to it in writing the Learned Magicians chapter. I wanted to replicate the types of magic that actual medieval magicians thought they could practice.

If you want a preview of the magical system that I tried to replicate, you could read Don Skemer's Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages. It and, of course, Kieckhefer were my primary sources.

The natural magicians of 4th edition were a little too crystal wearing, new agey, alternative mediciney for Ars Magica in my opinion. The Learned Magicians are closer to what actual practices were in the Middle Ages, which means they were literate and educated for the most part. I've included a sub-tradition that uses the same game mechanics of the Learned Magicians, but can be practiced by the dirt-eating, peasants of Mythic Europe and does not require them to know Latin. It is not the primary focus of the chapter.

Regarding potions, in addition to the basic Learned Magicians, there is a subtradition, Mythic Alchemists, capable of creating potions beyond those presented in Art & Academe, creating gold, love potions, the whole nine yards. Again, they are not the primary focus of the chapter.

Learned Magicians cannot create vis. The old Natural Magicians could use psuedo-vis to power their magic. It wasn't straight up Hermetic-style vis, but a special brand. There is no such thing in Hedge Magic RE. Learned Magicians have to acquire vis, just like everyone else. This means that they compete for it with magi and can come into conflict with magi over it. The Fourth Edition authors wanted to avoid this conflict, apparently, and invented pretend-vis to do it.

Anything in there about Cybele/Magna Mater? Someone might have mentioned to me that it would be of interest to me...

-Ben.

Salvete Sodales!

Thank you for the answer, John. So you started the tradition from scratch, and I will have to evaluate it on it's own credits. As our 4th ed. campaign has peacefully succumbed to death, I am fine with it - even so I like continuity within a setting and might feel slightly different if I was to convert an old character. So, I am just curious for the new types.

Anyway, from your comments it seems you mixed up the 4th ed. 'Cunning Folk' with the 'Magus Naturalis'. The later one most certainly was the scholary type (Hell, they used Artes Liberales and Philosophiae for all their magic totals), whereas only the former one had any use for 'wild vis'. Well, it doesn't matter any longer.

So I will just sit and wait until I can finally lay my hands on a copy of my own.

Vale,
Alexios ex Miscellanea

That's entirely likely, we never used the book in any game I played. The thing that I remember the most was the devotion of about one quarter of the book to game fiction. I'm glad that David let us continue in that tradition. I think each chapter should really be about 1/4 to 1/3 game fiction, to give a good feel for the tradition. :wink: