Obviously, but the extended parma may be tricky to maintain consistently.
it lasts as long as at least one character can see the other.
Sure, most of the time, there may be no issue, but Murphy's law applies.
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Agreed, however, how many shield grogs are on an expedition? Enough for the parma to cover them all?
What makes the order the pre-eminent magical group, is there capacity to withstand enemy attacks. If most Order magi are wandering the lands with parma at level 0, that takes away the order's key advantage over other magical threats.
Extending the parma is a good thought, however, I doubt it is commonly done.
At most one per magus on the expedition?
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I would imagine the point of mundane assistance for a magi when on an expedition is a deterrent. A bunch of bandits see 2 travellers, would they pepper them with arrows, with the intent of taking any loot and hiding the bodies?
When confronted with a larger group of travellers, any bandit group, or any other martial threat, the question "Is attacking these people worth it?" becomes a lot more challenging to answer.
Sure, but if you've got one person comfortable with you through Parma sharing, then you can apply other social forces through that one. Teach your personal shield grog some Leadership, make him/her one of the commanders for the grogs as a whole, and then all the comradery they're developing during training time when you're not around keeps the other ones following the one person you're Parma-ing's orders, even if the rest of them don't much like you.
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This seems like an extension of the more general principle that you have an experienced turb captain who is used to the gift actually be the one to direct all the grogs. They can trust the captain even if the magi remain suspect.
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Also the shield grogs can do the various menial labour that the magi find beneath them, like gathering firewood, cooking, tending to the mule (which probably will never get used to the gift), fixing the cart. Mages can do plenty with magic but aee low on skills, they won't bother gettering Awareness, survival, professions... at 5 while the grogs are there for that. Unless they are gently gifted, they will need a shield grog with charm, folk ken or bargain to go amd secure accommodation.
The OOC explanation for the number is one per non magus player on the adventure.
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So if everybody wants to play their magi, they also have to cope with the Gift at the market and at the inn, and suffer the fatigue from the menial work in camp. There is lots of roleplaying potential without grogs too.
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My group classifies Shield Grogs as a special type of Custos. All of the Magi have one or two (even the Flambeau, though he calls them his "adventuring companions"). When the Magi go out there tends to be several other Custos with them.
Our available "adventuring" Custos include:
- 2x Voices (enchanted partial Reinforced Leather)
- 6x Guards (enchanted Long sword, Heater Shield, full Mail)
- 3x Assault (enchanted Great Sword, full Mail)
- 3x Archer (enchanted Composite Bow, partial Mail)
- 3x Scout (enchanted Composite Bow, partial Reinforced Leather, Insignificant Pendent)
- 6x Myrmidon Champion (enchanted Short Sword, Infantry Shield, partial Reinforced Leather)
Unless many of the Magi are going out, rarely more than a handful of them will go. The Myrmidon Champions only take part when the Magi are using one of our ships. But you do increase the total by Shield Grogs, personal servants, and any Companions who join. Total group size can easily hit 30 or 40.
While it might seem excessive, you have to remember that the Magi are essentially the "rulers" of a holding that can easily be as big as the holdings of a landed knight in medieval times. How many people does an average landed knight travel with?
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Probably not 30-40. Many landed knights would have just the land to support themselves. A retinue of 30-40 would be for bannerettes and barons (lesser barons of course). But of course, the holding needed to support half a dozen magi would be at least one to support a bannerette with half a dozen knights. Horses are expensive, but so are labs. I do not find 30-40 particularly excessive if the magi travel together, but would each of the magi at the covenant want to flash the might of a knight bannerette? I am sure the typical Verditius or senior Tremere would, but I am not so sure about all the others.
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I have a hard time believing that Magi haven't come up with a solution to this problem in several hundred years. The simplest solution is to raise a guard with the kid, from the time of his apprenticeship. This person would "belong" to the apprentice, and smart masters would teach him to treat the "servant" well, and to spend time together, to go to normal lessons together, and to room together. Eventually the feeling of discomfort would become normal. The discomfort wouldn't go away, but it would be just how you feel around each other.
Once the apprentice becomes a master, the friend would go with him, wherever. He would also be responsible for leading the group of people who care for the master. (British officers had a batman who was in charge of his uniform, but usually did a lot more to smooth things out.) There are clear parallells with European Nobility, and how they had people to deal with the commoners, and to insulate them from themselves. You can treat the rest of the peasants how you like, but you better treat your bodyguard well.
Same process with the "Help" in more colonial and prejudiced cultures. There is a close bond between the "Help" and the kids. They may disrespect and be shits to members of the "Help's" race or culture, but their person is their person. Equality is now the norm. Race and class aren't supposed to be relevant, but that isn't how things were in the 1200's.
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It is a well known fact that young children are tolerant of weird people..... Or maybe not.
The other child is going to talk about the "weirdo" behind his back. The moment someone isn't watching, the other child will be mean to the apprentice. Even when someone is watching, the hired help may think the weird kids needs to be taught a lesson, needs to toughen up, what do those weird magi know about raising a kid, etc. I can't see their being a good relationship. Sometimes maybe, but not often. Also, a shield grog arguably has a 30 year working life. What doe the magi does for the next 50+ years.
Not only do you have the gift issue, but the classic dislike of the front line grunt soldier to the ivory tower intellectual who doesn't know how the world works.
The gift penalty is a great in game mechanism to bring in companions and grogs to the story, and also justify why there is no magiocracy ruling mythic europe. There is no easy fix. Obviously any stogy guide can make an easy fix, however, I feel it would be a misstep.
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You bring up good points. I was speaking more of mages finding work arounds to achieve protection for their apprentices, just as nobles had to figure out ways to protect their heirs. Think if the "rival sibling" trope. "Sure, my brother annoys the shit out of me, and I argue and fight with him, but gods help the fool who thinks they can bully him." That is a two way street, if they were raised as siblings, and constantly told they would need to rely on each other as adults, it could work.
If I were designing a system to create shield grogs for apprentices, I would start with the grog younger than the apprentice. And I would tell them that they were a team from a young age. Brothers who are treated as a team, and learn to be a team, can become quite formidable. Both are rewarded whenever one succeeds. You stay away from the Ivory tower problem by letting them go through things together, where they have to rely on each other.
Once the first pair is created, the shield grog is put in charge of the Mage's security, and tasked with training a team to protect him. Eventually one of the other team members takes over, as the original gets too old to go on adventures. Since they are still close, he becomes a key member of the Mage's household. One of the things which I think most troupes leave out is the household of the Mage. A mage is the equal of a noble, and no noble can manage everything they need to alone.
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It is very funny how that works. Downtime, players tend to be very aware of that household, assuming that they can always recruit mundane people to do anything but labwork for them. Uptime, nobody wants to play anything but their magi, who then do everything themselves.
What they really leave out is the difference between a Spring covenant and an Autumn covenant, and the challenges involved in getting from one to the other. What you describe is very plausible in an Autumn covenant, with an abundant population and well-functioning household with skilled people in all roles. There are several challenges. You need enough people. You need skilled people. And you need teams who work well together. The two first can sometimes be achieved with enough money and a sponsor who can afford to shed staff, but the last one is going to take time.
So I find your ideas completely sound in a successful Autumn covenant. In a fledgling Spring covenant, they are somewhere between wishful thinking and powergaming.
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Building a household could be an interesting part of the game, and where a beta SG could step in. I get that Spring Covenants wouldn’t have full households for mages. But, what a good series of adventures for a beta SG, Grogs, and companions to work on.
I would love to see how you would that story.
I find it depressingly difficult and time-consuming.
A point in favor of the idea that magi would probably cultivate a few grogs to eventually send off with their apprentices is that the traditional apprenticeship length is the same as how long it takes to get used to the Gift. It would indeed likely make both children's lives harder, not easier, but since when has any magus cared about his apprentice having a good childhood, much less prioritized it over them not being an embarrassment to their master once they're Gauntleted?
Like, you're gonna have SOME masters that truly do not care about their apprentice's long-term prospects at all, who teach them once per year to meet quota and then keep them in the lab from sun-up to sun-down the other three seasons and never let them form any connections or useful skills, and then toss them out into the world alone without caring how they do. But the norm of Hermetic culture is that the master/apprentice relationship fills the void most magi get from not having biological families, and while plenty of parents (especially medieval parents) may be miserable people to be raised by, they also usually want their offspring to be successful. If only because it reflects well on themselves.
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It is an interesting part of the game. Spring Covenants bring built from the ground up give the opportunity to chose the members one or a few at a time, which makes them a lot more fleshed out than just "stuff gets cleaned". No, the wife of your sailing grog whonis the biggest gossip in town does the cooking and beer brewing for the Covenant. And ypu remeber how you had the Co mage save her from whatever disease was ravaging the land.
The milkmaid was rescued from her pursuers after she killed a man with an axe etc
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Some don't care.
Some may be to naive and narrow-winded to realise that they should care.
Those who do care may put more or less care into the projects.
Then some are understaffed, to the point that they cannot find a candidate.
Others lack the mundane staff to train the candidate.
Yet others see the candidate dead to mishap or disease.
Some may lack the resources to keep such a big staff.
There are simply too many reasons why it might not work out, or may work in different ways in individual cases, to claim one established custom. The important point is that this approach to rearing grogs is plausible enough safely to assume when bootstrapping a saga. Making it the universal norm is a leap.
I think our distinction comes down to pairing "universal" with "norm." Generalities are made by exceptions. I agree completely that things don't always work out how magi want, perhaps more often than such is the case for nobles due to the Gift's effects, and that while there may be an ideal for how much or how competent of help you should send your magical children out into the world with, most young magi will face some amount of deficiency for many reasons, and the unluckiest will receive no help at all. But I also think there's a powerful filtering effect at work here, because if you're one of the young magi most deprived of a stepping stone, you'll be the most likely not to need to worry about further recruitment because you won't go anywhere, just stay at your parens' home covenant or find the nearest established one willing to let you glue your lips to their behinds. In which case the question of where you find grogs is moot or at least very different, because you're just one piece of the existing project of an older and established covenant rather than somebody trying to figure out how to get stuff off the ground.
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