As the title suggests; in a saga I'm currently a part of the covenant has acquired various Gruagachan Lab texts, and my character has also learned Pictish to a functional degree.
Now I'd be interested in integrating Gruagach Blessings and Curses, their guidelines, but I'm wondering how would that look like in Hermetic Magic.
What it can do:
Grant bonuses and penalties to certain Ability & Characteristic rolls
Grant General Virtues & Flaws (temporarily)
Grant Supernatural Abilities & Flaws (at a Score of 4, temporarily)
Reduce Ability Scores to 0 (temporarily)
Reduce Characteristics to 0 (temporarily)
Take away Virtues (temporarily)
My current idea is adding their guidelines to Creo & Perdo Vim respectively.
For modifying abilities I believe Corpus would be more appropriate than Vim. As for adding or removing virtues and flaws, as well as modifying characteristics, there are already guidelines for them.
You did not list the full range of Gruagach powers. There are several of those which do not already have a Hermetic equivalent.
For me it could be Corpus to affect physical abilities but Mentem for social one.
I think you should talk with the rest of your group first (especially the game master) to be sure it won't be unbalanced or perceived as unfair.
For example, granting Supernatural Ability at 4 could be seen as unfair for someone who actually spend a Virtu and 50 xp to have it, so make sure everyone is ok with it
For increasing Characteristics, sure there is already Creo Corpus guidelines, but there is nothing for granting Virtues and Flaws. Or am I missing something?
I listed most of which Hermetics cannot do already, which is mostly contained within the Blessings and Curses. There are some guidelines within the Vision form, specifically for granting Visions (Flaw) and Premonitions. Shape is just Muto Corpus. Sure the Limit duration sounds fun, but is not a priority yet.
Everything else (that is...all proposed breakthroughs in the book) is of no real interest.
The DM is not opposed to it, and as for the rest of the players don't really care for my Hedge Magic shenanigans.
I agree with others that Corpus and Mentem make the most sense for affecting characteristics - they already have guidelines for permanently raising characteristics, so it would make sense for guidelines to temporarily raise (or lower) them to also be part of those forms.
In terms of Blessing/Curse I think it's very important to point out some restrictions that Gruagachan have:
Can't use Give Blessing on themselves.
Can't use Blessing/Curse with normal durations (limit and geas duration only)
Limit and geas are variable durations whose magnitude depends on how well suited the prohibition is to the target (no hermetic equivalent)
Take Blessing has guidelines to remove virtues, but can't actually target specific virtues. It removes a relevant virtue within "a particular area of endeavor" but the Gruagach has no specific control beyond that (hard to mesh with hermetic magic)
For this reason I don't think you can directly copy these guidelines. Something can certainly be integrated from them, but it's not as straightforward as a direct port. But at the same time, these aren't inherent flaws - magic powers and Learned Magicians can grant/remove virtues without these restrictions (though those versions have limitations of their own). This actually gives rise to a few cool story options:
Maybe you have to integrate limit/geas duration before integrating Blessing/Curse is possible. There are some interesting hooks here in that limit/geas would appear very similar to some of the Merenita inner mysteries which might lead them to believe your character has stolen their secrets
Maybe partial integration creates a major hermetic virtue ("Gruagach Magic"?) that gives access to Blessing/Curse but restricts all of your magic to require a limit or geas. Similar to how Mercurian Magic partially integrates the old cult of Mercury magic system but removes your ability to use spontaneous magic. Having to have all hostile spells have a geas and all beneficial ones have a limit is a decent tradeoff. A full integration would remove these flaws, but would be much harder and require original research.
Maybe you can only get partway from studying Gruagachan magic because of the inherent limitations. This would require your character to also study magical beings who can grant virtues, and maybe Learned Magician magic. There could be some fun stories in that and it would make the integration more earned.
