Alright so I am building a mage who wants to do a menagerie. Would you consider, a magical focus in magical animals a major or minor focus?
Thanks for your time.
Major, based on the lists on pages 45 and 46.
Although a focus in animals with a Might score from any realm is also Major. (Similar to a Major Focus in Spirits.)
Legendary Creatures is a minor magical focus listed in the Bjornaer section of HoH:MC on page 37, but it doesn't/shouldn't cover every magical animal.
Depending on what you are planning to include in the menagerie, it might cover enough to be workable?
First, I'm assuming what you mean is animals with Magic Might. I would answer the opposite to Erik based on the same pages. Let's compare it to a typical Animal example, such as "canines." Canines covers dogs, wolves, and jackals (no coyotes in Europe). Assuming your familiar will be one of those (which is essentially a guarantee if you want it according to the core book), this covers everything you enchant into your familiar bond, everything you cast on your familiar, yourself if you take on that form, and dogs/wolves/jackals whether they're mundane, magical, faerie, infernal, divine, spells (like with The Wizard's Mount), or dead (such as grave hounds). It should still apply to your familiar if you want it to. So the question is whether or not the breadth is more or less than the rest of what you get with "canines." As spells, you're limited to ritual magic if you want it to have Might, and so essentially there are no spell magic animals since you'd use D: Momentary (not saying no spells to work on magic animals, but no spells that while running are magic animals). And then there is a question of whether a dead magic animal is still magic; let's leave dead animals within their original area for now because that's the worst-case scenario for breadth. Now it will go by SG from this point, most likely. You could say then that you have one six the breadth by limiting yourself to magic animals, but canines are far less than a sixth of all animals, so it's too broad despite not being able to use it on yourself. That doesn't work for me, though. When I run games, magic/faerie/infernal/divine animals aren't a dime a dozen. They're each quite rare, far, far rarer than mundane animals. On top of that, a lot of the value for "canines" is that you can use it immensely on yourself; even if you're not a Bjornaer with an appropriate Heartbeast, you can still turn yourself into any type of canine with a spell. Between the relative rarity of animals with Magic Might and not being able to use it on yourself (unless you happen to have Magic Might somehow), you've made it much narrower than what "canines" covers in my book. If it's narrower than an existing Minor Magical Focus, then it's narrow enough to be a Minor Magical Focus.
Good find. This one does cover things outside of Magic, like faerie or infernal dragons. For me the gain in breadth within Magic counterbalances the loss of breadth being restricted to one realm.
Honestly, when its like this I'd always say talk with your SG and the group and get their feeling on it