Mercurian Magic

I know @Christian_Andersen was very annoyed with the mandatory flaw build into Mercurian Magic. Enough that I feel like it needs a slight touch of something.

Part of the problem is that the value of halving the amount of Vis spent is so very saga dependent: If vis is plentiful, spending less is less valuable. If Vis is rare and valuable in your saga, this virtue becomes much more useful.

As written, I doubt I'd ever take Mercurian Magic for any character except a theurgist that was already intended to sacrifice spontaneous casting completely.

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I do not think it would be mechanically unbalanced.

I think OTOH that it would break the lore. It would make a lot more Mercurians into play, and it would no longer be the obscure, almost lost tradition that it supposedly is.

And I still agree with @ErikT that the loss of flavour is unfortunate.

There is a case for deleting it completely from core and deferring it to TMRE, suggesting that yes, it exists, but it comes with a lineage which should have its own lore and story hooks. (Diedne magic could go the same way.) This is really part of another awkwardness that occasionally bothers me. What is the nature of these Hermetic virtues? Are the genetic? Inherited through the opening? Taught? Initiated? Or what? The available lore is a little too sparse to make good and consistent backstories.

But that of course, is for 6ed and not for errata.

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I don't think removing the restriction to spontaneous spells would make the virtue overpowered, as there alternative virtues worth considering even for a ritual specialist. I thought ErikT's suggestion to allow ceremonial casting of formulaic spells to be novel and interesting as an option. The alternative of giving spell mastery 1 towards ritual could work too. But dropping the flaw from the virtue seems the simplest and best option, and with the inclusion of a separate flaw, it can be the goto ordeal for mercurian mystery cults.

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The combo virtue and flaw needs aspect of Mercurian magic needs to be removed, in my opinion.

Given the split in opinions here, the only live option is, I think, taking out the Flaw, because there are game design reasons for doing that, and it was only left in because the Virtue might have been unbalanced without it.

If the Flaw were removed from the Virtue, it would gain independent life:

Ceremonial Spontaneous Magic
Minor, Hermetic
You can only case Spontaneous spells using the rules for ceremonial casting (page 83).

Thoughts on this? The other possibility is doing nothing.

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I think just removing the flaw would lose too much flavor from the virtue. Doing nothing would be a better option.

In my opinion any changes to Mercurian Magic should encourage those with it to use rituals/ceremonial casting when possible, not remove reasons to do so.

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Is this to imply that if the flaw is removed, you would rather add ceremonial formulaic as an extra benefit?

I am afraid that would be overpowered, but otherwise I agree with you. Yet, David's conclusion has a lot of merit too.

Maybe we are talking about two separate things here. As a core virtue, MM is only mechanics, and David is right. However, MM is important lore in the setting, and viewing MM as a lineage, ErikT is righter than David. If MM was a Mystery, it would have the ceremonial flaw as an ordeal, and if it were an Ex Misc lineage it would be coupled with the flaw (except that this is too Hermetic for Ex Misc).

No, both removing the flaw and adding ceremonial casting of formulaics would be a bit too much, making the virtue somewhat overpowered. One or the other would be okay from a pure power/balance point of view, but not both.

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From a purely mechanical viewpoint, removing the flaw wouldn't be problematic.
But the virtue isn't purely mechanical, but tied into the lore and background of the setting, and I think it would be a mistake to not take that into account. It is "Mercurian Magic", not "Good at Rituals".

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Which makes a case for moving it to a supplement with a little more room to describe that lore than core has.

Very much agree with ErikT.
Which is also why I prefer the virtue to have its own special quirks to compensate for it.

However, what we could do is separate the flaw, as outlined by David Chart, but state in the virtue's description that, to have the virtue, you must take the flaw.

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I am in favor of the separation of Virtue and Flaw.

Purely from a mechanics perspective it is much cleaner to have them separated.

While I agree with others that they go together thematically in the lore of the setting that, IMO is not good enough reason to force it together. I would instead prefer that the description of the mercurian magic virtue include a sentence like "practitioners of mercurian magic often suffer from the ceremonial spontaneous magic flaw" or something like it.

I do agree with the perspectives that there is a solid argument to be made that Mercurian magic belongs in a different book. But that is likely to outside the scope of this thread.

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That is a lot better than an automatic flaw IMHO.

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I haven't seen it in play enough times to have any opinion yet.

If this end being it's own flaw I believe it needs a line saying "you can't take this flaw together with both weak spontaneous magic and difficult spontaneous magic".

It might also be necessary to change weak spontaneous magic and difficult spontaneous magic to make clear that you can pick any two of these flaws, but not all three.

As a side thought, would a description for MM saying "you must take at least one of the following flaws: weak spontaneous magic, difficult spontaneous magic or ceremonial spontaneous magic" work? It still imposes a particular flavor to the character, but with a bit more leeway than currently.

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I'm in favor of the flaw and adding a mention to the virtue that practicionners of the virtue often have this flaw. This can be an initiation ordeal, when tied to other books.

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Is there anything which is not saga dependent?
It is a potential problem, already, that the entire house of Verditius is crippled in a low-vis saga.

I don't think so, the reducing the vis cost by the Mage's Craft score actually helps working around the shortage. Similarly, the mysteries for Item of quality and reforging become more useful: great items without the need for vis and being able to smelt found items into vis.

The craft benefit mitigates moderate shortage, yes, when you get to the point of making greater enchantments. This is useful in moderate-vis sagas. In actual low-vis sagas, any kind of enchantment is going to be a rare event regardless, and the saving only applies to preparation, not to the actualy instilling of the effect.

Items of Quality may of course change the game a little. They are not vis-free though. The book says one pawn. I must admit that I find them utterly boring, though. It is very hard to come up with any flexible range of effects without mastering a range of crafts.

A mild exaggeration surely. They have the other 10 virtue and flaw points like any other magi.

You don't need any craft skill at all to make an Item of Quality. A decent Philosophiae score (which most Verditius mages will already have) is all you need. Plus of course the base item and a pawn of vis.

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