... and a very wise design decision too.
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I do find it interesting how there was player fanon that the Gentle Gift is a "weak" Gift whereas normally Gifted individuals were average and the Blatant Gift was a strong Gift.
And then if you map that out, Gently Gifted people can't have another major hermetic virtue typically and has 3 virtue points eaten up leaving less space for minor hermetic virtues, normally Gifted people got one slot for a major hermetic virtue and blatantly Gifted people also got one slot but also 3 virtue points from their nature that can be spent on hermetic virtues.
Its probably not the intent but it does come with the nifty implication there is a tier system of strength that manifests in terms of virtues.
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But apart from Virtue points, what is the game mechanical implications of "Weak"/"Strong" Gift
I'm not sure what you want me to say to that- the virtue points is the implication. Unless you mean lorewise.
If so- in such a case the Gently Gifted are typically innately weaker than those normally Gifted, who in turn are innately weaker than the Blatantly Gifted. However, this bridge isn't so wide that suffecient expertise in the Arts and cunning cannot overcome it and there's some overlap. In addition, the Gifted can learn how to emultate aspects they're missing similar to the unGifted by either refining their expertise magic through breakthroughs or undergoing initiations. Unlike with the starting virtues, this (normally) wouldn't be an aspect of their Gift but quirks and tricks they picked up even if they didn't figure out how to integrate it.
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I can see where you are coming from,
and I don't like it.
The Gentle Gift is power, namely the power to be able to infiltrate mundane society and apply subtle power in their midst.
Opting for the blatant Gift instead allows you to compensate with more blatant powers, like raw firepower or other things.
I refuse to call the Gentle Gift weaker because that would tend to imply that the game is about blatant powers, and I do not want it to be.
YMMV
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Many of the Major Hermetic Virtues -- Diedne Magic, Faerie-Raised Magic, Flawless Magic, Mercurian Magic -- seem to be more about how magi were trained than about their innate magical abilities. That doesn't imply Gentle Gifted magi are "weaker" so much as that they're Gently Gifted at least partly because of their training.
Moreover, magi who take the Blatant Gift may counterbalance those Flaw points with Virtues that have nothing at all to do with their magic -- Blatant Gift + Magister in Artibus doesn't imply anything about "stronger" or "weaker" magic.
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I am not saying it is weaker as a form of "it isn't good."
I am saying it is weaker in the sense of its less intense and so has less intrinsic "oomph" but as a benefit the individual gets to integrate into society without an issue
The Gentle Gift is a super power- the psychological and social consequences of being isolated from society cannot be understated but all too easily overlooked, and the advantage of actually being able to talk to people is super handy.
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Faerie raised magic is half implied to be innate from faerie blood iirc, Flawless Magic could be a quirk of the Gift, Diedne magic is deffo trained.
It isn't like its all one or the other- some hermetiv virtues are quirks of the Gift, others are trained. The biggest example of this is perhaps the Gentle Gift itself- I doubt its something that could be trained, especially with Jerbitons emphasis on finding Gently Gifted apprentices.
Sure, but there are better wordings to use, words which do not draw the attention away from the most lovely aspects of the game.
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Let's go with the uncontroversial, elegant, "Not as stinky."
Some characters with the Gentle Gift may have, consciously or unconsciously, worked to make their Gift not as stinky while they grew up. This might happen to be reflected in the game rules by the Hermetic Virtue exclusion rule. Characters with an extra stinky Gift may have put no effort into the hiding the stink, while normally-stinkily Gifted characters put in the average effort. In both cases, the number and nature of the Hermetic Virtues tends toward a reflection of the way they handled their Gift at a young age.
Reductionism is bad. Because it's IRL stinky. It's quite plausible that some Gentle Gift characters developed the Gentle part, and for others it's simply how their Gift always was. It's convenient when things have one definite cause, but people are rarely convenient, and I'd expect magi to be even less convenient. So, IMO, it makes sense for the same Virtues and Flaws to derive from multiple causes, in multiple ways, from character to character. As opposed to a single cause for each Virtue of Flaw that's the same for every character that possesses it.
For some characters, the Gentle Gift might very well be because their Gift is ah .... "less OP" than most Gifts. Such a character would likely have some serious Hermetic Flaws, too: All lovely ways to express the character concept.
Also: Mythic Blood is stinky, but in a way that accentuates the Virtue's loveliness.
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This is implicitly canon, as of Apprentices. Apprentices can be born with the Gentle Gift, or taught it by their parens, or have it as an Inherited Virtue that just manifests at some point. (It's implicit because the book does not explicitly say that this applies to Gentle Gift. But as that Virtue is not excluded, this is clearly true.)
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Here's what the author of Apprentices wrote about choosing which Virtues are teachable to apprentices:
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Such an optimist! (Or, alternatively: What a nasty thing to say.)
Anyway, I was thinking about how Mythic Blood isn't necessarily born-only, because drinking straws do predate plastics.
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From what we can infer from the rules it makes sense that the Gentle Gift (or Blatant Gift) are not invariant expressions of one's essential nature. Maybe they're not teachable, but they are acquirable.
We know that Major Hermetic Virtues that are the result of training (e.g., Diedne Magic, Mercurian Magic) preclude having the Gentle Gift. We know that apprentices trained by Gently Gifted magi may acquire the Gentle Gift during their apprenticeship. It's possible to gain the Gentle (or Blatant) Gift through Twilight effects, and so that may change over the course of a wizard's career.
It makes sense for Jerbiton magi to deliberately seek out Gently Gifted apprentices if only so they won't have to waste an extra season during their apprenticeship inculating the Gentle Gift (assuming the parens is also Gently Gifted, of course).
Do we?
We know that you cannot start the game with two major Hermetic virtues, and they may be hard to teach to someone with a lot of supernatural powers, but what prevents gaining Gentle Gift as a mystery in game?
... except for such a mystery cult not existing in the given saga, but I am am talking in general ...
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I should have added "through apprenticeship." As I noted, it's already possible to gain (or cancel out) Gentle/Blatant Gift through Twilight.
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One of the Criamon paths give you Gentle Gift. (Or have you lose the Blatant Gift if you have that)
Another path gives you Blatant Gift.
So it is very canonical that you can get the Gentle Gift during play - even if you already have some other Major Hermetic Virtue.
If you use the rules in Apprentices to develop an apprentice season by season, there is no theoretical reason why they couldn't have two Major Hermetic virtues by the time they pass the Gauntlet. In practice that would of course be quite rare, but there is no reason it can't be done.
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There are rules in RPGs that are there for play balance, and there are rules to make the game match the desired flavour of the game world. I see the Gentle Gift being a Major Virtue as the latter, not the former. (No shade on Loke, because its value will vary with campaign, and it's subjective anyway.)
I saw Robin Laws talk at a games con some years ago, talking about character design for Feng Shui. It's a game where you pick and customise an archetype, and he explained that the characters with the biggest combat numbers are the types you see most often in the movies. So players that pick a high-powered charactet type will generate a group with the right composition for the movie-reality it simulates.
In the same way, I think the Gentle Gift is a major virtue because it's meant to be rare in the Order, and that means it should be rare among player characters. (There's also a reason that they wanted social skills to be something most mages are bad at, but that came a lot earlier.)
There's something similar with the recent discussions about teamwork in the lab: the rules are designed to support a mage with an apprentice and a familiar, because that's in genre, but they make it harder to gather a larger team, because that's not the flavour the designers want.
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Yes, exactly.
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It is known that many believe that the Gentle Gift means a weaker Gift.
It is known that for starting characters the Gentle gift requires making other sacrifices for game balance.
It is also well know that many people experience "sour grapes" over advantages they do not have, and that magi are not immune to this.
As such I would say it is most likely the reputation is a combination of some very mild evidence in terms of general trends and a lot of spite and jealousy amongst magi who have alienated family members or suffered isolation because of the Gift. Especially those with the Blatant Gift
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