Don't you contradict yourself? If you actually implement the desired flavour in the setting, Gentle Gift becomes a major virtue for play balance. It is not so much subjective, as it is relative to the setting of the given saga.
I think I scared off a sometimes frequent poster on this forum from the Wake of the Schism because I made the unGentle Gift a major disadvantage on stage.
... but more players stayed.
I'm not sure I follow your argument. But maybe when I was saying "play balance" I should have been talking about "magical power"?
I do get how the Gentle Gift can be important! My mage doesn't have it, and it does make his life harder. I do think people who wave aside the problem are missing the point. But I also think it's similar in effect to Judged Unfairly or Tainted by Evil, and those are both minor flaws.
The Gift is critical for the world to make sense. Logically, with the incredible power magic can provide, why do we not have a Magiocracy somewhere? The reason is the gift. No matter how powerful someone is, if everyone from the hired help to the bodyguards thinks their leader has something wrong with them, the leader will be assasinated sooner or later.
If the Gentle gift was a +1 virtue, a lot of magi would take it, and it would bring in to question the history as written. If we have a lot of magi with the Gentle Gift, lots of magi could have been friends with each other prior to the Parma.
The Gift is a beautiful design element and is essential to the Ars Majica world building.
Indeed. If you say «magical power» you make a very different point, but I do not think you think of the Gentle Gift as pure flavour either, not when you also find yourself penalised by not having it.
No, that wasn't my intention.
Well in v3 in was +1 (as you may know!). I think the theory was that it was cheap because it was low power, but that most magi didn't have it anyway.
RPGs vary a lot in how much they expect PCs to be typical of their society v they are exceptional. ArM has pushed hard to the former since its earlier editions.
Indeed. An old friend of mine, who favoured AD&D in spite of being the breed of roleplayers I know, and not the rollplayers I have encountered in other (A)D&D groups, flagged this advantage of the class system of AD&D. It secures some stage light for everyone, because each class has its knacks where everybody else turns to them.
In skill-based systems, and particularly with a diminishing return to XP, like Ars Magica, characters tend to converge to the same average. A little skill is cheap. Mastery is bloody expensive.
However, the Gift penalities do some of what my friend found in classes. It makes the magi depend on the grogs for a lot of everyday and sometimes crucial tasks in mundane society. I am not very fond of the Gentle Gift, because it is a way for some magi to hog the stage light that was other's due.
I don't think a Gently Gifted wizard ends up gobbling up all the face time that a social companion would take up. Magi have an endless number of places that they need to spend their experience already; they just won't ever reach the same scores in Social Abilities that a companion can achieve. They might be remarkable as a wizard who actually has a 3-4 in a Social Ability and doesn't get that annoying -3 on their rolls, but they'll still be outshone by a companion with a 6-7 & Puissant or Affinity in Charm. Maybe the Gently Gifted will spend a bit more experience on Social Abilities than other magi, but they just won't be able to keep up with the social companion's scores.
That said, I think that Gentle Gift needs to be Major because it will define a character in much the same way that Diedne Magic or Mercurian Magic or a MMF would. Even if you're otherwise the Herbam wizard, if you have the Gentle Gift you are that one the other magi shove forward to deal with anything social. (And, you're probably still only marginally competent at that.) Just like the Mercurian has to do all the Rituals. It's a Major Virtue because it will eclipse all your other Virtue choices.
Agreed. Generally the magi would leave it to the companion. The gently gift magi I am playing currently is not doing the tedious stuff. He is not going to bother to contact merchants to buy goods, when travelling he is not going to organise accommodation in an inn, he is not interviewing new residents to the covenant (he'll just cast Pose the silent question a few times to vet them). It is not worth his time.
I see the Gentle Gift helping in two ways.There is that element when interacting with significant nobility. "Why am I dealing with an underling, a flunky? Why am I not talking to the rulers of this castle? I am due some respect!".
I also mentioned trust in an earlier post. Having one magi who does most of the communication with the mundanes, who the people trust, means the covenant is better prepared for mishap. The mother of the child who saw something weird will say "Timmy, tell the lord what you saw".
It also depends on how strong the gift penalty is played in the saga. If it is just a -3, it is not a huge problem. I've always thought the Gift penalty is meant to be more though. If a magi with good social skill had a bunch of good social rolls, all goes well, however, after he has left, the people say "{Magi} seems a nice enough guy, but I get a bad feeling abut him. Something in my bones. He's just not right". "Now you mention it, he is a bit creepy". If the Gift is played like that, the Gentle Gift is stronger.
Here we have different experiences, but first, we should ignore the stuff so tedious that it is not worth telling about. In my experience, the magi will run around town to gather information, because this is often a critical part of the main storyline. True, if you need a hefty die roll to charm the witness, they still do not have the chance, but most of the time, this is just RP and Joe Average does well enough.
So I like to play the Gift penalty as a qualitative major distrust, beyond die rolls, but when nobody feels like picking up a grog to resolve the situation, we are stuck. Again we see that there are to breeds of players. We had one member of the troupe a few years ago, who expressed with great pathos, «grogs are fun», and we know plenty who want to play their magus and feel uncomfortable juggling more than one character.
Mundane mysteries are hard to do in Ars Majica.These kind of events can only be done for low stakes (which may be a fun side scenario for companions and grogs with no magi present), as the moment they become high stakes, the magi with Pose the silent Questions steps in.
In our group, all of us have magi we focus a fair degree of attention on, one of us has a companion who maybe even does more than their magi, two of us with companions who do a little bit, and one who spends little attention on their companion. None of us focus on our grogs.
That's not about the high stakes mystery, but about the high stakes question in that mystery. The tricky part is finding the right target and the right question for that spell, and that may take many interactions, so many that enmity and distrust would pile up around the normally Gifted magus for another story to tell ...
We've had Mystery Cults with Gentle Gift in our sagas.
I think I even recall one (holy) maga gaining it from Pilgrimage.
Personally I find the root issue with Major hermetic house virtues to I got is that it confers a stigmata to the house.
Jerbiton, with the Major Hermetic gentle gift lose access to all the powerful Major Hermetic virtues. Tremere can't have a Major Magical focus. Same type of restriction for mercurians.
Most of the time we house-rule the campaigns as follow:
Jerbiton get to buy the gentle gift virtue as a Minor Virtue at character creation
Tremere get to chose between magical Minor focus Certamen or Puissant Intrigue
Mercurians.. well... they are stuck. Hope you can initiate a Major Hermetic virtue down the way...
W
Only Ex Misc get a free Major Virtue. The other Houses get free Minor Virtues -- Jerbiton doesn't get the Gentle Gift for free (in this edition), they get "A Minor Virtue relating to scholarship, arts, or mundane interaction".
If they want the Gentle Gift they have to use their one Major Hermetic Virtue slot for it, just like any other magi. Likewise, Mercurian Magic. You're essentially saying that you consider both Gentle Gift and Mercurian Magic underpowered (along with Mythic Blood, I suppose, since we're in this thread). There's only 12 Major Hermetic Virtues, so that's a substantial fraction to consider underpowered.
I generally think gentle gift to be overpowered. It makes the Magi the master of mundane affairs, the default guy to handle whoever knocks at the door. Even faeries and magical creatures might find you more palatable. I hear that in many campaigns the effects of the Gift are toned down, allowing Magi to interact with mundanes without leading to torches being lit by the common folks. If canon Gift is applied then the merit provides one of the most ranging and powerful benefits.
Mercurian magic is a flavor. Saves vis. Makes you the de facto ritual guy unless there is a magi with flawless magic that keeps putting you to shame. You gey the support of a mystery cult and access to powerful rituals. Not the best merit but it will make the magi unique in the troupe unless others take it.
What I do find is that these merits stigmatise a house.
Jerbitons Magi would select an apprentice with lower attributes in order to ensure they had gentle gift. It also means less Jerbiton have powerful virtues (The other Major hermetic ones).
Same problem with Tremere where none of them have a Major Magical focus or if they do, it is something they get later down the story.
I guess you can always say that the dummer Jerbitons and the weak Tremere that have corrupted the certamen with a house virtue that makes them default winners stigmatta's have not surfaced yet in 1220.
W
This was discussed at some length here.
Quoting DE description of the gift on First Impressions on a Village:
"The villagers refuse to let the characters into their homes or property, and bar the doors and keep a watch all night if they camp on common ground."
and in an inn:
"The innkeeper treats the characters coldly. He sets his prices very high, and will not be bargained down. Other guests ignore the characters as much as possible, and keep a careful eye on them."
I'm really tired of people talking about "the Gift is downplayed because people isn't trying to skew you with a pitchfork", canonically the Gift is just distrust, not hostility, and that distrust is represent mechanically with a -3, not a -90. That people here overplays the Gift doesn't make it the new canon of the book.
Yes, a person's animating spirit is agitated in the presence of the Gift, and because a person does not have direct sensory connection to their animating spirit they let their imaginations go wild to explain why are inexplicably upset in the presence of the Gift.
I can understand why Magi suffer the Gift penalty to Intimidation attempts - the target of the intimidation doesn't think it is quite legit, like foreign films being dubbed, the mouth movements don't correspond to the voices heard.
If you read the qualitative descriptions, there is a lot more to it than a -3 penalty. The -3 penalty is what you get when you have established a connection and the other party has rationally decided to (try to) disregard to supernatural effect of the Gift, such as when teaching. «Will not be bargained down,» means that the magus does not roll at all; the penalty does not even come into play.
I agree that it is not -90, nor hostility for the sake of hostility. However, it easily spirals into hostility because the Gifted would be the first to suspect when there is something bad to suspect them of, more so than the random stranger, and after all, when there is a story, foul play is the norm, not the exception.