I have a newly Gauntleted character of House Merinita who was inducted into Nature Lore rather than Faerie Lore by her parens. Now, Nature Lore is specific to the region where you learn it and using the ability outside of this home region is considerably more difficult. However, there are no guidelines provided for how to change the home region, which is very strange as it seems then that if you have a character with Nature Lore they must learn the Supernatural Virtue at the location where the Saga takes place; otherwise, the character will never be able to . This seems to me to be a big miss. Is the expected scenario that the character must learn a new version of Nature Lore for the area they move to? Or, is there a way to transition to the new location?
Well it depends how your SG wishes to rule things but one could also read the reference to home region as a specific type of terrain rather than one particular geographic location. For instance, one who takes Forest Lore has his/her home region as {FOREST} (i.e. forest regions) and thus by extension is attuned to all forests and so on.
Personally I prefer this interpretation for ease of play for all concerned rather than the more restrictive geographic locale interpretation.
It all depends on how strict or lenient your SG and troupe are I suppose.
If this seems too much of a fudge, you could always require the character to spend a season attuning him/herself to the new forest/mountain/body of water, etc., in order to eliminate the -3 penalty.
I'd prefer this as well but I don't think they will agree. I'll pose it to them though, and hope they agree.
I like this too and think they may go for this solution. Side question that pops to mind is Way of the (Land) virtue. Does the +3 bonus apply to what effects the character is capable of doing? For example: If Daisy, the Merinita, had a Nature (Forest) Lore score of 2 and Ways of the Forest; does this give Daisy access to the effects of Nature Lore score 5?
No, Nature Lore pertains to the supernatural aspects of the chosen area whilst "Ways of" provides bonuses to mundane activities taking place in the particular surroundings you have chosen. The two are complimentary, not stackable.
Thank you for such quick and helpful replies. I'm trying to wrap this Merinita maga up for game tomorrow and she's a very different style of character than I normally play (lab rats and political magi); so, the rules aren't as familiar to me.
I'm really going to advocate for type of terrain, in her case Forests, rather than a specific locale. I'm even willing to limit it to a specific Realm, if need be.
We finally decided that if a character raises his Nature Lore ability using experience solely from a new area, then he can claim that new area as a "home" territory.
It's not quite "rules as written", but it felt right...
Limiting to a specific realm isnt really much of an issue since it could only be Fairy or Magical realm interaction anyways. You dont generally have powers in the infernal unless you are a diabolist nor in the divine unless you plan to be a holy magus or some form of clergy IMO.
Most wilderness areas would be of a magical nature anyways I should think. Not divine unless the site of some holy incident nor infernal save for the same reason. Nature Lore seems to presume magical realm interaction as I read it anyways.