Necromanncer (hermetic virtue)

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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So I am having session 0 and Character Gen with my new group on friday and since one of my players has expressed interest in Aq and Ig, I have pointed them to the errata, specifically to the Elemental Magic major Hermetic virtue which could be of interest.

This is thematically appropriate because the four elements are linked. What comes next to mind is that Co and Me are similarly thematically close and that maybe a Hermetic virtue could/should exist to represent/enable necromancers in a comparable way.

Obviously it is too late for the definitive edition, but i felt like throwing the idea out there. Not sure if it would be too weak for a major or too good for a minor...

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MMF: Necromancy. Job done?

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That is not the same though, it is very different mechanically.

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True. And the only character I had made me regret it, because I got done with the necromancy I wanted to do waaaaaaay too fast.

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IIRC, Mythic Locations mentions "Natural Magician" as a variant of Elemental Magic. Don't recall all the arts included, but Herbam is among them. So there is some precedent for this.

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Natural Wizard has Herbam replace Ignem.

Some on this forum have, in the past, suggested a similar Virtue for Animal, Corpus, Herbam, and Mentem.

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I consider the reason elementalism was buffed, is that in regards to what they do, there's a degree of overlap. Blow things up; incantation of lightning, crystal dart, pilum of fire, basically throw an element at someone but with different numbers.

There's a bunch of things elementalists can do, but it doesn't have the range of options what someone with Mentem and Corpus can do.

Corpus and Mentem can do so much, that a virtue with just those 2 would probably be fair. While not exactly an affinity it does give +50% XP. Normally one can't get 2 affinities in forms, so it's worth slightly more than 2 virtues.

Also because the 50% XP is applied to the other form, instead of being applied to the form advanced, it will allow more access to Summae for longer.

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Huh? Did I miss something? In my book, it just says

Nothing about them having to be one Form and one Technique?

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Elements are a lot more than just direct damage spells. They have a lot of utility: travel (Au and Aq), Covenant improvement (He and Te), protecting oneself against the respective elements (both for combat and for travel).
Now are He and Te closer to each other than Co and Me: sure.

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Oops. My bad.

That does raise the other benefit. The virtue elementalist, and any other similarly designed virtue does not consume the 2 possible affinity spots, therefore letting the person have virutes with an affinity in 2 techniques, which would be a good synergy with the boosted forms.

I did say

For travel, I'd prefer rego corpus. I appreciate Aurum can fill a sail and Aquam push a boat, but they are limited to what the boat and sail can handle. Terram does have a bunch of craft applications, and is the element with the most utility.