New Arcane Ability?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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Just spitballing here.
Mercere the Founder both managed to enchant a ritual spell (Mercere Portal), and broke his Gift because it was "weak".

I am speculating that he might have been the last possessor of an uncommon Arcane Ability, that for want of a better name I will call "Vigorous Casting".
VC is vaguely like Life Linked casting, but instead of drawing upon your life force, you draw upon your Gift. With the potential to weaken your Gift.

Basically you can improve your Formulaic/Ritual casting total by up to your score in Vigorous Casting, and probably improve your resistance to spells likewise while using this Arcane ability.

Downside is you roll extra botch dice equal to how much Vigorous Casting you applied. These bonus botch dice only apply to weakening your Gift. Using calculations similar to increasing Warping Score, you instead increase Weakened Gift score.
Your score in Weakened Gift is how much your casting total is reduced (may be offset by VC). WG of 10 means your Gift is destroyed.

Vigorous Casting is probably a requisite in enchanting Ritual spells.

I am I letting my inner munchkin get away by considering this?

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I'm not sure, but outside of the proposed use for enchanting rituals, which I don't really know the value of, this seems... a bit weak? I mean, if you're investing the experience to improve this ability, you may as well invest that experience into better Art scores, for constant, drawback-free improvement, or use ceremonial casting. The risk of permanently weakening, and eventually destroying your gift, while increasing the odds of a botch, seems far too high in exchange for boosting your casting total by less than 10, and the opportunity cost in terms of experience is a significant detriment too. Could definitely be wrong, but that's my initial impression.

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You'd need a short-term / long-term Fatigue system or you won't feel the impact before the end of the campaign.

You have a long-term effect where +6 is 6 extra botch dice that increase a Warping-like score.
This should also give you 6 xp in short-term Casting Fatigue, which give you a -3 score to casting. This decreases back to 0 xp every season.

OTOH, it might be simpler reuse Faerie Metamorphosis and/or Weird Magic. Each Twilight episode stutters the Gift for a short term.

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And if Vigorous Casting increased casting total by +5 per point employed, on par with Life Linked magics?

Or each point was equivalent to Special Circumstances and provided +3?

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I waited for some other commenters to be sure, but I also thought it was under-powered. As others have mentioned, there are other options that allow one to add a skill to casting total in certain occasions, without having a downside.

I'd think you'd want to make it at least +3 per level if it's a skill. I don't like it improving spell resistance. As it's an ability of a founder, one of the key issues of magi antagonism was lack of spell resistance (as well as two gift penalties acting simultaneously), which is what made the Parma such a game changer. If Mercere had some spell resistance, it changes the dynamic somewhat.

On the premise I can only see so far, as I am standing on the shoulders of Giants, I shall suggest some variants.

Fragile Gift. minor virtue. The magi receives a -2 penalty to social roles, instead of -3, and while there is a sense of unease people feel around the magi, it is slightly less than the usual gift.
The magi can push their magic to the limit, adding their warping level to their casting total for formulaic and ritual spells. Any time this is done, add botch dice equal to the bonus provided to the casting total. If 3 botches occur,the gift is lost.

Fragile Gift. Major virtue. The magi receives a -1 penalty to social roles, instead of -3, and while there is a sense of unease people feel around the magi, it is significantly less than the usual gift.
The magi can push their magic to the limit, adding 2 + double (or maybe triple) their warping level to their casting total for all magic rolls and lab activities. If used as a lab activity, it is considered experimentation.
Any time the magi uses this boost, add botch dice equal to the bonus provided to the casting total. If 3 botches occur, the gift is lost.

At a point late in his career, with a decent warping level, Mercere could be getting over +10 from this virtue, and assuming a MMF in travel, the Mercere portal looks more achievable within game rules, instead of using hand wavium.

I personally have no issue with hand wavium. One can argue magic was different in the founders time. Maybe the rulers of the magic realm equivalent of Arcadia wanted exemplars of magic on the Earth, and gave powers to the founders in great excess of the modern (game time) day. It doesn't really matter, however, for those who do care, this does give some extra numerical kick to push Mercere to the point of making the portal.

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