Actually, a STRICT hermetic training is 15 seasons long, not 15 years. As such, if you have enough resources AND previous knowledge of non-hermetic stuff you can probably finish your training in 5-6 years or so (in order to acquire some spells and Arts ratings).
That is not exceptional. Any magus can do that given that sort of extra-intensive training. There is even the canon case of the last apprentice of Bonisagus himself finishing his trainig too fast and ending up with the power of a full magus when he was on his teens. Obviously, having a tteenager with that sort of problem was BAD. After all, being a teen is an illness we all have to pass in one moment of our lives.
Bonisagus had to march him because he was acting like a dick.
More than a virtue I thinkit would make for an interesting character concept AND a flaw (being looked suspiciously by his peers during the first years of his hermetic life probably along with some mental flaw like low self steem, bipolarity or being moonie)
Just some thoughts on this. I fail to see a nuke-armed teenager as a genius. More of a danger to the universe.
Somewhat of a modern conceptual imposition on the paradigm then both by the canon writers and yourself, Xavi.
In the 13th Century the notion of teenager or even adolescent would not have existed. Children were regarded (and in many demographics, formally initiated) as adults once they reached puberty (12-14 years). Many girls and boys would have been married legally without parental consent by this time.
I think the creature we understand today as the unruly teenager is only made possible by our smugly overcomfortable modern lifestyles and the artificial concept of adolescence of the past century or so.
True. Sometimes I forget about that. Weird, since we just had an adventure (designed by me) about the events happening to our mundane meddler magus escorting the daughter of the local noble to be marred.... she being 10.
However, the marching of Bonisagu's apprentice was an old (2nd?) edition event already, IIRC. It was developed in GTOF, but it was there somewhere, I think. And right now it is still quasi-canon and IMO sensible: being trained too fast in too much power is not a good disciplinarian mechanism. Happens with a lot of stuff in real life, actually.
IMT we hab been talking long and wide about that.
Lets roleplay a bit: unless you are a bonissagus why on earth whould you want to finish an aprentice in 6-9-12 years...
You have. A magical gifted lab assistant/slave for 15 years FREE!!! You can kill a assistant if you want is your property! Is a thing! A pet, a piece of furniture with your name on it. Ending you take aprentices to be more powerfull and free. So that virtues should be only suitable for bonissagi ( earn points by number of aprentices) or in necesary conditions...
Schism war: i need those hoplites for yesterday- you, you and you teach those bastards or burn them to ashes!
As background flavor for my magus, a Tytalus, I had the master's former apprentice be a genius perfect student and the master was attempting to thwart the House of Tytalus by not teaching the boy Asterpatos according to the insanely brutal Tytalus way. So this child prodigy excelled and was brilliant like none other, and the master bragged and bragged. Well this boy was slowly manipulated by a unknown Tytalus, a magus that did not like his filia departing from the code of Tytalus, and so the master's own master and beloved rival, decided to destroy the apprentice.
Long story short, too late, a child indulged and given the powers of a magus at a very very young age is truly a frightening thought. A youth is easily manipulated by a 120 year old master of intrigue and sorcery, and there is nothing like using untraceable mundane means to turn an apprentice into a dagger in the heart of a master.
This aside, I like the idea of the minor and Major Virtue, with the Major virtue coming with a minor personality flaw.
The minor virtue with the apprentice ending within say 3 years of the 15... remember Theban turns out students in 14 years no problem. The Major virtue could give you a trained mage in say 8 or 9 years, but with the draw-back of the personality trait signifying some unhinging of the supple mind. Perhaps over-confidence, arrogance, paranoia, ect.
Of course this originally was posted long before Apprentices....
Trying to remember... are you truly allowed to kill them without repercussions? I know technically you might be able to have one die without there being a issue, but if you actually murder one, wouldn't your Tribunal get a bit pissed? Definitely within the Theban tribunal you would suffer a public reproaching, a issuing of one or more shards, and possibly a forced removal of politi status and been told to leave the Tribunal.
I understand the context of what you are saying, but something in there struck me as worth talking about. How are apprentices treated in different Tribunals. Thread done:
As background flavor for my magus, a Tytalus, I had the master's former apprentice be a genius perfect student and the master was attempting to thwart the House of Tytalus by not teaching the boy Asterpatos according to the insanely brutal Tytalus way. So this child prodigy excelled and was brilliant like none other, and the master bragged and bragged. Well this boy was slowly manipulated by a unknown Tytalus, a magus that did not like his filia departing from the code of Tytalus, and so the master's own master and beloved rival, decided to destroy the apprentice.
Long story short, too late, a child indulged and given the powers of a magus at a very very young age is truly a frightening thought. A youth is easily manipulated by a 120 year old master of intrigue and sorcery, and there is nothing like using untraceable mundane means to turn an apprentice into a dagger in the heart of a master. So my character's master eventually murdered his first apprentice, leaving the corpse to rot, and then refused to ever train an apprentice by such kind and gentle means. Yeah that meant my character got 15 years of such ruthless training even some Tytalus thought it was excessive.
This aside, I like the idea of the minor and Major Virtue, with the Major virtue coming with a minor personality flaw.
The minor virtue with the apprentice ending within say 3 years of the 15... remember Theban turns out students in 14 years no problem. The Major virtue could give you a trained mage in say 8 or 9 years, but with the draw-back of the personality trait signifying some unhinging of the supple mind. Perhaps over-confidence, arrogance, paranoia, ect.
Of course this originally was posted long before Apprentices....
Trying to remember... are you truly allowed to kill them without repercussions? I know technically you might be able to have one die without there being a issue, but if you actually murder one, wouldn't your Tribunal get a bit pissed? Definitely within the Theban tribunal you would suffer a public reproaching, a issuing of one or more shards, and possibly a forced removal of politi status and been told to leave the Tribunal.
I understand the context of what you are saying, but something in there struck me as worth talking about. How are apprentices treated in different Tribunals. Thread done:
Figure out how to perform Parma magica, probably through a lab accident that sends you into short term (one round?) temporary twilight and "clicks" in your efforts of copying your master when he performs it. Mybe you got your rite wqhen you were 10 years old: "get this key and you will be free.... err... a magus". The key is inside a magical steel furnace, for example, and immune to rego magics (and the furnace cannot be affected by magic either
Yes, you really are. Thebes tribunal actually cares a lot about apprentices and give them an unusual amount of rights.
But this is over and beyond the demands of the code.
the rhine only demands that you should be a master to take an apprentice - meaning that the effective level of minimum competence is somewhat higher. but that's about it.
There may be social limiters - and there often are. but legally, apprentice rights are few.
Actually, there's 1 law that can be called in. Not necessarily intended to protect apprentices, but it can be called in if someone takes issue with you doing so.
Endangering the Order.
Killing potential members just on a whim is endangering the order, and thus, a crime.
Another example would be Flambeau apprentices given "battlefield promotions": HoH:S, p.14 also reports that "a Flambeau apprentice named Cindrallon was made a full maga of House Flambeau after only seven years of apprenticeship because she single-handedly killed a renounced magus in a Wizard’s March. Though she had used a spear rather than a spell to slay the renegade, her master and the Primus agreed she had shown outstanding courage and fighting ability. Other, similar, battlefield promotions occurred during the Schism War."
Personally, I think the two are quite different because (magus) PCs are typically supposed to start at roughly the same power level, and in particular the same number of years out of gauntlet. Skilled Parens and Gild Trained give you more magical power than the other PCs; "prodigy" effectively gives you a bonus to aging rolls and saves you some vis if and when you'll get a longevity ritual.
So I think that finishing your gauntlet three years early (for the same experience) is worth definitely less than the amount of xp you get as a magus in three years. A better comparison would be to consider a magus who starts his apprenticeship X years later, and "recovers" those years with an apprenticeship that is X years shorter, giving him effectively X years of pre-apprenticeship XP. At 15xp/year, 90 xp are then equivalent to an apprenticeship cut short 6 years, not just 3. And even this comparison is somewhat biased against the prodigy: pre-apprenticeship xp can be applied to stuff that's often less useful to a starting magus.
Given this I'd rather not handle this as a Virtue, because even at 1 Virtue point its granularity is too coarse. What if I want to play a character who's spent just one year less than the customary 15 -- or one year more because e.g. he failed his gauntlet the first time? What I'd rather do is say that for every year more or less than the standard 15 years of training, a magus
gains or loses 10xp and 10 points of spells, AND ALSO
gains (regardless of whether he's younger or older) 5xp in an appropriate reputation, which is probably half good and half bad if the character is too young, but most likely bad if he is too old.
Well, it's not a hard-and-fast rule, but (barring some notable exceptions) it's generally a good idea in most rpgs. The corebook itself, on page 29, suggests that: "in most troupes all magi should be approximately the same number of years out of apprenticeship. Actual ages are relatively unimportant, as magical abilities tend to overshadow mundane. If you decide not to do this, it should be because the whole troupe wants to play in that sort of saga, not because one player has a cool concept for an older magus."
I created a Ex Misc tradition with a major flaw that amounted to a drastically Shortened Apprenticeship. (5 years) There where some other conditions like all members of the tradition had to be a Magister in Artibus before they started their apprenticeships. It was also expected that members would never keep their own apprentice's for more then five years.
