I think you could allow the Ease Factor to increase by +01 every 03 days due to a failed Stamina check ,
rather than an automatic increase every 03 days.
This does give more variation to the length of time away from an aligned aura.
(in game terms , i am in favour of variables that are not readily predictable by players ,
and they could botch the first roll after all)
Please explain your idea further. Do you want the EF to increase due to failed Stamina checks in addition to the standard 3-days automatic increase, OR only when a check is failed ?
Yes, I see your intent, and it's not without merit. I'm just a bit doubtful, since I'm not convinced that deviating from the august simplicity and reliability of the Deprivation rules would be worth it. IOW, would you propose me to house-rule this way all the Deprivation rules in game, for mundane food, air, and water as well, or just to make an exception for this Virtue ?
If the Stamina roll is a stress die , then i would allow an exception from the standard Deprivation Rules in this case.
(though if this is confusing to players , leave the standard rules in place)
The character can still eat regular food and drink , or consume Creo/Corpus vis ,
so the automatic increase may not be warranted.
This Virtue would represent someone who is supernaturally tougher than a standard mortal.
They do have a weakness in leaving an Aura with the resultant penalties to actions ,
but not knowing exactly how long you can get by is more of a challenge.
An alternative could be to keep the automatic increase every 03 days , but allow a modifier to the Stamina die roll.
You won't fail checks as easily.
Medical aid would be no help , but a Healing Potion , made in your aligned realm ,
could add from +01 to +21 to the rolls.
These could be done as a lesser enchanted device with one use.
As you would need vis to make them , then this would likely balance in game terms.
Yes, I see the good merit of your idea, but I would prefer not to make separate rules for mundane and magical deprivation, since players might find themselves to track both food/water and aura deprivation at the same time. OTOH, aura deprivation is somewhat less severe than starvation, since, by itself, won't kill the character, just send it into hybernation. Although a comatose character would require periodic feeding of food and water, or will die by starvation, and with ME technology, giving food and water to a comatose person is no easy task. Although I suppose some ReAn or ReHe spont spells might easily do it.
Yes, but remind that I've purposefully used the rules for Longevity Rituals, so they can also gainfully consume Vim vis, or any Technique/Form vis that is highly relevant or strongly associated to him/her (magical specialties, affinities, and the like). It is nice to preserve the spirit of the rule (you need a vis diet to stay out of aura in the mundane world indefinitely) and to provide some loophole so than character doesn't necessarily become a sinkhole for precious Creo/Corpus vis.
On this part, I would kindly ask advice. Do you think the virtue looks and feels better if it also includes a bonus to recover from wounds and diseases while in auras, or not ? As you may see upthread, I got some rather vocal objections to including that bit, but you don't seem as opposed to the very concept of a powerful longevity virtue, so I value your judgement.
A CrCo ritual spell or one-use "healing potion" lesser enchanted device that would temporarily grant bonus to aura deprivation rolls would IMO be a highly thematic and balanced response to the deprivation problem. I guess Moon duration would be appropriate Do you think the virtue writeup should include an explicit mention of this, or is it best left to player ingenuity to devise 
?
You could do this 02 ways , include a bonus , which i think is thematic and appropriate .
or make Immunity to Disease a prerequisite Virtue.
I don't have a ready idea as to what the value of the bonus should be ,
but you could make it something like Corpus Score divided by 05.
For myself , i like players showing ingenuity.
In game , if they were to research this Virtue , then i would let them find this out.
If the Virtue is for generic use ,
then it probably needs a statement to the effect that Magical Aid may be of benefit.
I would really not use the second option, because a) it seems excessive as a prerequisite, and, more importantly, in ArM 5th ed. general Immunity to Disease is a strictly Infernal Virtue, as per RoP:I. So it seems inappropriate for this virtue, which should be linked to any of the four realms.
A bonus seems the better idea. Like you, I have struggled to find a mechanic that would be fair to most character concepts, and Co score wouldn't be fair to generalists and non-Corpus specialists, or the occasional non-magus character. For similar considerations, but to a lsser degree, even Stamina isn't optimal. Some thought got me two options: either tie the bonus to the sum of aligned bonus (so it would be +2 to most characters, +3 to a minority), just like the penalty to magic resistance, OR the bonus should be equal to aura strength, divided by two (round up), so in most cases it would range from +1 to +3. At a first glance, the latter idea seems the better option to me.
A minor issue about this: RoP:I makes a penalty to healing wounds a general feature of infernal auras, one of the rare negative effects that even characters which are aligned to the Infernal aren't extempt to. OTOH, there is an Infernal Major Virtue that makes someone totally immune to disease. In light of this, do you think that chthonic mages and Infernal characters with this virtue should be still allowed to reap bonuses to wound and disease recovery from Infernal auras, or not ? I'm undecided on the issue, even if I'd be more inclined to say "yes" for thematic consistency's sake.
Well, I mostly picture this Virtue as a Mystery one, which mystae mages that follow cults and paths that are headed on the road to immortality might Initiate. However, I would not rule out the rare character that might have this virtue as an effect of a strong supernatural heritage or blessing. So ?
Immunity to Disease is not specifically an Infernal Virtue ,
The Nephilim Mythic Companion write-up on page 66 of RoP:TD lists Greater Immunity : Disease as a prerequiste.
Greater Immunity being a core book virtue on page 43.
Greater Immunity : Disease could be Initiated at a previous stage before taking the Supernatural Life Virtue.
My copy of TMRe arrived last night.
Hopefully i can give you some more useful feedback when i have had a better look at it.
A more complicated way to do an Aura Bonus would be to treat it as a Score , value from 01 to 10 as per a skill.
The character starts with an Ability called Vitality at 01.
This can be raised by XP as any normal ability.
The value of the Ability is added to all rolls to recover from wounds or disease.
As this is yet another XP sink , it is costly enough to allow the benefits to apply all the time , even outside an aligned aura.
You still get the Deprivation effects when outside a sustaining Aura , but can still add the bonus to rolls.
If the only way to get XP in Vitality (or whatever it might be called) , is from Exposure or Adventuring ,
not from a Summa or Tractatus , then it will not raise in value very quickly.
Being aligned to more than one aura could give increased XP.
Players could also buy Affinity (Vitality) , which would be yet another way to soak up Virtue points or as yet another Initiation add-on.
Those with Cthonic Magic or those with Immune to Disease , or both ,
should probably get the benefits of Supernatural Life , for thematic consistency.
Any bonus to healing or disease is added to the penalty applied by being in an Infernal Aura (as per page 12 in RoP:TI).
If you don't want anyone thriving in an Infernal Aura , only allow the SL Bonus to negate the penalty (equal to the IA Value).
You can never get better than a +0 to healing disease or wounds in an Infernal Aura.
Keeping this solely as a Mystery Virtue would cut down on potential abuse ,
as any Path to Immortality is meant to be very , very hard.
Congrats! And welcome on the mysterious side of Ars!
You are right, my previous interpretation of the corebook writeup for that virtue mistaknely told me it wasn't allowed for all diseases, and my lack of interest for Divine characters led me to skip the Nephilim Mythic Companion example. Thanks for the reminder.
I do not think this would be appropriate, since making a Major Virtue a prerequisite would be out of balance for the way prerequisties for Mystery Virtues are treated in TMRE. Generally, a major virtue may have one minor virtue has a prerequisite, two minor ones in one case for the really outlandish stuff (full, nature-changing immortality).
If Supernatural Life would really need a prerequisite preliminary step on the mystery path, I think that at most Unaging might be detached from Supernatural Life and made its prerequisite. I included it since to a large extent, SL thematically includes the features of Unaging. To a lesser degree, another possible prequisite might be Rapid Convalescence.
I wish you a a good and happy delving into mysterious facts. I hope you got HoH:MC at the same time, as your enjoyment of both books will be greately increased if you read them together. You will find both books highly insightful for our discussion.
Hmm, on further reflection, I would prefer to use half the aura's strength (round up), while in aura, a more simple way to model the bonus.
However, your idea may still have merit. Would it be terribly unbalancing, or too complicated, to combine the two ideas, and have base bonus of half the aura's strength (round down), in Aura, plus the Vitality score, active everywhere ? This way, characters that initiate the Virtue would get a 1 score in the Ability associated to the Virtue, as per usual rules, and start with a 1-3 bonus in any but the strongest (6+) auras, and 1 outside of aligned realms, with the option to raise the bonus further by sinking Exposure or Adventuring XP in it. The idea seems to make thematic sense, but I fear it might be too unbalancing, or, most of all, too complex to manage. Anyway, if onw were to adopt this system, the Virtue itself should be renamed, as associated Abilities of Supernatural Virtues generally take the same name of the Virtue, and Supernatural Life seems a bit pompous for an Ability. Maybe Supernatural Vitality ?
Yep, on further reflection, this seems the best way to manage the issue. Let the SL bonus balance with the general penalties of Infernal Auras.
I would really use SL as a mystery virtue in the vast majority of cases. That said, if a player would really want it at charactr creation for a character with a very strong supernatural heritage as justification (say, Strong Faerie Blood or Mythic Blood), I think the plea might be listened to with an open mind. After all, sinking 6 Virtue points to make a character near-immortal is no mean feat. One might buy 1 major and 3 minor hermetic virtues with the same points. Longevity does really little to make the character more powerful in the short and medium term.
I did in fact get 04 books.
TMRe , HoH:MC , Ancient Magic plus City & Guild.
A brief look at Bjornær , then reading through Initiation Scripts and looking at some of the Virtues.
The Great Elixir being one of them.
It may be a few days before i get enough breakthrough points for any further Insight.
My general tendency is to look for Stackable Virtues to see how far you can push the system.
Congratz, congratz, congratz, congratz! And welcome to a brave new world, Ravenscroft!