Indeed it is! While he won't be starting with much if anything in the way of Mentem ghost stuff, it's something he'll be wanting to build towards fairly quickly.
Not sure I agree with this take. I could maybe see that argument applying to the actual casting (I don't agree, it's a com roll for a reason and not say sta like most spellcasting, so one has to assume there's some sort of social component, much like say Sihr), but the actual commanding bit doesn't use the ability at all, it uses leadership. To me that seems like a clear cut case of Alluring applying.
Taking a deeper look I observe the following. If the command rolls were just magical commands ... it wouldn't really need to be facilitated by knowledge of language. The implication seems to be that this is to a certain extent a combination of some actual act of persuasion and issuing commands intelligible to the target dead person? This does seem implied by the use of Leadership in the roll. If that wasn't the intent it would have been simple to make another against the ability itself or some such. So it appears kind of murkily a magical social interaction. But certainly not completely non-social?
That was more or less my take on it as well. It's not particularly well defined as to what the ritual looks like, but there was a conscious decision to use Com not Sta in the casting total. Which implies, at least to me, some sort of social aspect to the whole thing. That said, that's precisely the reason I actually do think that the Gift can and should penalize in that situation. Hence my earlier question about Inoffensive.
As for Alluring, it just says that you get +3 on Com and Pre rolls to affect them. Raising the dead with magic using Com seems to suggest that at least by RAW, it should be applicable. Not that I'm necessarily opposed to carving out an exception if the troupe feels it doesn't fit. It just feels like it should to me? But again, that's why we ask, no?
There are two different things. There is the Casting Total, and there is the Commanding Roll. I don't think the Casting Total would be impacted at all by either the Gift or any other reaction stuff. It's the Commanding Roll that is different and seems to be a somewhat social (if you can say that with the undead) thing.
On a different note, you're going to have all sorts of corpses with Magic Might 9 (Corpus), and I'll have
any being with a Magic Might associated with [Corpus] can sense [her] nature when nearby. Typically, weak creatures will be afraid of the [maga] and powerful ones will attempt to kill [her].
Perhaps I'm biased, either by an intrinscic view of undead, of Valgaldrar or something else.
It seems clear to me that Alluring should help with Enchanting Music and Entrancement. It's not as clear cut with Valgaldrar. As I see you are not pleading with the undead for him to act, as in, without Valgaldrar you would have zero chance of "convincing" the undead to do anything. Thus, to me, Valgaldrar is much closer to pure magic than to social interaction (and this last one seems to me the kind of thing Alluring targets).
But well, the idea of mindless undead is a recent one. Norse undead (actually, medieval undead in general) where cognizant, and one of my favorite episodes in the sagas is when a guy threatens his dead relatives with a lawsuit to force them to leave his lands, so I don't know why I'm dwelling on this topic this much. =P
Trust me, this very much came to mind, and amused me greatly.
Precisely. And haha that's bloody fantastic.
I'm fine with this as a compromise. Casting total no, Commanding yes.
As an aside, the language around casting totals made me question whether Cautious Sorcerer would apply to the casting total side of things or not (obviously not the commanding). I'm not sold either way just yet as I can very much see both sides. All this of course brings up the question of familiars and the gold cord. Which says you subtract it from the number of botch dice when using magic. Just magic, no further distinction. So would it apply?
This could be trivial to answer, depending on what you're asking. Did you take Cautious Sorcerer for your Hermetic magic? Then it has absolutely no effect on your Muspelli magic. If you take it for your Muspelli magic, then it has absolutely no effect on your Hermetic magic; but that would bring up the question of whether it's allowed with Muspelli magic (not listed, while it is for some hedge traditions). Here is the book statement for this separation:
Note that Hermetic Virtues and Flaws, including the ones gained by being a member of House Ex Miscellanea, affect only the exercise of Hermetic magic, not non-Hermetic powers. (HoH:S p.103)
I hadn't decided if it would be appropriate to take Cautious Sorcerer or Ability yet, but I appreciate the clarification. Can always count on ya to know where to look!
My thoughts precisely. Given this, I'm curious what folks think, as it seems like an area we need to make a ruling on as a troupe.
So this establishes that by RAW the virtue works with non-Hermetic varieties of magic. And I see no stipulation for declaring that it should/must work with a declared sub-set of the magic known/used by the one with the virtue, or any mechanism for declaring such a sub-set.
This leaves me inclined to think it applies to all magic used by the possessor equally.
Re: Gold Cords
There doesn't appear to be any sort of restriction in the description, so I'm not inclined to artificially/deliberately impose one.
But that goes against what HoH:S says. It also disagrees with how it had been written in HMRE, where it's more explicit that these are different versions of the same Virtues.
It would have been much clearer had there been a class of "Tradition Virtues" rather than "Hermetic Virtues." Then each Tradition would have its own ones of a bunch of those particular to its own magic.
My intuition was that this was the less recent source and thus overruled.
Where should I look for this? If this establishes the precedent of differing versions then this concept should be incorporated into our understanding of RAW for these purposes I would agree.
I concur and believe that ideas and intent for how all of this should work likely evolved over the (not inconsiderable) time period of the writing/publishing of 5e.
Found it, though it's not as clear as I'd recalled. They say that Gifted characters can take some Hermetic Virtues. But since Hermetic magic requires the Gift, the core book made it clear the Gift is needed for Hermetic Virtues. So, with traditions that support unGifted magi they added.
In some cases, versions of Hermetic Virtues are available as Supernatural Virtues to unGifted members of a tradition.
But then they hedge (heh-heh) on that and do open up Hermetic Virtues in several cases
But if we read further about these Hermetic Virtues we see things like:
Also, there are a few Virtues and Flaws available to elementalists that are similar to Hermetic Virtues and Flaws of the same name, except that they apply to elementalist magic instead. These are listed below, but players should simply refer to the Hermetic descriptions in Ars Magica 5th Edition.
Note how these "apply to elementalist magic instead."
Vitkir characters may take as many as ten Flaws to balance ten Virtues, and there are several new Virtues and Flaws given in this chapter that only Gifted characters can take. These Supernatural Virtues and Flaws are the same as Hermetic Virtues and Flaws, but specifically apply to runes and vitkar rune magic. Also, many Hermetic Virtues and Flaws may be taken as Supernatural Virtues and Flaws that will affect the character’s rune magic instead.
Note how these "specifically apply to runes and vitkar rune magic" and "affect the character's rune magic instead."
So they weren't as thorough as they should have been (which brings up my "tradition virtue" approach), but it's pretty clear when they've actually made a statement that these statements agree with HoH:S's statement. It's not surprising this was ignored in Rival Magic because Hedge Magic was supposed to have some overlap with Hermetic magic, while Rival Magic was supposed to be focused on magi from outside of the Order, and thus those without any Hermetic magic.
Reading through your citations, the HoH:S section leans me more towards your view of RAW on this issue.
Were it not for this quote I would view all of this as an artifact of the writing/language and its imperfections. But this seems to establish an intent that is otherwise not expressly/overtly changed in subsequent material like I had thought was the case.
This doesn't quite mesh perfectly with my conceptions of these things ... but it doesn't really have to. It seems the "per magic style" version is more consistent with the intent than such virtues being generally applicable.
Ya, I think RAW is definitely this, just not clearly explained much. But, that being said, I don't think a house rule going the other direction would cause significant issues. I know you're trying to avoid a lot of house rules, but if this really doesn't fit your feel of things, you should be safe making one here.
I don't feel the need to correct this with a House Rule at this time, so I think we can proceed.
And I'm quite curious to see what @Nithyn comes up with. He has been dealing with some stuff in real life over the past few days but I'm confident he will start catching up with us soon.
So here's an interesting thought/question that I want folks' take on. So Ranulf out of MoH (pg 115) has an effect (Shadow of Spring Times Departed) enchanted on his talisman that allows it to slowly repair itself. Could you in theory create a similar spell to allow revenants to heal themselves slowly over time, much as a living breathing person would?