I ran a concept by Scott and he said to mention it to you all. I think I'm starting late enough I'd show up as a guest and so I won't make decisions on the covenant's starting situation.
I have a vision of a Merinita with Faerie (Padfoot) Blood (probably with Monstrous Appearance) who focuses on hounds and glamour. I'd want to start him a few years out of gauntlet, enough time to pick up Glamour and to have a hound familiar and to have bred the familiar to produce a bunch of magical puppies (I'm thinking MM1-5 for all the hounds, including the familiar, not something really powerful.) that he will raise as his hunting dogs/shield grogs. (I've got RoP:M with the animal training rules but haven't had the opportunity to use them.) He would probably develop some bloodline spells to cast on his familiar to affect the other hounds. I expect Rego and Imaginem will be his best Arts, Creo, Muto, Animal, and Corpus being his runner-up Arts. He would be a hunter/adventurer who would certainly enjoy venturing forth against the Mongols.
I think this concept might work well with a bunch of the others, but it's starting to look like there might be a lot of animal-focused magi. Too many too similar? Let me know. I can come up with other interesting ideas.
As for RoP:M and magical animals / familiars, I like the RoP:M rules. I like having to choose between power and the ability to learn Magic Theory and the like.
Other rules questions:
- Would a magical focus in glamour be major or minor? It only covers a subset of CrIm and MuIm, ending up less broad than a single TeFo combination, qualifying it for minor, but I figured I'd ask.
- How do you all deal with the craft magic (or creation magic) and Finesse? I've required a Finesse roll, the roll providing the workshop total. Meanwhile I've limited the top quality (Quality, Excellent +1, Excellent +2, ...) by the Craft: X score. That way no matter how well you roll, you're still limited by your understanding of the thing you're making.
Chris