IonianD will surely give you the guidelines for characters, most everything is here.
Not really grokking this Flaw, but you could certainly make a Greater Malediction and flesh it out more. If you look at all the characters participating, all Flaws and Virtues are more or less from Core/Houses of Hermes, so not really sure if such a Hermetic Flaw would be appropriate.
Taking a Major Virtue to completely offset a Major Flaw does not seem right.
As for House, you do you! From a Covenant perspective, we lack experts in Animal or Herbam, who would be most welcome for money making schemes, in Mentem (Annastaj apparently is), Imaginem, Aquam, well, most everything!
The idea of that flaw would be that Ignem magic always has an Aquam requisite, Terram magic always has an Auram requisite (if not limited this list would go on). While an elementalist virtue certainly eases the burden, I am not sure I would agree that it completely offsets the flaw.
I do agree that non-standard virtues and/or flaws can be problematic.
Hehe, I am not implying Elemental Magic as written is a good Major Virtue! But in this particular case it would have its normal (subpar) effect plus totally negate the proposed Major Flaw, which would be too good.
We don't have a dedicated healer/characteristic enhancer magi in the covenant if that is of any interest. The Mercere cult of Hero's are a great choice for this type of build in my opinion.
We lack most things. We have CrAu, PeVi, and Te specialists, and a few (more or less) generalists. Sorry if I forgot somebody.
John is right that a healer would be useful. As somebody else mentioned, Animal and Herbam have some interesting applications to income. We lack both. The weakest technique in the troupe is Intellego, and that's a gap worth filling. We have level 10 summa in Latin though. I am sure every other missing art is useful as well. The list of missing skills is long, it is the present skills which make a short list
Personally, I find it a little bit awkward with a growing number of Greek magi. The covenant was announced initially, with a serious ambition to recruit outsiders. The outsiders are already the minority, and I think balance is better. Just a thought. Not an absolute.
Well you probably can't assume any form from the house... Even Flambeau might specialize in Perdo, I would still be surprised to meet two and find no knowledge of Ignem...
The point for Bjornaer and Animal might be weaker - I give you that - however, I would have expected some knowledge...
I think that assumption makes as much sense as expecting every pair of human magi two know both Corpus and Mentem between them.
The point here being that heartbeast bjornaer has nothing to do with Animal, or any other Hermetic art, and bjornaer tend to shun magic which may superficially resemble the heartbeast (HoH:MC). There is a case to say that bjornaer are the least likely to know Animal.
Anyway, rechecking I see that we have some knowledge of An. Pavo, the other bjornaer has 6; which I counted only as generalist knowledge I think it is too low to make much difference to herd income, at least I have not been able to come up with a strategy that Pavo can use to boost income yet.
Pavo is a healer, but not specialised - with Creo 8 and Corpus and Animal at 6, he has 20+ Sta+aura for healing humans and animals. So far he only has Bind wounds and Purification of the Festering Wounds, but he brought the Animal equivalent of Purification as a lab text which even the notoriously poor student Pavo can use. So Pavo is an adventuring healer and a "fix-it-just-enough-and-let-bed-rest-do-the-work" healer rather than the "big ritual, now you're fixed!" sort of healer.
There are many things we don't have, so there's a lot of character types available. Just don't play a Bjornaer mystagogue or a Verditius and you'll avoid the worst overlaps.
The way is completely open for a Intellego specialist, or a Mentem specialist, or an illusionist, even a CrIg flambeau would be a positive novelty.
Native language 5 is free as part of early childhood anyway according to the core book page 29. I suppose this is just redundant information? If not, what does it mean?
The rest of us interpreted it as you do. The native language 5 is redundant info. The bonus on top of RAW is area lore 2 for home area, and classsical or romaic Greek 1 for immigrants.
Hi, I enjoyed the backstory and the focus of the character, looks very effective on the surface.
I would point out that Persona does require a Sta + Persona vs 9, it does not seem that Prometheus would be able to use this skill reliably, what with Sta 0 and Persona 1, even more difficult in a Divine Aura.
Also, what is his rationale for coming to the remote, Greek, secluded and poor covenant of Meru Mudi?
It seems that this character might be more effective in towns and cities, but the Divine Aura would hamper his spell casting greatly, adding botch dice as well. Perhaps Deft Caster (Me) could help you out more than Subtle/Quiet Magic, free up points to get Improved Characteristics and Minor Focus, or Puissant, or Affinity, or Special Circumstances or Careful Sorcerer.
Anyway these are things that jumped out at me, feel free to disregard all of what I wrote, certainly not meant as a criticism, I myself am very green in Ars character builds, so my analysis might be totally off.
Happy to hear that. You have some pretty valid points below...
I would point out that he would - most of the time - come prepared, i.e. switch personae before entering auras. But that of course leaves the low chances from Sta+Persona...
Meru Mudi is open for outsiders and relatively close to the Despotate. I do see him doing longer journeys.
What about
Is the comment about non-human form just an example reasoning for not using voice and/or gestures?
