I joined an Ars Magica (4th Edition) group a while ago, having had no contact with the system before, played now a couple evenings with my companion, and now I create a magus. Based on what already exists in the group, I thought that a Merenita maga might fit, with elven or strong elven blood, raised by elves, and fitting to her being more used to spontaneous and fluid with her magic she is somewhat focused on auram spells (what with weather being a bit unpredictable and changing quickly at times) and having a matching personality.
Now it says here that Merenita maga have a talent called fairie magic, which gives them an increased resistance to faerie magic spells and improves the casting of faerie magic spells the character learnt or invented.
I'm not sure what "faerie magic spells" exactly are in this context, and the rulebook I got doesn't really dive into that. In a PDF about faeries in Ars Magica (though that seems to be about third edition as it refers to stuff that doesn't exist in 4th) I've read about powers faeries have, which seem to be a bit like innate spells, though powers are only available to true faeries and not characters with faerie-blood. But otherwise I don't really know what is meant. Is there somewhere a list of faerie magic spells? Can Merenita magi learn them? When a spell is spontaneously created, what would make it a faerie spell?
My memoriy tells me, that each spell you mage invent, count as faerie spell - or is this from 5th Edition? at least in 5th Edition special range/duration/target are mentioned, which your group maybe allows also in your 4th Edition game - some of them are already mentioned in 4th Edition supplements.
Also i see in the 4th Edition grimoire is a whole section of farie magic, with special and weird farie sppells.
All the useful information on Faerie in 4th Ed is in the Wizard's Grimoire. @Ononius is right that any spell your mage invents will be a faerie spell, and that's true for all of House Merenita. As the Grimoire puts it,
The practical application of this is that for any given Hermetic spell or effect (formulaic or spontaneous) with a given level, there is an equivalent Faerie Magic spell with the same effects, which might or might not have the same level.
Your mage will get to add your Faerie Magic talent to any total involving faerie spells, but subtract it from non-faerie spells. Other mages can't use faerie spells at all. There are a bunch of extra ranges, durations and targets that faerie spells can use. Certain types of spells are higher or lower levels depending on the arts used. And there are rules for using Faerie Magic when writing texts that are designed to cause headaches
The Grimoire also has a collection of specifically Faerie Magic spells. If you're going to play a Merenita, you probably want to get a copy just for this section.
