I try to avoid Magic Foci. I have an old character updated from ArM4 that has a Major Weather focus, but that's the only one I think. My favorite character gets by quite nicely without it. Thought about adding one but I decided against it as it would be too limiting. Foci encourage over specialization, which IMO is more detrimental than being over generalized.
It is not uncommon to HR the ability to have two foci if one of them was forced upon you by your House (Tremere) or another Virtue (Mythic Blood).
There is also the Potent Magic option from Mysteries, which states the intent is to substitute for a Focus.
So if this works for you...
Call Mythic Blood Supernatural, substitute Minor Potent Magic for the focus (which adds a +3 bonus that can work with other magic/powers), and subtitute something such as Long Winded or Life Boost for the Stalwart Magic.
The main problem I'm having here is finding something to replace the Stalwart Magic. Magic Resistance seems unpopular, but I want something that's
a) useful to non-mages
b) not useful to mages, so they won't want the non-mage version of Mythic Blood
c) suitable for someone descended from just about any magical being
and Magic Resistance is the only thing I can think of that fits the bill.
If someone has a good suggestion for what could replace it, I'm interested.
I am a bit concerned about that possibility. But hey, I can always undo problematic changes.
Magic Human sounds cool, but it wouldn't really fix the issues I'm trying to fix. It introduces a new character type quite different from the ones I'm tinkering with.
I'd actually say Guardian Angel and True Faith give better bonuses than Mythic Blood. True Faith is upgradeable through acts of piety, and Guardian Angel's +5 soak and good advice seem about as good as a minor Virtue (maybe Tough, for +3 soak if you want to compare directly) and a magical feat.
The drawbacks seem like a wash, too. You have to have a Minor Personality Flaw (Pious?) or you have to be a good servant of God.
And the kill-on-sight thing is specifically for Parma Magica. The Order doesn't kill all Magic Humans or relic-bearers or True Faith-havers on sight, after all.
Still, maybe it'd worth dialling back the MR a bit. How about MR 10? Or 5?
Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking.
By all means, do what works for your saga. But I myself would not approve a new form of Magic Resistance of any sort (other that the currently approved means such as Faith or a Might score).
And you might be asking for the impossible. How can anything useful to a mundane be of no use to a wizard? Magi are people too.
I am just trying to match similarity. Stallwart Magic keeps you from loosing as much Fatigue as the next guy. So does Long Winded.
If you want Magic Resistance, go for it. It is your saga and it is just a game. You don't need anyone's approval, and I doubt anyone would anyway. If you ask for an appropriate number, most will say even 0 is too much MR.
You are never ever going to convince me. But you don't have to convince me. It is your game and I am not playing in it. You may find my advice useful (or not), but my opinion is irrelevant.
If you are giving person might, you are making a magic human, kind of the definition of a human with might.
Yeah, I've pretty much given up on the Might idea. Too much baggage.
Not sure why you'd think any amount of MR is automatically too much. Magic Resistance really isn't that hard to get...you can get 10 from a Relic Minor Virtue, and every magical beast out there has it. IIRC diabolists can bless themselves with it. The Parma Magica offers it. It's all over the place.
Coming up with something useless to magi but useful to everyone else is tricky. A small amount of Magic Resistance does it, but does anything else?
Hm...maybe something Warping related? Magi get Twilight instead of the normal effects, maybe people with Mythic Blood could have some kind of unique warping reaction. Maybe they just don't get Flaws or die from it...
You seem to be under the silly notion that the Order wouldn't forcefully conscript these guys. Those with True Faith and stuff are often protected by God or a major religious institution, and infernalists are basically KoS for everyone, Order of Hermes or otherwise. But these people with magic-borne MR would be forced to join the Order, Gift or no, especially if it's easy to discern them by their partially inhuman nature, because MR with otherwise no restraints would be so useful to the Order's enemies.
Also, the Divine and Infernal are abrahamic powers. They both outclass the Magic and Faerie Realms by their nature; the Divine being moreso than the Infernal and Hermetic Magic being the exception are obvious caveats, but the latter is a testament to the Founders, not to Magic as a whole.
Not to mention, and I won't even bring up the Divine because you seem to have a different idea of how hard it is to keep True Faith than the one I have, Infernally, MR is fairly hard to get. Getting any reasonable amount is a high-level effect involving a major expert, an entire cult of lesser experts (but still experts!) using Ceremony, or a relatively powerful demon, the latter of whom it isn't exactly wise to approach prior to having a means to defend yourself.
When selling your soul for something is actually difficult, I think you come to appreciate the power and repercussions of MR...
It's not a silly notion at all. There are plenty of magically resistant faeries and magical beings out there, and the order doesn't forcefully conscript those en masse. It's certainly happy to recruit them, though, and I expect that it'd be happy to recruit some Mythically Blooded folks too.
(Though honestly, MR 5-10 is a pretty paltry protection against a magus.)
As for keeping True Faith, it's impossible for most people. But if you have it, you're the kind of person who can keep it just by living normally.
And no matter how hard it is to get MR through the Infernal, it's definitely easier than changing who your parents were. Your blood is what it is.
PS: If you don't like MR as a benefit, what do you think of modified Warping?
Notice something interesting here?
Those are all either:
- Might (which as you mention have a lot of baggage
- Divine (relics, True Faith)
- Infernal (diabolist blessing etc)
- Parma Magica - the only way to get Magic Resistance without a might score available to the Magic or Faerie Realms. As intended.
Resistance to Aging?
The difference is that creatures with Might, by their nature, are both almost never Gifted, and they're very hard to teach magic to, because the amount of Might drastically affects the mechanics of initiating them to a particular Tradition. In other words, Might is fine, because it won't be an enemy wizard that has access to it.
MR 10 might be paltry against a magus who expects it to be there, but that isn't the only point. Or have you forgotten how Trianoma succeeded in unifying the Order in the first place? This characters shows off what appears to be an immunity to the other tradition members' highest-level magic, every hedgie on that corner of Europe will be jumping to get in the pants of the nearest mystical creature so their kids could have it. It'd be hilarious, but it would be nonsense all-around.
You've never used True Faith, have you? The risk of losing it is a common problem during stories. It's a very fragile balance requiring a big balance game.
An alternative Warping that makes you more like your supernatural parent over time would be pretty interesting, though non-magi usually aren't subject to a ton of Warping in the first place.
...Eh, never mind. This is a waste of time.
Discussion is almost never a waste of time. Don't be discouraged just because this particular project isn't working out.
I just feel like the conversation is circular and not really helping anyone get anything done. So I discarded the response I was gonna write.
As for the project itself, I'm not bothered by the way it's going.
Well, the premise seems to be making Mythic Blood into a virtue that magi wouldn't take, when it was a virtue that only magi (or Gifted) would be able to take.
You seem to be focusing on the need to impart resistance, and assert that it is easier for other paths to have magic resistance. Magic resistance, outside of Parma Magica, is generally weak. Even Parma isn't the greatest thing in the world, it's best feature is that it blocks the affects of the Gift, unlike other forms of resistance, apparently. But, even with all that, overcoming a resistance of 30 isn't all that hard, even for character's at gauntlet, if they are well designed to do so.
Mythic Blood should be usable for magi and for non-magi. It's already usable for magi, so the only thing that needs to be done is to make it usable for non-magi.
And I'd be fine with swapping the MR for something else. But what would that something else be? An alternate Warping paradigm, gentler than the normal one and incompatible with Twilight? A small ageing bonus that doesn't stack with longevity rituals?
It is useful for non-magi, in the form of the 30 levels of effect, no? It just becomes more useful in the hands of a magus, which isn't inherently wrong. In the same way that an otherwise untrained person with the Gentle Gift is basically just paying a Major Virtue's cost for a Supernatural ability and otherwise has no particular advantages in a mundane station over anybody else, but if initiated into a magical tradition, will have a whole host of advantages over people who would otherwise be his equals (Gifted practitioners of the tradition in question).
I'd like to come at the whole MR thing from another direction. MR is, in a sense, everywhere (though not exactly easy to access, being a very high-level effect in both Divine and [strike]Holy[/strike] [i]INFERNAL[/i] groups) but one thing it never is, for mundanes, is inherent. You always have to do something and get it from somewhere. Being touched with the right spell, learning Hermetic magic, being protected by God as a reward for your incredible devoutness, acquiring a relic. My thought is, if you're born with MR, you're inherently not human, you're part of the powers that are able to give humans that MR. But that isn't really satisfying to you, is it?
So here's another idea. Make it similar to the Infernal Blessings major Virtue. The person in question can choose a number of benefits; a few supernatural abilities, or Power levels like Mythic Blood already sort of gives, or a boost to some combat stats like Init/Soak/Atk/etc., a boost to Aging rolls, etc. Maybe even a Might variant that doesn't penalize learning or some MR or something if you decide to swing that way. That means you can keep it relatively balanced by making it a choice between one big benefit, two medium-sized benefits, three small benefits, etc. while at least playing lip service to the fact that not all of the Magical creatures that can breed with humans are the same, in the form of allowing characters with that Virtue to customize what they inherited.
... You don't have RoP:I either, do you, to see the Virtue I'm drawing inspiration from? Well, the concept is easy enough to understand. Offer a number of benefits, make each benefit cost a certain number of points based on its relative power, and then have the Virtue give some number of points so people can tailor their character's benefits.
No, I'm fine with that. That's actually a big part of why I came up with the idea. Folks with Mythic Blood are about as inhuman as a core-book PC can be.
I'd really rather have a single consistent benefit. Something equivalent to Stalwart Magic, which magi won't mind not getting. I'm trying to make the "new" Mythic Blood as consistent as possible with the "old" Mythic Blood.
Technically, I'd say folks with Strong Faerie Blood are closer to inhuman than those with Mythic Blood, simply because the concept of the Faerie Realm is so much more divorced from what makes people human than Magic is. (Now, Faerie associates more with humans because they need humans, but that doesn't change the fact that in a direct comparison, Magic creatures are closer to what humans are than Faeries are.) But that's a fairly pedantic distinction at any rate.
Nrh. In that case, why not just make it a minor Virtue that only gives the effect levels? Or, perhaps, since it's a Hermetic Virtue after all, you can use it the normal way, but if your character is untrained by a certain age, they trade the "one free Supernatural Ability" of the Gift for, oh, more effect levels for new effects? Then the idea is that it happens naturally and will bloom into its own later in life, but Hermetic magi have a way to channel it towards better purposes if they find the Mythic Blooded child first. It fits paradigm to have effects be able to change based on what purpose they're channeled towards, and Hermetic magi have a much more codified pseudoscience than those around them, so I'd say it fits there too. And very few magi would choose to have a few levels of effects they can't even design (since they were born with it after all) over the benefits associated with core Mythic Blood, so pretty much every magus would train their apprentice to channel it into the form that goes with Hermetic magic.
Expanding on the earlier idea of an alternate Warping paradigm, how about letting people with Mythic Blood and no Wizard's Twilight or other Warping paradigm get a Virtue whenever they take a Flaw from Warping? With the Virtues being chosen specifically to make you more like your Mythic ancestor, of course. And maybe full transformation into a magical being at Warping 10.
As is, warping is a bad thing for mundanes. This version of Mythic Blood wouldn't really make it into a good thing, but it'd make it less bad.
The selling points here are that it'd be suitable with just about any Mythic ancestor and that magi wouldn't have any reason to want this version of Mythic Blood because they don't get Flaws from Warping anyway.
No one has an opinion?
I kinda figured with all the interest in the MR version, someone would have something to say about the Warping version.