You're still basing it on the premise that it should be available for everyone. I don't think it should be, and I think there are alternative methods for acquiring what you wish via Magic Human or other virtues. Companion slots characters really don't have to worry a lot about warping, anyway...
I'm actually okay with it being Gifted-only, as long as it's not mage-only.
So does this sound like a good benefit for a potential apprentice or a Gifted Companion to have?
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying.
If I took this as a Gifted member of another tradition, I'd determine my magical feat, and I'd work with the SG to determine the no-fatigue threshold for spells, because some traditions have difficult Arts, and some have Accelerated Abilities, and it's a confusing morass. Certainly one could find an applicable focus, still, though. But that magical feat, which you can work as if it were a fast cast is a pretty big deal. A Gifted Companion with this virtue who could parry a lot of his blows with a Wizard's Parry ReTe(He) effect with no words or gestures? Yeah, I'm on board with that.
Yes, Gifted companions and potential apprentices get a magical feat. And it's easy to make the free Virtue work for them too. So we just have the get the last part of the Virtue to be generally applicable and we'll be golden.
This is a proposal for doing that. What do you think of it?
Well, it is already generally applicable. It's a Hermetic Virtue, which, only requires that one have the Gift, not that it be opened to Hermetic Arts or even another tradition's Arts.
Edit: The Gift being a free virtue, with all that it entails...
Except, as I've been saying all thread, much of the Virtue doesn't make sense unless you have Hermetic magic or something similar.
I'm honestly not sure why this isn't getting across. It seems very very simple to me.
A rose by any other name.
It's a Hermetic virtue, that is a virtue of use, or applicable to only one with the Gift. A Gifted companion, is someone who can learn magic, Hermetic or otherwise. Whether they actually do learn magic is immaterial to the fact that they can learn magic. So a Gifted Companion who has Mythic Blood manifest, could do the feat, and would have a latent magical focus when their Arts are opened, and be able to work spells within their tradition (Hermetic or Otherwise) without the risk of losing fatigue, in circumstances where they spell is successful.
I have a Merceris Magus who has Mutantum magic, worked it out with the SG that it's a Latent Magical ability. He recently discovered that he has it, but the virtue was still "taken" in his list of virtues. It's a similar principle. Some characters start play fully formed and ready for whatever, some take time to develop. Some want to develop in a Mystery later on. A Gifted Companion with Mythic Blood without being opened to a tradition is simply a companion who is waiting to grow into a role.
This is getting across fine.
The thing that's not getting across to most of us is why you consider that a bad thing.
They get the benefit of a power if they don't know magic. They get more benefits for learning magic, making them, among other things, more valuable as apprentices than normal Gifted people.
Why is it so bad that some of a Virtue's benefits only apply to non-magi?
Also, for the record, there's precedent for doing otherwise in the form of Gifted Companions, but in most sagas "Gifted PC" and "Hermetic magus or apprentice PC" are basically synonymous.
It's mostly a problem because, if the Virtue is a well-balanced Major Virtue with the bonus, it's not a well-balanced Major Virtue without it. Also it's aesthetically displeasing, but that's secondary.
But honestly, I'm not that interested in that argument. Even if you don't care about the problem, can you try and evaluate whether this is a good solution for it?
There are some things that are just good only for magi. It is, after all, a game about magi. So most of us (like me) are unsympathetic or uninterested in your cause.
Having said that, go ahead and do what you want to do in your saga. You need no one's approval.
Mythic Blood obviously isn't only for magi, since it's in your blood and not in your training. You get Mythic Blood before anyone (except God and the players) knows whether you'll be a mage.
And I'm not looking for approval, I'm looking for feedback. If you think my goal is wrongheaded, whatever. You can still say whether a Virtue for every Flaw while Warping is likely to work out in terms of balance and gameplay.
And obviously I could just make changes without asking anyone's opinion, but discussing these things is a good way to avoid silly mistakes. I'd rather not accidentally make Mythic Blood by far the best virtue in the game.
Major Hermetic Virtues, if not taught them by your master during apprenticeship, are usually inherent. Those give no benefit to the Gifted people who have them, with the obvious exception of the Gentle Gift (though even that is a lot more beneficial to a magus than a mundane), so most players won't play people like that (I mean, who wants useless Virtues taking up points?), but the fact is that they're part of the setting. There are people with Mythic Blood who never become magi. They still get a sweet ability. There are also people with Flexible Formulaic Magic who never become magi. They get nothing.
Ars Magica embraces the reality that people who are or pursue different things will have different capabilities from one another. The fact that people aren't equal to one another, especially if they don't have the same opportunities, is pretty much part of the paradigm.
There's very little precedent in the setting for trying to enforce an arbitrary sense of balance on the Virtues and skills that make characters distinct from one another, if those characters aren't part of the same social progression (magus, noble, peasant, etc.).
On that note, I'm going to try to contribute to the discussion now.
What people are saying about how non-magi don't usually get much Warping is true. Instead, I'd make it an effect of aging. As the character gets older, they start coming more and more into their identity as not fully human, much like the Nephilim in Realms of Power: the Divine. They might gain a variety of stat bonuses and new abilities, slowly over the decades, and get a significant bonus to aging rolls (which doesn't stack with a Longevity Ritual), becoming less and less human the older they are. The exact mechanics would need to be ironed out, but it works better connected to age rather than Warping.
Hi,
My issues with Mythic Blood are slightly different.
- For most magi, it is just eh.
- The benefits of Mythic Blood very much favor certain kinds of magi. Specifically, these magi need to care about successfully Formulaic Magic without fatigue; in this edition, I consider that benefit marginal, since a magus is likely to have solid Arts for the spells he knows Formulaically, and very often, successfully casting a Formulaic spell without Fatigue but with negative Penetration means the spell didn't do anything anyway. It is certainly a worthwhile benefit, but hardly better than ok.... for most magi.
- Having a minor focus baked in means that it is impossible to have Mythic Blood and have a Major Focus, even though many kinds of heritage go well with that.
But sure, we can add your concern about mundanes.
My solution would be a bit different, and would mostly leverage existing rules and virtues:
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Various Major Virtues that represent blood lineage, continuity of tradition or other, similar close association, count as Mythic Blood for the purposes of prerequisites or bragging rights. These include, but are not necessarily limited to, Strong Faerie Blood, Giant Blood, Mercurian Magic and Diedne Magic. Take the benefits during character creation and describe the connection.
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New Virtue: Strong Magic Blood: Start Aging at 50, +3 bonus for Aging. Take 3 benefits and drawbacks listed for Magic Blood, and attribute them to your lineage; being coherent is nice
. This is a kind of Mythic Blood. -
Recommended option: If you have any Major Supernatural or Hermetic virtue that the troupe agrees can reasonably be based on your tradition/blood/etc, take the minor Heroic Flaw (I forget its name) that gives you strong personality traits, Confidence 2, and allows the GM to sometimes force your character to do something: You cannot help it, it's in your blood. You can take other Heroic Virtues associated with your legacy, and are considered to have Mythic Blood.
There. Now, mundanes can have mythic blood, and more magi can have mythic blood that actually makes sense for them. These rules are likely to cause an explosion of characters with Mythic Blood bragging rights. I see that as a Very Good Thing: We're medieval, so attributing a character's difference to "he's the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son" or "his grandma came back from the woods with a little something extra, if you know what I mean," or "Merlin is half-demon" or "the spirit of Diana herself stood witness at his Rite of Initiation" fits very nicely. It seems that anyone who is anyone has an extended backstory (he is descended from the House of David! And God himself is his father....)
Anyway,
Ken
Take what you will from it but for many of the traditions from Rival Magic HMRE Mythic Blood is not on the list of allowable Virtues. So Mythic Blood is not actually available to all Gifted characters by RAW.
Then they don't really have Flexible Formulaic Magic. Or Twilight Prone, for that matter. What they have is the potential for those Virtues and Flaws.
Ars Magica, at least in 5th Edition, is actually a pretty well-balanced game (although its points of balance are a bit unusual). No need to mess that up.
That's actually a really neat idea. But it's also complex, and I'd feel weird about not giving Magi the same benefit. Maybe that could be a separate Virtue?
I'd like to have something that can be cleanly replaced with the stalwart magic bonus that Mythic Blood gives to magi.
Well, that just makes the problem worse. The solution is probably the same, though.
That's a solid solution, but I'd prefer something less drastic. Letting the Magical Focus be another Virtue fixes one problem, and making it a Supernatural Virtue makes it less of a problem if it's only okay. So I feel like what I have already does a decent bit to mitigate those issues.
It seems a lot of players have this interpenetration of ArM. That most Virtues (and Characteristics for that matter) are somehow randomly distributed potential destined from birth or granted by rare and specific events. Not advantages that are just as likely to have been developed by effort or circumstance. Therefore there should be people with contradictory and conflicting virtues all over the game world. And that the PC's and spotlight NPC's are somehow the exceptions in that their virtues tend to be coherent and complimentary.
Even though there are few rules for getting Virtues or Raising characteristics during play I just don't think these things only develop as the result of pure inherent talent or rare fantastical circumstances. That just doesn't seem true to the setting to the even to RAW.
I don't think the game world is full of random combinations like scribes with Great Strength and illiterate peasants with puissant Artes Liberales. Even if the do exist for the purposes of the story they are the exception not the rule. And the RAW do not even allow for things like Folk witches with Flexible Formulaic Magic .
Maybe that is the case but I'm not even convinced of that most of the time. I'd rather think there are any number of ways a character can come by a virtue. Inborn potential being only one way to explain text on a character sheet.
I agree with you.
Firstly, considering that a magus finishing his apprenticeship has spent more time in a magical lab, in a moderately high aura, with a master (himself usually quite focus on his topics of interest), I would consider that most virtues AND flaws are developped during apprenticeship and somehow influence by the master.
Secondly, with Mysteries bringing in the concept of initiation script, it is not unreasonable that some common teaching methods are more or less documented and formalised to influence certain virtues/flaws. After all, serving 15 years somebody is an ordeal.
How tightley can a master dictate his pupil virtues and flaws is another topic. For example, a magus with Flawless magic, specialised in Imaginem, might have his student ending up with Deft Imaginem instead of Flawless magic.
Other magi won't drive certain virtues, but instead will screen young gifted one until they found the one suitable for them: example, Jerbiton looking for Gentle Gift or Merinita looking for Faerie blood or Strong Faerie blood (although these can also be initiated).
In fact it is reasonable to assume that a lot of magi are able to drive at least partially the growth of given virtue in their pupil. Gifted children are rare, yet many traditions managed to find suitable heir. If it was pure random statistic, magi will have to travel a lot and spent a lot of time researching for the perfectly gifted student.
IMHO, a magus following a certain tradition (like an Rustician from Ex miscellanea) will look for a gifted student with some inclination towards the tradition. Maybe it is just Puissant: Woodwork, then the master knows that he can awaken the Craft magic within such student. Possibly at the cost of the initial virtue.
To come back to the original request about Mythic Blood, my initial reading of the virtue was that it was linking the magus through bloodline to one of the Order source of magic, would it be a Founder, or an inspiration for the Founder or an older source of magic (Hephaistos, Hecate...). So I never had issue as such, seeing it more as a strong background element than a really strong major virtue (compared to other).
When it comes to granting MR to non-gifted character, I have mixed feelings. Mechanically, it would make it a strong virtue enabling character with interesting abilities (a witch hunter with 10 MR will be real threat for non-hermetic magus). Thematically, I have two issues: first, I like the uniqueness of Parma magica and any virtue granting similar protection, especially to mundane character, weakens Parma position. Second, I do not find a hero/god/goddess displaying a innate resistance to magic (dwarf resistant to magic is a D&D invention).
On the other hand, dwarves in Ars Magica would be represented as Faeries, so they would innately resist magic just like every other creature with Might. But that's sort of a sidenote.
Hi,
For me, this isn't a complicated issue: First the player chooses the virtues and flaws, and then he fills in backstory accordingly. Did the character get Flawless Magic because his parens foisted it on him, ruining some other virtue? Ok. Was it because the character is OCD? Ok. Was it random happenstance? Ok. Due to practice, practice, practice? Ok. A demon just gave it to him, hoping to nurture his pride? Sure, why not.
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AM5 has drifted toward allowing the same rules for development in play and before play (see Apprentices), but I think that childhood development is intrinsically different. Both modern and medieval perspective sort of recognize this, though in different ways and for different reasons.
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I prefer to consider the development of many virtues and flaws as a kind of unknowing initiation: A script is followed, and no one realizes that there is a script. It is easier for a child to manage this, because many of these inferred scripts have conditions that an adult can no longer satisfy due to his contrary experiences.
Initiation of Faerie Blood: Dangerous Quest into faerieland, accept faerie flaw.....
Anyway,
Ken
What I like is that Apprentices allows both approaches.
A Mythic Blooded master looking for the same in his apprentices, so that he can draw it out... Or a he waits for it to manifest. Both are possible within canon now. Before, not so much...