Amen! No argument there!
You, Sir, have found the Ars Magica Promised Land! I was there once and I sure enjoyed my stay!
With my current gaming group, I see it just up the road ahead. I hope to see you there (metaphorically speaking) very soon.
OK, that was a hard one... 
Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon
The whole point of bothering with an "upgrade" to 5th Ed. is to see whether it's an improvement or not. I don't ever recall reacting as badly to a skim through of a new edition as I did with the 5th Ed. main book. So many things that were accepted parts of canon were casually discarded or warped (literally). Compared to some of them, the points-only Characteristics rules were minor revisions.
Magic Resistance is the biggest offender to some. To me, it's in the number two position because of what it does to the non-Hermetic traditions (if the Sahirs were that vulnerable, the Crusaders would have blasted right through them with the assistance of the Flambeau). The number one offender is the change to the Realm interactions. They are a cosmological nightmare that defies the description given (the Dominion is EVERYONE'S enemy according to the new chart; Magic can scarcely flow from the Divine if the Divine is antithetical to it, and reducing Faerie to just human "make believe" is an insult of the highest order). Of course, that's a subject for another thread.
What I find annoying is that the Flaw category restrictions in particular force players to make characters that have a certain mix. I enjoy creating characters with complex personalities, for instance, and frequently selected 4 or even 5 points with of Flaws that are now covered by Personality Flaws. The restriction on the Major Hermetic Virtues doesn't mesh well, either. Why should there not be a Necromancer (Major Magical Focus) with Flawless Magic? Or a Diedne-derived Elementalist?
Concerning the limitations imposed by rolled characteristics, I would always roll first, then see what inspirations I could derive from the stat possibilities combined with other sources (random Tarot card draws, for example). Oh, and concerning the supposed shortage of people with +2 in all stats, tweak it slightly so that one or two are at +3 and counterparts are at 0. Now think of, say, the requirements for Special Forces personnel. Or some athletes. Are they out of reasonable bounds for Companions? I would say not.
Or, to cite an historical example, consider William St. Loe, the 16th century English nobleman who was a man of immense physical stature, exceptional intelligence, apt social graces, and impressive wealth. He is arguably an example of what a Companion might be later in his career, however, his virtues were sufficient that he would be difficult to create without rolled stats, because point allocation would eat up other essential Virtues. How many of you have heard of him before? He wasn't royalty, nor was he a man who became of outstanding fame in posterity, yet he was a compelling, influential figure in his day--and a real historical person. Excellent Companion material.
sounds like a Mythic Companion to me 
Arawn,
I can't agree with most of what you said.
Point by point...
Overall
Your experience with 5th ed. was completely different from mine. Most of the things changed are now closer to what I always thought they should be (based upon their descriptions in earlier edition). I was very happy with most of them.
Magic Resistance
I like the new magic resistance. Now it actually means something. Before, it always felt underpowered compared to its description.
As for the sahir, they were seldom described as front line fighters. It was alway the summoned jinn that did the direct fighting and they have plenty of magic resistance.
The Dominion
All forms of magic being more difficult in the Dominion has always been part of the description of the Dominion. The Dominion making magic difficult does not make it the "enemy" any more than a fence is the enemy of a person that would like to be on the other side of it. Cosmologically it makes perfect sense to me. The Dominion has always been the primary thing defending the common people from the "unnatural" things of the world.
Faeries
Faeries are not (even in 5th ed.) "...just human "make believe..."." The complex interactions between human belief and a Faerie's existence and role have been explored before. See "Faeries" and "Faerie Stories" for examples. You will find that the version of Faeries presented in 5th ed. are not all that different. The differences in nature between the Magic Realm and the Faerie Realm are more clearly defined in this edition. Clear definition is a radical change from earlier editions, but I think that having such a definition is an improvement.
Personality Flaws
"A character can not have more than one Major Personality Flaw. A character should normally not have more than two Personality Flaws in total, as more risks him becoming a caricature."
Remember that a Major Personality Flaw "...should be what people think of immediately when they think of the character" and "A Major Personality Flaw constantly drives your character to act and get involved in stories."
(All quotes are from Ars Magica 5th ed., page 37.)
The only rules restriction pertaining to Personality Flaws is that you may not have more than one Major Personality Flaw. You can have as many Minor Personality Flaws as you want, you just have to be careful to not make your character into a caricature.
It was my experience with earlier editions, that a plethora of personality flaws just made most characters into stereotypes rather than making them more interesting... In our saga, we allow extra Personality Flaws only when the player can show that they form a coherent whole and will be interesting rather than annoying in play. So far, nobody has had any trouble with this...
Major Hermetic Virtue Restriction
I do agree with you that the limit of only one Major Hermetic Virtue may be extreme. I don't see it unbalancing the game and some combinations of Virtues make sense to me. For example, Gentle Gift and nearly any other virtue... Restricting this makes no sense to me...
Improved Characteristics
Three levels of Improved Characteristics (the equivalent of a single Major Virtue) will allow a character to have two traits at +3, four at +1 and two at 0. That seems pretty impressive to me...
William St. Loe
Improved Characteristics (x3), Large, Wealthy, Landed Nobel...
That should do it...
(Personally, I was always more impressed by William Marshall. He arguably could qualify as a Mythic Companion and he's in the right time period...)
Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon
I pretty much agree with everything you've said here, ShopKeepJon, but this one deserves comment. Firstly, we immediately house-ruled that the Gentle Gift is a social virtue, rather than an Hermetic one.
As for the only one Major Hermetic Virtue, I've been a fairly vocal critic of the rules of acquiring Virtues and Flaws for a while, and this does neatly demonstate it - the impossibility of certain clearly sensible hermetic lineages. I can see why the rule exists for game balance purposes and to try and encourage people to take non-Hermetic virtues - I just think that whilst it does a good job for rounding characters created in a vacuum, things like that should definitely be up for discussion in a gaming group.
And you need a flaw for this? o_O
But then, compare something.
Let's say you make such a character. Let's say an Overconfident Pagan who's Driven to make hermetic magic immune to the dominion's effects. Not much risk there, but still, the GM might find some uses for this, and it might be fun. 9 points of flaws, and it is not that hard to play.
In the meantime, your friend bob, who don't have your imagination and roleplay abilities, suffer under the burden of Blindness, a Blatant Gift, and Age quickly.
Or, this is kinda caricatural, but I hope you see my point
Another thing for your GM: How many flaws can fit on the head of a single campain? If you have these MAJOR flaws (or 3 times as many minor flaws), either he makes uses of them all, and you steal all the light from the other players (and his campain) as the game revolves a lot around you, or he doesn't, and then you get "free" virtues points.
In the meantime, your friend bob is almost sure to suffer from his flaws, whatever happens.
=> This is, IMO, a question of balance, and fairness.
Special Forces?
4 stats at +1 and one at +2 aren't enough for you?
And for those world-level athletes, you've got Improved Characteristics and Great Characteristic.
I utterly fail to see a problem here
Oh, well...
At one time, with a friend, we tried to model Charles Ingalls with GURPS, for fun.
We came up with a total of about 250 points.
25 points is a normal human
100 points is a starting heroic PC.
Does this means the system is broken and that every PC should begin with at least 250 points?
Say, Large character, Landed Noble, Improved characteristics *2, Wealthy, one great characteristic... I'll even give you another one Great Characteristic. 10 points.
This has the effect of making the Gentle Gift the rare and precious virtue it is supposed to be.
When it was only a minor virtue, you had 2 types of characters: The ones with Gentle Gift, and the ones with Blatant Gift
Amusingly, in our saga, even with the only one Major Hermetic Virtue restriction, three out of six mages have Gentle Gift. I couldn't believe it when characters were being presented...
My character, on the other hand, is the only one with Blatant Gift. As one of the two main Story Guides, I didn't want to be playing the main diplomat among the mages. With so many Gently Gifted I was more effective at this than I had expected...
Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon
The magnified negative effect of the Dominion on Magic and Faerie must produce a corresponding influence on the evolution of the behaviour and culture of those Realms adversely affected by it. In 5th Ed., urban Covenants are greatly weakened, whereas before it was a "nuisance" that social Magi might be willing to overlook. As the Dominion spreads, it steals more and more of the Power which belong to Magic and Faerie. It thereby becomes an adversarial force which is to be opposed, not one to which the Order surrenders (the statement that anyone causing trouble with the Church gets Marched by the Order is an egregious example).
It is worth noting that my most recent 4th Ed. Covenant, Bridgedwell, worked to reconcile Magic, Faerie, and the Dominion. The Church of St. Brigid was the focus of the Covenant, and its Bell of Bright Faerie Iron was enchanted to destroy any Demons who came near. The idea was that there might be a way for the three Realms to coexist and complement one another. St. Brigid, obviously, is the converted/conflated form of Bridget, the Celtic Goddess and a great Faerie Power. She was also called "the Second Mary".
In 5th Ed., this type of endeavour would never have been attempted. The countermagical deadening caused by the Church would have been so extreme as to prevent any meaningful cultivation of a mutually tolerant coexistence. In 5th Ed., one wonders how Andru could ever become Primus of House Jerbiton when his deference to the Church and Susceptibility to the Divine Flaw would effectively make him magically impotent in the presence of that which he adores. Somehow, I can't see Magi following his example.
This creates a vicious cycle. Magi shun the Dominion because it severely weakens them. Magi should therefore oppose the Church as well as probably Judaism and Islam. Magi drift further and further from the Divine. If the simplistic explanation of Infernal Auras holds (i.e. regular "sin" in a place can eventually produce it), even the casual "sins" of the Magi and Covenfolk will become magnified over the generations until Covenants are sinks of Infernal Auras interlaced with Magic.
Retroactively stripping Magic Resistance from ALL non-Hermetics after 16+ RL years and 4 Editions violates any understanding of the balance of power within Magic. The fiat saying that Charms Against Magic, also a staple of the game from the start, can't work compounds matters. It also "fixed" a problem that never existed. Hermetic Magic ALWAYS had stronger Magic Resistance than others due to their Parmae Magica plus Form scores. They were stronger and more versatile, but "hedge" traditions could sometimes hold their own and weren't pushovers for starting Magi. "Ordo Nobilis" did go to ridiculous lengths in extending Magic Resistance to nobles; that could have been fixed without violating so many other elements of canon.
Fifth Ed. shatters the balance of Powers among the Realms. The repercussions on the milieu cannot be ignored. This, to me, is its gravest offense. Compared to that, the rules by which Characteristics are generated and Virtues and Flaws are chosen are minor glitches which can be worked around or worked with in the spirit of experimentation (which I'm willing to extend).
The irony is that Fifth Ed. IS a good system, mechanically speaking, if viewed in a vacuum--just a severely parallel universe version of anything that created the previous Ars Magica worlds.
(I didn't notice the other thread about this before posting...)
I just don't see it.
There are two main problems with working in a Dominion aura, the first is increased botch dice and the second is reduced casting scores.
There are several ways to reduce the number of botch dice that a mage rolls. An addition of three botch dice (for the average Dominion aura in a city) is not going to overwhelm a mage that has made any kind of preparation for living there.
Reducing casting totals by nine is a serious nuisance, but not the end of the world. Casting spells spontaneously is much more difficult, but magi are far from helpless in a city.
They have made it clear in a few supplements that the Dominion does not uniformly cover a city. A covenant can easily be situated in one of the areas without a Dominion aura.
Not only does "sin" produce an infernal aura if practiced regularly in an area, but magic produces a magical aura if practiced regularly in an area. A covenant set in a neutral (with respect to the realms) area in the city would be far more likely to eventually acquire a magical aura than an infernal one (unless we are talking about very naughty magi).
An adversarial approach to the Dominion is not necessary, though it does make sense that some reactionary magi might think it so. (This could be a good story hook...)
As far as the change in magic resistance being a fix to a non-existent problem, it was my experience in earlier editions that Hermetic magi did not have enough of an edge in resistance to match what was written into the background material. The change in rules seems, to me, to have merely brought the rules into line with the written descriptions of Parma Magica.
Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon
Hi,
I am a fan of tweaking rules, and if you don't like a rule, change it! Want rolled characteristics, ok, roll em. Want different rules for MR? Ok, that too.
I don't agree with your perspective, but that's not important. Your saga, your rules.
I especially disagree with you about rolled characteristics being desirable. Sure, they cannot cover all possible characters in the world, but the twin ideas that a) this is desirable and b) any playable game system can achieve this represent 1980s rpg thinking. Nothing wrong with that, but consider:
Suppose you have a game which allows all possible characters, randomly generated. And then, three players roll paraplegic lepers with the barest smidgeon of magical talent and just enough intelligence to cast spells and read (very slowly), but the fourth player rolls up the AM equivalent of Sauron. If you allow the three players even a little bit of grace, to make up for their bad luck, you have broken your intention. Even if it's one reroll. Similarly, if you make things harder for Sauron, or ask him to roll a more playable character, you have also broken your intention. But if you do nothing, your game isn't going to be very playable after a token amusing session of Sauron the Great and the Three Drooling Idiots.
If you constrain your rolls to allow "reasonable" characters, you might as well go all the way to a point-based system. Maybe players don't get to play the guy who is so remarkable, that he is not only a magus but has 20 virtues and only two flaws, just as they don't have to get stuck with a magus who starts with all stats at -5.
Of course, we might even circumvent the need for this line of argument, with a larger point: I don't believe you or anyone else is capable of modeling reality in a playable game system. The suggestion that rolling dice promotes realism fails utterly if the game system is not a good model of reality, and they never are. There aren't nearly enough random dice rolls, for one thing, to represent the trillions of factors that go into your every day. There isn't enough data upon which a system that models reality can be based. Indeed, some of the fundamental ideas that go into many game systems in the name of "realism" (and I'm looking at you, botch rules), fail utterly when considering reality.
Here's my favorite: Suppose you are a king, and have an important meal to serve. In most RPGs, this meal, served up by the greatest chefs in the realm, is more likely to be a disaster than a random meal at an inn, served by a moderately skilled cook who does not know you are king, because the first roll is important for everyone involved but the second might not even be rolled....
As for magic resistance... maybe. If you don't like what they have, make your own rules, which will also fail in some way. All rpg rules do.
Anyway,
Ken
Back on topic...
Whenever we used the rolling method for generating characteristics, someone would roll very poorly (almost all negative numbers). Far from taking this as a role-playing challenge, the unlucky person would whine and complain until allowed to re-roll. I've talked to people from other groups and they reported similar events.
This may not be how it worked for everyone, but it certainly was the way it worked around me and those I've talked to.
(Oddly enough, no one complained when they rolled ridiculously well... 
)
Sit vis vobiscum,
ShopKeepJon
That was always a problem. With only four rolls there was always a strong possibility they'd all be mediocre or terrible. They had the right idea in D&D 3rd ed with options for what happened if all the dice rolls were too crappy. ArM should have had something similar.
I started with 2nd Edition. We created 5 characters at a go, with the storyguide rolling the minus die, and the player rolling the plus die.
Remember, for 4th Ed. the range was +/- 4 (any time a zero came up, the total was zero).
Typical results would include Highs stats, 3 moderate, and one average (We did have Greek God among mortals, and Thing from the Pit, too...). Our magi wound up being better non-magical combatants than most of our companions (but not all...). Still, all the characters generated got played, no matter how seriously warped some of them became (because that gave our GM a story to inflict on us... 
)
I've done both systems, and I find I like the purchase system a bit better than the roll.
My beef is with MR in general, but as I would be fighting that one from the deck of ship that has already been sunk, I think I'll enjoy the mermaids swimming by down here on the ocean's bottom...
Steve