Thinking of it from "What would insert name of local powergamer here do?" would this break if every Corpus specialist gets Chirurgy to ridiculous levels, every Mentem specialist tries to get all their social skills to ridiculous levels, and you have "sword mages" who cast spells on their blade, practising their arts increases their Martial Skills and vice versa?
Actually, this would be quite flavourful - now your Tremere has a reason to be a chess grandmaster - they developed Gaming skills to push their Mentem up! Sword mages, boxing magi whose Brawling and Athletics helps them hone their understanding of the human body - they may get powerful but in a very thematic and enriching way, so I'd be OK with it.
The value of secondary insight comes up every few years here, along with recommendations for amending it, some of which have been my own :-).
Making it a minor virtue simply works. It has the virtue of being straightforward. New paragraph new paragraph
Another variant colon secondary insight as a major hermetic virtue that allows a character to gain one experience point in each art during any season in which the character does not otherwise gain any experience points in magical arts. New paragraph
Another variant colon secondary insight as a major general virtue that provides 60 experience points during character creation and 4 experience points per season no matter what else is done during the season semicolon these experience points can be used however the player wants. The number of experience points gained is less than that provided by some other virtues but is completely flexible in its use within the bounds of legality and combines even with exposure, so is valuable for characters who spend a lot of time gaining exposure.
I am not a great fan of the version proposed here because it is finicky. Every season requires approval for what is and is not related, and that's just too slow. The application of the rules themselves are also tricky, and I've just assumed not have that.
Making it a minor Virtue certainly works. But the catch is making it a Major Hermetic Virtue. This is harder, because you want something that should be character-defining in a way that Minor Virtues don't have to be, and probably can't be.
It's true that Secondary Insight was originally about making a magus who was a generalist in the Arts. The spirit of my attempt was slightly different -- to make a magus who's a "generalist" in the sense he combines Arts and mundane abilities.
I had thought about removing the ability+art link; or, as temprobe suggested, giving a fixed list of links. It's certainly a possibility. It removes some flavour, though, buying -- a few seconds per season? Meh.
Other than that, I am not sure why Ovarwa says it's finicky.
I'm fairly happy with it. That said, I bow before one of Ovarwa's solutions, which is vastly superior. Not the 4xp/season one; its very flexibility, paired with the fact it has little oomph, makes it bad for a Hermetic Major Virtue from my point of view. It's the antithesis of a character-defining Virtue.
The other one: in any season in which you would gain no experience in the magical Arts, you gain 1xp in every Art. This is elegantly simple, powerful but well-balanced, and can support both the "generalist in the magical Arts" magus concept of the original Secondary Insight, as well as the "mundane and magical mix" I was aiming for. I'll now edit the original post adding it.
I agree that Ovarwa's proposal is the best I've seen for a long time. I think the optimal use lies elsewhere though.
Even a generalist will favor some Arts over the others. You will want to reach score 10 in those as soon as possible. While summae are not as good, 10 points in the favored Art has almost the same value. And with Branches, you're doing just as well.
Just a quick test: 15 years is score 11 in all Arts. Compare to 5 years to read all the Branches and read 2 favorite summae to score 12, plus 10 years of secondary insight giving you score 8 (branchless) - 10 (branches) - 14 (favorite).
It might, ironically, end up best for Verditii. What's fifteen years of Magic Theory, Craft, Philosophiae, and laboratory refinement, plus 22 in every TeFo? It won't win you the Contest, but it's a fantastic foundation to build a career on. You could make a career out of fiddly complicated effects with a ton of requisites, or multiple linked triggers and Intellego Form(FormFormForm) effects...
Really, though, it's great for any magus that wants a ton of Abilities; adventurer types and socialite Jerbiton come to mind.
The long and the short of it is, I agree, it's a good virtue that is powerful and character-defining in the way a Major Hermetic ought to be. It feels right.
It also works for specialists. A starting character can take secondary insight, and then take affinity and poissant with a foreman technique, and then take a minor focus. That's 8 virtue points. He can dump a lot of starting experience points into that single technique and single form, and never have to worry about arts ever again.
Nah. Tremere certamen specialists! I do not think there is a better major Virtue for them, by far.
It leaves a lot of time (and Virtues) to pump up Finesse and another crucial certamen Abilities, and has immense synergy with the Tremere Focus.
Any Focus, in fact, that is not concentrated into a few Arts. Hmm. The more I think about it, the more it feels a bit overpowered.
Ironically, I've always considered Secondary Insight to be more useful to specialists than to generalists:
When you study your favorite subject (eg. Corpus), you will also get XPs for you 'other set of Arts' (same example: Techniques). Which is really nice.
That is...a serious concern. You might consider making it incompatible with a Focus? Or, so that it isn't barred to Tremere entirely, "if you have Secondary Insight, any Focus you possess or gain (from character creation, positive Twilight, Magic Realm, initiation, etc) is replaced with an equivalent Potency."
Is it a bad thing for these foci to be improved? For example, a focus in turning people into animals is a completely legitimate focus, except that ordinarily it isn't a very good focus compared to those that only involve one technique and one form. Foci that have requisites are not very good. I consider that a problem. Anything that helps these foci seems like a good idea to me.
I also think that a good major hermetic virtue should be or feel just a bit overpowered because you only get one of these and it should feel like a big deal. As an aside, it might not be such a terrible thing to rebalance major hermetic for choose that are not powerful in this way, and then enforce the rule that a magus can never ever ever have more than one, even with initiation. That is, a character can have a major mystery virtue and a major hermetic virtue but not two major hermetic virtues ever. New paragraph
Tremere Certamen specialists are already so good that it stretches SoD heavily to believe that non-secret, non-Tremere vis sources exist in Mythic Europe.* I'm not opposed to most generalist foci being improved, but the Tremere focus is so setting-warping in its mechanical consequences that improving it any further is, in my view, extremely dangerous.
There is of course the alternate view that, since Tremere don't lose certamen anyway, this will change nothing, except that every once in a while a Tremere will misjudge who he can bully safely, challenge an archmagus for all their vis sources, and then die to Wizard's War the next month- but that's a precarious perch atop the slippery slope of a Second Sundering.
*Yes, I am aware that a Bjornaer certamen specialist can in fact beat the Tremere by simply having more Fatigue levels to spend, and there probably are one or two such specialists in the House. Which still leaves eleven or twelve tribunals for the Tremere to run roughshod over.
It's very good to help many-Art foci, in principle. That's not the issue.
It's just that the more I think about this Secondary Insight, the more I see how it could synergizes a bit too much with a bit too many things. I am not going to say "it's broken" but ... it makes me slightly unconfortable, in a way that the all-elemental-forms-as-one-but-no-affinities-etc-Elementalist does not and in fact no other printed Hermetic Virtue does.
For example, I'd choose it flat out over Flawless Magic. Here's why.
At a first approximation, Flawless magic gives you 5 "free" xp in useful spell mastery every season you spend inventing spells, adventuring, or improving mastery (at a first approximation, but it's not a bad one!)
Hmm, can I trade those 5xp for 1xp in every Art please? And I also get those 15xp whenever I'm spending a season enchanting items, binding my familiar, Learning Parma, Finesse, Penetration and other arcane skills, training my apprentice, recovering from an aging crisis ...? Sign me up!
But, again, it's great design (I said it and I'll resay it).
See HoH:TL p. 55 and more specifically the box on the legality of certamen as to whether it is normal or not to challenge the ownership of a vis source by certamen - it isn't unless a Tribunal finds it normal that fights occur over possession of a source. Certamen is typically used to settle reasonable disputes and claims, not to take control of someone else's property. Anything else is certamen bullying, itself a crime in many tribunals.
A previous version I had of this version of the virtue variant is that you can forgo any experience points otherwise gained in a season and instead gain 15 experience points evenly divided amongst arts. It is still a strong virtue but not quite as strong, especially in sagas with good books.
I was thinking about this a lot during my work breaks. And finally decided to post. I appreciate others may not agree with some of the base assumptions or directions, but I figured it'd be fun to post my ideas which are in stark contrast to the trend of this thread.
What I want out of a major virtue is a way to define your magic, how you interact with magic. Your special-ness. This is a thing that 'just get more xp' doesn't work for me. Even if that xp leads towards a specialty, because usually if the point is to get more xp then minor virtues are usually better for both shorter and longer sagas. I want a major virtue to do something unique, and more xp doesn't feel correct - even if it's A LOT of more xp.
If Secondary Insight is supposed to be a generalist wizard ability, where you can see links of magic inside other magic, then we need to show that mechanically somehow, in a way other than just giving xp. These are a variety of ideas rather than a whole package:
When doing lab work, you can substitute your Magic Theory (or other ability) for your lowest involved Art in calculating lab total. Your Pilum of Fire could be Aura + Int + MT + MT(creo) + Ignem. I think this might be particularly useful when dealing with requisites.
Alternatively, you might allow them to apply any strongly-linked skill as an added bonus to the lab total, such as Swimming to a spell to breathe water, or Craft:Woodworker to Herbam Craft magic; Realm Lore to spells for wards on that realm; and so on. This is similar to how Verditius can put Craft or Philosophae into their enchanting totals; With this in mind I might only allow it for new spell design.
When the Magus learns a new spell and take exposure xp, they gain additional bonus xp equal to the magnitude of the spell. Perhaps this needs to be put into unused Arts. Treat it as bonus xp rather than advancement xp, so it'll skip various bonuses. That makes math easier for its value.
The ability to apply your form bonuses (Form/5) to situations where a knowledge of the form would be advantageous, such as Aquam for swimming and sailing; Mentem for Folk Ken; Corpus for Medicine and Chirurgy; Auram for reading the weather.
Ah, I like this better; basically, because it seems guaranteed to not the Virtue to take if you want a specialist, something I could not say of the other. It is also rewards more a ... thoughtful use. It's obviously perfect both for the adventuring magus, and for the generalist.
The first option is nice in theory, but for most Magi this will be a small benefit, unless they have Puissant MT and invested more than the minimum 3, and then it gets a bit overpowered at first, but eventually it would be less, especially by the time you're getting an apprentice, since you'll want at least 5 in every Art.
The second option has an interesting flavor, but not every Form will have an easy ability that can be strongly-linked to it, which means that some Forms will benefit from it more easily.
The Third option is the one I like, while i know it still remains an Xp virtue, but it should be limited to only adding those extra XP to your lower Arts. That will aid the Generalist in improving his arts all over.
The fourth option is interesting, but I'd probably want to make a list of 2-3 Abilities per Form that are thematic enough to give the bonus to. Mostly so there's no situation where Mentem is 'best' because it affects Charm, Etiquette, Bargain, Leadership, Intrigue and Folk Ken.