I was wondering the possibility to make secondary insight a Fat version of affinity :
When you study any art, gain 50% bonus XP to be evenly ditributed to the other arts.
So if you gain 14xp on a summa/vis study... you get 1XP to put in 7 other arts of your choice
You could also keep the technique/form separation from the original virtue meanging that with 14XP gained on a Form, you have 1XP gained in 3 techniques and 2 XP in the 2 others for a total of 7XP...
Have people thought about the fact that now that this is a minor virtue, it can now be stacked with Elemental Magic? How would that work?
This makes it more balanced. I think.
What I note in @David_Chart 's proposal, is that this is going to be the best xp boost in the book for every magus concept but the narrow specialist. It gives 2-4xp like book reader and study bonus, but you get it for all study modes (unlike book reader) and you don't need to make any extra effort (unlike study bonus). The narrow specialist may have to put these xp in unimportant arts, and prefer something else, but any magus who needs a handful of arts will be able to put these xp to good use. This makes me feel that this is too strong for a minor virtue.
@Fishy 's proposal means that the magus needs a broader focus too reap the maximum benefit, reducing the number of cases where this virtue is strictly better.
That said, I think the extra restriction makes the rules annoyingly complex. I don't like complexity 
Not sure I agree it would be better than Book Learner - at least not until you run out of books for your primary arts.
Book Learner gives extra xp to the art or ability you are studying - which is presumably the one you are most interested in improving at that time. Should you have an affinity for that art/ability it will increase the amount of extra xp you gain from Book Learner - which it won't do with the extra xp from Secondary Insight,
Unlike Secondary Insight, Book Learner applies to anything you study from books, not only Arts. Very useful when you want to improve your Penetration, or Magic Theory, or Medicine, or Artes Liberales, or.....
Note that I excluded the narrow specialist; we are not talking about the magus who spends nine seasons out of ten on the two arts where he has an affinity.
Barring that extreme case, everybody has a few favoured arts to put the extra xp in, so the xp are as much worth as those gained from book learner.
Also note that the argument I made was that secondary insight retains its value when you run out of books. Of course I was assuming that the saga would last beyond that point.
You are right about one thing though. I forgot the abilities, which also benefit from book learner.
My preference would be to keep it as a Major virtue and revise the ammounts of xp upwards, somewhat along the lines of what red shadow hawk proposed. I'm not really concerned about impact on existing games, it's not really different from the boost given to elemental magic in my mind - I had a character with the virtue and revised the art xp using my seasonal xp log. But yes, there may be an argument to have the minor virtue distribute its xp towards the lowest art - if a minor virtue is the prefered fix.
It's fine. If you study an elemental Form, you get piles of xp in the other elemental Forms, and a couple in Techniques. Because of the Form/Technique split in Secondary Insight, the bonus xp can never go to the same place.
Yes, probably true. When it was a Major Virtue, I think people felt it needed some guidance on what concept it was for, but that is no longer the case. (I have no idea how many editions this wording goes back.)
I cannot find it in 3ed nor 4ed ...
Surprising. I would have expected to find it as a +2 virtue, too strong for minor and too weak for major.
I would allow it with Adventure experience too.
Now that Secondary Insight got a rework I think the Major General Virtue Magian Lineage (TC&TC 92) need to be reworked also because it looks like it was benchmarked on the old Secondary Insight.
There are several virtues in the non-core books that suffer from similar problems as Secondary Insight and Elemental Magic did.
From the Elementalist chapter in HM:RE we have
Elemental Magic
Elemental Theurgy
Elemental Medicine
Elemental Philosophiae
Of these Elemental Magic is easy - just change it similar to how the core version of Elemental Magic has been changed. For the others one can just ignore them, or turn them into Minor virtues. They would be quite strong for Minors, but probably not so badly it will break anything.
The Vitkir in HM:RE have their own variant of Secondary Insight. This gives seven bonus xp as written, and is thus a bit too strong to be made into a minor, while pretty weak for a major. Easiest is probably just to let it be, unless someone happens to sit on an amazing idea to fix it.
Hermetic Sorcerery from RoP:tI also feels weak for a major virtue, while too strong for a minor. Again it is probably easiest to just let it be.
Major Magian Lineage (from TC&TC) does seem quite weak for a major when looking at just the number of xp you gain, but if it can be used to learn extra Supernatural Abilities in play (the description is a bit unclear on if this is possible or not), then it can actually be a very strong virtue.
Some kind of clarification is probably in order for this virtue regardless.
Can you clarify the unclarity? Is the question whether you can choose three Supernatural Abilities, not take the Virtues, and then learn them all later? (It is obvious that you can do it with two, if you apply minimal charity to the interpretation of the wording.)
Lets assume that one or more of the chosen abilities are Supernatural abilities that you don't have the corresponding virtues for, and don't start out with a score in. (Lets also assume they aren't Favored Abilities for you)
So after a while, and after some studies, you would have 5xp in each of the unknown Supernatural Abilities - at which point you have a score of 1 in each of them and can study them normally.
And this is the unclarity - is this how it is supposed to work, or do you need to learn the Supernatural Abilities in question in the normal way first (up to a score of 1) before you can put xp into them.
If just seems a bit too easy a way to get access to 1-3 Supernatural Abilities that may normally be worth a Major virtue each
That does seem a touch unbalanced, yes.
How about specifying that the Supernatural Abilities cannot be Major Virtues (unless the character knows them from another source), and that you cannot put xp in Supernatural Abilities with a score of less than 1 in any other way? That way, it is up to two bonus Minor Virtues, which would make it slightly powerful, but weaker if players took the other Virtues, or had them as Favored Abilities.
I think the problem here is if the chosen ability in Major Magian Lineage (from TC&TC) become Favoured ability like with a Divine Tradition or if you need to hope that the SG at some time during the game allow you to initiate into them.
That won’t work. Without the corresponding Virtue, you can only gain a new Supernatural Ability by gaining 5 or more XP in a single season, after subtracting the values of any existing Arts and Supernatural Abilities from the Source Quality. If you can’t get to a 1 in the ability in that season, the XP is lost. So putting single points into 3 abilities at a time would be worthless, you’d never acquire the skills.
For most of the normal ways of learning a supernatural abilities, yes.
The question was if this virtue would override that or not.
Once the character knows the Ability, it may be advanced normally.
So, are secondary xp part of normal advancement?
I would say only Twilight effects are similars are not normal.
So, what about making it explicit that you must get access to any Supernatural Abilities in one of the normal ways before you can actually use any of the xps, and boosting the bonus to half the number of xp gained in one Ability? (Make it strictly parallel to Elemental Magic, but with one fewer things getting the bonus to allow for the fact that it includes the Minor Virtue.)