For me that sound ok. If there is a problem that it is 3 nearly complet free choices I would reduce the choices to Supernatural Abilities thought by the Mobeds as they are mentioned in the box at TC & TC 94
That would seem okay to me.
How's this for the wording?
In addition to the benefits of the Minor Virtue, your character has an affinity with the ancient prophetic and other mystical arts of your ancestors. The player must choose three Arcane or Supernatural Abilities which the character need not start play with, and which cannot be True Names. These Abilities are considered connected, so that whenever your character gains experience from a source dedicated to one of these Abilities, they gain half the Source Quality (round up) in experience points in each of the other two Abilities. A character must have access to a Supernatural Ability in one of the normal ways, such as taking the Virtue at character creation or Initiating it later, in order to put any experience points into it. If you choose a Supernatural Ability that your character does not yet have, any experience points generated for it by this Virtue before the character gains access to the Ability are lost.
I think you can get away with a slightly simpler wording here:
In addition to the benefits of the Minor Virtue, your character has an affinity with the ancient prophetic and other mystical arts of your ancestors. Choose three Arcane or Supernatural Abilities, which cannot be True Names. These Abilities are considered connected, so that whenever your character gains experience from a source dedicated to one of these Abilities, they gain half the Source Quality (round up) in experience points in each of the other two Abilities. Note that your character must have access to a Supernatural Ability in one of the normal ways, such as taking the Virtue at character creation or Initiating it later, in order to gain any experience points in it (including through this Virtue).
I think "access to a Supernatural ability in one of the normal ways" should be clarified (in either version): what happens if the character has no relevant Virtue, but has the Gift or True Faith so he could learn the Supernatural Ability by getting 5xp "in one shot" into it? I would be ok with the character learning it from Magian Lineage, but it's not clear either way.
Hmm. Maybe something like the below, in place of the last sentence?
Note that this Virtue follows the normal rules for placing experience points into Supernatural Abilities, requiring either the matching Supernatural Virtue or another way of learning (for example, characters with the Gift can learn Supenatural Abilities if they have access to a higher enough source quality, which this Virtue will seldom supply).
In practice I think the part of that in brackets is probably unnecessary, given how rare it will be to have no other supernatural abilities to ruin the source quality.
There is the option of providing a relatively simple explanation of Secondary Insight, and using Secondary Insight in the counter-example one puts at the start of the list of virtues. This counter-example would hopefully cut down the need for such complex wording in many virtues.
"There are such a large amount of Virtues, Flaws and Skills, it would be impractical to write the rules to cover ever possible interaction. We would ask people to look at the spirit of the rules and use the most logical option.
For example. Secondary Insight does not explicitly state you must choose supernatural skills which you have. A magi could then use secondary insight to get supernatural skills they don't have by the letter of the rule book. It is up to every playing group how they use the rules, however, we consider that interpretation against the spirit of the rules. "
Except that Secondary Insight does not allow any such thing. Putting xp into Supernatural Abilities is part of the (Major) Magian Lineage virtue, which came up as an example of other virtues suffering the same problem as Secondary Insight did.
Oh, and it is not always easy to tell what the spirit of the rules is. Regarding Magian Lineage, it was not at all clear what the spirit of the rules was. Or the letter.
My point is there's an element of David and Co tying themselves in a knot, making each virtue explanation bigger and bigger, to cover every peculiar interpretation.
A reasonable troupe accepts there must be cause to get a new skill. I'd like to think the rules would not need to explicitly state one can't use a skill which gives XP in other skills to learn Area Lore {Australia}, to work out where Australia is, for example.
Expecting a playing group to use the rule book in the spirit they are intended seems better than adding more and more detailed and complex virtue explanations, that will turn away some readers
For the playing group who see the rule book as a puzzle to squeeze out the most optimised character, being less explicit works for them too.
Much of the fiddling with wording is completely unnecessary, because it is already good enough.
There are some actual unclear wording though that could be good to clear up.
Appeals to follow the spirit of the rules is however mostly useless, because in many of the unclear cases it is not at all clear what the intended spirit is.
Elemental magic and Second Insight got rebalanced to be more in line with other virtues what in turn make Major Magian Lineage become only the combination of 2 minor virtues unless it also make the selected Supernatural favoured ability. According to the text it was quite possible that it could unlock up to 3 Supernatural Virtue as favoured ability what lead to Major Magian Lineage also rework here.
I am broadly in favour of errata for clarity - sometimes this means no errata, where adding examples would take up too much space; this should generally be fairly rare, though. A stylistic convention to put examples into italics text would possibly help by making it more obvious they aren't part of the actual mechanics, reducing the "wall of text" problem.
If only we had a consensus on which was which…
Any decision on secondary insight?
I went for making it a Minor. I'm not quite sure when the next errata update will go on the Atlas website.
Thanks for the update.
I am playing my first Ars Magica campaign. Picked Secondary Insight without doing the math compared to other virtures (but at least I also picked book learned). Still thinking a bit about how to change it while keeping it as a major virtue as I assume it will be a bit strange for me to suddenly have more virtue points in the middle of the game.
I could probably (with some errors) add in if it was changed to giving more xp, but I am also considering if one could just add an additional effect instead of just more xp (or making it a minor).
One suggestion I am thinking about is if you could get you add your lowest art to some selection/combination of your: lab totals and/or casting (all cases or maybe just improvised or just formulaic+rituals). For my character right now that would mean +5 to whatever it applies to, but I assume one could get it up to +10 or even +15. I don't think it would out-scale an affinity for a specialist, but it might still be to strong since you get to add it in so many cases (the numbers could of course be changed to half that value or so if necessary). I guess the flavor would be that your general understanding assists your activities.
I am not a super fan or the hard forcing you get to be a true (all arts) generalist, as I think it is a feature that the current printed version supports semi-generalists too (many arts, but not forced to all).
Two questions on how to bring this errata to my GM and the table. Did you go with LeeFishy suggestion (re-posted below) or without the bolded added constraint?
Your method of magical study is especially versatile. When you spend a season studying one of the magical Techniques from a book, a teacher, or raw vis, you also gain a single experience point in any 4 Forms of your choosing. When studying one of the magical Forms, you also gain a single experience point in any 2 separate Techniques of your choosing. You may not put more than one bonus experience point into a single Art, and may choose different Arts to receive the bonus experience points in each season, even when continuing to study the same Art from the same source. These bonus experience points are not increased by Affinities or any other factors. You can not put these bonus experience points in your highest technique or form. This Virtue is especially suitable for generalist magi.
Secondly, how do you suggest changing a character mid-campaign that when their Major Hermetic virtue gets (rightfully) downgraded to minor? Should the character get 2 more minor virtues? Get rid of a minor or add a minor flaw to take a new Major while keeping vitrue/flaw balance? Tough luck, you just have less virtue points? I understand that this will always be a decision for the table and the GM but it would be nice to bring some insight or suggestions to the table.
Thankful for any view from more experienced Ars players
I would probably do this, yes, if you were my player. Preferably something that makes sense and doesn't suddenly spawn experience points like adding the Warrior virtue. The easiest explanation for why you're suddenly manifesting the Second Sight or Deft Mentem is to consider those 2 points of virtues to be Latent Magical Abilities.