As you might have hear me ranting, we will be starting a new saga during next term, one with wildly weaker hermetic magi than the current setting. We are basically making the OoH be formed by Hedge magicians that have Parma. One of the things we still like, though, is the FOunders, and we would like to replicate their traditions using hedge magic methods. We would appreciate ideas here Some are really easy to simulate, while others are extremely difficult.
GENERAL APPROACH: Use Hyperborean Hymns as the basic traditions for Mercurian magicians. INstead of the fields of Mercurian magic, they will have a field more related to their magic. So flambeau would have a "flame" hymn, and Trianoma a "storm" hymn. Probably theyb would have their abilities divided in two or 3 hymns to allow for a faster evolution of the hymns at lower levels. Hyperborean Hymns allow you to have spell effects, but they are much more limited in their usage. It also allows for ritual magic in an extremely vis-intensive way. Some magi might have a bunch of supernatural abilities instead.
Here comes our first design:
BONISAGUS. Wards expert (in our alternative story) and theoretical genius. No need to design this tradition since we obliterated his tradition to justify the non-integration of the diverse magics despite the existence of Parma and Aegis.
TRIANOMA: Tempestaria. Not strictly a founder, but with enough m,ythic status to desere a place here (same as Pralix). Hyperborean Hymns (storm) or use the exmisc whistle up the wind ability instead?
MERCERE. Shapeshifter and Muto expert. Shapeshifter Virtue, high Magic Lore and Artes Liberales. Mythic Alchemy? We have a problem with Hermes portals here...
TYTALUS. Summoner. Summoning, Binding, Puissant Bargain;
If it gets Ablating, it also gets Dark Secret; this is what the infernalist Tytalians did.
FLAMBEAU. Hyperborean hymn (flame)
JERBITON: Entrancement, gentle gift, another minor virtue
DIEDNE: removed from the equation, so pointless as well. Their exMisc substitutes represent a multiplicity of approaches.
CRIAMON. Summoner. Summoning, Binding.
BJORNAER. Hearthbeast mystery. Probably along the lines below.
Each level of Heartbeast grant you a minor Virtue for your Heartbeast form. At levels 3, you also gain a minor flaw. At 6 and 9 you also gain a MAJOR flaw and can have a MAJOR virtue for your form. THe flaws also show in your human form. Youy have a Heartbeast personality trait that goes up +1 for every 2 levels or fraction of your form. So someone with Heartbeast (crow) 3 would have a personality of Crow +2, with 3 minor virtues and 1 minor flaw for his crow form. The flaw will also show up in his human form (generally a mental flaw).
The flaws and Personality increase means that political Bjornaer tend to be around Hearthbeast 4-5. Above that, they start to be too animalistic in their behavior. Heartbeast 9-10 is almost effective Twilight for them, but really powerful creatures.
MERINITA: Nature magicians. Nature-like hyperborean hymns. Magical animal companion, animal ken and ways of the land. Fae merinita are just fae magicians with no real link to Roman magic at all.
VERDITIUS: Mechanica of Heron. That is more than enough to justify their magic item power given the abilities of the other traditions.
And this is it. This is how we are planning to simulate the stuff. We are noit sure we nailed a lot of them. The idea of using Hyperborean hymns mechanically is fairly good, but not perfect. We would use straight hyperborean magic, but the problem is that the abilities are not FOrm specific, and some of the related fields are somewhat weird when you apply to certain founder. Guerniucus is specially complicated, as is Mercere.
I remember, in a thread about "the next edition," you suggesting that Hermetic magic be removed from Ars Magica. I think it is safe to say that's not going to happen, but I agree that it's a fun campaign idea and I am glad to see your group running it. It reminds me of when I ran the Star Wars RPG with a campaign premise of, "We're rewriting episodes I-III so they don't suck."
But I think that you are missing a great opportunity when you make most of the Houses use the same hedge magic mechanic. When we plug so many Houses into Hyperborean Hymns, it makes them feel the same and you lose the variety and distinctiveness that is hedge magic's strong point. Instead, perhaps we should approach this problem from the opposite direction: start with cool hedge magicians and then ask ourselves, "What House could that be?"
For example, Learned Magicians are interesting, they have diverse powers, and they are historical. Perhaps that's Bonisagus; even if the man himself was killed, others might have reconstructed some of his original, Pre-Hermetic magic. Alternately, use them for Verditius, since Automata become much less interesting when everyone in the House can make them. Use the Vitkir storm mages for Trianoma and Elementalists for Flambeau, with later members of the House fleshing out the other three elements. Druids will be detailed in Hibernia, if I recall the Table of Contents correctly, but Folk Witches make for a useful place holder for Diedne; sure, they don't have the powerful Spontaneous Magic, but who cares. We're throwing out all Hermetic Magic; what really matters is the human sacrifice angle and that's a classic accusation against witches.
By making Mercere shapeshifters, you're relegating Bjornaer to also-ran status. The only difference in feel is that Mercere get lots of forms while Bjornaer gets only one. Instead, emphasize the mundane duty of Mercere and his knight-errant adventurous angle, and all Mercere are un-Gifted. They'd make awesome Nightwalkers, all born with a caul. Likewise, what makes Guernucus interesting isn't his earth magic, it's his status as Quaesitor; make House Guernicus into a Society of mages with various Hedge Magic paths, united by their duty as Quaesitor.
Why saddle Jerbiton with Gentle Gift when they have no spells? Instead of Entrancement, consider the Virgilian Magic of the Augustan Brotherhood. This is, quite literally, magic based on art: the poetry of Virgil. It maintains Jerbiton's link to Rome. Since Tremere and Tytalus were both students of the greatest necromancer ever, divide necromancy in half, with the spiritual "ghostly" parts going to Tremere and the corporeal walking dead going to the Leper Magus Tytalus.
My emphasis is on two things here: first, try to make the Houses distinctive mechanically from one another, if you really want to avoid the homogeneity that Hermetic Magic creates. Second, try to incorporate as many cool Hedge Magic traditions as possible, or you're just wasting material.
This looks like a great premise. I also liked the idea of using Hypernborean Hymns + supernatural abilities.
I would be very concerned about exploiting Ceremony to reach horridly powerful spells. I suggest allowing only to use leaders, and I would consider splitting up the Hymns to each use a different Characteristic.
Using hymns to cast "formulaic" spells does not require any casting roll, which lowers the impact of aura and the tension of luck. I would suggest instituting spell casting rolls if these mechanics are to serve for PCs.
I don't see why removing Bonisagus' tradition is necessary - he simply invented the Parma as his great achievement. Regardless, warding seems like a great tradition for him.
I also saw her as a Germanic sorceress, so I'd suggest Whistle Up the Wind. But YMMV.
Shapeshifter ?! Don't see it. I'd remove that, and focus much more on mythic alchemy. Plus perhaps a hymn to do Muto stuff.
Cool !
However, I would try to connect Tremere and tytalus to the hymn/Mercurian tradition. Perhaps using a hymn to summon and command spirits ?
Even cooler !
Consistency would require the Summoning hymn to also offer Commanding, if you decide to adopt using it for both Tremere and Tytalus (their shared heritage from Guorna the Fetid). This makes Tytalus a bit too strong as a tradition, perhaps, and bit less focused.
I'd suggest Second Sight, Premonitions, and Commanding (or the Summoning+Commanding hymn) or Warding (a la Bonisagus).
I like your way. Another option is to revert back to earlier editions and the Pomeranian witches, and make these guys take Shapeshifter as their primary supernatural ability. Augmented with powers to summon and command animals, wilderness sense, and perhaps to bargain binding deals with supernatural creatures.
Yeah. Pack in Wilderness Sense for the True Merinitia, too.
I've never really considered the possibility of using Hyperborean Hymns as a stand in for the magics of the Cult of Mercury, but ultimately I think the idea has some promise.
The biggest problem, as you've identified, lies in the fact that you basically have to design a whole bunch of new 'Hymns'. Still, it is easier than designing new Arts and/or Supernatural Abilities because you can appropriate the Hermetic guidelines. Another issue that may come up is that 'Illumination' and the difficulty in casting spells at night are rather specific to Apollo, but that too is relatively easy to remedy when one considers the vicissitudes involved in trying to design a whole new tradition from the ground up...
The seven names used by the Hyperboreans are rather poetic too and consequently I don't find them at all intuitive. Therefore, I'd recommend taking a more conservative approach and use discrete epithets for the Deity involved with the specific cults that the founders belonged to.
My thoughts on the subject are generally very similar to yours so I'll be focusing on the relatively few differences of our interpretations in the sections below:
Birna: Not a descendant of the CoM and seemingly limited in power, but this could be due to her lack of training in her native tradition. Based upon the description of Pomeranian werewolves in GoTF, suggests that members of her tradition possessed: Animal Ken, Entrancement, Second Sight, and Shapeshifter so perhaps some variant of Folk Witch? Also, based upon Bjornaer's stories of the tradition being 'soul stealers', it might be interesting to give them some way to steal the powers/might of supernatural creatures - or, maybe that was just Bjornaer's misunderstanding of either the Folk Witch Skinknitting or the Enrichment process for Things of Virtue?
Bonisagus: While earlier editions did credit Bonisagus as descending from a tradition that specialized in supernatural wards, I believe that has been excised from 5th Edition. Instead, how about making him a master of metamagic? That would facilitate both magical research, integration of disparate traditions, and (arguably) the interaction of Magical Defenses with hostile magics. The difficult part then comes in determining what sort of Hymns he should have access to. Still 'Protection', 'Magic', 'Knowledge/Wisdom' and such are appropriate to a lot of deities.
Criamon: There's precious little to go by in trying to reconstruct the magic of Criamon, but it is, IMHO, hinted that his parens was taking an eclectic approach to his education by initiating him into disparate mystery cults through the torturous Ordeals he's described as being subjected to. I almost want to suggest that he might have been Taltos since that might explain why his master was in such a rush to initiate a child. In any case, his main contribution to Hermetic theory is said to be providing a (relatively) safe Twilight variant. Given how bad Twilight is compared to most Hedge Traditions, however, whatever the CoM experienced must have been REALLY bad!
Diedne: Almost nothing is known about Diedne or her magic, but since you've chosen to omit her from the line-up and she's not the descendant of a Roman tradition it's not much of a problem. Those who've read the ToC for 'The Contested Isle' probably know there's a box discussing the similarities between the magic of the druids and that of the gruagachan which makes sense since both are based on Celtic magical practices and might be a good option if you choose to have her included as an antagonist of some type or another.
Flambeau: 5E establishes that Flambeau descends from the Cult of Mithras through Laberius. A quick google search turns up relatively little about the Roman Cult of Mithras except that it is only tangentially related to the Zoroastrian figure 'Mithras'. Still, knowing the deity formerly venerated by the Cult does give some suggestions for hymns even if what's known about that deity is somewhat sparse. "Truth", "Sun", "Justice", and "Fire', would, however, appear to be appropriate themes for his epithets which would make him quite similar to Apollo actually...
Flavius: Typically described as possessing an unusual power of perceptions we know relatively little about the magic of Jerbiton save that his tradition possessed a number of Mercurian rites that were subsequently given over to Bonisagus. To this end, the Cult of Mercury proper might actually be the most appropriate choice, if we decide to have him ignore Hermes more rustic aspects and instead focus on his role as 'Thievery', 'Rhetoric', 'Interpretation' and such.
Guernicus: David Woods' reimagining (?) of Guernicus as a Terrae Magus ties him to the Cult of Tellus. Since the Protogenoi don't get a lot of face time in the Classical Mythology that I'm familiar with, we're a bit more limited in terms of powers, but I would suggest 'Earth' as being rather too vague and paradoxically too limited. Tellus, being identified with the earth might also possess powers affiliated with fertility by virtue of giving birth to the titans and representing the bounty of nature. Some sort of association with the underworld might also be appropriate since Tartarus was said to exist within her bowels.
Mercere: All but explicitly said to be a Mercurian, which fits well if we take an opposite tack than we did Flavius and emphasize Mercury's role as 'Herald', 'Messenger', 'Seducer', and "Roads". As you say, Hermes' Portals are potentially a problem, but if I may humbly make a suggestion, borrowing 'Travel' from the Sahir could be useful solution.
Merinita: According to what we know of Merinita's magic, she was extremely knowledgeable about magics dealing with forests and healing. Based on this, the suggestion that she may have belonged to the Cult of Diana may be correct. If so, her choices of hymns would likely involve 'Wilderness', 'Animals', 'Disease', 'Moon' and similar epithets as well as the Mystery Initiations you've already described. I would, however, take issue with your characterization of Faerie Magicians being non-Roman since if we accept the deities themselves as Faeries the various Cults' magic all derive from Faerie-based powers as some point or another.
Tremere: I agree almost completely on this point. I do seem to recall Tremere being credited as possessing 'Entrancement', but that could easily be just him personally or perhaps the result of a mystery initiation rather than being something inherent to magics used by the Cult of Aita that he learned from Guorna.
Trianoma: While described as being a member of the Witches of Thessaly as described in RoP: TI, I've never felt that the infernal tradition did an especially good job of describing the sorts of powers Veia and Trianoma are described as wielding so granting them a Magic as well as Infernal (or at least chthonic) tradition is a really good idea. I'm not really sure how appropriate the tempestari are for the concept, but ultimately I suppose it would depend on how you chose to design them and their powers.
Tytalus: Again, sounds good though I would note that I'm pretty sure Binding is always Infernally aligned (like Ablating) though naturally some traditions might consider its use ethical so long as the targetted spirits are willing to be subject to the power. Besides, if Guorna and Tytalus are any indication of the tradition's members, they might not care for the spirits' wishes in any case....
Verditius: Heron's arts are even less developed than Hyperborean Hymns and thus not IMO suitable for player characters though I think it could certainly serve as a strong base for designing a set of enchantment based powers less restrictive than are achievable through Heron's art. I also feel I would be remiss if I didn't point out that HoH: MC also describes Verditius studying a form of rune-magic similar to that employed by the vitkar...
Trianoma: You could use the Storm Wizards template in AtD.
Flambeau: Why not use the hermetic guidelines for Ignem, giving them only one accelerated supernatural ability (fire magic) to cast them? You can even make that a "normal" ability and allow them to use Ceremony, or something like it, but at a vis cost.
Bjornaer: If you want to make them "leaders of the pack type, take the heartbeast and its mystery refinements from HoH: MC. And, from HoH: S, allow them to take the Summon Animals supernatural ability, but limited to the form of their heartbeast, like “Crow Summoning”. Other animals can be summoned at half the score.
Merinita: Give them Forest Lore, Magical Animal Companion, Animal Ken. You can maybe do like Flambeau with Herbam, but with a single normal ability, maybe boosted by their forest lore score accordingly (like, full score when they’re in their forest, score -2 in outside ones, something like that). This could allow powerful ones to cast hermetic herbam spells of up to lvl 25 (2 abilities at 10) when on their home turf
Guernicus: You might want to try an elemental summoner, from Hedge Magic.
You might have one or more as… In RoP: M, there’s a mythic companion, the spirit votary, who might very well interest you for one or more of these traditions, like, say, the Criamon.
Btw, I guess you’re aware that, save Commanding, Ablating and Binding are outright infernal abilities but that you chose to ignore it.
Why do people forget that groups change over time? I don't think that any of the Order's first generation, (including Diende and Trianoma), were Infernalists. I don't disagree with the other posters. But I can't help but wonder how I'd do it...
Trianoma: RoP: TI even says that the Witches of Thessaly grew corrupted over time. Just subsitute Summoning with a non-Infernal varient (The Cradle and the Crescent has some good advice on that front), Hexing with Cursing from Hedge Magic (Revised) and Commanding with Banish from HOH: S. That way Trianoma is still trained in the style of Modern Thessalyan Witches without being whole sale evil. Naturally she has the Premonitions too. How else do you explain her visions.
Alternativly the Storm Wizards from AtD would work well too.
Diedne: Until "The Contested Isle" comes out, I'd just use the Gruagachan tradtion, maybe add the Faerie Magic virtue for good measure for the really religous amongst them. No Tatoo Magic though.
Flambeau: The Mobed from "TC&TC" could work if you go with him being an actual descendant. More importantly, I'd let him being intiated into the Cult of Mithras in "The Mysteries (Revised)". As per his history, he gives it up for Fire magic from the Elementalist. That way he not only brings fire magic but a unique perspective on Hermetic Theory. It is, after all, his third tradition.
Merinita: I'm sorely tempted to just do her as a reskined Soqotran Sorceress with the Nature Mysteries from HOH: MC, minus the Limit breaking tricks. (No Energy or Perpetual Duration).
Flavius: Vigilian Magic, minus Amino, Sorttes Vigiliance and anything that would break Hermetic Limits. I would call it Mecurian Rituals. These Mecurian rites are based the relavent abilites rather than arts but otherwise work like the Fencil Rituals from HOH: .TL.. Actuallly, I'd just borrow the Vigilian guidelines.
Tytlus: Just a couple of dots of Defixo Magic with more than a few Mecurian Rituals. And the Spirit Magic Mysteries and Leper magic. He is clealy the stronger of the two brothers magically.
Tremere: Same as Tytlus with fewer dots and rites (and no Leper magic.), but he does manage to recruit more than a few followers who are Folk Witches with Valgadrar replacing Shapeshifting and Healing. Also I'd give Tremere the Leadworker Virtue and a flaw representing those odd nightmares he has about fighing evil witches...not that the Latent Magic will ever be tapped into. Just a fun bit of Colour.
Guernicus: Like Flavius but with fewer Vigilian Arts and some Elemental Earth Arts. As stated above, his magic is less important han his personality and I can see him recruiting from various tradtions provided he trusts the individuals that make up his House. Which will soon mean that the only way to join the House is to be chosen. Hey, It's a true lineage for a reason.
Verditius: Learned Magician with Laboratory Magician and No Text Casting. Little bit Vitkir runes. Alternativly, the Eye of Hephaestus and the Touched by (Realm) Virtues could work fine as well. Like all Mystery Cult House founders, he is trained in all of his House Mysteries that weren't invented later. (Hence why Merintia DOES NOT HAVE Faerie Magic.)
Pralix: Like Tytlus until after she is intiated into Hermetic Magic. No Leper magic. I'd say she didn't pick her trick until she starts putting together the Ordo Ex Misc.
Birna: I'd use her as a kind of Gifted Folk Witch (with Animal Ken, Entrancement, Second Sight & Heartbeast as Asscioated Abilities). She has all th House Mysteries she can while still being human. (Though she might have the scripts...)
Mercere: Gentle Gift (while he still has one). I'd have him bringing the basis of Viresculture, though it won't be until Herisson that the magic is codfied. [strike]I'd run him as a Musphelli albeit one without an evil patron, maybe Venus or Juno.[/strike] It occurs to me that a Faerie Rites Wizard could do the trick. He just has limited scores...
Criamon: Because I can...Hyberborean Hymnist, minus the Hermetic Limit breaking part. And as always, as many House Mysteries you think you can get away with. Remember this is what Bonisagus is going to use to delvelop the Hermetic Arts, so none of the Founders should be able to break the limits.
Bonisagus: ...is, ironically, the only who can get away with breaking that rule. He had the workings out for removing the Limit of Energy before it was stolen, so theoretically Bonisagus could break this limit before he created the Hermetic Arts. Clearly a Mecurian Magus.
For those with Mercurian Rite, I'd have a variety of different rites that each Founder brings to the table (though Tremere brings the fewest 'new' ones). You know in order to make it worth seeking various parts of the Cult.
EDIT: Fixer's idea for Flambeau, namely giving him one 'Art' that just uses Hermetic Guidelines is quite intriging...and not all together bad, though you'd need something that passes for a technique...unless you treat it like an Ability...
EDIT 2: minor updates...
I just copy-pasted all your answers in a WORD document to quote you all. 7 pages of text all in all. You guys are amazing I started writing a post with quotes tryiong to answer all the comments… and it ended up at 7 WORD pages just quoting until Gremlin44. So I ditched it all and will answer some of the main comments I have detected. Basically, it seems that I did not do it well in the first post.
VISION OF THE ORDER (Doctorcomics)
We just played a fairly long saga in the Isle of Mann. We went from scrapping our survival to rule the order and create 2 new tribunals shaping hermetic politics. All that after enslaving a dragon, killing 2 others, changing the location of Mount Snowden and a few major changes in mundane politics just by talking (and massacring a few thousands of soldiers; no imperilled hermetics). We enjoyed it immensely. However, it broke our suspension of disbelief BIG time. Such a powerful magical power could not be ignored and would massively affect the setting no matter what the official line says. Too big to ignore for our taste.
In an upcoming 6th edition (if that will ever exist) we would like to see a weaker Order. One that can cast amazing rituals and stuff, but with some assumptions that make such magics quite harder to cast (vis availability and book trade going REALLY down and XP accumulation being smaller, concretely).
However, such an event is FAR away in time, so we decided to play smaller in our next campaigns. We have started by playing other stuff with a lot less power level (LotR, Star Wars and the like: we like classics) and by playing a test hedge campaign: a replay of the war against davnalleus playing BOTH sides of the contest. It has been great fun, and the loss of opponents has had a much larger impact on the troupe than in previous sagas (you were killing your PC of the other side in some battles…) and it has shown to us a way of playing that we have really liked.
So our next saga is going to be a Triamore saga buyt with an OoH formed by hedgies with parma. You can read some of the basic assumptions here if you are interested: The Order of the Small
Add to that a few stuff like our house rules (play with D6, only 2-3 Realms, new combat system, no spell mastery – irrelevant in the incoming campaign-, personal wards as soak bonuses instead of absolutes….) and you have the basis for our game.
Now, in this new saga, as I said it is all about hedge magicians. Under this idea, all the founders were hedgies as well and the ooH is basically just a collection of disparate hedge traditions. Do not worry; we are using a lot of them. You can find our compilation of the official hedgie traditions here: Non Hermetic Traditions: a compilation There are a few books that came out since the last update, but you get an idea. Not all traditions will be used, but the OoH will certainly be diverse
(this answer is getting really long…)
ON THE FOUNDERS: WHY DO WE WANT THEM?
We want to simulate the founders because well, they ARE the founders And we are curious about how we could create traditions for them and trying to simulate their powers. The original seed came out of my frustration to create a pre-hermetic Flambeau using the elementalist rules in TMRE. I was really looking forward to that one, and this frustrated me and I started to look elsewhere. My troupe did bandwagon with me when I presented my original layout (significantly different from the current one) and here we go Looking at what the collective wisdom and knowledge of this forum can do and how others would interpret this is also a boon here
We would like to design traditions that come from the founders, even if they are no longer the largest part of the OoH. They can easily be the hones with hermetic prestige, for example. And well, it adds to the diversity of it all
INFERNAL SUMMONING AND RELATED ABILITIES
To the diverse comments regarding this, yes, we are aware that all the summoning abilities from ROP:I except summoning are supposed to be infernal. However, there are quite a few other traditions 8including hermetic magic) that can do the same as Commanding and Binding without them being branded as Infernal, and so we think that this is too harsh and that non hermetic versions of those 2 abilities must also exist. Ablating remains infernal for sure. Treat this as a house rule
Tytalians will have a link to the infernal in the form of Chtonic Magic anyway, while tremere’s tradition would have ditched that practice (and not transferred it to his descendants). Both have access to the whole pack of spirit summoning V&F, but not all of them are part of the “basic house pack”. A tuytalus can have commanding, but that must be paid with his normal allowance of V&F Those 2 houses are the ones I am the most sure about having nailed it (well, another member of my troupe did, actually), so I think they will remain as they are. For others I think we are still in shaky ground.
HYPERBOREAN MAGIC AND MERCURIAN MAGIC
Using hyperborean hymns is only meant to be used for mercurian traditions, not for all founders. A priest of Diana or Hecate do not need to use the same magic system. IIRC the only true Mercurian traditions are Flambeau (this assumption has already been challenged), Guernicus and Mercere.
So, for other traditions this is not necessarily the best system. YMMV as usual.
The hymns of Apollo are quite good at simulating the mechanical aspect of Mercurian magic (weak personal magic, massive and vis-expensive ritual magic with lots of participants). The particularities of Apollo (night problems, poetic hymns) do not need to transfer to Mercurian equivalents that use the same mechanics.
I think that Yair’s idea of splitting hymns by characteristic is a great idea. And I found that a lot of the suggestions and level of insight provided was AMAZING: Thanks a lot people.
BONISAGUS AND TRIANOMA
We removed bonisagus because we could not find a hedge tradition that worked on wards. And did not manage to design something that worked well as one. If you have any suggestions we would be more than happy to hear them. Since this needs to be created from the ground up, we prefer to leave him rest for a while. He is the archetypal hermetic figure along with Notatus and the few other members of his tradition, someone that no one can currently emulate.
OK on trianoma. Will keep whistle up the wind, then. IIRC she was a Tempestaria in older editions, and I prefer that over a Witch of Thessaly (even if the Withches will be in the OoH).
I am still reading the transilvanian tribunal, so have not reached the tempest witch template yet. Thanks for the pointer, Fixer!
OH! I didn’t catch that one! Will have to look into twilight. The Taltos idea is also cool.
This is more or less what we will do, yes.
About Flambeau I also found that the current Pserimpseu (or however it is written) fits flambeau philosophy quite well. He might be kept just like that. Is what made Hyperborean magic “click” in as a hermetic possibility for me in the first place
I am a little bit lost here. Would you mind to point me to the “Cult of Mercury proper”? I was not aware that there were rules for this one…
Great suggestions for the rest, thanks I specially like the Travel suggestion for the Hermes portals and Mercere.
Well, we are tinkering with the cosmology and make fae and magical realms identical. Only merinitae and some other academic magicians keep any form of academic debate about the existence of 2 realms instead of one. That solves the issue somewhat, but the basic reason is that we always wanted to strongly differentiate between the nature merinita and the fae merinita, giving more credit to the former. Since there is already a tradition of fae magic around, it is easier to just use the rules for those instead of having to reinvent something that some authors have already put a lot of effort in simulating.
Will look into that. Still, the powers attributed to Verditius and his items seem to match the Mechanicians better than the Vitki.
Hope that clarifies a few issues. Thanks a lot people! Great replies!
HoH: MC, page 46 the penultimate paragraph before the "Hypostasis" section. I will note, however, that the section is, perhaps, a bit vaguer than I remembered since, but certainly criamon magi believe that opening the hypostasis to hermetic magi was criamon's doing.
I was referring to those members of the Cult of Mercury who actually practiced magic associated with the God Mercury, as opposed to its many offshoots that practiced magic linked to other Olympian deities some of which have already been described above. I apologize for the confusion.
Hmmm. So, according to some Criamon magi the previous effect was just death... Seems unlikely, warping never kills directly before warping 10 for any tradition. But there must have been an effect of some sort before Criamon altered things.
I've also been thinking of a concept of CoM's reaction to warping. For plotting reasons I want it to be possible for them to remain in it for up to... say... 600 years, and it makes sense that all those in the same ritual would travel together (if the CoM used rituals like those of Fenicil communal casting must have been important). ATM my concept is a sort of senate, into which they disappear bodily, where they must explain their actions and be judged.
Of course the CoM offshoots, like the Terrae Magi etc. may have had different warping forms entirely.
yep. IIRC the Columbae use hermetic warding (and add V&F on top of that), so that is not what we were looking for. I have not read their section in a while, though, so I might be off mark here.
Ring/Circle magic, a minor hermetic virtue which does what you say it does
Warding major supernatural ability. I believe it uses hermetic guidelines (and where's the problem with that?) but there are differences. Most notably, IIRC, it doesn't need to penetrate MR, but is limited to circular wards. Really, you should look at it, if only to make sure. And you can combine it with Ring/Circle magic, if you want it to do more. But really, how many ways can you do wards?
Never test a munchkin with that question. :mrgreen:
Ward and "total resistance to everything", "cages for anything" and "perfect container" are all equivalents in that sense. "Circular" and "immobile" do not need to match either.
In fact we used to have a "shower" that was basically a large pile of circling water in a circle ring: you entered from one side holding your breath, stood there for a few seconds and stepped out again. There, perfectly clean human. Do not step on the circle if you do not want to get a messy room, though
Circular shields were also common to put wards on them.
Some are really easy to simulate, while others are extremely difficult.
I started writing a post with quotes tryiong to answer all the comments… and it ended up at 7 WORD pages just quoting until Gremlin44. So I ditched it all and will answer some of the main comments I have detected. Basically, it seems that I did not do it well in the first post. 
