Simulating the Founder's traditions

[Xavi]

Hi again,

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!

@Gremlin44

Criamon: (…)
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!

OH! I didn’t catch that one! Will have to look into twilight. The Taltos idea is also cool.

@The Fixer

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.

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

@Gremlin44

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.

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.

@Gremlin44

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.

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.

@Gremlin44

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...

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!

Cheers,
Xavi

PD: In the end, “only” 3+ Word pages :