So he has Flawless Magic and didn't spend any xp in 15 years further mastering any spells?
Very odd.
He did, I just didn't label it as such, would you like me to? I lumped it under general 'XP' use, I didn't break down the XP gain seasons. I went the abstract route vs detailed season by season.
Oh, I see the masteries now.
I see you've posted a new sheet on page 5.
I haven't seen it, this is all for page 4, so some of my points may be moot.
Both Stalwart and Efficient are listed as "Rare - Cult of Mercury", meaning "Normally available to a select group, requiring the magus to be part of that group or be taught the ability by one of them".
Secure is "Uncommon - House Bonisagus", so you should write something about it.
Idem for Forceful, with house flambeau.
This is a little too much, since these come up so often (And I'd have put Forceful casting at +3, not +5, but that's another story 
).
Hum... Maybe shift your favor flaw to explain either of these? It'd open up your character story options (since you already have the Driven flaw to cover house Tremere, anyway), and would help explain of you got some of these. For exemple,he could have petitionned a Flambeau from [strike]Doiss[/strike] Aedes Mercury to teach him the flambeau and Mercury secrets, in exchange for future favors.
Otherwise, nice character, nice spell selection, will be useful to the covenant, like it. Very similar to a concept I did, I dunno if I send it to you.
Your basic casting total is Sta 01 + Rego 20 + Vim 10 = 31.
Ceremonial Casting allows you to raise it to 41, and cast the rituals, at the cost of time: No quick-drawing a circle in a hurry.
I think this fits the character, just making sure you're conscious of it.
BUT, IMO, you made a mistake: Penetration.
Best-case scenario, you're in Andorra's aura, your penetration will be around 41 + 5 (aura) + 7 (skill) - 40 = 13 + die. Raising your Vim to 20 (no small feat) will only raise your penetration to 23 + die. You've got almost 15 lost spell levels here. And you can seldom count on Andorra's aura.
I'd suggest lowering the circles to 30, or even 25.
Lvl 30: Penetration becomes 23 + die.
Lvl 25: Penetration becomes 28 + die. Swap Ceremonial Casting for Penetration Mastery, you get down to 19 + die, but your circles are much faster to draw, should you need them.
You might even want to take lvl 20 circles, with Penetration Mastery. Without any aura, this means a penetration of 18 + die, meaning they'll work just fine in any mundane or magical place, are still usable in faerie auras, and only slightly reduced in power in moderate infernal auras (As a comparison, your present circles have an effective penetration of 41 - 3 (aura) +7 - 3 (aura bonus to the demon's MR) - 40) = 2 + die in a lvl 3 infernal aura, assuming the demons let you take your time. If not, it's down to Die - 8 )
Likewise, he has no penetration for his Aegis, I suppose this is on purpose (Useless vs creatures, but great versus enemy spells and powers)?
??? This is a mastery for damage spells. I can't see it being any use there.
I suggest instead you take either Penetration Mastery, or rather Imperturbable Casting.
This is very low, for a magus 15 years PG.
Most importantly, it'll limit the amount of vis you may use in a season to 6 pawns, which will greatly impede your ability to enchant items.
You're also at the point where 1 more point of MT lab total costs 15xp and applies over all arts. This is about as much as 1 more point of Creo/Rego, and only half as much as one more point of Mentem or Vim.
=> Unless you don't intend to enchant anything (including a talisman) and want to stay focused on Mentem and Vim spells only, I'd say it's worth it to lower your arts a little in order to raise your MT.
There's 2 errors there.
- Finesse is listed at 4 on your sheet, not 7.
- 60xp added to a skill at 4 without any affinity get you to 110 xp, or skill 6, with some XP to spare.
Anyway, IMO, you don't need finesse at all. None of your spells require it. No Craft Magic spells, no Vilano spells, nothing.
If I were you, I'd drop it entirely, and instead pour the points into other skills.
Likewise, your Leadership is only 1, which will be a REAL impediment in all your attempts to control any ghost or spirit (should you later decide to do that, which seems a natural path given your arts). I'd suggest swapping Perception and Presence for that purpose.
Idem, concentration score is crippling.
Sorry, I'm going very quickly, this is taking me too much time already, so I may miss things 
So, important stats IMO: Intelligence, Presence.
Important abilities for his magic IMO: Penetration, Leadership, Magic Theory, Concentrartion
Herbam is listed at 5 (15xp) on your charsheet.
I can't check yur totals, so I don't know what's the good score, but I'd advise you to check everything.
Cost in XP = 10 + (20 per Virtue Point) - (10 per Flaw point)
Cost in Time = Seasons equal to the formula above divided by 10 (round up)
That's 10 + (20*3) - (10-3) = 10 + 60 - 30 = 70 - 30 = 40xp
Cost in time = 4 seasons.
So, assuming you did everything else right (didn't check), you're due 10xp = a season. However, if yu drop 2 Circles of Protection to lvl 20, you save a season I think, which covers this cost.
Bleeding from my eyes, gotta go.
Well he is a Mercurian, so that covers his knowing Stalwart and Efficient.
As for the others, it's not a bad plan, I'll consider swapping the flaw over.
You did indeed, I borrowed from that concept quite a bit actually.
Sorry, I missed the part where Circle Wards need to penetrate (different Sagas and all that)! Yeah, I'll be adjusting them down to 20.
The wording was... ambiguous. I was intending to use it to have the option to increase the size of the Elemental, but looking at it, I imagine that Flex 'Size' would do that instead, correct?
Your other comments largely apply to the older character, I had actually (ironically) just made similar updates to your suggestion.
As for how I do my totals, I was listing what was spent to raise it to 10, not the total XP. But I understand the confusion.
As for initiating Mercurian Magic, here's the formula as per Marko's HR section.
Time Required = One Season plus One Season per Virtue Point, minus One Season per Flaw Point.
XP Required = Ten times the Virtue points, minus (Cult Lore x 5)
Maximum of 3 points of Virtues &/or Flaws, Minimum Time Requirement of One Season.
So 1 + 3 Seasons (3 Virtue Points) - 3 (3 Flaw Points) = 1 Season and then for XP, 10 x 3 - (2 Cult Lore x 5) = 20 XP.
I will lk clser in bit. But Mercurian Msteries are fine since he has the Mercurian Virtue of Flaless Magic.
I notice you are trying out some of our Mastery options. Not many have ever seen use so some testing and revision may come from experience. Fixer's suggestion for +3 instead of +5 for Forceful sounds about right. I shall look at that.
He's also a Mercurian, got the Major Virtue and the Cult Lore to back it up! 
Don't worry, I looked and it seems like flex to size does what.
Ah, I guess this Saga sides on the side of 'An Aegis needs to penetrate' huh? It really means that an Aegis MUST be group cast, period.
Honestly, as long as he group casts the Aegis, he's golden (but loses the benefit of Mercurian). But I may consider making a slight tweak and have him learn like a level 30 version as well or something.
Up until now we have not required Aegis Penetration. It is in the HR's. But, until now, no individual knew the spell them self. Now we have two, Thomas and Roberto.
I am not a fan of Aegis Penetration and would prefer not to worry about it. However, I will follow along with what the majority in the troupe would prefer.
Agreed, I'm in the same boat about penetration. I've always hand waved it and said, it's a hell of a spell that we have no idea how it works. AKA it's magic! But if folks would rather it need penetration, that's ok too! Like I said, made a slight tweak to him, so now he has a level 30 version for penetration reasons. If that's not the case, I can easily swap it back.
What is the general issue with Penetration and the Aegis? I'm unfamiliar with the debate.
Basically that it's like a Circle Ward and needs to penetrate a creature's MR to keep it out.
Though it never seems to address Aegis directly, leaving it open to interpretation...
Thanks.
I cannot find where (or even if) I wrote an Aegis HR. It is something that has never come up so I ignored it. Much as I do with many things that are immediate and obvious (it is the only way to stay sane and run a saga like this).
So I suppose it is open to discussion.
I think that to fret over penetration is a buzz kill and a time eater. It is the one spell everyone encounters, multiplied by many covenants to visit and/or interact with.
I say that knowing that the two PC's with that spell can penetrate at level. I mean, I am sure Thomas can get there with Mastery. Roberto also has Mastery, plus Life Boost. The covenant uses a Casting Tablet and I jsut handwave it. Botches are possible, yeah. So I hit Bellaquin with one 
Statistical Calculus gets in the way of handwaving and fiat. If the laws of averages are to apply, let them work out their balance and wrath on some covenant in Stonehenge :mrgreen:
If we are to adopt the burden of calculating Aegis Penetration, I advocate that we at least handwave boundary size. Not to say you could walk the perimiter of a city. No. But the castle or covenant building/grounds, big or small, is covered by the concept of Boundary as defined in that ritual.
Basically, I mean disregard Size Magnitudes for anything the size of a typical covenant or smaller, from vat areas like Ddurenmar and Doisitep to tiny enclaves like Varidian's Tomb or the Tower of Vulcanus. Same level = same protection.
And Aegis Penetration is really just a pain. Really.
We actually worked out what looks like a decent, workable house rule for the Aegis in my Stonehenge campaign. Basically, we more or less ignored the Boundary definition for Aegis, and HR'd that the boundary must be defined by the caster during the casting of the spell by walking the defining boundary, and that depending on the actual size of the Boundary, this may result in the spell taking longer (but not shorter) to cast than would be indicated by the spell level.
And as far as Penetration, we ruled that the Aegis must penetrate for the warding effect, but not for any of its other effects (e.g. to affect casting totals or magical abilities).
Just for comparison and contemplation.
Here we go again
This is a mystery virtue. To being play with it, you should have the Cabal Legacy flaw.
May I suggest instead taking the "Imbued with the Spirit of Vim" virtue, like we discussed*? Or Leadworker maybe?
Much better on the skills, although I still don't understand why Finesse 4 given your spells. But it's your choice, no problem otherwise.
- In short, for those who are curious: Mercurian Magic + Imbued with the spirit of vim = cheap, or even free, Watching Wards
Nice!
Now that I think of it, since you wanted suggestions of rituals, a year variant of this is a possibility.
I was thinking if there would be a way for you to ritual cast a kind of Hermes Portal, but I don't see a way.
Yes, this is the same formula, I just use the one below, which is clearer IMO.
The difference between our math comes from the fact that you count a cult lore of 2, whereas I don't find any (despite having looked more than 5 times :-/ ). Maybe this was from a previous version of the character?
May I second all this very much?
IMO, it allows for some fun with the Aegis, from choosing an optimum aegis for keeping out creatures (Pen = lvl), to casting one specialised versus magical powers (Pen = 0), without the hurdle of your covenant being limited in size.
For that matter, I don't even see Mercurian Magic anymore. Did you make a fairly large change to the concept?
You know what it is? I probably screwed up the copy and pasting. I've been on the road since Friday, I'll have a chance to check tonight.
I know for a fact that I forgot to put Mercurian on it. I'll update the sheet tonight.