is there a way, and if yes, which for Tremere to gain an additional magical focus?
The only way I can think of is by having luck when entering Twillight. Ayone know other ways?
By RAW, no. One magical focus only. Even Twilight is questionable, and really up to the SG or the troupe.
I would instead change the House Flaw to Minor Magical Focus (Certamen) to Certamen Focus, and not actually count it as a magical focus.
The simplest way, I think, is a script that gives a virtue in return for the Sacrifice of your focus. Then find someone who has the focus you want and have them teach it to you (As a Hermetic virtue, your Arts don't count against the Teaching total!).
Mythic Blood gives a free focus, should that count? If not, then you should get some other minor hermetic virtue.
I was thinking about Certamen and instead of it being a focus, the Tremere geta unique Ability: Certamen. They can use the score in Certamen to replace any two other Abilities in a round of Certamen (so they can do it each round). They could use Certamen to replace Penetration, Finnesse or Parma (any 2). This gives some of the bonuses that the focus does (any Tremere gets a bonus every Certamen because of the focus) and implies that the Tremere superiority at Certamen is an actual skill that they hone and practice.
Officially, no. Although I've often house-ruled that the Tremere House-virtue is actually something more akin to Diedne Magic which acts like a Magical Focus, but isn't actually one.
Another possibility is to take "Potent Magic" (see HoH: MC or TMRE for details) which allows much the same thing.
My house rule is to discard the idea of Tremere being better at certamen than other houses and replace it the house virtue with "Tremere training" which is much like guild trained from Guardians of the Forest or Skilled Parens.
1this has the added bonus of making certamen more fair and therefore believable in setting.
I like the idea of having a magical focus as a Tremere since they often specializes themselves. If your magus is specialized in something you can choose another focus. If your magus isn't specialized, then you're stuck with Certamén.
This is the way I'm tempted to go as well.
I can't say that it's an original thought. Paul Briscoe has a book out there released under Creative Commons entitled De Domo Tremeris. This is one thing I stole shamelessly. As written, Minor Magical Focus (certamen) violates the spirit, and arguably the rules, for a magical focus.
Timothy Ferguson confronted this question when designing the new House Tremere and it influenced the new version. He accepted that, by the rules, no, Tremere could not have a Focus. That mean that they were, pound for pound, generally inferior to other magi of their generation, who usually WOULD have such a Focus. Every House has mature specialists in every field from Longevity Rituals and Healing to Necromancy or Storms, but not Tremere.
Ferguson compensated for this by giving the Tremere more House support. Tremere can ask their House for material help, in the form of books, vis, teachers, soldiers, specialists and so on.
My point with all of this is: if you decide Tremere CAN have a Focus, then, if you also allow them to call on House resources the way HoH:TL details, you are essentially giving them two handfuls of cool shit and no price to pay. If you don't have a problem with that, and consider the Tremere obligation to obey all the payment required, then you're fine. But if you change the RAW, you might want to downplay or eliminate the House Support at the same time.
Try to give AtD a read. The House of Tremere has quite impressive resources to share with their members, atleast on their home ground.
Ah, this old chestnut.
Personally, I leave it as-is. I wouldn't go messing around with starting Virtues, not for the whole House at least.
However, if you want to play a Tremere with an additional or different magical focus then I'd either swap it straight out, making you the little Tremere who couldn't, or I'd ask my troupe whether they'd mind me taking a minor focus in addition to the focus in certamen.
Unless you have other player Tremere, taking that second route doesn't really disadvantage the other players, which is what counts.
Personally I'm fine with a second focus for tremere. Just with the obvious proviso that the two can never apply at the same time!
I don't see any other focus than "Certamen" applying during Certamen, and likewise the focus "Certamen" applying nowhere outside Certamen. So this should be fairly safe.
I disagree with that - even without a magical focus House Tremere gains a huge advantage through its unique focus, which gives it significant political leverage outside of the Tribunal meetings.
... and I disagree with that as well. The Hermetic Order is rather small, houses usually averaging around 100 members. It's practically impossible to have a specialist for everything in a house, given that there are a ton of generalists as well, and the few specialists are then scattered all across Mythic Europe (13 official tribunals, plus outskirts), not easily accessible by everyone. That's not even taking into account the age of the respective magi - half of the house membership might not be what you consider "mature".
This is also why I'm opposed to the somewhat overdone "splatification" in the Houses books. For example: There are 9 active paths for Criamon magi with a house membership of 94 - and not every Criamon will walk a path right out of apprenticeship, so there are on average less than 10 Criamon magi walking a particular path. And that's on average - canonically the Path of Strife is strongly advised against, so there should maybe be 5 magi on that path in all of Mythic Europe.
To circle back around to my point: I think it's wrongly assumed that Magical Focuses are rather common in the Order and there is hardly any magus without one. This stems from the fact that mechanically they are the most powerful Virtue right there in the corebook and not taking it might disadvantage you against other players who do. I hope that Magical Focuses are severely reworked in a hypothetical future edition - even if in another direction than nerfing, as in assuming every magus does have an innate specialty in his magic and you only need Virtues to make them broader or apply to more than one field (spellcasting/labwork/whatever).
So all in all House Tremere is stronger than the other houses as in that every member of their House possesses a unique and politically quite relevant Magical Focus. RAW they lose a few specialists with a Magical Focus, but they more than make up for that by their House Virtue.
If the GM's view is that House Tremere's Focus on Certamen is not a weakness, but instead makes them as strong or stronger than other Houses, then the argument against allowing additional Foci is also stronger. If MMF: Certamen is clearly good, and all the material support Tremere can call upon from their House is clearly good, it is hard to rationalize allowing a PC to have a second Magical Focus unless, of course, every PC may do so.
I find it interesting that there is no further comment in RAW on Tremere with Mythic Blood. As such a character would have two magical foci, by RAW it should not be possible to create a Tremere with Mythic blood. Unless I'm missing something somewhere any possible remedy to this situation amounts to house rules.
Not allowing the combination seams closest to the rules. I am not sure if there is any specific mention of any Tremere actually having Mythic Blood. Of course it leaves one wondering why one form of mythic blood was included in the clan's virtue section in HoH:TL. (Zmey who get a magical focus in Storms.)
Allowing mythic blooded Tremere but either shorting them a Focus seems a little unfair. Altering one of the foci into a different virtue seems more fair. Either way though you are going against one rule or another. RAW doesn't actually give the option of not taking your clan virtue of your or not getting the bonus focus from mythic blood. (Actually Apprentices opens up the possibility of not acquiring a house virtue if you play out your apprenticeship, but only as a failure of your parens to teach you appropriately.)
You could allow both Foci and call it RAW, by saying that one or both of the free virtues are not true foci. This however opens up the doors for any character with Mythic blood to have two foci or for any Tremere to have two to three foci.
My suggestions was they either get the other minor focus and still keep the certamn focus, or another minor Hermetic virtue to represent the power from the Mythic Blood. But I don't think that the Tremere should be shorted on that Major virtue, especially as they are a True Lineage.
There is definite story material for some kind of inner struggle between the legacy in their blood, and the Tremere disciplines being rigorously applied and learned.
One other thing that should be remembered when thinking of this issue is the possibility of Non-tremere having a focus in Certamen. I don't believe there is any rule against it. With that focus a few other houses can produce Certamen specialist that are as good or possibly better then the best Tremere. (Tytalas and Bjornaer I'm looking at you)
House Merinita can produce particularly excellent Certamen specialists. Shared Fatigue of Fae familiars can make opponents cry. Doubly if the familiar can quickly restore might. Perhaps by snacking on the grogs. One interpretation of The Becoming can make Certamen impossible to lose. (Or impossible perform at all with another interpretation.)