Tremere "no sigil" issue

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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I noticed that there is a tendency to have a house rule allowing Tremere to have a second Magical Focus in addition to their MMF in Certamen (or to allow a different house virtue), because otherwise the MMF in Certamen "occupies" the only Magical Focus you can have with a sub-par one.

There is, however, another point that makes the house Tremere less attractive: In 4e, No Sigil was a required minor (1 point) flaw for Tremere magi. In 5e, Tremere still don't hold their own sigils until they beat their parens in certamen (or until the parens dies), but now it's a "free flaw" for which they don't get anything back. The other two houses that have some drawbacks are Bjornaer (cannot have familiars) and Verditius (require casting tools), but they get something much better in return.

It seems that holding your own sigil as a Tremere is unusual:
-In the Stonehenge, Normandy, Provencal, and Theban tribunals, only one Tremere sigil holder is described (usually with language allowing for more in your own saga). The Rhine has two, while Hibernia does not even have a single one.
-In order to become a Master in the Rhine tribunal, which usually happens 30-40 years after gauntlet, control over one’s own sigil is not required (but it helps).
That indicates to me that you probably shouldn't try to challenge your parens in your first 30 years post Gauntlet. Maybe it's just considered inappropriate.

What are the implications of that?
-Technically, the parens holding the sigil is just a permanent free proxy. I would still guess that not holding your sigil means that you might be viewed as less than a full magus by other houses (although if only a small minority of Tremere hold their sigils, that may relativize this view as there are evidently very capable magi that don't hold their sigil).
-In Stonehenge, there is a roll call at the start of each tribunal, where each mage is asked to confirm that they have a voting sigil (p. 116). That means that Tremere cannot even attend a tribunal.

Something positive that Tremere get as part of their house is support. The box on p. 120 makes it clear that this is supposed to balance out the seasons of study they lose while carrying out their duties so they advance at a similar speed to other magi. It is definitely not intended to balance the no sigil point, as there is more support for higher-ranking magi, who are more likely to already have claimed their sigil.

I understand that the whole sigil issue is used to emphasize the focus of the house on hierarchy and unity, but it still seems like a drawback. Is there a way to balance it?

Making it a mandatory flaw as in 4e might be too much. I don't think it rises to the level of other hermetic flaws. Looking at flaws that don't directly impact casting, Hedge Wizard and Infamous Master give you a negative hermetic reputation. This can be quite punishing (rightfully so, considering the balance with other minor hermetic flaws).

Could there be some house flavor that balances the no sigil flavor? Maybe just the amount of duties you have to perform?

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Quite simply, it is not great to be at the bottom of an authoritarian pyramid scheme.

The pay off for losing your sigil at the start of the career is that further down the line, you might be able to bully younger magi and take their sigils. This promise of maybe one day rising to the top, exerting power at the expense of the next crop of tremere is what gets the fresh tremere to submit to the more powerful ones now.

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Unless... they see it as being for the best: If you're young and inexperimented, exercizing power requires great caution, lest mistakes be made. So, sometimes, it might be best to leave it to older, wiser magi. The difference being that, instead of wasting their time by discussing the issue with them at length before following their advice (multiplied by the number of other youths seeking counsel :grimacing:), you just give them your sigil.

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I feel sure Stonehenge Tremere get to attend Tribunals. Maybe they are permitted the loan of their sigils by its owner?

In general, I don't think this needs to be a flaw. It's just how the house works. We don't expect Mystery house members to have a "required to act as Mystagogue" flaw etc.

I do think that it's balanced by (1) the support you get from the house in training, Vis loans etc and (2) the power you have over other house members later in your career. Even if HoH:S talks about this as a balance for the tasks you are given, it's really part of the whole. Tremere is a team game.

The ability to write a letter to your bosses, explaining why you need a particular spell or Tractatus to make you better at your job, and expect to get it, is a very big plus.

(I'm now seeing young Tremere as like junior academics, always working away at their next grant proposal - okay, maybe it does suck after all.)

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Nothing is universally better. The heartbeast is strong for a starting magus, but the familiar is strong for the maturing one. Whether Bjornar is worth the price may depend on the duration of the saga. It may also depend on whether the troupe wants to play out the interactions and the mysteries of Bjornar cult.

Tremere is similar. In most games, the missing sigil is a non-flaw, because tribunals come up rarely, and actual voting even more rarely. I thought the roll call at tribunal, even Stonehenge, was to get a count of the sigils, not necessarily ban the sigilless.

It is perfectly permissible to design a starting Tremere whose parens has passed, and thus holding their own sigil. (Serf's Parma. I may be remembering the wrong edition here.) It is reasonable to make house support just a tad harder to obtain in such case, or increase expectatins from the house slightly. In short, if you feel a need to balance, you can fine-tune support, mentoring, and obligations to your liking.

At the end of the day, Tremere is always going to be most fun if the troupe plays out the house interactions. If they do, the fun of rising in the hierarchy and taking the lime light in the intrigue is going to outweigh every disadvantage. If they don't, the Tremere is just going to be the runt of the pack of bickering PCs.

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Well, I would not do a post doc again, I have paid my dues...

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Tremere magi usually can get much more support from their house than magi from other houses get. See the Tremere chapter in HoH:TL for details. This is what they get as compensation.

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Imo, the problem is that certamen focus undermines certamen as a non-destructive scheme form conflict resolution, and thus it kind of has to go

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How do you figure that? How would it undermine things?

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Well if we look at the story put forth in hoh:tl, it portrays the tremere as the primary advocate for certamen as a conflict resolution scheme, which is fine. Now, I can accept that characters in universe don't know their own virtues, let alone anyone else's, but certamen focus is not a small bonus(particularly if theyre focusing on progressing their arts in a way that allows them to best utilize it, which is cannon) and it probably won't take the whole several centuries since the creation of certamen for people to notice that tremere almost always beat similarly strong magi. It's not a very big leap from there to "well you just want/wanted this to be legally binding because you're cheating at it, I move to make it explicitly illegal to resolve conflicts with certamen"

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I think the argument of Wingsday is the following (I've seen it made often enough).

Certamen is supposed to be a form of non-lethal conflict resolution vs. another magus, that one is more or less just as likely to win as a wizard's war. So, if you know you have a 70% chance of winning either, you'll go for certamen (unless, you know, you want to kill your opponent and/or rob him) because you can assert your will with the same chances and far less risk.

But if you have a 70% chance of winning a wizard's war, and only 40% chance of winning a certamen because your opponent is a Tremere and has an advantage at certamen that is not representative of his ability to win a real conflict... then you are much more likely to go for the riskier conflict which you are more likely to win.

This argument has two flaws, in my opinion. The first is that, for small enough stuff, people are willing to give up an advantage in order to avoid escalation; so non-Tremere will grumbingly accept certamen rather than risk death. The second, and more subtle one, is that in some sense the Tremere "advantage" at certamen does reflect their being better at war than their Art scores (and Parma, Finesse, Penetration etc.) suggest. That's because a Tremere magus is likely to have much more support from his House in a War than the average magus, and that support counts a lot, and would not be "visible" in certamen were it not for the Tremere focus.

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Wizard war and certamen aren't the only options on the escalation ladder here though, all of the options available to us mundanes are also available to magi and we get on fine enough,

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Tremere the Founder was younger and weaker at magic than the other founders, so he invented Certamen (with the help of Bonisagus) so he could be the best at something.
Then he pushed to make it a legal conflict-solving mechanism because it was something he was good at. This is no secret.

I don't think there is anything preventing characters from other houses to pick up a focus in Certamen. Having such a focus is no more cheating than being really good in the Arts is.

The main alternative to Certamen is Wizard's War. Few think that would be an improvement.
But a whole lot of issues get resolved long before it gets that far.

Also, House Tremere is big on NOT abusing Certamen. They generally not want it to be used for real unless the alternative really is Wizard's War.

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To answer the original post. You should not look at it as "Young Tremere lack a sigil, hence they are politically weaker than magi from other Houses!".

Instead, you should look at it as "Tremere, young and old, operate as a power bloc". This goes well beyond the sigil issue. It involves time, resources, conflicts etc. In general, this means you are more constrained in your actions, but when your goals align with those of the House, you can get much more done than the average magus. Let me stress that this is not a Ponzi scheme, where the newer participants pay the costs and the older ones reap the benefits. No, everyone reaps material benefits from such cooperation, and everyone pays the price of having their freedom somewhat curtailed; the balance (as in academia!) probably favours the young, though they usually do not realize it.

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This is, of course, exaclty what an older temere would tell you

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And whether it is true or not, depends solely on how you play your saga.

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Indeed, it's mentioned in HoH:MC (pg 77) that there's a group of Merinita who have it.

To my mind, the benefit to balance out the political cost of losing your sigil to the Tremere voting block is the potential for that voting block to be supporting you. Not always, but if you're a Tremere in a multi-house covenant you've got a direct line to a group of potential allies and a good idea of what causes they could potentially be persuaded were in the Tremere's best interests, and how. If all else is equal, "showing support to our housemates and demonstrating the benefits of having Tremere in your covenant" is at least a minor advantage.

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It's interesting that there are different takes on this, from "once you rise in the ranks, you can bully younger Tremere" to your attitude. Again, it seems to depend very much on the troupe and their view of the house. A magus can always choose to leave the house, so I'd think that would tend to limit the amount of abuse they'd be willing to suffer. Players are not likely to want to play a young Tremere suffering abuse at the hands of his elders, so I would judge that Tremere are probably as abusive as an average military (discipline is enforced and there may be a few bad apples, but in general they know that morale is important to success).

@loke:

It is perfectly permissible to design a starting Tremere whose parens has passed, and thus holding their own sigil.

I had not thought of that, but I don't think there's anything in the rules to prohibit it (in the sense of requiring a house rule), if your troupe agrees.

At the end of the day, Tremere is always going to be most fun if the troupe plays out the house interactions.

True, the troupe has to be on board when you play a Tremere. And Tremere seems to be a house that provokes very emotional reactions from some players, probably due to its history in earlier editions.

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Technically, the sigil-holding parens is a free proxy. Normally, you determine a proxy when you're not attending tribunal. So the practice of having a proxy and still attending would seem a bit strange just by looking at the code. Probably tribunal differ in how accomodating they want to be to Tremere.

Probably apprentices may also attend, but not vote. The question is whether they are allowed to talk. A reasonable default could be that apprentices can attend, but not contribute, while Tremere may participate in the discussion even if they may not vote?

@tomaso:

Maybe they are permitted the loan of their sigils by its owner?

Is there anything to support that in any of the books? It seems strange to have someone hold your sigil and then get it back for the only time it matters.

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I think the reasonable default is that every PC may talk. It is reasonable by virtue of feasibility, rather than plausibility. Playing subordinate is a difficult task; some players detest trying and some try but speak out of turn anyway. The challenge is related to another conflict, between playing your role and playing to achieve the scenario goals. Every troupe has to make an interpretation which not only fits their conception of the world but also their own behaviour as roleplayers. Trying to make defaults for others is rather futile.

IMHO, the formal rules of the tribunal meeting rarely matter. Most of the negotiations happen outside the formal meeting, so that when the formal meeting starts, most decisions have been made, or at least narrowed down to formal proposals with only the count of votes remaining. It is the out-of-meeting intrigue that needs roleplaying, and there everybody can take part, according to their status and goodwill. Stonehenge may be an exception, with its deadlocked intrigue. Hibernia is explicitly set up this way, with the tribunal being a one-week fair, with several meetings in different constellations.

... which is generally true for almost all the houses. Both Tremere and Tytalus are sometimes written off as provoking intra-party strife. To play them, the troupe has to agree on why they do not have to be. Jerbiton is sometimes written off as being magi not interested in magic. If a player plays the art-loving magus cultivating mundane relations, but the troupe only wants t play high-fantasy quests, it is a disaster. A Verditius can quickly devolve into the weekest member of the covenant. Magic items are powerful, but when you make them for sale, you do not develop own magical power. To make that fun, the troupe may have to play out outward trade and intra-house contest, and eventually hubris. Flambeau is in many ways the most stereotypical and monomaniac house. To make that fun over time, one has to find a way to make them more than battle engines for hire. HoH suggests the tournament community, which may be fun, but only with the troupe onboard. So it continues.

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