Virtues and Flaws Across Multiple Traditions

For those not following the relevant thread (https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/the-covenant-of-caepernum-eleutherius-of-tremere/12166/1), I have been creating a character who is a member of two different magical traditions: Hermetic Magic and Solomonic Magic. Hermetic Magic is his original tradition, but he is gradually being initiated into the Solomonic Arts.

One question which has come up is to what extent his ("Hermetic") virtues and flaws should apply across traditions. Clearly some virtues and flaws only make sense for particular traditions (Deficient Ignem isn't going to have much effect on your Gruagachen Arts), but others have the potential to be more generally applicable (e.g. Cautious Sorceror).

Complicating matters is that some virtues and flaws are significantly better or worse for different traditions. For example, Harnessed Magic is explicitly a major rather than minor virtue for Amazons.

I could have sworn I saw something on this in the Rules somewhere; however, I cannot now find it, and I don't want to work off the half-memories I have of what it said if I can help it. Does anyone know where it is? And failing that, what are people's opinions?

So it appears to me, that every saga is on its own here - as it is on the subject of facilitating dual tradition characters. (I didn't read the Eleutherius thread.)

Cheers

Found something in HoH: Societates, p. 103, might or might not be applicable:

Note that this in the context of ExMisc Supernatural abilities, but still might be relevant. Although the OoS’s magical skills are called Arts, as well. Who knows? :confused:

Edit: p.34 TC&TC:

, so it’s looking more to me as if these things do not carry over, which I find odd, but...

In my opinion, every tradition should have its own Virtues and Flaws (Solomonic rather than Hermetic, etc.). I have often argued that those Hermetic Virtues or Flaws that don't exclusively apply to Hermetic magic (Gentle Gift, for example) should instead be Supernatural Virtues or Flaws. As a GM, I'd also make it a little easier to gain a Virtue associated with another magical tradition if the character already has it as a Hermetic (or whatever) Virtue.

For example, I might treat a Major Hermetic Virtue that the character already possesses as a Minor Solomonic (or whatever) Virtue, and a Minor Hermetic Virtue as a Free Solomonic Virtue. It still has to be initiated or taught or whatever, but it is much less onerous to figure out how to use it with the new tradition. Likewise, gaining a Major Solomonic Flaw when the character already has it as a Major Hermetic Flaw would only provide the benefit of a Minor Solomonic Flaw, and a Minor Hermetic Flaw would just automatically convert as part of developing the new tradition.

Hi,

I think the situation is mixed.

Consider a Strong Parens who teaches Hermetic Magic along with some hedge tradition. I think it's pretty clear that those 60xp can be spent on both traditions. But I think it's also pretty clear that the spell levels much be Hermetic. And that only a Hermetic Magus can take this virtue.

Then there's Cautious Magic. I think it's reasonable that someone who is cautious with magic might be cautious with more than one tradition. But it could be argued the other way too.

Subtle and Silent Magic? That seems bound to a tradition of magic... but maybe not. I would probably rule that it applies across any tradition that allows magic to be subtle or silent.

Gentle Gift? Clearly does not apply to any tradition, but to the Gifted character, even if he has no tradition at all.

Flexible Formulaic Magic? Clearly applies only to Hermetic Magic. Or does it? Any magic that features RDT might benefit.

Waster of Vis? Not a virtue, but I suspect this should apply across traditions.

And then there is an interesting editorial decision (which I suspect was really not a decision at all but an emergent oddity) in which a given virtue is Hermetic for some hedge traditions and supernatural for others.

Taking Hermetic Magic plus a Hedge Tradition tends to be less than optimal, so I would lean toward allowing virtues (and flaws!) to apply across traditions unless it doesn't make sense. For example, only Hermetic Magic allows spell mastery at all, so Flawless Magic does not make sense for other traditions, but some hedge traditions maybe deserve to benefit from FFM.

What breaks?

Anyway,

Ken

I would just let everything apply to everything. You paid for it, you paid to get access to the other traditions. If they are compatible then why fuss over it just to punish your players?

Like Ken said. If you are Careful with Hermetic then you are going to be careful with everything. Same if you are reckless or can keep your voice down.

There are other traditions that use mastery but I would imagine that Flawless would apply similarly to Careful. You are really good at understanding your spells or what ever, why would your habits change.

Maybe Meeting someone half way and not allowing Major Hermetics to apply would work for a more conservative approach (would get weird with Foci but what ever).

Other wise you might let someone do a small project to integrate the traditions with your Virtues? So a Minor Breakthrough per virtue? A Minor for a Minor a Major for a Major? A Minor or Major to use any and all applicable virtues? Tune as you like?

I would tend to agree, that relevant virtues apply across traditions. Also, being proficient in more than one tradition is rare.

Hi! So relevant Flaws should apply across Traditions as well, correct?

The context is this: Salutor's Magus in that thread is infiltrating the Order of Suleiman. They do not know he is Gifted, so he is being Initiated as Ungifted, and saddled with a Major Flaw on the way. Salutor suggested a Major Flaw that limited Eleutherius's casting as a sahir. I asked about that, because it seemed strange to me that a Major Flaw would only affect that side of the equation. Thinking of Blatant Gift, Difficult Longevity ritual, Waster of Vis, Twilight Prone, Painful Magic, Magic Addiction, other Major Supernatural Flaws, etc, which would prove a great hindrance, no matter the character, and would seem to apply across Traditions, missions, and Stories.

My point being at that moment that the Major Flaw suggested would not greatly inconvenience the character. On the other hand, Deficiency with a Technique or Difficult Spontaneous Magic would not seem to apply to the sahir side, either.

So, as Ovarwa says,

.

Ya, seems legit.

If he is getting a flaw then he is getting a flaw. If he screws up his Hermetic magic doing something with a Hedge Tradition then that is what happens.

If the Flaw is irrelevant to Hermetic magic all the better.

Given the passage in HoH:S Ignes.Festivus found (thanks for that), I'm inclined to go with Hermetic virtues and flaws only affecting Hermetic magic, and similarly Solomonic ones only affecting Solomonic Magic (with the exception of Gentle Gift and anything else that clearly manifests before you join any tradition at all).

That does have the slightly odd result that joining a second tradition later means (assuming you're already up to max points originally, anyway) that you're an entirely vanilla member of the tradition, without any strengths and weaknesses (including not having a Hermetic flaw in the way magi are supposed to have).

I'm not sure if that's a situation that necessarily needs fixing, but one possible approach to it would be to pool virtues and flaws into two groups - those that affect a specific tradition, and those that apply outside a tradition. Then say that for each tradition, tradition's virtues + other virtues = tradition's flaws + other flaws <=10. It would usually make sense for virtues and flaws that have the potential to apply to across multiple traditions to appear multiple times, but wouldn't be a strict requirement, and that way you could allow for them to have varying point values where there are significant differences in utility between traditions (thinking about Eleutherius' stats, for example, Life Boost should either be altered or be a major Solomonic virtue, given that boosting your initial summoning naranj not only provides the same boost to every subsequent naranj you cast through the same spirit, but also allows you to apply the bonus to lab work).

Sure, that is clearly how it works by RAW. But we can't stop a discussion there. That would take the fun out of it!

Hence the next couple of paragraphs!

Hi,

Some Flaws clearly only apply to one tradition. Deficient with Intellego? That won't affect Solomonic Arts at all.

But the same is true of some virtues. Affinity with Rego? That also won't affect Solomonic Arts at all.

Anyway,

Ken

Is there any indication of how the Spider was affected by multiple traditions and initiations?

Also, check out the Flawed Powers Flaw on page 107 of HoH:S for affecting Abilities?

Page 12 of Rival Magic has a list of Hermetic Virtues & Flaws that are more "general"?

Hehe, the Spider is a SG anything goes character, the writeup does not dwell on such things. There is no way that after 700 years he doesn’t have every applicable/equivalent Flaw in the book and twice over, just from regular Warping episodes from each one of those lifetimes as another tradition . And he’s not a stay home and mind his own business kind of guy, more battles/ adventures means more botches. So, apparently he’s solved the limits of Warping, Essential Nature, etc.

I think the thing that has at least the potential to break is that some virtues and flaws are worth more to different traditions, or don't apply meaningfully. At an extreme, you could end up with a character whose flaws were all meaningless to every tradition except her original one, but where the virtues always apply.

The "equalise separate virtues and flaws across each tradition" approach I suggested avoids this, at the expense of increased complexity. It also has the disadvantage that there's no direct support for it in the Rules, but then that applies to the "just assume everything applies" approach as well.

Hi,

We, and especially me, tend to concentrate on Virtues and Flaws here. We talk much less about spell guidelines, except when designing effects.

But even 'abusive' allocation of VFs breaks little or nothing. Heck: Nothing would break if a magus took ten reasonable virtues and balanced them with no flaws whatsoever. Story and Personality Flaws? No need. There will be a story regardless, characters will be played with some personality regardless, and given the nature of players and GMs, there will be consequences. Other flaws? Yawn. A broken virtue is not balanced by a reasonable flaw, and a reasonable number of reasonable virtues needs nothing to balance them.

Real optimization lies elsewhere, especially in getting approval for a creative use or interpretation of spell guidelines.

As for "just assume everything applies" not being supported, that's not completely true: Hedge Traditions tend to list obviously reasonable and unreasonable VFs, which gets us much of the way toward understanding what VFs should and should not apply to that tradition.

Anyway,

Ken

I think that's supporting a different point; I'm not suggesting that members of Hedge traditions can't take virtues and flaws that mirror Hermetic ones - clearly they can, and lists like the one jason72 mentioned and those in Hedge magic are useful for deciding which ones apply. The question is whether a Hermetic magus has his Hermetic virtues and flaws automatically carry over to a non-Hermetic tradition (where they would work for that tradition), and that's not supported - indeed, is opposed by HoH:S pg 103.

Hi,

I misunderstood what you meant.

Anyway,

Ken

Also, it may be important to note what HMRE says about these Virtues. For example (with my emphasis),

Interestingly, they don't follow the same pattern. And then there are the Viktar, who have a whole bunch of equivalents to Hermetic Virtues and Flaws listed as Supernatural Virtues and Flaws.

I don't know what to make of all of it. I just thought I might include those quotes to help.

I have contemplated something the other way around. What if you took Greater Magical Defenses as a Hermetic Magus? Sort of a similar question. Would it double what you get from the Forms for Soak and related stuff and for Magic Resistance (not doubling Parma Magica, though)?