• On Books
• On Spells for Regular Use

Each item is marked with HR for a house rule, amending canon rules, or (I) for an interpretation where the rules are seen as ambiguous, unclear, or disputed. Some are marked (Q) for Question, where I am torn between different solutions.

XP and Advancement

1. (I) Adventure XP is incompatible with any kind of productive work, including teaching, writing or copying books, lab work, etc. The only exception is mundane work which can be seen as an extension of the story.

2. (I) Source qualities are calculated per season. Multiple stories in a season are considered together to give one combined source quality.

3. HR The maximum source quality for adventures seems low. Even the best field experience is by far inferior to a good a book. While the effect of field experience should not be unlimitted, as it is in previous editions where xp are granted per session of play, independently of in-game time, the cap of 10xp feels low. I suggest to increase the upper limit to 20, although the maximum should only be granted for complex adventures.

4. (I) Affinities apply to advancement totals. They do not apply to the bonus xp granted by, e.g., elemental magic and secondary insight. This seems to be quite clear from RAW.

5. (Q) By RAW, advancement totals are rounded up in the case of affinities. This leads to some odd metagaming considerations. It becomes very tempting to take just one xp as often as possible from exposure and adeventure, and have it doubled. Considering that all encouragement of metagaming is bad, I have long favoured keeping the fractions. Ignoring the observation that some bonus xp are not affected, keeping fractions is also very simple, since the factor of 1½ can simply be applied to all xp earned.

   I would suggest either,

   • apply affinities to all xp, keeping fractions.
   • stick with RAW.

Laboratory

5. (I) It is possible, in the same season, to invent some spells using a lab text and others without it. The calculations can be made by using lab text levels as a bonus to the lab total, and work out the inventions of all the spells as if not using a text.

6. (Q) Is it possible to experiment when using a lab text?

7. (I) Some spells are restricted to particular Houses, Cults, or Societies. Except for the spells given in [core] and [cov], as well as the relevant House chapter [HoH], all starting spells should be approved by troupe decision.

8. (I) Magi of Hermes is known to contain a lot of spells which break canon guidelines. Therefore each spell from this book should be validated and approved by troupe decision before taken or invented.

9. HR Taking a full season to fixate an arcane connection feels very expensive. We have therefore allowed the magus to fixate several arcane connections in a season, up to his Magic Theory score. However, it is not possible to fix one in less than a season, or combine this with other lab activities. The fixing process needs to be aligned with celestial cycles, but the process allows some parallellism.

10. (I) While it is clear that the lab notes of other magi must be decoded before they can be used in the lab, it is not clear how much information can be cleaned from notes to determine if it is worth decoding. We have adapted the following rule.

    Untranslated lab texts can be read, and with a Int+Magic Theory roll, obtain Technique 6+, Form 6+, Requisites (9+ for 1st, 12+ for 2nd, 15+ for third etc) and Magnitude (roughly 9+ exactly 12+) and as such 4 Magic Theory rolls should be made. This whole process takes 1 day per lab text and does not in any way translate the code of the writer.

Spells and their Guidelines

10. (I) Realm aligned spells to reduce might work on all creatures with might aligned to that realm. E.g. Demon’s Eternal Oblivion applies to all creatures with infernal might, whether magical beasts are considered to be demons or not. However more specific versions can be created to benefit from a magical focus, but this only applies to custom spells with careful wording.

This interpretation is made to avoid ambiguity over the definition of a demon. 11. (I) Versions of (say) Pilum of Fire with group target are possible in more ways than one. 1. As area type effects as in Arc of Fiery Ribons. The area may be defined in different ways, when the spell is invented. The definition is fairly coarse though, and it cannot be tailored to a precise selection of opponents at the time of casting. 2. By hitting a group of victims, each hit by one pilum, using the group target rules to define and limit the group of victims. 3. Creating a group of pilums distributed among one or more victims, so that a given individual may be hit more than once. This requires an extra magnitudes for complexity/flexibility, since the group of pilums is organised in quite an elaborate pattern to hit the selected victims. The spell description should make it clear which of these interpretations is in force. 8. (I) To decide if a target is a valid target for a given spell, it is the current, rather than the essential form which matters. That means that Muto magic can be used to change the target into something which can be affected with the desired spell. A person with giant blood (size +2) can be shrunk down to size +1, so that standard Corpus spells (e.g. healing) apply.

Aegis of the Hearth

13. (I) The Aegis protects the covenant, and it does not extend to the lunar sphere. Exactly where the magical boundary occurs above the covenant will be unpredictable and may vary. Nothing prevents a magical bird from overflying the covenant to leave droppings, natural or otherwise.
14. (I) Aegis of the Hearth can be invented with different size modifiers, even though range/duration/target cannot be modified. The base size is 100 paces diameter, but +1 (300 paces) versions are common in the Order.

Virtues and Flaws

15. (Q) The troupe has to suggest the amount of vis granted by personal vis source. I suggest 3p/year if a technique or 4p/year if a form.
16. (I) Elemental Magic (Hermetic virtue in core) is well-known to be weak as a major virue, hardly better than a minor virtue. However, the supernatural virtue of the same name [HMRE] explicitly grants bonus XP for story experience and exposure experience applied in the elemental forms. Furthermore, it is presented as simply a non-Hermetic version of the original virtue, implying that the original virtue should apply XP in the same way.
    It may still be weak as a major virtue, but it is clearly better than a minor virtue. Magi who spend a lot of time inventing elemental spells can gain 5XP in many seasons when they would otherwise earn only 2XP from exposure.
17. HR Secondary Insight is another major Hermetic virtue which is widely considered to be too weak for the cost. It gives 2 or 4 bonus xp in a season. It may be better than book learner which gives 3xp for book study only, but only marginally so. Several house rules have been proposed to make secondary insight worth taking. For example,
    • Secondary Insight is a minor virtue.
    • Secondary Insight is a minor virtue, but the bonus xp always goes into the forms resp. techniques which have the lowest score. The player can only choose when two or more applicable arts have the same prior score. This forces the magus into a generalist profile. (The original version may of course be retained as a major virtues.)

On Rituals and Botch Dice

4. (I) Rituals are always cast on a stress dice, no matter how relaxed the situation.
5. (I) Practice of mastery of ritual spells yields 4xp per season. It is true that practice by repeatedly casting the spell earns 5xp, but this is not practical for rituals, due to the vis cost.

Note These conditions makes it either risky or expensive to go seriously into rituals. For better or for worse, a ritual specialist may be unattractive.