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---
title: House Rules
categories: rules
---
**Review Needed**
This house rules are taken from an existing saga, with additional
comments about known issues that may need discussion.
+ On [Books]()
+ On [Spells for Regular Use]()
# Rule Interpretations
## Books and Advancement
1. 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. Source qualities are calculated per season. Multiple stories in a season
are considered together to give one combined source quality.
will still only give one XP award.
3. The source quality range for adventures should be extended.
Long and complex stories should give learning comparable to good books.
There should be a cap though. Even long stories should not give a lot
more xp than the best books. An upper limit of 15 or 20 is suggested.
Long and complex stories should give learning comparable to excellent
books. Maybe 5-15 would be a suitable range.
## Virtues and Flaws
1. Personal vis source grants 3p/year if a technique, 4p/year if a form.
2. 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.
3. 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.)
## Laboratory
1. 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.
## Spells and their Guidelines
1. Although ring duration allows permanent effects,
it should be noted that the ring is fragile.
In particular, if the ring is obstructed by something
dropping and covering it, the spell ends.
7. Realm aligned spells to reduce might work on all creatures
1. Realm aligned spells to reduce might work on all creatures
with might aligned to that realm.
However more specific versions can be created to benefit from a
magical focus.
8. Versions of (say) Pilum of Fire with group target are possible in
more ways than one.
1. As area type effects. Arc of Fiery Ribons exemplifies this at
a lower damage, but the area may be defined in different ways.
Such a definition is fairly coarse though.
Such a definition is fairly coarse though, and the magus cannot
tailor it to hit a precise selection of opponents.
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 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. 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
1. The Aegis protects the covenant, and it does not extend to
3. 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.
1. 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.
# House rules
1. A magus can fixing 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.
3. Fractional xp carry over. In other words, when an odd number of xp is
assigned to an ability/art with affinity, the half xp should be recorded
and not rounded up.
*Note* This can be problematic when several XP/quality modifiers
apply to the same trait. Such cases should be checked for future
sagas.
4. 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.
5. Copying ability books, the copyist needs to accumulate points equal
to 3 times the level (compared to art books where only points equal
to the level must be accumulated).
## On Rituals and Botch Dice
1. Rituals are always cast on a stress dice,
5. Rituals are always cast on a stress dice,
no matter how relaxed the situation. (This is RAW.)
2. 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.
3. A *Safe Casting* mastery option can be learnt, but requires one to
study a book which explicitly makes it available.
It is not automatically available, and books teaching it may be rare.
It halves the number of botch dice, before subtracting the mastery score.
This is an idea which comes from one of the Folios posted on the
Atlas Forum.
**QUESTIONED**
*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.
# Mythic Europe Interpretations
1. Most magi dress so that they are easily recognisable as members of the Order.
This often includes badges and insignia, which are known to many
learned people.
Players whose character dresses differently,
should be careful to state this.
2. The Irish year starts on 1 November (toussaints or Halloween),
and the year is divided in two, with Summer starting 1 May.
Matching this with Hermetic seasons, it is reasonable to let the year
start with Winter 1 November, Spring 1 Februar, Summer 1 May,
and Autumn 1 August.
This places solstices and equinoxes approximately mid-season.
The difficulty is, of course, that the Winter of 1220,
starts 1 November 1219 by modern calendar.
3. The common calendar year starts with Spring from the Spring Equinox.
Winter is the last season of the year, from Winter solstice to
Spring Equinox.
# Necessary house rules
## Regular use spells
Spell use which occurs in session is easy to handle, but daily use
is susceptible to abuse.
This applies (at least) to
1. Rego Craft Magic for income and/or cost savings.
2. Rusticani charged items
3. Lab Boosting Spells
The Lab Boosting spells are balanced in canon by causing lab warping,
and this seems ok. It accounts for the risk of mishaps and the distraction
to keep them going.
Rusticani charged items have a definite time requirement, but even so,
an item/hour is commonly achievable.
Using just the ten day distraction allowance,
this gives 80 items/season.
A season of reading, in principle, allows 240 items/season.
This seems excessively powerful, especially if items are sold.
To date, it has been managed by creating a little more than what seems
sensible, and the effects on the game are minor.
Craft Magic in principle are momentaneous spells. In theory,
with perfect logistics, the Mystical Carpenter can erect ten houses
per minute. However, what does it take him to get the materials in
place? Similarly for Elfin Brewer/Baker, Mystical Blacksmith etc.
In theory, a couple of craft spells could serve as scores of specialists,
saving almost all costs.
+ Main question. How much time does this take for the magus?
Most of the time is probably spent organising the grogs for logistics.
Some may be the disruption of having to cast the spells at
particular times.
+ Some cap should probably applied to account for the need to acquire and
check raw materials. Possibly half the cap of a real craftsman.
# Rejected House Rules
1. Teleportation is not discontinuous disappear/reappear behaviour,
but rather ultra-fast real movement.
This means that one cannot teleport out of a complete enclosed room,
but has in practice no consequences for the
speed of movement. An unobstructed path,
not necessarily a straight line, is required.
*Note* We did not really consider the smallest possible opening
the target can teleport through. There is also a question of how
this applies to teleportation in andout of regione.
This should be reconsidered.
