House Rules

Rules Under Consideration

• Steve Huntsberry's Combat Rules (Updated on 22 November 1999)

Accepted House Rules

• Faerie Sight allows seeing illusions and faerie things, and through Faerie regio.

   

• Second Sight allows seeing spirits, demons and ghosts, and through magic regio.

   

• Certamen and Penetration Abilities and Knacks count double when added to an Arts total.

   

• Cyclic Magic can be taken multiple times, at the SG's discretion. The bonus lasts for the entire 'upside' of the cycle. The worst cyclic modifier applies to lab work - if you want CM to affect your lab totals, take a yearly cycle bounded on a season.

   

• Strong Faerie Blood only provides one Faerie Virtue at one point less than normal. It costs one point more than the corresponding Faerie Blood package. (Strong) Faerie Blood does not allow a character to have more than 10 virtue or flaw points, but it does allow Faerie Virtues, which other characters cannot take. It does not allow Faerie Powers, which only Faerie Companions may have. The +3 bonus substitutes for the Faerie Blood +1, and does not add to it.

   

• Characters may not have more than 10 virtue points, even if these are balanced by flaw points, and even if multiple flaw points are accepted per virtue. Similarly, character may not take more than 10 flaw points.

   

• Affinities with Spontaneous or Formulaic Magic have been voted down.

   

• Expensive armor weighs only 1/2 the listed weight. Knights get no special bonuses, although the group may later decide to create a virtue (or skill?) to represent the ability to more easily wear armor.

   

• All applicable Affinities, Knacks, Abilities and situational bonuses and penalties stack. For example, a magus with Verditius Magic, Alchemy, Herbalism, Affinity with Corpus and Inventive Genius gets to add all ability and bonuses to the lab total.

   

• Confirmation that it *is* possible to botch with Charmed Life - just difficult.

   

• Normal AM4 invention rules shall be used. Experimentation rules may or may not be revisited.

   

• Well-Travelled adds its bonus only to Area Lores, Languages and Legend Lore knowledges that a) apply to the region covered, and b) have at least one ep invested in them. The bonus does not apply to a skill defaulted to at a penalty, such as using a similar language to substitute for one not known. A region shall not be greater in extent than a Tribunal.

   

• Good Contacts (by whatever name) applies to a single social circle, whose nature, size and geographical extent shall depend on the social circle specified. Thus, contacts with the 'upper nobility' will likely extend to many of the great houses across Europe (but their vassals and servants might not know you) whereas contacts in the Venetian underworld will help with all sorts of shady types in Venice, and maybe provide one or two similar contacts in Florence and Genoa, but will not apply to all underworld figures anywhere.

   

• Personal Magic (-6 Flaw) halves all totals associated with magic not involving a personal range. This is not a House Rule but a clarification of a poorly written rule.

   

• Faerie Magic spells are also not permitted, even for Merinita characters. (However, a character can obviously use a Faerie Magic spell as inspiration for - later in the saga - inventing a spell that conforms to normal Hermetic guidelines.)

   

• No PC shall begin play with a spell not explicitly listed in one of the permitted supplements. A spell guideline is not a spell for this purpose, even if the construction of the spell from the guideline seems straightforward. General spells may be taken at any level desired, subject to the usual restrictions for spell selection. No parameter of any spell may be modified, even if so doing seems straightforward.

   

• Keen Vision is played precisely as written in AM4.

   

• Faerie Magic +1 (Hermetic) acts as Magical Affinity with Faerie.

   

• Noncombatant -2 (Magi) has all the limitations of Noncombatant -3 (Companions), plus you are also at a -3 to all magic in combat, as defined by the Storyguide at the time.