Dice wrote:To me, the biggest issue here is that there was literally NO limit before on number of awakened mages, and now there's a very stringent one. Anything that any mage can do, like awakening, does strike me as something that should be reasonably element-agnostic. I like the idea of having a set number of slots for awakened ones (a small number, maybe 3 tops? 1 at circle 1, 2 at circle 3, 3 at circle 5?) and then slots added to that for fire mages for regnants obtained in other fashions. The bonds are, to me, supposed to be different.
This sounds like a reasonable step-wise limit to me. Zeita's idea has some potential, but it doesn't address the fundamental nature of awakening -- which I think could probably use some clarification and attention here. Is awakening something that always forces only a weak bond no matter what and can't be done without creating one? If so, give awakeners ways to break those weak bonds early without harsh penalties. Given that regnancy and control magic are supposed to be taboo, a mage (of any variety) continuing to maintain a bond after awakening could be seen as crossing some line, regardless. This would mean both cultural and mechanical reasons not to maintain many bonds.
(Though, I do wonder whether those taboos are ever really observed.)
My point about the helpfile, Rabek, was to say that if staff want to give fire mages an -intended- mechanical bonus for being skilled at blood magic, there would seem be some basis for it, depending on one's reading of the helpfiles. There are multiple ways to slice and dice this issue, with reasons both for and against particular restrictions, depending on the outcome staff are most concerned with and how they want to define the nature of the bonds, now that regnancy has undergone such a huge facelift. I also think the awakening helpfiles could use a rewrite, tbh -- the fact that fire mages also have a spell called Threshold of the Flesh was incredibly confusing to me when I first started out.