New Fellowship Phase Undertaking, or: how to learn to twice bake honey cakes

[adamspecial]

Long story short, our fellowship's hobbit asked how could he ever learn that beorning's cultural virtue, being him a scholar travelling around middle earth to learn and discover all that is edible and potable and make it taste good.

I thought of this new undertaking:

Learn from Beorn
Requirements: Beorn as a patron, and his house as sanctuary, in which you are spending this fellowship phase; you must also raise your wisdom during this fellowship phase.
You learn the twice baked honey cake cultural virtue instead of a cultural virtue from your culture as your wisdom is raised.

How about that? How about extending this to every virtue that makes sense following the same or a similar pattern?

[Scrollreader]

If you have no Beorning PCs I /might/ allow it. I certainly wouldn't if I had someone playing a Beorning (or interested in playing one, should their current character die).

As for other virtues, I would be very, very careful. Virtues are designed to interlock with cultural stats. For instance, letting an Elf of Rivendell, no matter how tall or buff get Great Strength can shove them right off the RNG. Letting a Hobbit get Swordmaster can do the same. Many times, a virtue is designed to make up for a weakness of a culture (In Body, Heart, or Wits). The system is pretty carefully balanced. I've been running twice a month for a year now, and I would be very, very leery of allowing cross-cultural virtue access.

[Glorelendil]

From a roleplaying standpoint let him learn how to bake a pretty passable imitation, no virtue spent or undertaking needed. Beorn himself could teach him.

If he had an applicable trait/speciality (like Cooking) he could then invoke that trait on a successful Fatigue check to get the AP ("It was my honey cakes!") but otherwise they wouldn't have the mechanical benefit of the real thing.

You just have to handwave the difference and call it "magic". Beorn: "Huh. Not sure. I showed you exactly how I make them."

[Stormcrow]

I'd go for adamspecial's original undertaking. The idea is that the non-Beorning character has invested a lot of personal time with Beorn—he's not just a guest; he's "in" with the Beornings. So he gains access to one of the Beornings' cultural virtues, at a cost of one of his own. Provided this is done only under the close supervision of the Loremaster to make sure the player isn't just trying to snatch up the best cultural virtues from a culture, that is, the player can show that his character really is involved that closely with the Beornings and not just stealing the goodies, I see no problem with it.

However, as Loremaster I would NOT allow that particular hobbit's reason to be enough. That character is just sampling things from different cultures, not really trying to become part of the culture the virtue comes from. That's not enough to allow a crossover.

[SpottedBill]

What Stormcrow is saying is the key here. I've allowed a Barding character to take a Reward from the Beornings after he had acquired Beorn as a patron and raised his Valour while staying a fellowship phase at Beorn's House. This type of thing is actually outlined in Adventurer's Companion under The Benefits of Patronage.

However, I wouldn't have allowed this to other characters that easily. This Barding was the son and Heir of the player's previous character, who had perished in the campaign. He had been sent to live with the Beornings by his father and had spent years there before entering play. So having a real narrative connection to the place is definitely the most important requirement.

[Robin Smallburrow]

To the OP (I think this topic was also brought up in the AiME forum, see my comments on that):

Just because Beorn knows and trusts the PC is not enough for said PC to be accepted enough to learn a secret such as the making of Honeycakes. The PC must have undertaken the Receive Title Undertaking (as a minimum!), which represents that the character has spent time and effort to become known and trusted by the Beornings as a people, not just their lord.

In fact, it could be argued that becoming trusted by the 'common folk' of a culture is actually more important for a PC than just the Lord - stableboys, cooks, guards, innkeepers you name it! This is often a neglected part of roleplaying IMHO. This is what the Standing mechanic is for!

Robin S.