[aaminoff]

The swing from magic-1 to drain-2 does get you a significant stack of design points, I like your idea of using skeptics to create a magic scales neutral research center, and in the first year those philosophers are not hurt too badly by it at research 8-1=7.

So I have been wanting for months to try this using the Virtue. My question is, how important is the minor N bless? In my experience with Helheim's Vanjarls, the regen just does not kick in all that often - if you are taking damage, you take enough damage that fairly quickly the mistform gets popped and then a couple large hits and thats it. Whereas most of the time awe + defense + protection keeps the hits off entirely. The exception would be poison, where regen is a great way to be poison-immune, but we can get there by using nature magic instead.

I want to skip the N bless because with the Virtue's new path cost of 70 or so, I can afford only one new path: E4, which also bumps up her naked protection into the range where stray hits that get through from typical indies are fairly minor.

[edit: Im contemplating this under CBM, where the Virtue starts with A and S and is a bit cheaper]