I found no rule prohibiting a vampire to take the Spell Knack quality and I think it's fine by fluff. But...

A vampire may raise his magic attribute to increase his powers and his awakened abilities. But Spell Knack prohibits the increasing of the magic attribute. Possibilities:
- prohibit the combination
- allow increasing, but regarding the spell the attribute will always be treated as 1
- allow increasing and the the spell becomes more potent

I favor the last one, since the quality is just so mediocre.

Opinions/propositions/threats?

I would tend to say no to Spell Knack for any critter that has a Magic attribute. Per normal CharGen, the only way to get a Magic attribute is to take one of the qualities listed in the Spell Knack description. By choosing a Critter option out of RC, you get the Magic as part of the race.

The intent behind Spell Knack (by my interpretation) was to allow for a mundane who had figured out one trick and while it wasn't as powerful as a mage, could be the edge needed against another mundane.

Edit: If you want to use the last option, take Magician and Aspected Caster (Spell Category). You will have full power with one area of magic and take a heavy penalty on the others.

Follow-up question to your proposition: Do you choose just a spell category for 10 points or a spell and a spirit category?

The way Aspected Caster works, you would pick a specific classification of spell or spirit.

Spell Knack (Manabolt) would find its corrolary in Magician/Aspected (Combat). Any non-Combat spell would take -4 dice pool penalty (this includes all conjuring and other magic tests).

If instead you wanted Spirit Knack (Guardian), the corrolary would be Magician/Aspected (Guardian) Any non-Guardian summoning would take the -4 DP penalty (including all Sorcery and other magic tests)

The plus side is that with this configuration, you have an entire category of spells open (in the first example provided) instead of just a single spell. You also have minor ability to work other magic, though you are hampered when doing so. Taking the Spirit restriction is almost as restrictive as the Spirit Knack (one type of spirit for both options) but you still have the ability to push into other areas of magic with diminished capacity.

The down side is that it takes a larger chunk of your possible Positive/Negative quality pool, so you will be restricted in other qualities that you can take.


EDIT--Re-reading, it sounded like you may want to take Spell Knack and Spirit Knack (Cast 1 spell and summon 1 spirit). For that, I'd recommend Mentor Aspect. You have full access to magic that your Mentor spirit gives you bonuses to but are at -4 to everything else. Depending on the Mentor this could be a -5 or -10 quality.

I see where you're coming from, but i wouldn't disallow Spell Knacks for any of the new character options for those reasons (unless the character is a wendigo, making him a magician or mystic adept by default).

As i see it, Spell Knack is kind of like a step inbetween a mundane and a magician.
Being awakened, but with extremely limited potential.
As there are critters who automatically start with a Magic attribute, but still don't have any of the Magician, Adept or Mystic Adept qualities, i can imagine that, for those critters, developing a spell knack is certainly possible, as both being a full-blown magician and not having any awakened abilities besides those they are born (or quasi-reborn) with are valid options for them.
I regard the fact that the rules for all advanced character options in RC explicitly lay out what magic or resonance-based qualities they can or cannot take and never mention that Spell Knack is not a possibility as a support of that assumption.


As far as building such a character is concerned, you could go with option 2 in the OP, houserule Spell Knack altogether (why should the quality only be un-nerfed for vampires, right?), take the approach suggested by you or choose the Magician quality and Incompetence for certain magic-linked skills.
All these options would be a possible way to model a character with limited magical abilities, even though the latter two seem to be mechanically superior to me.