To be clear, Magic-Owl is weighted towards Norse magic, but it is possible to get other cultures' magic as well.
This is largely what I assumed, yeah.
I don't think it's that bad, because otherwise it'd be a sucker option. Mild near-sightedness in exchange for access to magic is a great bargain, and I'm a bit annoyed that it's falling behind in favor of using our Fylgja as an offtank (Which isn't great beceause it's never going to have as much Endurance as we will), or a random gacha roll every turn at the cost of a gigantic compel that will get us into trouble.
Shield-Owl isn't bad, I just think it's not a great option and doesn't make best use of the opportunity. Again, that level of nearsightedness isn't going to seriously harm day to day life or ordinary battles, only things where extreme ranges are in play.
I can't tell what about my you're objecting too in my post, so it's hard for to respond.
I think the compel will be about as manageable as bloodlust is, which we've dealt with pretty well, and possibly not even that bad given it's resistable and controlling herself is one of Halla better traits.
I think that you're kind of shrugging of the idea of ranged combat a bit too loosely, because it's actually a serious concern. Raiding parties frequently ran into enemy archers and norse warbands employed them to good use themselves, as sen by our last two battles involving a fair bit of archery interplay in the background.
'The enemy has access to bows and other extreme ranged weapons', would b a genuine concern that needs to be dealt with in most pitched battles a viking would find themselves in, and the real world lacked people who could fling Xianxia magic at eachother through melee weapons or their hands.
Those fights are also the ones where our Flyja is most vulnerable due to it being a flying creature and focusing on it being the standard way people take out Flyja users in this culture according to steinarr.
Having our fylgja out in combat is an unacceptable risk right now barring going Shield-Owl, I think...but bear in mind that 'for now'.
Even if the spells we get aren't good for that, or aren't useful for us at all (and I suspect some, even most, will indeed be very useful, if perhaps not in this specific area), our hugareida is actually quite good at defensive tricks and I suspect we can come up with another one if we choose to do so to protect our fylgja, so in the long run doing so is doable. The short run? Not nearly as much.
And the short run needs thinking about, because besides our fated encounter with Reinarr, 16th birthday boss fight, and raid trials to worry about we still have reason to believe their are bandits in the area and have a number of othr antagonist residents in our neighborhood.