I'll chime in just to say that it sounds like the players feel starved for vis. If you don't like it then have an honest chat about it OOC and offer them some IC way to acquire this vis they so want at a price you're more comfortable with than a single Virtue.
Honestly, I've never really seen the Virtue as cost-effective, considering what a normal Covenant should run across.
I'll also echo that the character should somehow resonate with the vis and that it should have SOMETHING to do with the character's concept as a whole, even if only superficially, rather than conceived as some gnome that drops off some vis every once in a while.
That's a little grainier than the ones I remember, which broke it down to maybe about 10% increments, not "halves". 4:3, 4:7, 11:10, something like that.
Do you (or anyone?) know where "those other tables" might be found?
About the players going crazy about this, I tend to agree with the other posters: maybe you could consider uping the vis they get normally a little bit? It seems they quite starve for it.... This has happened in sagas of my group as well. In one of them we hoarded vis just for longevity potions. After we all got the potion we started considering other uses for it. It is one of the reasons why circle/ring spells are such favs of ours: no vis required for quasi permanent immobile effects like covenant heating, illumination or cooking fires.
Yep, that's it, or close enough to what I remember.
Specifically, I was referring to an article that can be found on this site: durenmar.de
Since the site relies 100% on internal navigation and has no sub-addresses, click "bibliotheca vetior", then "Vis Economy of the Order of Hermes" to read this article.
Here is an excerpt, but only one small part:
[color=DarkRed]For the purposes of small or informal vis trades, the 15 Arts can be broadly ordered in the quite noticable price bands as follows:[list]
Intellego (usually trades with Vim in the ratio 2:3 or 3:4) (the most valuable, in part because it's the least common)
Creo, Corpus, Vim (Creo and Corpus usually trade with Vim in the ratio 1:1 or 5:4)
Muto, Perdo, Rego (usually trade with Vim in the ratio 3:2)
Auram, Ignem, Imaginem, Mentem (usually trade with Vim in the ratio 2:1)
Animal, Aquam, Terram (usually trade with Vim in the ratio 3:1)
Herbam (usually trades with Vim in the ratio 7:2 or 4:1) (the least valuable, in part because it's the most common)[/list:u]Any SG should read the entire article over, just for inspiration - even if you decide to discard the idea entirely, the occasional magus (a Tytalus?) might demand such a trade ratio just to work the PC magi.
I don't know if it's the ones you'r elooking for, or if it was in the article you found. I dug around and found our original rates, inspired by the Durenmar article I think. mit.edu/~dcltdw/RPGs/ArsMagi ... trade.html
But the quoted values are totally insane...
Vim is the cheapest there is because it can be "freely" extracted! Making it more expensive than many other Vis types will break the system in seconds.
The base exchange rates we use: 1 pawn of a technique may be traded for 2 pawn of any form
1 pawn of a technique may be traded for 5 pawn of vim vis
2 pawns of technique vis may be traded for 1 pawn of any technique
2 pawns of form vis may be traded for 1 pawn of any form
3 pawns of vim vis may be traded for 1 pawn of any form
4 pawns of form vis may be traded for 1 pawn of any technique
10 pawns of vim vis may be traded for 1 pawn of any technique
That also includes the ability to extract smaller amounts of Form Vis like Vim Vis but at far far lower efficiency.
You can grow orchids "for free" - are they, then, cheaper than the dandelions that grow in your lawn?
Vim vis is not "free" - it takes a mage a full season of work, and that is damn expensive compared to all that Herbem vis growing in the faerie forest.
The comparative costs are based on estimated yearly harvests and demand - some are more common, and some are more desired. Both of those are arbitrary, yes, but not random, not without rationale and a foundation in reason.
If you disagree, fine, change them for your saga. The premises you use in your saga are most likely different than theirs, the frequency of wild vis, the varying abundance of different types. But your "reasoning" will not be greater than what went in to those numbers, I guarantee (except for you.)
Ridiculous reasoning remains ridiculous even if motivated.
Fact is, sources isnt an automatic income.
Fact is also that if you need it, the magi can extract vim vis themselves.
In all gaming i have been involved with AM, Vim has not once, EVER been in lower supply than or something that anyone wanted rather than another form. And tech vis... always more useful, never quite enough. Vim is always a matter of, how soon can i get it, not wether CAN i get it.
Oh, well, if you experienced it, it must be universally true. How ridiculous of me to think that the previously quoted values were anything other than "insane", oh Font of Truth.
The case of Vim is special in the sense that it can^be extracted. Still, most magi of the OoH are not actively extracting it most of the time, and the apprentices that do it do not have very high values. Vim is useful for a number of uses (opening items and aegis not being minor ones), so as quoted Vim vis tends to be preferred over techie vis (Rego, in the case of the aegis) due to the superior scarcity of the later. Still it is not necessarily true that techie vis needs to be scarcer in your particular saga We even played a semi-successful saga (dropped it after 15 years of game time) where there was only one kind of generic vis that could be used for everything.
To me herbam is much more available than vim most of the time. At least in my sagas. Much more than Vim anyway. In fact a lot of forms are much more common than vim IMS in general terms. The fact that Vim is a renewable resource does not make it free. Biodiesel is renewable, but certainly not free energy, to put up a modern energy source example It still requires time and effort to distill it.
The expensive yearly casting of the Aegis causes a constant drain on our covenant Vim Vis supply (we sometimes use Rego instead -> imagine!). Add that to the demand for Vim to open items for infestation/talisman.
These factors put Vim Vis supplies under stress and force our Magi to spend seasons extracting it. I can tell you my Magus much rather writes a book about a favoured subject and have it copied and sold, teach others or sell magic items for Vis than spend seasons in the lab extracting it. I think you should weigh all this aswell.
IMS we usually treat Vim Vis similar to other Forms, at half the price of Techniques. And we use the 'Redcaps charge 100% provision' rules. If we wouldn't have a Vim Vis source, our covenant would be buying it constantly -> probably willing to pay a premium now and then.
Our convent is situated in the dutchy of Schleswig, Denmark and I tell you, the kind of vis most scarce is ignem, followed by terram. Even the red caps have only little ignem vis to exchange and we are at the end of the route...
So your players offer creo-vis? Great! Two pawns per pawn ignem.
Anyway, if it bothers you, ban it from the beginning or reduce the amount. Or for heavens sake let them burn vis until the day of Final Twilight!
You can't blame a player to choose something better over something worse, if the choice if open to him.
If you think that choice should not be open, for any reason, then you need to make it clear it is not an option (in this case "You need to choose between 1 Tech. vis OR 2 Form vis /per year. You can't choose 2 tech. vis / per year.")
This problem comes from a misunderstanding of the rules about character creation in Ars Magica. Many seems to believe that the Virtue and Flaw system is balanced in such a way that a Minor Virtue = a Minor Flaw = another Minor Flaw. This is only very roughly the case. Many minor virtue are more usefull than others, etc.
The character creation system in Ars Magica aim not to balance each character compared to each other.
If you want each player to have a character mage of equal power, you need the StoryGuide (or the Troupe) to do the job at character creation.
That is, he (or the Troupe) need to compare each player's choice of Virtue/Flaw with the other player, to find if it's balanced. Then, some changes may be necessary.
We even played a semi-successful saga (dropped it after 15 years of game time) where there was only one kind of generic vis that could be used for everything. 