Alternate Teaching - Hermetic Instruction

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hello all, so while thinking about my Scholae Magicae idea I came up with this alternate method for education. I am kind of proud of this version and so I wanted to share it. Now, this said, if you have differing thoughts I would love to hear it. If you have additions that would make sense please tell me. And if you have another version that does it better or whatnot please present the idea.

Instruction Advancement

This method of Advancement provides an education through a means mystically empowered. Only those who have the Hermetic Instructor minor virtue may utilize this method of Advancement to educate others. While only those who have had their Arts Opened using the technique of the Scholae Magicae may learn using this method. An individual may not be both a student and an instructor during the same season. The instructor and any students must share a common language.

The Instruction Source Quality is equal to the Instructor's Communication + Instruction + 4 + bonus with a Gain Limit being the instructor's score in the Art or Ability. If an instructor has ranks in the Teaching Ability then he may apply one-half it its total to his Instruction Source Quality. Ranks above five in the language of instruction provide a cumulative plus one bonus to the Source Quality. (Example, having Latin 6 grants a +1 bonus, having Latin 7 grants a +2 bonus, etc.) The Good Teacher Virtue applies to the calculation of Instruction Source Quality just as it does other methods of education.

A student may attend up to six courses in the same season, with each course having a number of Abilities or Arts taught. Any experience points gained within a course may be split between any and all of the courses instructed. If a particular Ability or Art is taught by multiple courses than the experience gained is added together. (Example, a student is in both the Mentalism and Naturalism courses of which the Art of Vim is taught by both. He decides to put 1 experience from both classes into Vim, adding 2 to his Vim experience.

An instructor may teach up to his Instruction Ability in courses, different or similar. An instructor may teach a number of different Abilities or Arts in a single course equal to his Intelligence + Instruction + 1, minimum two. An instructor is required to have a minimum of two in an Ability or five in an Art that they wish to instruct. For instruction to be successful the instructor must have a higher rank than the student in the Ability or Art taught. An instructor may have several students within a single course, at a maximum number of students equal to Instruction x 5, with a minimum of one student even for an instructor without the Instruction Ability.

Both instructors and students may undertake a laboratory or craft work project during the same season that they are using the Instruction method. This does give them a -5 penalty to Lab Totals due to the distraction of either learning or educating others. If a student or instructor undertakes such work then they gain Exposure experience in the Abilities or Arts of the project. Only a single laboratory or craft project may occur in a season.

In a season both the student and instructor gain Practice experience in Latin. A student will also gain Instruction experience equal to the Source Quality of the instructor. (Within the Scholae Magicae the average Source Quality of Instruction is 12, though this does vary.) The instructor will also gain Exposure experience that they may put into the Instruction Ability, the Ability or Art being instructed, or (if an Art is being taught) the Magic Theory Ability.

Experience Note

Oh, and one more thing. I codified what sort of experience characters can get at the same time.

Characters of the Scholae Magicae have three academic seasons and a free season. The free season represents breaks, holidays, and travel times between home and the boarding school. Within a season a character can:
-undergo Training, Teaching, or Instruction Advancement.
-get Exposure experience in numerous topics.
-get Practice experience, mostly in Latin.
-get Adventure experience.*
-accomplish laboratory or craft work with a -5 penalty.

*Adventure is something that I apply to PCs only, and should in my estimation go above and beyond normal seasonal activities, so this sort of advancement can occur at the same time as any other. That said, this only covers adventure that goes around other activities, not which replaces it. As examples, let us take Harry Potter. The mystery he solves in say Year One occurs at the same time as schooling and so can overlap but the adventure he goes on in say Year Seven was completely school breaking and so he was unable to do anything related to training, teaching, or Instruction.

2

All of this Scholae Magicae material looks like a very fun story setting, but is the ability to teach Arts to multiple students really such a big deal? You can just make multiple copies of low-level high-quality summae and pass those out to get the equivalent under RAW.

3

In a way no, lol. But also its kind of 'fixes' something that has bothered me for a while. The nature of advancement rules kind of bother me and so coming up with something like this has been a therapeutic method of correcting something that I didn't really like.

And it has helped me establish the whole Scholae Magicae thing that I obviously have been going on about, hehe.

4

Technically speaking you don't even need multiple copies - medieval universities used the "everyone read from the same book and discuss" method, as described in RoP:D (in the Judaism section) and ...A&A(?).

I think the issue is that the Apprentice rules require that you spend a season every year teaching magic to them. Thus, teaching multiple individuals magic in a year allows you to cover that requirement. (Although I believe this is also the default way the apprentice picks up their Paren's House minor virtue via osmosis.)

5

There is that nasty Gift thing to consider for teaching many students.

6

Do the rules specify teaching magic? My recollection, consistent with a quick glance at the AM5 core, is that the requirement was simply one season per year of personal teaching. This could easily include Magic Theory, useful Lores, or even a language, none of which is restricted to a single student in the way Arts are.

Ok, it's a nit-pick and I agree with the OP that a classroom approach is more flavorful, but mechanically I think a new teaching skill is unnecessary.

7

No, teaching need not be magic. Although if it is magic, by RAW (not Hermetic Instruction proposed here) it must be one on one. It is implicit to me that the season of teaching must be one on one, always, whether on the Arts or something else. It may be mentioned somewhere but I know the core book does not explicitly state one on one teaching. If it isn't the case that it be one on one teaching (or training for things like MT) one could take 15 apprentices by oneself and teach them nothing of the Arts or Spells only teaching them Magic Theory or Latin and perhaps some other abilities that a magus might find useful, leaving the apprentices to fend for themselves with primers for getting their Arts up, if anything... Such a path is certainly not within the spirit of the Code, so perhaps you have a magus who tries to do this and it's a Tribunal trial, or perhaps someone in the distant past tried to do this and the Code has been modified to say one on one instruction, which means that someone ruined a good thing when they tried to take one (or five) apprentice(s) too many...

8

Interesting. I never got that sense from reading the published material. Then again, my view of Order seems to be more decentralized that that of must forum participants. If a magus actually finds two Gifted children at around the same time, decides to make the effort to take both as apprentices, and gives them a minimally competent education, then I don't see the Tribunal objecting.

9

I was thinking about things and while I am mostly satisfied with the Instruction Method I did remove the need for an Instruction Ability and made the Teaching Ability suffice. An instructor still needs the Hermetic Instructor minor virtue and a student needs to have his Arts Opened using a specialized technique, so there is already a resonance effect. But it does make it possible for the standard Teaching Ability to work without much modification.

Not that I am against the conversation on the practices of Hermetic apprenticeship and the nature of the training a season per year but I was wondering if anybody had any actual thoughts on the new method in itself? :slight_smile:

Its funny, but the nature of this method just provides a mechanical representation of how the experience points would be rewarded in a potential saga of the school - players of students choose their classes from a list and then get a number of experience points as a standard which they can then put into a number of abilities learned in each course.

10

There are counterexamples in HoH:TL, in the Bonisagus section - it describes a magus teaching a friend's apprentice (and their own) at the same time, and then the next year having the friend teach the two apprentices.

I was under impression that in order to gain your paren's Minor Hermetic virtue from osmosis, you needed 12 Seasons of one-on-one magical training, though - as 12 seasons of "being in the same room" doesn't seem to cut it (ie, being a Lab assistant). As such, I would imagine that 12 seasons of non-magical Teaching wouldn't cut it, either.

11

The code also requires that such instruction be personal; and by fostering apprentices both magi Bonisagi are breaking the Code, technically. I will stipulate that the personal instruction need not be one on one, since that seems to be a sticking point for you. But there's a significant advantage lost when the instruction is one to two or many instead of one on one. And how many things can one teach an apprentice and a non apprentice in the same season? So, with the exception of fostering, which is 8 seasons of 2 on 1 instruction, instruction, for all intents and purposes is one on one. Sure, someone could push it in the Code, there's plenty of wiggle room for a trial here. Is instruction still personal when it's more than master and apprentice?

Apprentices details that 10 seasons of one-on-one interaction are needed to acquire the House Virtue for about half of the Houses.

12

I'm still not seeing the problem with taking two apprentices. Consider the following situations:

A selfish magus takes a single apprentice and gives him the minimum one season per year of instruction, on an individual basis, and uses him as a lab slave for the remaining seasons.

or, a second magus takes two apprentices (leaving aside how he manages to find them), and teaches them Abilities together for one season per year. He gives them two free seasons per year to learn Arts from the magus's ample library. The final season is one-on-one labwork, conducted in different seasons for each apprentice.

The apprentices of the second magus are clearly getting a better education, if the Tribunal even cared about that, which it probably doesn't considering the treatment condoned for Tyatlus apprentices for example.

13

The problem isn't taking two, but taking more than two.

Edit: this is a problem in the standard setting, in the setting where there's a system of Hermetic Instruction and the typical master/apprentice relationship is changing, it's not a problem.

14

I quite like the rule, especially if you replace the "Instructor" ability with the regular "Teaching" skill, with the caveat that the Hermetic instructor has the hermetic virtue "Instructor".

Points to consider:
The lab where the instruction is given must have the "Gallery" feature to accommodate more than a couple of students.
The students are busy taking notes and observing the magi, so they cannot contribute to the labtot of the magus.
I believe it is a nice compromise between allowing a magus to teach a large number of students without compromising too much his personal progression.

In fact, considering the way your grouped the skills, during a "labclass", the magus will use at least four skills or competences and the students can pick up from any of those:
He will always use Magic Theory and very likely Artes Liberales (for astrology, geometry and arithmetics), and he will at least use two Arts.
And depending on the activity, you might even consider Philosophae (if it is involving Animalem, Herbam or even Terram, or new focus research), possibly Divination if it is about Scrying or investigating magical abilities of an item, and I am sure you can find other broader correlation.

I was about to forget: in the School chart, they must be a paragraph on how students attending a class in a lab are not to be considered invading the sanctum of the mage. Maybe it is even allowed only in a dedicated teaching lab (with higher safety and teaching characteristics) designated by a logo different than the usual Sanctum symbol.

15

Actually, four works.

Consider a standard apprenticeship of 15 years, or 60 seasons.

Each apprentice could get:
1 Season of Opening the Arts, one-on-one with the Master
14 Seasons learning Abilities taught by the Master on a group basis
9 Seasons assisting the Master in the Lab, one-on-one
30 Seasons self-study in the Library
6 Seasons of "Other Stuff"
This qualifies both for the 1 Season/year requirement of personal teaching and the 10 seasons one-on-one interaction for the House Virtue rule in Apprentices (helping in the lab is explicitly mentioned as counting).

The Master would spend:
4 Seasons Opening Arts
14 Seasons teaching the group
36 Seasons doing lab work, assisted at all times by a single apprentice
6 Seasons of "Other Stuff"

In return for investing 18 seasons of his time, the Master is getting 36 seasons of help in the lab, and perhaps more depending on the "Other Stuff". It's not notably worse than the cruel master who invests the minimum 15 seasons and gets back a max of 45 seasons of poorly-skilled lab work.

Given sufficient Gifted pupils, one could imagine a teaching and research covenant with four Magi turning out around one new Magus per year. It's not Hogwarts but it's not bad.

16

It's not a problem of the mechanics or logistics if you presume personal is not one on one teaching, I guess I was unclear.

17

Awesome. Glad to hear it. :slight_smile:

And yeah, I didn't edit the first post (I don't think that's fair at this point) but in my notes the ability to use in this advancement method is Teaching.

Instructors must have the Hermetic Instructor minor virtue, and students must have their Arts opened using the alternate technique (though I guess, a minor Hermetic virtue might exist allowing a person with the Gift opened in the traditional way to access instruction, but such virtue is 'secret', hehe)

I hadn't thought of having the classes be in the laboratory, but that is an interesting way to look at it. I was personally looking at it that the instructor teaches, and then at night or in between classes he goes to his laboratory and does a lab work, though your idea is a nifty one as well. Actually, I totally could combine the two versions together - most classes are taught standard classroom style, but if an instructor wants to perform a laboratory activity he uses one of his potential class 'slots' in order to do it. Students might then use up one of their six class slots taking said course in order to basically participate in the operation. Its totally an interesting way to go about it. Plus, its thematically fun and I like that element to it. :slight_smile:

What I might do is that an instructor pc or a student pc being taught by an instructor npc might declare that one of their six classes is actually a labclass, which basically combines classroom learning with laboratory activity. This way it fits into one of the slots that students have. Even more theoretically, I might create a seventh class 'slot' that is only representative of labwork, to basically state where it is going. I'm not sure which is the least paperwork heavy option. hehe

I agree with you about the whole 'not invading the sanctum of a magus' aspect to the charter, its a nice organizational ruling and makes a lot of sense. I also think that having a dedicated teaching lab would make a lot of sense, and basically declare the purpose to all, so no confusion results.

Thanks for the ideas, totally appreciate it. :slight_smile:

18

That makes sense, but remember that the "personal" requirement is at best a legal requirement, not a technical requirement, unlike the requirement for learning the House Virtue. It would only work against the Master if the Tribunal considered it a problem. This could easily happen if there's a shortage of Gifted potential apprentices (which there certainly would be in my favored setting) or for more obscure political reasons. These same considerations would come into play with the larger schools you're discussing.

Imagine a Bonisagus covenant trying to monopolize all the Gifted children in a Tribunal to train for some enormous and demented project. "We choose to put a Maga on the Moon by 1269, not because it is easy but because it is hard!"

19

Since I have made some changes to the Instruction Advancement method I figured I would repost the idea with the changes included.

Thanks for all the comments and I look forward to hearing more. :slight_smile:

++

Instruction Advancement

This method of Advancement provides an education through a means mystically empowered. Only those who have the Hermetic Instructor minor virtue may utilize this method of Advancement to educate others. While only those who have had their Arts Opened using the technique of the Scholae Magicae may learn using this method. An individual may not be both a student and an instructor during the same season. The instructor and any students must share a common language.

The Instruction Source Quality is equal to the Instructor's Communication + Teaching + 4 + bonus with a Gain Limit being the instructor's score in the Art or Ability. Ranks above five in the language of instruction provide a cumulative plus one bonus to the Source Quality. (Example, having Latin 6 grants a +1 bonus, having Latin 7 grants a +2 bonus, etc.) The Good Teacher Virtue applies to the calculation of Instruction Source Quality just as it does other methods of education.

A student may attend up to six regular courses in the same season, with each course having a number of Abilities or Arts taught. Any experience points gained within a course may be split between any and all of the courses instructed. If a particular Ability or Art is taught by multiple courses than the experience gained is added together. Example one, students are enrolled in the Methodologies course which provides basic education in the Arts of Creo, Muto, Perdo, Rego, and Intellego, and the Ability of Magic Theory. Example two, a student is in both the Mentalism and Naturalism courses of which the Art of Vim is taught by both. He decides to put 1 experience from both classes into Vim, adding 2 to his Vim experience.

An instructor may teach up to his Teaching Ability in courses, different or similar. An instructor may teach a number of different Abilities or Arts in a single course equal to his Intelligence + Teaching + 1, minimum two. An instructor is required to have a minimum of two in an Ability or five in an Art that they wish to instruct. For instruction to be successful the instructor must have a higher rank than the student in the Ability or Art taught. An instructor may have several students within a single course, at a maximum number of students equal to Teaching x 5, with a minimum of one student even for an instructor without the Teaching Ability.

Both instructors and students may undertake a laboratory or craft work project during the same season that they are using the Instruction method. This is considered a seventh special course that follows the rules for lab or craft work and not for regular instruction. This does give them a -5 penalty to Lab Totals due to the distraction of either learning or educating others. If a student or instructor undertakes such work then they gain Exposure experience in the Abilities or Arts of the project. Only a single laboratory or craft project may occur in a season.

In a season both the student and instructor gain Practice experience in Latin. A student will also gain Instruction experience equal to the Source Quality of the instructor. (Within the Scholae Magicae the average Source Quality of Instruction is 12, though this does vary.) The instructor will also gain Exposure experience that they may put into the Teaching Ability, the Ability or Art being instructed, or (if an Art is being taught) the Magic Theory Ability.