Alternative apprentice mechanics

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

It has been pointed out repeatedly in the past that, according to the ArM5 rules, apprentices often are not worth the time spent educating them (not to mention the effort to find them in the first place). Thus, the idea has emerged that you take an apprentice not for the help provided, but as a sort of "adopted child" to create a legacy.

I think this is a problem with the mechanics, and specifically with the ArM5 mechanics, where apprentices are somewhat less useful, and the opportunity cost of teaching them is comparatively larger, than in previous editions. Instead, I think the rules should support the notion that an apprentice is to a magus very much what a modern PhD student is to his advisor: an asset, that requires time and material resources to develop and put to good use, but that if correctly supervised turns out to be a decent-to-good investment before graduation. Note that this does not prevent a bond of parental-filial affection forming! But even to be considered good legacy material, a PhD student must pass this "net worth" test.

Furthermore, I think the rules should do two more things. First, an apprentice should boost the master's productivity not by allowing him to do tasks he wouldn't be able to do alone (so, no bonus to Lab totals!), but by allowing him to do more of the same stuff - basically the master offloads lots of chores to the apprentice. Also, a selfish master who optimizes his teaching to extract as much value as possible from the apprentice, should still more or less produce a "standard" magus. Contrast this with ArM5 rules where the master would be in many cases better off telling the student to study on his own from books or from mundane teachers, and in any case would be better off teaching the student Magic Theory rather than Arts or spells.

Mechanically, I'd do it as follows. Crucially, this is about apprentices, not collaboration with other magi or your own familiar. I think those should be handled in a different way (in particular, I am not overfond of familiars adding their Int+Magic Theory scores; instead, a familiar should aid a magus using mechanics similar to those of Laboratory Personalization found in Covenants).

Hermetic Apprentices

If you have an apprentice at hand, every two consecutive seasons of magic work you gain a third one for free. A season of magic work, for these purposes, is one where you'd only gain exposure experience, and this experience could be in Magic Theory. This represents the extra productivity you gain from a second pair of hands, and assumes you do spend some of your time instructing your apprentice. In particular, for every season in your service the apprentice gains:

  • 4xp in Arts or Abilities, as long as his score does not exceed yours, and
  • 2 Levels of spells, that you can "spend" at any time during the apprenticeship to teach him spells you know of Level no higher than his Tech + Form + Int + Magic Theory +3.

You can actually skimp on this instruction and squeeze as much work from your apprentice for as little instruction as possible, in which case every three consecutive seasons of magic work you gain two more for free (in other words, you get 5 work seasons every 3, rather than 3 every 2), but then the apprentice only gains the "standard" 2xp of seasonal exposure experience for helping you. This is considered niggardly and exploitative by most magi (including those of House Tytalus) and is a low crime in many Tribunals and a source of Poor Reputation everywhere.

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2

As for reasons to train apprentices, the Oath of Hermes that all magi have sworn include a provision that they will train apprentices.
While that provision is not really enforced, it certainly creates moral and social pressure on magi to take on an apprentice.
So I expect quite a few magi take an apprentice simply because they feel it is their duty, rather than any considerations on what they can get out of it.

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3

Hmm. The passage of the Oath is actually:

I will train apprentices who will swear to this Code, and should any of them turn against the Order and my sodales, I shall be the first to strike them down and bring them to justice. No
apprentice of mine shall be called a magus until he first swears to uphold this Code.*

I think the intended meaning is "All apprentices I train will swear to this Code", rather than the literal "I will train at least two apprentices who will swear to this Code, as for the rest, it's my business though I shall not have them called magi unless they swear and I shall strike them down if they ever do turn against the Order". If the Oath really asked magi to train at least two apprentices, it would force either a Malthusian crisis or massive violations (thus weakening the authority of the Code), which seems a rather poor choice. I would add that nowhere else in the line this idea that you'll commit a High Crime unless you train at least two apprentices seems to have a place...

4

Did some checking, and found where I got my interpretation from.
I don't think the intended meaning of this part of the Oath has changed between 2e and 5e.

I will train apprentices who will swear to this
Code, and should any of them tum against the Order
and my sodalis, I will be the first to strike them down
and bring them to justice. No apprentice of mine shall
be called magus until he first swears to uphold this
Code.

Technically, this provision includes a promise to
train apprentices, so that those who do not do so are in
violation of the oath. This interpretation, however, is not
enforced. Still, magi do see training apprentices as a duty
to be performed even if one will not personally profit
from it. The only restriction this provision now imposes
is that all apprentices must become Hermetic magi.
The Peripheral Code outlines what is seen as fair
and unfair treatment of apprentices.
The Order of Hermes p39

5

Don't know about you but I have definitely had magi train apprentices because they were very useful. In my case I used a Bonisagus (didn't have to get all my scores up to 5 first or spend a season opening them) with a high magic theory skill who could teach them magic theory:6 in a couple of seasons, and had them ready books 3 seasons in their first year (they had already learned Latin and artes liberales as well).
If they hadn't I would have had a mundane teacher handle Latin and Artes Liberales the first year and focused on magic theory so they could still be useful quickly. Additionally Apprentices can be useful in terms of assigning seasons that don't require your higher level of skill- have the apprentice fix the arcane connection while you do something more important. If your apprentices aren't usefull then you aren't really trying when it comes to making use of them.

6

I hate your premise but also find it interesting. I hate it because I like the ideas of legacy and perhaps duty driving the taking of apprentices even though magi know that training an apprentice is not the path that leads to more power.

The interest part is that I do like thinking about alternate rules. Can I assume that the idea is that a normal apprenticeship would be 15 years each of which had 1 season of direct instruction, 2 seasons of magical work (plus a bonus season for the master), plus 1 season that is not direct instruction or magical work with the master but could be pretty much anything else but is likely to be reading a book or utilizing a non-magical tutor?

That leads to an apprentice having 2x4x15 = 120 xp from the seasons of magical work plus 30 seasons of teaching (or books) which is almost certainly at least another 375 xp. Almost 500 xp plus 60 levels of spells. Compared to 240 xp + 120 levels of spells that seems very generous even if you enforce an idea of devoting some seasons to creation of spells instead of reading/tutoring to get up to 120 levels of spells.

7

I think the two seasons per year of magical work would grant 2 xp (from exposure), not 4 xp (similar to practice). That is then 2 x 2 x 15 = 60 xp from 'working in the lab' -- distilling Vis, fixing Arcane Connections, assisting the mage, etc.

The early years are almost certainly going to be study of Latin and Artes Liberales (so that they can read and write Latin) -- until Latin is at least four, when the apprentice can benefit from books (and translate the mages Laboratory Texts). That works out to 55 xp, however long that takes -- in the absence of dedicated tutors, it might take eleven seasons.

8

No. The baseline is that the apprentice is working all the time as an apprentice - constantly helping, constantly receiving supervision and instruction. That's how it works in real life, incidentally.

So, out of 60 seasons (15x4) the apprentice is getting 60x4=240xp and 60x2=120 Levels of spells. As per character creation rules! The master is effectively getting 29 "extra" seasons of work (30 -1 to open the Arts of the apprentice) as a benefit from the extra pair of hands.

Though you could see the whole process (the numbers are the same) as, every year:

  1. The master spends 1 season "distributed over the year" instructing the apprentice, providing 10xp + 8 Levels of spells, for a total of 150xp + 120 Levels over the entire apprenticeship.
  2. The apprentice helps in the remaining 3 seasons, getting 3x2 = 6xp of exposure (90xp over the whole apprenticeship) and effectively "doubling" the lab output from the master - who does the difficult stuff leaving to the apprentice the easy but time-consuming chores. The master thus gets 6 seasons of work done during the 4 seasons of the year.

If the master is not working in the Lab supervising the apprentice all the time, he'll lose some of those extra seasons; (though he'll probably manage to arrange for the apprentice to get some extra instruction to compensate). This is how it should be: running a workshop, a research lab etc. mostly requires your full attention, and you can't quite afford quiet study and contemplation.

9

Under @ezzelino system every season working in the lab gives 4 xp for arts and abilities.

10

Ah so you are simply giving a benefit to the master during the apprenticeship. That makes more sense; the wording of each season tripped me up because I only ever think of apprentices as created all at once (characters before play) or done season by season in play. Well, or handwaved.

11

The idea was:

  1. The apprentice should provide a net benefit to the master, even if the master spends time instructing the apprentice.
  2. This benefit should be more work done, rather than better / more powerful work - so, no bonus to the Lab total!
  3. The simplest way to model it is to just multiply the effective seasons of work done by the master, i.e. the master, even spending time to instruct the apprentice, ends up with more seasons of work done than if he had worked alone all the time. Slightly below +50% under the best conditions felt kind-of-right.
  4. The apprentice should learn during his apprenticeship. This learning should be better than exposure (after all the master does spend some time actively providing instruction) but worse than dedicated teaching (because the primary function of the apprentice is that of assistant).
  5. This learning should yield a "standard", 240xp + 120 Levels of spells magus at the end of apprenticeship.
  6. The simplest way is to evenly divide that over the 15x4 = 60 seasons, i.e. 240/60=4xp/season and 120/60=2 Levels of spells/season. Which incidentally feels right: it's way better than exposure, slightly better than practice, but definitely worse than having a dedicated teacher devote all his time to you.

Does that make sense?

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12

Sorry, I'm the one who wasn't clear.

In your initial description I was confused because you tied the changes to seasons which, in my mind, turned this into a system similar to the detailed method of character creation where you plan things season by season. However you cleared that up earlier.

As I said at the beginning I'm not in love with the feel of pushing the Order even farther in the direction of research teams and grad school analogies but that is just me. Your plan does a good job of doing what it sets out to do when done in the more abstracted (yearly or over an entire apprenticeship - no seasonally) way that you intended all along.

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13

I'd lower the benefit # of seasons some, but I really like the basic idea. It feels more like apprenticeship to me. I also like the greater level of abstraction, because it removes any tension between the apprentice-as-a-tool and the apprentice-as-a-story. As a recovering powergamer, I appreciate that.

OTOH, I would want some provision for players who do want a higher lab total for part of the apprenticeship. Because otherwise-unachievable projects so often make for a good story. Spitballing, I think I'd make it a flat +5, more if there's some story support for a higher total. Like the parens is B. and "stole" the apprentice, or - now that the lab has been rebuilt and the parens has regrown that arm - the apprentice's Pe affinity can be put to good use.

Maybe +4, +4 more if the parens does something to warp the apprentice into a suitable tool. I feel that we, as magi, aren't doing enough to warp our apprentices.

(No. I don't always play a Tytalus mage. I just always consider it. Why do you ask?)

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14

Personally I don't agree with the goal of these new rules- which is to basically rob a magus of choices and trade offs of how to train an apprentice, and secondly, even given the goals I don't see why you need to reinvent the wheel instead of simply tweak the rules. This seems to me a case of starting by throwing out what works and then building back something less developed that you pulled from a donkey's posterior.

15

I'm not @ezzelino so perhaps I shouldn't say anything but this isn't a case of throwing out what works and building back something less developed. Instead it is taking the basic Ars Magica rules for apprenticeship (take 15 years and gives the newly fledged magi 240xp + 120 levels of spells) and adding a well thoughts out bonus to the master.

You could argue that it keeps a player from being overly generous and training an apprentice beyond the basic amount but I think @Tarquelne is right that the abstraction doesn't change anything with apprentice as a story element. The only thing that is lost is an ability to powergame the system.

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16

If you want to remove the ability to power game the system then just change the values for training or what is gained from a season of work. You don't need to reinvent the wheel.
It does seem odd to go to such lengths to prevent power gaming with apprentices when the entire rest of the system seems to encourage power gaming though.

17

I think the concern is that any properly trained apprentice using the various education rules dwarfs the abilities of a chargen character.

Iā€™m not sure I care enough to change the rules for it, rather than asking players not to abuse the poor system too much.

But, I definitely understand the desire to implement a more balanced system. :slight_smile:

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18

True but the reality is that apprentice will often be worse off being trained that season than just being left alone with the keys to the library.

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19

I think a mage might most profitably ignore teaching Arts; and (as you say) just give the apprentice (somewhat restricted) library access. Instead, they can teach Magic Theory -- the one-on-one bonus, a non-negative Comm and any Teaching skill at all can give a Source Quality of 10 or higher -- better than some many Tracti.

Since the mage gets 2 xp from exposure for 15 seasons, after their first apprentice they will automatically have Teaching 3; and the apprentice can get up to Magic Theory 7.

20

That's not the goal at all. The goal instead is to
a) re-align the "average" apprentice to the basic character creation rules,
b) ensure that even without optimization an apprentice is still useful net of the time spent teaching him
c) ensure that the apprentice bonus is one of being able to do more, rather than better (which is consistent with what apprentices have been about throughout human history: semi-skilled, ultra-cheap help to boost productivity).

I had been thinking about that - something along the lines of +33% (so 1 extra season for every three). It would not be inappropriate. However, a crucial thing to keep in mind is that you get the full +50% only if you appropriately constrain your work routine, and in particular you stick to your lab the whole time: no studying, practice, adventuring etc. If you start to do that, you are not only wasting the apprentice bonus, you also have to make up for his lost education by spending extra time teaching him. As I said before, that's the big limitation of being the master in a workshop in real life - you become a something of a slave to it :slight_smile:

I would say that an apprentice should not be the right tool for that. If you are a professional medieval artist, you do not take an apprentice to produce better art, but more art - the apprentice is the one who does the colour-mixing, paints the background, copies some of your previous work, etc.
There may be one possible exception: an apprentice who has a talent you have not. In that case, you can use the Hermetic collaboration rules below, that are mainly intended (and most useful) for when two (occasionally more) full magi collaborate.

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