I can see that ... but of course there are differences between magi and artists. I'd have these differences be significant enough to allow for "better." (Something it's hard to handle directly in the Ars rules, since a Lab Total increase so often means "faster" ... which might be seen as another way to say, "more," anyway.) But I wouldn't make the option available until close to the end end of the apprenticeship. So I agree with it being essentially collaboration.
Ideally - because of time constraints ("I can now invent a 10th magnitude ritual only 2 years ... but you're leaving in August ...") - I'd handle it something like a post-doc, blurring the line between end-of-apprenticeship and beginning of full-magehood. Inducements would likely be needed, and conflict could develop.
Interesting implications for the Rhine Tribunal especially, I think, with all those Bonisagius, and the Journeyman tradition.
I dislike with the current "Help in the Lab" rules, because you can get a huge boost to your Lab total - and thus to the difficulty of what you can accomplish - by employing an army of Intelligent, Gifted people who know nothing except for a ton of Magic Theory. Say, a bunch of properly "educated" Hedge Wizards. Sure, you need an adequate Leadership score for that, and there may be "social" consequences - but then, who needs to know?
Instead, I'd replace them with:
alternative rules for apprentices, above, that allow for a less skilled Hermetic magic-worker to boost the productivity of a more skilled one (while mostly thought for apprentices, they would also work nicely for, say, a young gauntleted magus occasionally helping his parens), and
the alternative collaboration rules below, that allow two - or sometimes more - magi to collaborate, and achieve together what neither would be able to achieve alone regardless of the time spent. The rules can also work for a master who obtains an apprentice with talents he does not himself possess, who would forgo the usual productivity boost for an attempt to "push the envelope".
Hermetic collaboration
Two individuals can collaborate to achieve what neither could on his own in any seasonal activity; if the activity requires the Gift, both must be Gifted. When this happens, they are treated as a single individual, with the best traits of both: one who has the higher score in every characteristic, Art, and Ability (including applicable specialties), who has all the Virtues that either has, and only the Flaws that both have.
In general, collaboration requires a ... collaborative spirit and reasonable communication, so a non-Gentle Gift unshielded by the Parma Magica, Flaws such as Incomprehensible, or lack of a common language (including Magic Theory 1+ for Hermetic work) prevent effective collaboration. Collaboration is most useful for individuals of similar overall ability, but very different specializations - the epitome might have been Bonisagus working with the Founders - but a master with a particularly talented apprentice (say, an Inventive Genius) can also leverage the apprentice's strengths to attempt an ambitious project rather than to increase Lab productivity as per the alternate Hermetic Apprenticeship rules above.
More than two individuals can occasionally collaborate with the same mechanics (the combined entity has the best traits of all), but this requires great coordination and tends to offer diminishing returns. As a rule of thumb, 2+n collaborators may work together if each has an appropriate Personality trait of at least +n, and either they all have Communication scores of +n or better, or they are led by someone with Presence +n or better and Leadership 4n or better. For example, a Leader with Presence +3 and Leadership 12 might coordinate a team of 5 people, each with an appropriate Personality Trait at +3.
I've never found the current rules a problem ... likely because no one in my games every tried to apply them beyond rare, short term episodes. They are awfully advantageous ...
If players were to pursue it, I'd probably use your rules, more or less (perhaps a favorably weighted Art average?), but I'd be tempted to always impose Personality and/or Leadership rolls, to see if the theoretical benefits are fully realized. AND MT rolls, if the magi have significantly different training (A Mercurian Verditius vs a Scottish "hedge witch," for example), and to integrate those oh-so-beneficial Foci. So you get the possibility of wasted seasons, or - for example - plagues of man-eating locusts, as the magi bicker or simply fail to understand each other.
Presence n and Leadership 4n is truly punishing. A mage with Presence 5 needs to spend 1050 xp on Leadership alone, plus have four different stories to obtain the assistance of four different mages. And the assistance does nothing to guarantee that anyone can exceed their own capabilities; at the very least it seems like all the xp for the individual abilities & Arts ought to stack.
I'm enjoying this conversation while observing it from afar. Yes, I agree that apprenticeships in play tends to produce overpowered apprentices. On the other hand - that is also true for magi. A study year with just 30 xp is a poor year for full time study, and a full lab year will always give exposure + correspondence xp or 12 xp, not 0 (unless you play without correspondence, but even then it's still 8 xp). Not to mention the other issues - book learner, independent study, free study, apt student don't really apply unless you house rule that in. And if anything, apt student should have applied 15 times in an apprenticeship. I'm never sure whether my magi really benefits from losing a season a year to teaching for the added lab total, because I rarely dedicate myself to 15 years of labrathood on getting an apprentice, and because I don't tend to want a ton of fixed ACs and other such jobs. But I do enjoy working on projects at an additional magnitude which saves me a season, or lets me learn additional spells. One house rule I've used in a game was on another level - I required scribed texts be written by gifted folks, not just scribes with magic theory. This gave work to apprentices who were often taught scribing early on, which reduced their xp gain, made them valuable to their parens, and incidentally acted as a control on the book market.
So in order to correct the glitches the new rules cause you have to write more new rules, which have their own created glitches until you wind up re-writing the whole system.
again I appreciate the goal here but has anyone considered the obvious solution- make starting magi more powerful? Then everything matches up, or at least gets closer to matching up.
No. You need Presence +5 and Leadership 20 to have seven people collaborating in the Lab. Given that more than 2 people collaborating canonically requires "exceptionally well-coordinated and cooperative people", I think that's fair; it's certainly intended. I think that 4 people (Pre+2, Leadeship 8) should be the practical limit. Particularly, because here they are collaborating as equals, each lending his own strengths. Even Bonisagus did not work with all the other eleven Founders at the same time!
The idea behind the rules should be exactly this: if you have four craftsmen/researchers etc. who are all of the same skill, and also have the same strengths and weaknesses, it's just right that they should not collectively able to exceed the capabilities of any one of them working alone for a longer period of time!
That's not the only issue I'm trying to correct. There are at least three more.
First, an apprentice (unless more gifted than you in some way) should not boost your peak ability, only your productivity; this is what happens in virtually every activity in the real world that resembles a master-apprentice workshop.
Second, there's the problem that unless heavily optimized or in some niche situations, particularly for an elder magus, an apprentice is often more of a hindrance than a boon, in that getting a Lab bonus of say, +5 on average 3 seasons out of 4 does not really compensate you for the loss of the 4th season. This should not be the case: if you want to churn out magic work well within your capabilities, an apprentice should boost your productivity even accounting for the time spent teaching him.
Third, under the current rules, a master has every incentive to focus on Magic Theory alone, and teach the apprentice no Arts, no spells, no other Abilities etc. Sure, this will/may reflect poorly on him socially, but the tension exists and is mechanically ugly: a master instead should have no inherent disincentive to give his apprentice the "well rounded" education.
Not at all. If you look at the original post the entire idea was that three types of (simple) rules should be used, for:
lower-skill help (typically apprentices) that should boost your productivity without being able to boost your peak ability (as is the case in most "real world" apprenticeships). The rule is simple: every 2 seasons of labwork with an apprentice to help, you get an extra season for free - and the apprentice gets 8xp and 4 levels of spells, slightly better than practice.
collaborations between "different equals", where you actually can exceed peak ability. The rule is again simple: the collaboration ensemble uses the best traits of each participant. Yes, a set of identical collaborators won't be able to exceed the capabilities of any single one of them, but to me this seems a feature rather than a bug.
familiars, that I think should help you in the lab not by being experts of Magic Theory, but by bringing their own unique quirks to your lab routine. I think the best way to do this would be to use some variant of the Lab personalization rules from Covenants. E.g. with a familiar that's a fire-breathing drake, I can see a magus using that fire to work a superior forge (maybe +2 Ig, +1 Te?). I'm still thinking about the exact mechanics.
Then the system is superfluous; just scrap it. Teams of near-peers get no advantage at all; the juice is not worth the squeeze.
Allowing the xp to pool to buy a higher level of Arts and Abilities for the collaboration already has balancing effects from pyramid pricing. If you feel it is too generous, then perhaps divide the pooled xp by some factor less than the number of peers.
Mercurians apparently collaborated on seasons-long (and possibly many-years-long) Wizards Vigils without having to jump through hoops like this -- and those are groups of near peer wizards, working on seasonal projects (castings) without the benefit of Parma Magica.
They could definitely be abused. Verditius, in particular, can abuse them with ungifted workers with Craft to improve item creation.
As GM, Iād have no problem with Magi working together to build a great project.
If it becomes routine and abused, Iād ask the players not to abuse the poor system. You never want to tempt the GM to create house rules because youāre abusing the system.
On the other hand, Iāve never seen it be abused in my games because magi generally are more interested in their own projects.
I disagree. If I am a Creo Ignem specialist and you are a Perdo Corpus specialist, and we need to create that Big Healing Ritual, it might well be worth it. Even if our Art and Ability scores are all exactly the same (a rare occurrence), and you are an Inventive Genius of Great, Great Intelligence, while I'm just a humble magus of average Intelligence ... but with a Minor Focus in what we need to do, collaboration might be worthwhile.
There is exactly zero reasons for there not to be a lab text for 'Big Healing Ritual' in Durenmar. Or available from someone who is actually a CrCo specialist -- especially since that peer-specialist will be exactly as good as both mages in the collaboration. That goes for every possible TeFo as well -- why spend several seasons collaborating to invent a spell that could be produced in just one with the appropriate text?
By your rule as proposed, there is no reason for several CrCo specialists to pool their expertise to produce an amazing new spell. Any single one could equally well write a spell alone which is exactly as good as the one which comes out of the collaboration.
While JB makes a really excellent case for scraping all spell invention rules as being superfluous, I think a minimum collaboration bonus - lowest MT? Int+MT? That seems familiar. - may be a good idea. To show the benefits even truly identical magi - trained by the same master? - can get by pooling their efforts.
To go to your craftsmen analogy, two craftsmen of the same skill working on the same chest of drawers can get it done faster, or add fancier ornamentation while still not missing the deadline.
Your rules would still add extra requirements, and allow for potentially much higher bonuses.
I'm increasingly liking the idea of treating it something like Experimentation, where there's risks - both from personality clashes and from purely magical mishaps.
Riffing off BlueThing00's points, this strikes me as a framework that could nicely handle potentially abusive exploitation of collaboration in an interesting, story-rich way.
I can imagine an Order where collaboration is fairly common ... And commonly leads to both powerful effects and all sorts of problems.
I havenāt had to have the ādonāt abuse the poor systemā talk for Ars, but I have in other games, partly because you have to get pretty ridiculous for Ars to get out of hand more than normal mage power levels.
If you have to have that talk, I take the route of appreciating that the player found a cool way to abuse the system, and asking them to not do it again because it makes things less fun for other players.
Iāll allow some character retconning if needed for the player to be happy with it.
Iāve never had a player who had a problem with me taking that approach.