If the books are already in a 5+ Aura they are going to be warped anyway after a century. Consider Durenmar with its 7. Not just the books but pretty much everything that has been there for a decade is going to be some degree of warped. The greatest library in the Order, the core of their magical knowledge, is warped to all getout.
IMPO some SG taking warping of objects way to far. In their game they can do whatever they want but I sure hope they are applying the same harsh effects to the NPCs that they are to their players.
It is 6+. Auras of magnitude 5 don't cause warping. Very few covenants are in auras that powerful specifically for that reason. If you pick a covenant like that as your home, that's presumably what you want or you'd pick something else. In general, though,tracking every little bit of warping is neither interesting nor practical.
Regarding libraries, however, there is a practical value in doing so. The comment about warping came up specifically because someone called out how the setting doesn't have all the books enchanted to be nigh on indestructible by enchantment. There are examples of libraries with watch wards or magical fire suppression that isn't on the books, but rather affects any fire that tries to start. But books still age and are subject to other risks. But it is not on the books themselves because of warping.
And warping is relevant here because it is undesirable to have Hermetic books not subject to the effects of time, any more than you want the magi to be immortal. Knowledge being lost, having to be re-invented, age taking its toll, etc are very thematic for the medieval wizard genre.
Also, there are very fun things you can do with warped libraries, as I alluded to earlier. I would fully expect that the Library at Durenmar is seriously messed up and if I ran a campaign there, that would totally be a thing. But the librarians carefully curate the selections made by visitors to avoid that impression. Visitors aren't wandering the stacks, never to be seen again.
The rules on warping 'objects' seem very much like an afterthought; but it seems like Hermetic Summae on Arts could become impervious to warping -- by being 'clarified'. Warping does not apply to full-integrated denizens of a Realm; and 'clarifying' a book aligns it very strongly with the magical Realm, such that the book cannot exist outside a magical aura. Or a mage might find a way to make his book a Magical Object -- similar to a Magical Human, or Magical Creature -- with a Magical Might score.
So, even if a storyguide wants to bother with tracking warping on objects, there may be saga-dependant ways around books getting warped.
Yes, I had been thinking that a book could easily be aligned with the realm of Magic. Possibly even as soon as it's written, if that's done in a Magic Aura. Doubly so if it's made out of resonant materials, as described in Covenants.
There's always saga dependent ways around anything. The rules aren't straitjackets. The clarifying concept does make sense as a way for books to 'warp' from Auras. The "crumbles to dust if taken from the Aura thing is pretty harsh, actually.
This is separate from warping from continual effects, of course. But, like everything, if it doesn't make the game fun for your table, it should be junked. I certainly wouldn't use it if I was going for a more Renaissance feel, with ever more knowledge/books/enlightenment as a theme.
But I like the weird wizard in his tower doing occult things trope with his strange books of possibly unsavory materials in a Middle ages where the world is teetering between the Renaissance and a return to the Dark Ages.
I played a game once where the Order was really cooperative and House Bonisagus was as effective as the rules suggest. Every Tribunal there was a set of patch notes for Hermetic Theory where new things could be done. We played fairly slowly, 2-3 adventures per year, so it wasn't overwhelming. But it was definitely a different feel.
The thing about the Order of Hermes is that there seem to be a lot of people who believe they are elite badasses, especially when they can "prove" they are elite badasses through the simple expedient of writing a book. Sure it takes a while to get your creo ability up to 50 to write that really kickass book, but if you have creo 50 and all your forms are under 10 the book is probably the easier path than competing in spells with someone who has a 30 in both a form and technique.
Most especially it can be a fallback position- you spent years chasing the dream of fertility magic, got your creo way up with a decent corpus and a smattering of animal, then you hit a dead end and decide to write a book because at least you have something to show for your life's work.
Where is that "thing" indicated anywhere? There's no published magi like that. There's no discussion of magi with that kind of attitude in any sourcebook that I am aware of. You can have that be a common behavior in your saga, but there no basis to say "The thing about the Order" is that.
That's practically the opposite of how the Order is presented. One of the regular issues on the forums is that the players make magi that way and the setting doesn't.
Not to mention that's pretty much a circular argument: there's enough tractatus to make getting to level 50 easy, because there's a lot of overspecialized Art 50 magi writing them because of how many tractatus there are.
Anyone with 5 in an Art can write a Tractatus. So technically, every Magus can write at least one Tractatus in every Art a few years out of Gauntlet. But few Magi actually take the 15 seasons it would take to do so, and not everyone's tractatus would be as useful, what with various Com scores, and with some being Incomrehensible.
"A character may only write a total number
of tractatus equal to half her score in an Ability
or one fifth of her score in an Art, rounded up
in both cases."
So Art 1 can write a Tractus, Art 6 can write two Tracti, Art 11 can write three; etc. And this is a wonderful use of some of the apprentices seasons of service -- a few free Tracti that the Master can use and/or sell; and this gives everyone at least an approximation of how good an author the apprentice is. Good catch Itzak. Thanks.
Actually, if you read the rules on writing a Tractatus/Summa, you need at least 5 in an Art to write a tractatus. Sure, you can write one tractatus per 5 or fraction thereof, but to write the first one, you need at least 5 in the Art.
A character must have a score of at least > five in an Art, or at least two in an Ability, before she can write a useful book. She must also have a score of at least five in the language she wants to write the book in.
It may not be directly indicated but Magi clearly believe they are inherently better than people with no magic, and "a lot" is not a huge hurtle to overcome in terms of numbers- if one in 10 magi believes they are a badass then that is a lot. Functionally you have an entire house dedicated to hubris.
Aside from clarifying books, or making them enchanted items which suffer warping to prevent wear, there is also the guideline in Magi of Hermes, p 31:
New Guideline:
CrTe 15
Repair a crafted item, returning it to
an “as new” state.
"The Conservators Delight" CrTe (affects solid objects) 20;
Base: 15 (repair a crafted item), R: Touch (+1), D: Momentary (+0), T: Individual (or circle) (+0)
Momentary Creo Ritual, 4 pawns, 1 hour to cast. Affected book (or possibly 'item or items within this circle') is restored to 'as new' condition, and continues to age and wear from this point as any other item of its' type.
Only the librarians of Durenmar know about the secret regio network known as L-Space, and the strange, orange furred humanoid that seems to haunt it's upper shelves...
Yes, but no one is objecting to Magi being egotistical.
The problems I have with your statement are that:
The idea that Magi can "prove" they are badass by writing a book. In character, they can't see the stats any more than you can "prove" Robert Jordan is better or worse than George Martin.
More importantly, the idea that they are so interested in proving they are badass by writing a book that they'd hyperspecialize to the point of having a "50" art so that they could do so.
And even your more recent comment about a House dedicated to Hubris belies this. House Verditius garners its Hubris by focusing on its Mysteries, which are about enchanting things. And they prove themselves badass by making magic items, not by writing books. Or by spending all their time reading about magic instead of enchanting items.
Spells (and enchantments) have magnitudes and levels; and those directly affect their own performance, and the ability of a mage to create them. Summae have levels, and a people with a certain rank of Art either can or cannot benefit from them -- again, a directly measurable consequences. There are whole schools of thought dedicated to 'forceless' casting, detecting and harvesting creatures with might, or quantifying an exact number of pawns of Vis.
Magi might have in-game access to knowledge of all sorts of things we regard as 'game mechanics'. Indeed, for all we know that might be the very foundation of Magic Theory.
Yes, you can imagine that a Magus is like "woah, I got xp!" in character if you want. And saying things like "please write your insights in a tractatus, because if you write that stuff in a summa, I can't learn from it." "Sorry, old chap, I've read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics already. There's no point in reading his Physics. Won't help a bit, you know."
It isn't about seeing the stats, or being able to prove anything. It is about how their belief motivates them. How many people today (especially politicians) write books because they believe it proves something about themselves or their political beliefs that it really just doesn't. They may be well reasoned political treatises (I don't know, I've never read one) but they seem to come out at one or two a year and they can't all be that great. If some guy believes he is a magical badass, and believes that writing a book will prove that to the world that he's a badass, he will write the book.
