An Alternative Ruleset for Books

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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EDIT: Updated formulas

All the discussions on the roots & branches, the libraries and book learning rules, had me thinking about how they could be made more interesting, make them more balanced against other paths of advancement (particularly studying from raw vis), and yet remain relatively simple.

I also wanted to introduce a degree of uncertainty in book study. Simply because I believe that it seldom happens that two individuals will learn exactly the same things from reading the same text. There are simply too many factors that can make a book useful to one person vs another. In short, I do not believe that two characters with a score of 5 in an Art or Ability know exactly the same things.

So here's an attempt at a book rules alternative. Feel free to criticize.

Book Types

The basic book is a Tractatus. It represents knowledge about a specific sub-subject in an Ability or Art. It can only be read once. It has both a Level and a Quality. It is written in a Language, which the author must know at an effective Score of 5 or above (effective score includes an appropriate specialty, such as 'Hermetic usage' when writing about Hermetic Arts, or 'academic usage' when writing about an Academic Ability).

Level = Any number up to the author's Score in the Ability or Art.

Quality = Author's Com + 6

A Summa is simply a collection of tractatus bound together with a gradually increasing Level. Although they are usually by the same author, they do not have to be.

Learning from Books

When someone spends a season studying a tractatus, he rolls a die to generate a Learning Total.

Learning Total = Simple Die + (Book's Level - reader's Score) * (5 for Ability, 3 for Arts)

The Learning Total is then compared to the following table to see how much is learned from reading:

Learning Total Source Quality
10 or less Book Quality / 2 (rounded up), minimum 2
11 to 13 Book Quality
14 to 18 Book Quality + 2
19 to 21 Book Quality
22 or more Book Quality / 2 (rounded up), minimum 2

When spending additional seasons reading a Summa, the Source Quality of each season after the first is increased by 1, non-cumulative. If one spends more than a year between seasons of study, the bonus is lost for the next season of study.

Assumptions & Results

The table is constructed so that the optimal results should be generated when the reader's Score is 2 points lower than the Level of the book, or 6 points lower for an Art.

If the Level of the book is too low or too high compared to the reader's Score, then learning will be cut by half, but never less than 2 xp even of the Quality of the book is low.

On average, with all other factors being equal, studying an average book (Q6 to Q8) should yield a bit less xp per season than studying from raw vis in a decent magical aura (of 3). This is as it should be, considering that vis study comes with the risk of a botch.

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Should Learning Total use Book Level rather than Book Quality?

That would make more sense based on what you wrote.

This is an interesting idea. Iā€™m not sure how I feel about adding randomization to the book gameplay.

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That was the intent, so a copying mistake. I'll make the correction, thanks.

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Just a relatively small one. Note that the zone in which the reader receives the full value (or more) of the book's Quality is 10 points. So if you study "within the zone", then you have very little risk of not getting the full benefits. It is only when you study a tractatus that is either below or above your current knowledge that there is a risk.

For example, if the reader studies a L5 tractatus on Magic Theory while he has a score of 2, then he starts off with +9. Adding a Simple Die gives a range of 10 to 19. So he gets the full benefit from reading the book 40% of the time, and has a 50% chance of getting +2 to the SQ. His risk of a reduced benefit is only 10%.

If, on the other hand, his score in MT is already 5, that he starts with 0, for a range of 1 to 10. It is a certainty that he will only get half the Quality.

On the Arts, a magus with a score of 5 is looking for a tractatus of L8 or L9. The first is only 10% risk of not getting the full benefits, while the second is 20%. Anything below L6 or above L10 is completely outside of his "golden zone".

EDIT: Modified the formulas above. They are a bit simpler now. Updated my examples in this post as well.

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Interesting, I've been wanting to change the book rules quite a while myself and I do have some house rules in my long-running campaign.

Your variant here make a lot of sense to fix one of my main gripes and it's source content vs capability to take it in. I would want to make learning total vs quality slightly harsher even, and for that possibly not even using a simple die or reduce the variance a bit.
A high level book should be out of your range if you're a beginner (keep some juice tomes out of reach but on the shelf gives a cool goal to work towards, especially if you attach it to also contains juicy spells).
Vice versa I've struggled a bit with some players optimizing highly and hunting down tractatii - then stacking that up for next player and future characters. I've always had a bit of a problem with RAW tractatus not having levels, especially when players go above 20 in the Arts.

I'll toy a bit with the ideas here, which I like. If making the effort to revamp, I think I would be looking to add some additional nuances though.

For example, I would probably prefer to have the Quality = Author's Com + Language or Artes Liberales (grammar, logic, and rhetoric specialties could apply variably, depending on what you write). There's also the aspect of the Teaching skill, which could be baked in as a part (or a roll when writing, that then modifies final quality).

You could also add the ability/art in whole or part, or a differential of it vs Level (with some division for Arts, /5 or /10). Since you calready choose level you want to write, it would make sense to get the benefit of quality boost when you are above the level yourself (but perhaps not by too much? the variable gains could hit not only the reader, but also the writer when out of their comfort zone. e.g. an ancient archmage trying to write a low level book for apprentices, he might just be used to too much complexity to manage).

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Yep, many things could be added to what I described. However, the question always comes down to: is the added complexity worth it?

One thing I wanted to stay away from is the possibility of raising the Quality when lowering the Level, for the simple reason that I didn't want the Quality of books to reach 20 or more.

I wanted to keep book study slightly less beneficial on average than vis study, because vis study comes with inherent cost (pawns of vis) and risk (botching). Book study should be the safe slow way of improvement, while vis study is faster but riskier.

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I agree on limiting the Quality to reasonable levels (which is why full ability/Art boosts are out for me too). Currently in RAW books are by far the best xp source, which can be a bit of an issue.
No one ever studies vis (or magical phenomena or artifacts unnecessarily) if they can help it, at least not in my campaign.

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I've floated the idea in my home game about changing books to be more restrictive. Tractati have Levels and Summae cannot be written. It was something people found interesting, but half the players didn't want to have that - specifically for book-keeping reasons on tracking what tractati people have read. The lack of Summae means they expected to get more and more Tractati instead. In the end, we decided the change of rules didn't add enough to the way we wanted to play the game that saga.

It does make me wonder, though, the rules say Arts can't be Practiced. I wonder if removing that would change anything at all in how the game is played.

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Crazy idea, what about it if your base Quality was something like your Teaching (or Artes Liberales) + Language.

In order to actually write the book you need to roll COM + Artes Liberales (or Teaching):

6-8 Barely cranked it out, Quality -1
9-11 Well written as you'd expect from a magus in standing. Base Quality.
12-14 Quality +2
15-17 Quality +3
18-20 Quality +4
21+ Quality +5

Failure means your book is bad and you know it -3 in Quality. Might not want to release that.

Botch means your book is terrible but you love it and think it's great. -10 in Quality, and it will cause disdain and damage to your reputation (might earn an unwanted cult following or something though).

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Actually, in the ruleset above there is no prohibition from studying the same book again. So you don't have that record-keeping problem.

The only thing that you may have to keep track of is whether you've studied that summa in the last year, to determine if you get the +1 to Quality for further study of the summa. And if a player cannot say if they've been studying it in the last year, well 1 xp is not much of a loss.

No offense, but I don't like any of those:

  • Adding your score in Teaching or Language ability to the Quality can crank it up by quite a bit, generating a huge spread in the Quality of books. Com + 6 already generates a spread from 1 to 14 when you take into account the possibility of the Good Teacher virtue. That seems wide enough to me.
  • Having to make a roll then authoring a book is a turn off for most players. No one wants to spend a season writing only to find out that they've wasted the season. It would be a disencentive to write books.
  • At the other end of the scale, cranking up the Quality by 5 points also goes against the "keep books safer but slower than vis study" principle.

One change I might consider is broadening the "golden zone" slightly (say 10-13 and 19-22 for full Quality), so that readers with a more varied score can benefit from reading a certain book. But that would require more analysis to determine how useful that might be.

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None taken. We can disagree and discuss. I see the point of golden zone, and I would agree to keep that tight. I'd say in practice though, your method here really does not work for me because of the following:

Any player character who want to focus some on com and writing books would have Com +3 or +5 with Great Characterstic and definitely buy the (IMHO really boring good teacher virtue, it has a place but I can't see it working good at all with your suggestion here), resulting in all books he writes for eternity are quality 11, as opposed to a general archamge who want to write his master thesis tractatus after 100 years of focus, but his com is a more measly -1 to +1, his quality plateaus at 5-7, regardless if he has Latin 6, teaching 8 and Artes Liberales (specialty grammar) 10.
So in actuality your Quality suggestion would be incredibly rigid, not open for any progression over time at all and a starting character could either be optimized or never write books at all. In my circles that would be seriously unfun for players.

As for adding a roll, my group would prefer some gambling here - and it's ok if yours are different. You could have a choice, you could treat as with or without experimentation as per laboratory research (and limit it to max +3 if you don't like added spread). Taking the safe authoring option is no risk, no reward but result in a stable output without modifier.

If you want to reduce the golden zone, consider the following options:

  1. Latin beyond 5 or 6 doesn't matter, since the language is limited by it's structure and grammar
  2. Possibly likewise with Artes and/or Teaching
  3. "overleveling" the ability or Art vs Level can be capped. Diminishing returns. Or not used.
  4. Simply do Latin + Artes + Teaching /3 (or any combination of skills you want averaged, including just the favorite skill or a new one like "Authoring"), then add a static modifier and possibly add Com (But I don't like it, since I feel should matter way less than actual scholarship (=Artes) and language proficiency, as well as Teaching really should be the shit for when it comes to writing an Instruction Manual).

At the end of the day, we agree on finding the golden zone for game purposes makes a ton of sense, but we seem to differ on how we want to get there. When I next do a campaign, I might be looking at keeping the golden zone in a state where it logically caps for uber- fantastic works at 10 (still a darn good, but incredibly rare resource), but remains in the range of other seasonal xp in the range of 5 plus/minus 2 most of the time, where 8 would be the best standard works players can normally get their hands on (and rare).

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What I would like to see, is pushing one step further the concept: each library is built like a collection of Tractatus for each skill or Art.

Your proposal still requires to consider tracking that a library could have two or more Summae /tractati on a given topic. I would love to see a way to have a "compounded" value (for lack of better word) for the whole collection of various document related to a single copy.

Let's say that as a Spring covenant, it start with a Summa on Creo L 10, Q 10. Decent but nothing to brag about.
During a fruitful trade during a Tribunal, the magi managed to get three Creo tractati and now, their library is L 12 Q11.

Then you apply a formula similar to the one you used.

Maybe an additional parameter would be the "breadth" of the collection impacting the left column instead of the right (widening or narrowing the optimal roll from 14 to 18, to 13 to 19 or 15 to 16).
So collecting tractatus will increase the breadth, allowing more magi from various level to progress at optimal speed because they are able to find suitable material in the wider collection instead of a single Summa wrote by a specialist that's too hard for beginner.

Each time a new item is added to the collection, it can contribute to the quality, the average level or the breadth or any combination thereof.

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Over in the Roots & Branches thread, I had a suggestion. Basically the idea was that a library of books, or a community of scholars, could be used to add to the SQ of improving Arts by studying from Vis (or, for mundane topics, adding to SQ from Practicing) -- but, otherwise reading the books did nothing to increase scores. Books and scholars could be consulted repeatedly, season after season -- but as a students ability rises, they get diminished returns.

TRACTI:
Track Name, Subject, and Quality of all Tracti in the library. 'Studying from Tracti in the library' pools together the Quality of all appropriate Tracti; that pool buys a 'Bonus to SQ' for studying a subject; minus the score in the subject of the student from that total. The remainder is the bonus to SQ from Tracti. Tracti used in this manner are unavailable to any other project (several folks working together in a Season on the same project all have access to the same books).

SUMMAE:
Track Name, Subject, Quality, and Level, of all Summae. When 'Studying From Summae that are in the Library' a Magus may use Summae only if the level of the unique (extra copies of a Summae add nothing) Summae is greater than the score the mage has in the subject. All of the Summae of sufficient level (and above) pool their Quality together; that pool is treated as xp to buy the subject of the pool to a particular total. That total is the 'Bonus to SQ' of that season of study -- and, for that season, all of the Summae in the pool are unavailable to any other project (several folks working together in a Season on the same project all have access to the same books).

SCHOLARS:
Treat scholars as Summae; with L= their score, and Q= Teaching + Comm + Virtues + Score. Teaching and Comm are both limited by Language; of whatever the common language between scholar & researcher happens to be. Scholars can help a number of different researchers in the same topic in one season based on their Teaching Ability score; but there is no bonus to the Scholars Source Quality for having only one or two students -- those boni apply to 'teaching', not to this form of research assistance. The number of Scholars who may assist a researcher in a season is limited by the Leadership score of the Researcher.

COMBINING RESOURCES:
Tracti, Summae, and Scholar pools may be combined; calculate the 'Bonus to SQ' for Tracti first, then the quality pool from qualifying Summae & Scholars can improve that by continuing to increase the SQ bonus along the appropriate pyramid scale.

I agree study from Vis is pretty crazy right now; a mage extracts Lab Total / 10 vis, and then uses twice that amount for study. And, of course, Vis for each specific art (beyond Vim) is more difficult to come by. Maybe the basic 'learn from Vis' would be better at one Vis required per full ten score in Art, and always at least one. And perhaps allow a small bonus to SQ for every extra pawn beyond the minimum, limited by the mages MT score -- of course, that means that botches are more severe. Of course, loosening the Vis requirement for study also affects the highest Arts scores that a mage can aspire to in the saga, so any adjustment needs to be carefully considered.

I am just spit-balling here; I am aware that this is a problem which has provoked a lot of discussion. I do not expect to have proposed a perfect solution, I just want to contribute a concept which I hope is useful.

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I don't think the concern is that it's too expensive in Vis, but that it's slower than good books and more dangerous. So your second suggestion here might help. Or maybe give a fixed bonus, maybe Magic Theory/2. (Because Magic Theory isn't useful enough already... Maybe make it Lore?)

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A possible extra rule would be that the Good Teacher virtue increases the range over which the book delivers good results, maybe by giving a bonus to the roll that can optionally be added after the roll is made. One characteristic of a good teacher is that they can write material that is clear to a beginner but also has enough depth for more advanced students.

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Well, one complaint about 5e books is that they are super easy, and a 'writing circle' can get to arbitrarily large Art scores. In older editions, books stopped being useful past a certain point, and mages had to resort to studying from Vis -- but 5e does not work that way.

The change to 'books increase SQ when studying from Vis' means that now mages always study from Vis -- and their MT controls how much Vis they can use to study from. Once a mage hits their MT / Vis limit, no more study is possible at all -- regardless of the books available. So if the cost in Vis to study is reduced, maximum Art levels will increase. Some folks will find that to be a problem; so it is something to keep in mind or (better yet) discuss with the group.

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The formula is cool. Might be intimidating for some players. We could "resolve" the formula and just add a dimension to the books. Say we call it "Target Audience Level" and set that the Author wrote the book for say Level 5 audience +/- 2 (or 3 the good teacher/Good Student virtue is at play, or 4 if both) & then just set the general rule that quality is at +2 within range and incremental -1 when out of it up to max level of text.

W

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Just make the base quality language +1. Lets people with bad latin write books, gives marginal advantage to people with very good latin, replicates existing stat for everyone else.

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The idea that a reader's understanding is directly related to an author's skill is the most "noblebright" (as opposed to grimdark) fantasy concept I've come across in awhile. :slight_smile:

I think the best thing offered by these rules is the idea that the best book is one right for the reader, currently represented by the fall of in effective Quality where there's too great a score difference. This is definitely not a criticism, but instead a suggestion: Lean into that.

It creates a demand for a wider variety of books, and opens the door to further mechanics that might be of interest in sagas where there are a lot of books. For example, Quality might be altered by shared virtues or flaws, and tracking that could lead to picking up modifiers based on the books you read.

My groups have generally preferred lab explosions to reading, and our HRs involve engaging with books less than the core rules provide for. But I say, if players are going to be regularly writing books, and/or reading continues to be a major method of Art improvement all a mages life, don't be content with a single minor modification to the very simple, very abstract rules that currently describe Hermetic reading and writing, especially in a long-term campagin.

Bring the books to life.

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That's an interesting suggestion. Perhaps giving the option to the author of applying some of his virtues and flaws to his work? Then the reader gets a bonus if he shares those, and a malus if he doesn't?

That would mean some books are perfect for one's lineage, and of not much interest to anyone else (except perhaps as a insight for that Bonisagus performing research on something related).