I know Paulos is going to have an apprentice, and Zacharias and Poenitens are looking at that as a possibility as well. I'm not sure where Daedalus stands on the possibility of an apprentice. How are we going to work that both pre-game start and post-game start? Will they be advanced season-by season? Will they have 240 points of abilities, Arts, and spells allocated evenly across 14 seasons? (About 17 xp/season) I assume any acquisition of an apprentice has to happen at the tribunal meeting, per the way things work in Thebes. That'll certainly require us to figure out how many tokens we have to start with, since magi offer tokens to apprentices to woo them.
As the magus have to teach the apprentice personal for 1 season / year so one season is already fixed with the teaching source of the magus.
Then I would assign only 2 exp. to the apprentice during seasons where the magus use them as helper.
Leaves how we handle the other seasons. 10 exp. sound to much for the off season of a apprentice as they are limited in what resources they have compared to a magus.
In my first scraped build I did go with 5 exp./season not used up to follow the whim of the magus.
If we want an apprentice to come out with 240 points of Abilities and Arts, and 120 levels of spells over the course of 14 years of apprenticeship, then they should get 40 seasons of 4 xp/season and 16 seasons of 5 xp/season, regardless of what use they are put to. Actually, 5 xp/season for three seasons and 2 xp/season for one season gets you to 238 xp. If we give 2 xp for your Gauntlet, they we get up to 240 just like you're supposed to. But that means 5 xp/season regardless of what use you put them to.
As for spells, I'd suggest giving 40 spell levels at 5 years, 40 spell levels at 10 years, and 40 spell levels at 14 years.
That assumes that we're advancing apprentices mostly as companions, i.e., with a fixed amount each year. That means that your teaching total doesn't matter at all, since your apprentice gets a fixed amount each year, regardless of SQs, etc. (just like a companion's advancement is independent of the SQ of teachers at the covenant.)
Or do we want to toss that out the window and advance apprentices as magi?
TO put it blunt unless we keep the apprentice arround after they are finished the way we build them is very uninteresting. What I just can't stand in the case of the apprentice is when the teaching source of the magus have no affect on how high the Magic Theory of the apprentice is, as int + magic theory / holy magic is nearly the only thing from the apprentice of any importance to our magus.
Another issue is that Apprentices are assigned during Tribunal meetings, and you don't necessarily get the apprentice that you want. Unless you have a long term plan for your apprentice (does he/she disappoint/oppose you), I'd simply set a aside a season a year for teaching, and 15 years later you have a standard character.
Or you if you want to crunch the numbers, figure out your characters Source Quality, and apply it each year.
Poenitens is willing to spend a season teaching people, on occasion. He'd like at least five people, for two pawns each. His SQ for three or more people is 19 (3 Base +6 Teaching +5 Communication +5 Good Teacher)
But you never get an apprentice that you don't want. You offer tokens to one or more candidates you're interested in. They then have the option to pick you or pick someone else who offers them tokens. (If you're the only one who offers them tokens, then they go to you automatically.) So, as you say, you might not get the apprentice you want, if he or she chooses someone else.
However, you can only get an apprentice that you expressed interest in. If none of the apprentices that you expressed interest in choose you, then you get no one. An apprentice you didn't offer tokens to can't pick you.
In Thebes, they only have a 14 year apprenticeship (across two fill tribunals) - though there's often some training after the apprentice has been found and before the next tribunal meeting.
That typically makes for a more powerful apprentice. But as Adauli points out, its' not like we'll be playing these characters. They don't need to be balanced. At best they'll be recurring NPCs.
I'm definitely up for that. But I think the odds that you'll find five people willing and capable of paying two pawns of vis for the same subject in the same season are not good. For one thing, there are only three other magi, and they're usually the only ones with free vis lying around.
I was also thinking that Thebes crams the apprenticeship into 14 years. But what they lose on the tail end, they often make up for on the front end. Since potential apprentices can be found anytime, but are only allocated every seven years, there is often some waiting time between being found and being claimed as an apprentice. TSE says that this time is often spent teaching the Gifted children to prepare them for apprenticeship. This, they say, can make up for the shortened time period for apprenticeship.
Do we want to account for this in some way, allowing future apprentices to take Classical Greek or Artes Liberales for a year or three before apprenticeship?
Or am I getting too much into the weeds for this?
technically you can get an apprentice without tokens, if nobody else offered them tokens either. There are also no guidelines on what happens if more than one apprentice chooses you because you decided to spread tokens around playing for the odds of getting a good apprentice.
personally my inclination would be to make an apprentice as a young gifted companion with the educated virtue, and play through their advancement to full magus.
True. But the implication is that only the worst sort of potential apprentice gets no tokens. So you'd probably be dealing with a problem child.
I had wondered about that. If it's first come-first served, then the order of presentation can be very important.
Would that mean every apprentice has to spend one of their Virtue points to but Educated?
As for playing out advancement, do you mean like a companion, getting a fixed amount of xp/year, or like a magus, with books, teachers, SQ calculations, and the like?
If the latter, how does Adauli handle his apprentice? Does she advance with fixed xp until the saga starts and then start going season-by-season? It's odd because using the proposed full apprentice advancement we're already using an odd hybrid advancement where an apprentice calculates SQ for teaching seasons, but not for others. I must confess to being a bit confused for how apprentices will be advanced both pre- and post-saga.
since these are NPCs they don't have to balance in virtues and flaws, so whether it counts or not is an academic issue- unless it is a PC character, in which case it probably should be one of the counted virtues, but it can be skipped for a character who was recently recruited where the covenant rules of allowing academic abilities will still apply.
as to advancement before the start of play, I'd suggest we go with the model in apprentices p.15-16. namely the apprentice has one season of being taught and 3 seasons of exposure each year.
Can you point me to the page where this is written? I thought Thebes have the normal 15 years with only the year you gain the apprentice fixed to a tribunal year.
About Virtues and Flaws I will go with 3 minor for both and assume that academic skills can be taken after the first 5 years even without a specific virtue. (Taking educated still give the extra points and allow to take classical greek as mother language)
Page 34.
Understood.
Thanks, that means I need to adjust the whole timeline of my character a bit. Probably I take 1 extra year pre apprentice time so the effect on Paulos will be small.
You make a good point. I think I assumed a 15 year apprenticeship, despite the fact that I should have known better.