I started tweaking to make a hybrid of CHs and mine, but I don't think it will make that much of a difference. We've got CH's version which suits the feedback well. Lets use it as is.
A sort of "averaging" of the two is fine by me, altho' I'm not sure "4's" in his main autocrat-ish skills are exactly "experienced". At Abilities of Level 4, he's semi-competent but hardly a quality professional - that sounds like someone who might be "extra" from a covenant that has someone real.
Depending how many total covenfolk we have, being an autocrat can (easily!) be a full-time job, and he'd have no time to do any real stonemasoning, much less a season (or more!) at a time for any "real" construction or repairs. Besides, unless we're just building a quick path or fixing a garden wall, it will take a crew of masons to do any real work - and the version I suggested has the connections to make that happen.
But if we think he can pull double-duty, then my version needs to be less autocrat and more stonemason - drop Prof:Autocrat by 1 level (4 -> 3), and add that to Stonemason (3->4), and change specialty to "walls" or something that isn't quite so drone-ish. Lose Clumsy (which might be a real disaster if you're up on a high stone wall), and take... Obese? (would need to change physical description).
Or we can just stat-up a real mason, and let this guy focus on the autocrat position - that would seem the better option imo.
Go for it. MTK can tell us if that changes the allocation of the specialists points, as it may well alter it.
If you stat up both, it doesn't affect Build Points--just yearly costs.
We have already said that the mason was serving as autocrat, though this fact hasn't played a role in any stories. And given both the need to rebuild the covenant and the presence of the quarry, the mason is going to be very busy. Do you th0ink the autocrat would be someone slated for that role all along, or someone drafted for the purpose once the magi arrive at the site?
I should point out, BTW, that Covenants specifies that an autocrat has two professions, Steward and Chamberlain, not just one. That's probably another reason to go with two different characters.
Scott
K, this sheds an entirely different light on the character, and what I drew up may not be so appropriate after all. If he's a mason who is "filling in" as autocrat in his spare time, then there is NO reason he should be anything but marginally capable (and only accidentally so!), and, yes, his Stonemason skills should be higher. (I had understood/assumed differently, my bad).
I just took a look at the Covenant pages -
Inhabitants
Magi: 5 (+5 guests)
Companions: 2 (+5 guests)
Specialists: 3 (blacksmith, carpenter, bookbinder)
Grogs: 10 (+10 guests)
= a "household" of at most 20 + potentially again that many in guests - maybe not demanding a full-time position after all.
...and then...
Specialists: +11
Grog captain (Miklos): +8
Autocrat: +3 (?)
These aren't giving the same values for "specialists" - I'm sure someone other than myself will know which is correct. More, a "+3" specialist is only a token gesture at the office - which might be fine IC, but we might just not want to have spent those points, or spend them on a less covenant-critical position, as an alternative (if we even can at this point?).
Yeah, wondered about that, but took it as given at the time. "Autocrat" is more a descriptor of a person's style of authority than a job description. It felt odd, as if "profession: tyrant" or "profession: puppet figurehead" were being applied. 
btw - the different distinct duties vary. I believe(?) the distinction here is that a Steward oversees the domestic population and the house as a whole (supplies), while a Chamberlain sees to the welfare of the rulers of the house and holds the royal's purse. Which is a fine distinction, essentially the first being a bottom-up view and the latter a top-down one. For instance, the Steward would not be seen by the public unless they were guests (and then essentially be the highest servant), but the Chamberlain would act as "greeter" in the name of the lord, and screen any supplicants for a meeting (acting as an unofficial and least "noble" mouthpiece). (Not sure what Covenants thinks, don't have it in front of me atm.)
I like to use the title Majordomo - literally "head of house", but there are others, like Seneschal (chief steward), Castellan (n charge of the physical grounds), Marshall (horses, carts etc.), Reeve (oversaw work), among others (inc. a spectrum of Latin terms, "Aedificator" being one of them), and many of these overlapped or changed from century to century and region to region, or - as in our case - depending on the size of the household itself.
I think you may be confused here. This is the Prevailing Loyalty calculation, based on my guess about the stats of the part-time autocrat I was expecting to be statted out. There are no Build Points involved here: neither specialist was bought with Build Points. Statted charactters never require Build Points, in any way, shape, or form.
In Covenants, the distinction is between the person who handles the specialists (a very small job in this case), and the person who handles the servants.
Have you looked over the rules in Covenants, or is that a book you don't have? Our covenant can call people whatever we want, but in the rules, an "autocrat" is a person who combines these two roles (or sometimes, one of these professions, and the role of turb captain.
Scott
(Starting a separate topic here...)
Don't have access to my FRoP book, and trying to remember how to put together a Familiar.
Basic bird, nothing fancy, about a foot long.
How do I determine Might, and any other values? And using the Houserules (Might penalty -5) what is the best/practical way to get them Magic Theory to be a functional lab assistant?
Don't need a copy/paste of the full rules, just a jump start/reminder, thx.
For some reason (and again, I don't have the book to refer directly to, but am finding more inspiration to keep searching!), I want to say that I read that section as implying that "statted characters" were Player Characters - not just any NPC grog that was given stats. So each Player gets 1 mage, 1 companion, and 1-2 grogs - those don't cost build points - but everyone else does, regardless of their detailing.
I could easily be wrong, but that's the strong impression I'm finding in my memory.
NOT saying we should change - just that's where I was coming from, and the root of my obvious confusion. Happy to get on board with this as written for this Saga.
I certainly have, but not to the point of memorization.
Those definitions do not match the ones I usually use, nor do they make sense to me. To me, a "Turb Captain" is (and always has been, from editions ago) a military position, a warrior who physically leads a group of grogs when out "adventuring" (for lack of a better term). The "Autocrat" (by any name) is not a martial post but a bureaucratic one.
If you say that Covenants says that, I'll take your word for it, but it just sounds off.
(Edit - altho' I suppose in a small covenant a TC could be the Autocrat, since the duties are not much beyond the grogs. In a larger one, I would not expect the Autocrat to go outside "with a big ahrn on his hip")
The default Might for a grog-level character is 3, but that animal sounds like about Size -4, which modifies the Might, making it 7--so a -2 total modifier, which means Training will be effective, but not Exposure. Books would be viable, but a bit painful, since they don't benefit from the +5 modifier for working with the magus. Basically, any time you're in the lab and you don't need to add the familiari's score to your total, you use Training to give him XP's. Also, Might can be adjusted (and many other things changed and powers granted or restricted) with Magical Qualities and Inferiorities: you get Minor Quality one per point of Might, and one more for each Minor Inferiority. A grog-level character can't take Major ones (3 points each), but, under our house rules, a companion-level familiar is possible--but will have a considerably higher Might, and will have drawbacks (see the house rules).
As far as the Inferiorities and Qualities to pick, we can make some suggestions if you give us an idea what you're looking for.
Scott
So most magi would seek a MM 5 (or lower) familiar, in the same way a 5 Aura is most desirable (without warping)?
So that would be the full -MM penalty, right?
I've found it varies, but yes, even with house rules such as ours, there's an incentive to keep the familiar's power level low; the aura acclimation rules make that doubly so.
Note that you could even take a Transformed Animal (base Might 0) or a Warped Animal (no Might).
Correct. Familiars turn out to be enormously powerful in the lab, and with magical powers on top of that (the release of RoP:M I think did a lot for their power level), they really don't need any extra help. 
Scott
ironboundtome and Cuchulainshound, why don't we do this: let's have both a mason and an autocrat, and let each of you stat out one of them. It makes sense to use the character ironboundtome already did as the mason, I think, with whatever changes are necessary.
Scott
Given that we only have a total household of a dozen and a half (not including companions that are "animals" - something I had not realized), and rarely that many guests, I think IBT's original mason has more than enough skills to cover the duties in his spare time, at least for now.
o He does need to rework his Flaws - nothing Major, nothing Story.
o I do think he should lose (most of?) the Carpenter ability, for reasons I mentioned before. If "scaffolding" is an essential part of "prof: stonemason", then that's all off-camera, but I'm against opening the door for him to have the skill to build both build a stone tower OR a wooden one, and Carpenter would do exactly that.
o I also believe that "Engineering" as such did not really exist at this time - it was more that master craftsmen had learned how to build something large scale, had done so before, and could repeat what he knew and had seen, not that they had a theoretical understanding of stress and material strengths and could apply those toward designing anything he cared to.
@ IBT - if you want to lift anything from my suggestions, feel free. If/when we need/find/hire a full-time Autocrat, that character won't have the same background, and so will be significantly different from what I wrote up.
@ MTK - If you feel we're getting big enough to warrant an autocrat, we can find one IC, and perhaps better than "mostly competent".
I'll edit the Mason/AC shortly.
Disagree with your point of Engineering. It is from the MCreator app, and I think it would certainly be a real skill in the period. He dos not need it though.
Almost all craftsmen I know (I have friends who are a professional a blacksmith, another a carpenter) and they all have a very wide practical skill sets. Each is hands on in many other related skills and can rough their way through almost every related challenge they confront. Both have built structures, fixed engines, turned their hand to crafting in others areas very effectively.
As an example another of my friends recently build a darn beautiful house, with bricks, plastering, plumbing, electrics, garden, landscaping - the entire residence from the dirt upward. It was him and his direct family; and he is a software engineer by trade. THIS is what I think most craftsmen would be like in the period; not specialists.
Further almost every farmer I know is poly-skilled. The single profession concept is rubbish. Maybe it might exist in large medieval cities where guilds had a high degree of control AND the population supported it; but not in small communities.
I'm utterly confused - I know you are aware that today is not the 13th century, so I'm baffled at what you think people you know "today" have to do with then. I know people like that - most people are like that. I myself can do carpentry and masonry and stained glass and scribing and animal handling and sailing and navigation and - well, the list goes on. Same for most modern people.
But so many changes have been brought on by centuries of access to modern education, and modern advantages like "the printing press" and cheap paper (and we'll ignore the more modern television and the internet) and publicly available student-driven education, that our concept of "craft/professions" today has little to do with medieval professions and practices.
As a rule, any profession did not learn "theory", nor even had any concept of it. There was no "intro to Craft" - they learned by copying exactly what their masters did (be that father, senior craftsman, etc), starting with simplest tasks and building from there, and rarely strayed beyond rote duplication. Farmers did not learn genetics or how fertilizer works - they learned to take the best seed and plant that with some cowshit mixed in for the best crop, because that's how their fathers did it and their fathers before then. "How does it work?" It works just fine, now shutup and do it. 
(Oh - and leave one sheaf standing in the middle of the field for the fae, or it'll go bad for ye. That's important too. Why? Because that's how it's always been done - ain'tcha been listenin?!)
In fact, it was so bad that, as a rule, people only practiced one VERY narrow profession within what we today would call "the field". So there were bucket makers OR barrelmakers OR wooden cistern-makers - but few would ever know enough to do the others very well. Not because they couldn't figure it out, but because they 1) had never seen it done, and 2) had no time or reason to try.
(Nor would they have anywhere easy to find out the tricks and secrets of it. Who, in a closed medieval economy where travel was an exception and not the rule, would teach a local competitor how to do their job? And who, if they already have a perfectly good job, would take the time and effort to start to learn a different one?) 
As a result, you had silversmiths and goldsmiths and bronzesmiths and ironsmiths and coppersmiths and brasssmiths and steelsmiths- and each of those were broken into subcategories of jewelry or larger decorations or weapons or locksmiths or buttonsmiths or whatever. Some rare "masters" might have the incentive and opportunity to bring several related divisions together, but they were the exception, not the rule. If you wanted a wall made you went to a waller, but if you wanted a street paved you went to a paver. If you wanted something carved from alabaster then you (naturally) went to an alabasterer, and if you wanted a millstone you got that from a (millstonewright?), because a common "stonemason" only really knew how to finish the stones that a scappler had roughed out, not make specialty items - altho' either of those would be better than a mere hewer, who worked in quarries cutting out the rough blocks from the living rock, something a stonemason or scappler really didn't understand, or need to (or perhaps even deign to). And so on, and on, and on.
Not that one couldn't try the other, but their experience with the material, tools and desirable qualities of the final product would not be generally applicable - and "experience" is all they have.
But that's utterly unplayable for a RPG, so we have "Stonemason" with a +1 specialty, and wink at the awkward details and are happier for it!
As for "Engineering", most of the concepts that discipline is based on simply didn't even exist. Ramps worked "because the ramp lifted part of the weight of the object, making it weigh less, and so easier to move upwards." Hokay - apply that to a design. Things like frames for houses or doorways, rafters and trusses for roofs, arches and columns for supporting upper floors - they were "learned" by direct observation as an underling, doing the hands-on work under the watchful eye of someone who had done it before. The next one was done like that last one, and anyone who worked on this one would just (try to) duplicate it on their next. And that was it.
There might have been some rare hard numbers for limits on certain things (aka "advanced secrets" handed down from master to student, and/or jealously guarded within a Guild or family) , but there were no theoretical concepts that could be openly and generally applied, only specific exemplary models taken from existing structures and past projects. That's why every major architectural breakthrough was exactly that - a breakthrough - and rare, only then, by proof of concept, trial and errour, did anything "different" come into being.
And then that was practiced until the new craftsmen got that right, and copied as such.
And that's why, if you wanted a mill, you went to a millwright, and so on. "Designers" were specialized versions of the senior craftsmen, just as the crafts were.
So a master Stonemason would know, solely from personal experience, how to plan and build a great tower, or a bridge across a river of x width and y depth (up to a point) - but that came from decades of being a stonemason across dozens of large projects, not from being trained as "an engineer". So if it came time to make something bigger/taller/different from anything he had ever seen or done, he could fake it from what he knew simply by making everything bigger - but if you are familiar with the square/cube problem of scale*, that would not always work.
(* If you increase an object's dimensions, the weight increases as a cubing function (WxLxH), but the cross-section supporting that increased weight is only squared (WxL).)
Yeah, even then, if we're talking about anything more than "mend the fence/roof/wall" level of skill. If a stone wall of a house was broken, it would be "mended" with rubble and mud - done. Any "profession" would be the ONLY thing someone practiced, or had time to practice, if only b/c they never had a chance to observe the "secrets" of anything complex from someone who knew how to do that.
Remember - even if there were no "Guilds", per se, often a single family had a monopoly on that craft.
(Realistically, some independent souls might be handy with wood and be able to make simple furniture, and make it well - but that's not the all-encompassing "Carpenter" that this game system lists.)
You had narrowly specialized professions in a few, very big cities, because of the existence of guild monopolies. And to be honest, in most real cities, most of the time, guilds were not nearly as specialized as the picture presented by the average fantasy RPG background. I'm sure individual craftsman specialized, but, as you said, that was because of monopolies, not because of an inability to learn how to make a vareity of products. In small towns or villages, a handful of craftsman did everything.
Scott
You present reasonable points CH, but I still disagree. Not a big deal.
You make your characters to suit your ideal, and I'll make mine to suit mine. Essentially it should not greatly change the game.
True, we can adopt any paradigm we choose for the game, but I'm pretty confident that's how it worked for the most part historically.
Any part of "wood stuff" that is a part of "stone mason" (like scaffolding or a special framework to support an arch until the keystone is dropped in) would be covered under Stonemason - he can do his job.
And "Engineering" that is stone-based would be covered under that too. A good stonemason knows how to design a massive stone tower, but doesn't have a (real) clue how to design a wooden hut (unless you can make barrel arches out of log blocks). 
But as you say, this is "Mythic" Europe, not Historical, so anything goes, really.
I think that ironboundtome's trying to be historical, even if he doesn't agree with you what the history is. Step out of the argument gracefully.
Scott
I thought I just had.