thanks, Kevin.
The long post helped. I still think it's odd to teach non-gifted mundanes magic theory to have them set up a lab, but you can of course educate your scribe rather than recruit her. It's not against the rules as I see it.
Int + MT sounds right for durenmar
And I'm sure I'll find something that can be used to simulate your quest for the runts of magic.
For what it's worth, in the sagas I run I don't allow non-magi to set up the labs, nor do I allow the non-physical abilities to use the Training rules. Neither make sense to me, so I usually house rule on that.
Sure thing - the main reason to train his scribe/neice is that the training itself is incidental - he can do it simultaneously while doing seasonal lab work, so there's no reason NOT to do it, and the end result is "At last! Someone who knows the difference between a ward and a warlock" - so it's as much a roleplay thing as anything else. (Plus, while they can't act as Lab Assistants, they CAN act as general helpers....which I think grants a Safety bonus.)
Also, my theory is that he can get a good deal on lab note trade from Duremar, as he's (by definition) going through the archives and looking for obscure lab notes for things that no one is currently working on, and probably don't care too much about.
Getting a scriptorium is a nice goal but in my opinion we don't have high enough writing potential yet for it to be worth the expanse of 3 specialists. Getting additional sources of outcome to pay for them seems necessary imho, that would mean doing some exploration of the surroundings.
Isn't latin 5 a requirement to translate into latin ?
Anyway, my season planning (we probably need a thread for this)
Yeah I've heard that interpretation. Mainly I think of it as the classic Apprenticship-style training, where you're sitting in the corner working on your own project, and the magi comes along every so often and corrects/discusses the technique with you. Or alternately, you're working directly with the magi, but the benefit of your assistance is cancelled out by the time it takes the magi to correct you and teach you. Or the Wizard simply narrates what he's doing, while giving you minor tasks to perform to show proof-of-concept.
Out here in the real world, I've done this a couple of times - the whole "work Mentor" idea seems to map fairly well to this style of XP source, and I've done it both with Writing and computer programming. It's not a perfect fit, of course - mainly because I actually have produced work in the time that I've had a work mentor - but it seems closer than the other styles of education, in terms of resources involved.
EDIT - Oh, right - the word I was looking for was "Internship", as this seems to map pretty closely to what an intern does - not a whole lot, but gains valuable experience.
And in terms of lab setup - from what I understand of it, it's mainly the practical side of getting everything set up in the room properly, rather than an explicitly magical activity. However, you need to know enough Magic Theory to understand what needs to be in the room, and then do the appropriate calculations to determine the best locations and whatnot. (Note that non-Gifted folks can still do external magic, using Magic Lore and whatnot - they can make minor magic items with vis, for example.) As such, as I see it as almost literally "unpacking the equipment and setting up the lab for future use", I don't really have a problem with it.
I use the term translate loosely. The rules (ArM5 p.102, "Writing Laboratory Texts") actually call this "writing ... Laboratory Texts to make them usable by others". It's not actually translating them into a different language, but rather expanding on the "personal abbreviations and shortcuts that others cannot understand".
Are we going to use the extended rules requiring a score 6 scribe, bookstapler, and cartoonist to have full quality books?
It looks like we have a spare cash flow of 50 pounds right now. We could easily add a pack of specialists. Also even though we don't have a lot of writing potential its currently our only source of books. We'll need to scrape for every bit of quality we can find.
Anyway, I like the idea of Grogs with Magic Theory for a variety of reasons. On that note, how much lab set up are Grogs allowed to do. I've always read the rules as allowing grogs to set up a lab for any magi to use, or even set up a lab with a positive refinement and let a magus just waltz right in to take it over. Pg. 118 of covenants mentions the labs at Durenmar are like that. Pg. 106 just seems to say you need magic theory, not The Gift or the like. Page 110 where it talks about increasing Refinement does mention a "maga", but I've never taken that to be a literally a female member of the order, but just whoever was doing the refinement. Installing virtues just says the person doing the work has to have a magic theory score three higher than the refinement.
Secondly, if you have a few grogs with decent talent as authors, you can teach them magic theory, then have them start a [strike]scientific journal[/strike] writing circle and have a bunch of books on magic theory. Get one grog a high teaching score, then pour the knowledge into the magi.
Yeah, I suppose if we wanted to get the last +3 Quality bonuses, we could just send the pages to a bookmaker in Paris, and wait an extra season or two. (Turns out that bookstores existed during the time, but more in the "we will make a book for you", rather than "we will sell a book to you".) Although does the Master Scripter need Magic Theory to gain that final +1 bonus? I forget.
I think we are, although (in theory) we could farm that out to a major Bookseller in a major city - at the cost of additional season's worth of waiting. Alternately...
"Scripters! Do you feel like living in a hole in the ground out in the middle of West Nowhere, France? Come for the filth. Stay for the complete lack of culture and refinement!"
I also like the idea that the people who work around the magi actually have something of an idea about what's going on, and as such they don't react with foolishness when the (magically) unexpected occurs. Or alternately, so that they can run away, and say "Oh, the lab exploded in a magnitude seven corpus effect; the wards probably collapsed" - rather than "by God, a giant man-slug is trying to eat the tower!" Y'know. Little things like that.
I've interpreted it that you can have generic labs (1 season) set up by anyone. However, if you want to personalize your lab, the maga needs to do it themselves. However, yeah - adding in a new feature still only requires the MT of 3+, as it's essentially a combination of physically getting all the equipment in the room, and then doing (external) hermetic Feng shui to get all the geometry and ley lines figured out.
Elizabeth has imbued with spirit of vim, and a level 20 Aegis if we just want to use that.
Oh, nice. (I had to look it up, to confirm that the fatigue penalty doesn't last until the spell effect is over - the Holy Magic version has that restriction, so it's mainly used for instant Creo effects.)
The only issue I see with that is the size of the covenant. A standard Aegis uses a Boundary target, which actually isn't all that big. (300 foot diameter ~= a 265-foot square.) Which is fine for a relatively small manor house + a garden. Is it enough to cover the covenant? I honestly don't know. And what boundary would we actually walk? Most of the covenant is underground.
I thought of the free cash flow as well, but then I remembered that we are starting the saga with no labs installed. Just building and maintaining them will be a drain on the covenant's resources. A standard lab with no enhancement costs 5 pounds to set up and a maintenance cost of 1 pound for typical use (2 seasons per year). The maintenance cost increases quickly with the Upkeep score of the lab -- for example, with underground labs we will start with an Upkeep of +1, which means our labs will actually cost 1.5 pound per year. That is a cost per lab and we have 5 magi, so right off the bat we will have to fork out 25 pounds to install the labs and 7.5 pounds per year to maintain them.
So let's not start spending money too quickly. If after 2-3 years we see that we still have an overabundance of cash, then by all mean let us hire additional specialists. But I am leery of getting them first only to realize that we have to cut on essentials, like grogs and defense.
That gives us a zone extending 50 paces around the center of the well. Even if this constitutes a sphere starting at ground level, that should be sufficient to build a decent-sized covenant. That is another advantage of building down. Though we could also build up by adding two-story buildings if we find that we have unsufficient space -- or if one of the magi prefer not to have an underground laboratory.
Let's not forget that it is preferable to avoid drawing undue attention to ourselves, so I don't think we'll want a covenant with hundreds of inhabitants. And not of our mundanes' buildings need to be withing the Aegis, or even clustered at the covenant itself. We could have a number of shepherd houses scattered around.
I agree.
I may disagree. Of course they can use the C&G rules, but having them enchant a lesser item is not possible in the setting of Solitude.
I want Latin (hermetic) 4 plus Artes Liberales 1, plus Magic theory 1, to be a minimum for doing this. I can't see how someone with Latin 1 is able to write a lab text. A character could of course write lab texts in occitan or kantonese if she has the language skills needed.
I think so, unless you all insist on not using them. I recommend you buy them and we assume they train their own replacements before they die of old age. They have 2 free seasons per year, so one team can do 2 seasons of work per year. For simplicity's sake, we can assume that they can work on the same book simultaneously (I do not want to keep records about whether the book is at the illustrator or the binder in the summer of 1263).
In GotF, Horst of Fengheld is a non-gifted redcap who is a famed author on magic theory. So yes, you could have a bunch of mundane people theorizing about magic without being able to cast spells. They could even write tractatus about it. The best example of this is the "Atlas games forum" - WE are the ungifted magic theory experts.
You can always chain them up in a dungeon and whip them - academic galley slaves.
Ruling for this saga: A non-gifted person with a score in Magic theory (set up labs) 2 can set up labs. Both first and second season. Usually they only do season 1 because a magus who uses a lab set up by someone else (gifted or not) gets a -3 to all activities until he spends a season rearranging it to his own taste (by doing season 2 of lab setup or by refining the lab for a season).
nice.
Let's not start using size modifiers here. The spell was made for covenant, so a normal covenant can use it. If you insist on a radius that extends for hundreds of paces beyond the hole, I will reconsider this.
It reminds me of a joke:
A professor of literature, a professor of physics and a professor of math are asked to cheaply fence an area for a herd of sheep. The English professor decides to put a a circular fence around the sheep. The physics professor outdoes him by fencing the entrances to a ravine. The math professor wraps the fence around himself and says: "I define myself as being outside".
Mainly I was referring to enriching Items of Virtue (RoP:M, pg. 124) - taking Vis that has special properties and making it so that when you carry it in your pocket, you get a bonus. If you can find vis that comes from an Item of Virtue, you can turn it into this type of enchanted item with an Int+Magic Lore + Aura roll (difficulty 9).
Not that I was specifically planning on having grogs do this - rather, I mention it as an example of minor magic creation that a non-Gifted person can do with Magic Lore.
Can we farm this out to an outside bookbinder/binder/illuminator in a large city? (According to Covenents, 'bookstores' exist at this time, in the same way that custom furniture stores exist.) I would imagine it would cost more and take longer, but it has the benefit of not having to keep staff on hand, and is probably more efficient for one-offs.
Heh - I actually had one of the original authors agree with me once that Magic Theory 1 essentially means "your character has read the Spell and Laboratory sections of the core rulebook". Not necessarily have it memorized, mind you - just read and studied it. This is why I figure that having grogs know a bit of MT is incredibly useful - as it means they can comprehend at least in general what their employers are doing, and react accordingly.
Sounds fine to me - I usually formalize this with a house rule that states "Aegis has a built-in +1 Boundary size modifier," which ends up covering all but the largest covenants.
I'd like enriching Items of Virtue to be an ability limited to gifted people.
I don't care where your bookbinder etc live. The cost will remain the same as if they were on-site.
Enriching Items is usually NOT something hermetic magus because it relies on magic lore rather than magic theory. If I remember well this is more or less stated in the book. But YSMV.
It is indeed based on Magic Lore, rather than magic theory. The bigger issue (for most magi) is that the effect has 0 penetration - so unless it's embedded in your Talisman, it can't penetrate Parma.
Plus, if you do embed it in your talisman, you're taking warp every year as a consequence. So unless there's something really necessary about that effect, you're probably better off not doing it.
Am I assuming correctly that all of the magi will want to go to the Tribunal meeting?
We should probably discuss what our goals will be regarding, say, the purchase of books for the library, trading of vis, how to vote on various issues, etc.
EDIT: By the time of the Tribunal, we should have harvested the Animal vis at least once (timing of the harvesting is not clear). Cornelius also extracted 2 pawns of Vim vis for the purpose of trading. I think we also have approximately 40 pounds of silver available. We could use some of that to purchase books on "mundane" subjects like Artes Liberales, Philosophiae, Faerie Lore, Finesse, Magic Lore, Magic Theory, etc.
Well, for truly mundane books (ie, Artes Liberales, Latin, Philosophae, etc?), we can probably just put down cash and/or send a check off to Paris to buy some. As such, I think we'd be looking for deals on used books (or entire small libraries - some slightly singed by fire, or have notes in them, etc.), if we're going to be buying from other magi.
This also brings up the question, again - are the Roots available as 'normal' books (as implied via Covenents - you can mail-order them through the Redcaps), or are they covered by the standard book-trading rules? Mainly because if they are, then there's little reason to get a root - a L10/Q10 summae is considerably more useful than a L5/Q15 summae, even if they both 'cost' the same. (to say nothing of a L6/Q21 vs. a L14/Q13). If that's a known issue with the abstraction, I'm fine - just pointing it out. (I would argue that "any summa less than L7 counts as a Root, and can be purchased with coin, as they are sufficiently common and only useful for a season of study, so as to be essentially disposable within the context of a Hermetic library.")
In terms of getting the most out of Tribunal, the optimum solution here seems to be "don't set up any labs, but set up a scriptorium and then have all the magi clarify their lab texts" - but that's probably not a realistic proposition.
In terms of voting: does anyone even know what the issues are?