Covenant Budget and Population

Retired Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: What if we joined them
21
  1. I don't mind athough faerie and even more infernal might will be quite problematic in our covenant. Hedge Magic is either secret or need a reason why it is tolerated by our mages.
    I also think the Orthodox and Latin Church holy magic traditions are probably easy accepted, Jewish and maybe even Islamic holy tradition are probably tolerated.
  2. I think there where 2 people of our group who want to create grogs and said they don't want a limit when we discussed this before the start. But I'm for limiting the totall number of created Grog to 10-20% of the covenant population at start as created grog need to keep updated trough the years.
  3. I think the limit that grog can take no major virtue already limit this by a lot.
  4. For Grog I suggest we should use the normal 15 exp. per year + Ageing rolls continue unless there is a special event that a companion or magus teach them. For the Companion I would prefer a more detailed variation what they do each season to get better and what seasons they work.

In general we should have no (public) Grog created that not work for the covenant or is a direct family member of a companion or magus at the start.

22

When I said we did not need to pay for grogs we create who are craftsmen or specialists, i was referring to BP cost, not maintenance.
Personally I feel that none of the characters should come from the books. To me that feels lazy and half hearted.
Given that we are in a very large city and would likely attract most of the people with supernatural traits to the covenant, I would expect such traits to be fairly common amongst covenfolk.
The other question if we are making magical grogs is what is the power level of the campaign?

23

I think it was said already that we want to play in a High Power campaign otherwise I wouldn't have chosen 2 chars who have little problems with aging and especial the companion would be much younger.

24

very well, that will put grog characters as might:5

25

Ah, sorry I grabbed the wrong end of the stick on that one.

I fall somewhere in the middle. I agree that it's nice to customize your grogs so that they have some personality. Besides, it can be fun to make up grogs. On the other hand, we'll have a lot of grogs in the covenant, and this is only a part-time hobby for us. I have no problem with filling in the corners by using grogs from the books if we have to.

The countervailing argument is that people with supernatural abilities avoid the cities because of prejudice and are more likely to be found in the countryside. Though I do agree that what supernatural abilities there were would have a good chance of congregating at the covenant. Plus, the covenant would be on the lookout for such people to recruit. I suppose an important question is how common are supernatural virtues and flaws in general among the population? According to Wikipedia, Thessaloniki had a population of around 150,000 in the mid-12th century. What percentage of those people would have supernatural abilities?

But the better question, I think, is how common we want supernatural abilities to be in the covenfolk from a story standpoint. One in ten? One in four? One in two? At what point does the tail wag the dog with grogs having supernatural virtues and flaws?

I would say that if we're allowing them (and I'd prefer we not have magical grogs), then the power level should be low, Might 5 or 10. I think it's perfectly reasonable to set a different power level for different categories of NPCs, e.g., familiars and magical grogs. I don't think we have to have a power level that applies uniformly across the board. For example, I think it might be perfectly okay to say that magical grogs must be Might 5-10, but familiars could be Might 15-20.

ETA: In looking again at the rules in RoP:M, I see that "High" level meets my desires: Might 5 for grogs, Might 15 for Companions. So I'd agree that High level is appropriate,

26

grogs with might 5 is considered by the book to be a high powered campaign. Grogs with might 10 is considered legendary.

one more point- I would suggest that grogs advance seasonally the same as other characters.

27

should we limit familiar to 15 Might also as suggested for a high power campaign in RoP:M 34? I ask because I think I can bind a might 25 ghost Re(Cr)/Me(Co) with Paulos.

28

Certainly for starting the game. If one turns up as a reward for an in game adventure with a higher might that is certainly allowable.

29

some points on the maintenance math:
each magi is 10 points- which requires 2 servants at 2 points each and 1 teamster (plus .4 teamsters for the servants) at 2 points per teamster.
each point of inhabitants costs 1 pound before other considerations (writing, weapons and armor or labs), most of this will be in provisions (food).

any craftsperson is 3 points, representing an additional .9 points in support staff (servants and teamsters). Common craftsmen save 1+skill/2 pounds per year subject to other limits in their appropriate areas. Exceptional craftsmen save their skill subject to those same limits. A typical craftsperson with an ability of 5 will lose the covenant money unless they are in an exceptional field. It is worth noting craftspeople with ability 6 will produce a net savings.

Each laborer is 2 points of inhabitants (plus support, which is slightly reduced due to the fact they reduce teamsters), but only saves 1 pound per laborer, so will always be a financial loss.

A companion character does not always require companion level support- for example a companion craftsman would be supported as a craftsman, not a companion.

It is also worth noting that according to RAW a 5 mage covenant has a base income of 85 MP a year, not 100. This actually comes out ahead for a summer covenant since a magus and support staff costs 16.4 MP per year.

We currently have wealthy and secondary income, which gives us an income of (250+100)*.85=297.5 MP a year
5 magi cost 82 MP a year
4 companions costs 32.8 MP per year
This will include servants and teamsters, and I don't see a point in trying to pre-divide them between houses and regio, especially since they do not have to be permanently assigned to one or the other.
each specialist or craftsman will cost the aforementioned 3.9 MP per year, each armsman will cost 3.28 MP per year. Once we strip away some of the unwarranted assumptions our covenant is in pretty good shape as long as we stay reasonable in terms of whom we hire.

30

I did the numbers and got a very different result, I'm afraid. (And not one in our favor.) Here's my work. Please check and see if I've done anything wrong.

1.) A specialist or crafter is equal to 3 points of inhabitants (IPs)

2.) You need 2 servants for each 10 IPs (not including servants or teamsters), i.e., you need 20% of your IPs in servants. For 3 IPs that's 0.6 servants, who cost 1.2 IPs, since it's 2 IP/servant. That's a running total of 4.2 IPs.

3.) You need 1 teamster for each 10 IPs (not including teamsters), i.e., you need 10% of your IPs in teamsters. For 4.2 IPs, you need 0.42 teamsters, who cost 0.84 IPs, since it's 2 IP/teamster. That's a running total of 5.04 IPs.

4.) Each IP costs us 1 MP/year for basic costs (1.1 MP/year if we pay half-again wages). That's 5.04 MP/year normally, and 5.54 MP/year with half-again wages (rounding to 2 significant figures).

So by my calculations, I get that each specialist or crafter costs us approximately 5 MP/year, not 3.9 MP/year. Please tell me I've made an error in my calculations. I like your numbers better.

For reasons similar to those given above, I actually get 3.36 MP/year for each soldier, just counting the basics. Alas, that doesn't count the 1 MP/year in extra wages that an armsman gets. So that makes each armsman cost 4.36 MP/year by my calculations, or 4.86 MP/year if we pay half again wages.

FWIW, I get 3.36 MP/year for supporting a servant, teamster, or dependent, 8.4 MP/year for supporting a companion, and 16.8 MP/year for supporting a magus.

That also leads me to another discrepancy between our numbers - dependants. Now, I don't know how many dependants we're likely to have, but I think zero is too low a number. We're bound to have some children of the right age, idle spouses, infirm, or elderly who can't/don't work. And I'm afraid each one costs us 3.36 MP/year. Alas, there's no guidance as to how many dependents there should be. We'll just have to set a reasonable number.

In the end, my numbers aren't that much different than yours (assuming they're correct). But they do tend to inch up our expenses to the danger zone.

In fact, my bare minimum numbers (5 magi, 4 companions, 5 shield grogs, 16 servants, 12 teamsters, 0 dependents) is an even 136 MP/year. And that takes no account of labs, specialists, crafters, extra armsmen, tithes, extra wages, weapons & armor, or writing materials. Those can raise the numbers very quickly.

31

Your math above was correct, I was counting servants and teamsters as 1 IP instead of 2.

However... spouses may be considered servants in effect if they do productive household work (What am I, your maid?), and by calculating costs with servants and then adding servants you are counting them double. Even children over the age of 5 who help out could be counted under servants.

You are however correct that the numbers can rise quickly- although I would also question whether every mage truly needs an armsman when we are living in a city...
We need to be aware of those costs and not rush to inflate them. So if we have 5 magi and 4 companions (70 pts) who then require 14 servants (28 points for a total of 98 points) and thus 10 teamsters (20 points) this brings us to 118 MP per year before we start adding scribes illuminators, bookbinders, armsmen et al.

32

Darn. I was hoping my math was wrong.

Oh, I freely admit that there will definitely be children who are servants and husbands and wives who are both servants and the like. But the fact that dependants are listed and children above five and “idle” wives are listed tells me that there could be dependents that fall in those categories. Consider if we had a silversmith as a craftsman. He might be married and have a wife who is too highly bred to be a mere servant. She would count as an idle wife. Moreover, he might consider his six year old daughter too young to be married, but not about to become a servant. And then there’s the possibility of the elderly and the infirm. We might well have some of them. And while I know plenty of older people well able to work into their nineties, I know others who have fallen into dementia and can’t even feed themselves. True, people didn’t live as long in the 13th century. But there were still some old and infirm.

As I said, I don’t know what the proper number of dependants ought to be for our covenant. But I think that number is higher than zero. I can make my own estimates. But I’d love to hear what other people think would be a fair number.

Cities can be dangerous too-sometimes more dangerous than the countryside.

33

Why only 4 Companion? What did I miss?

34

Two companions (including yours) don’t need to be supported by the covenant. For example, Salvatore is wealthy, which means he doesn’t need to be on the covenant books.

35

Ahh, thanks that means that they work together with the covenant out of different reason then paid by the covenant. (Like Favors and a friendly split/competition about who teach whom for Salvatore)

Other topic we will probably need to buy some academic summa and tractatus with our BP for our school library despite that they are usually better bought with money.

36

If we want to be realistic we will. After all, what summer covenant has zero academic ability summae? But it may not be because of the school. As silveroak has pointed out, the school is an income source now and strangely divorced in some ways from the covenant finances. In theory, we could say that it had all the books it needed to run efficiently. It’s just that unless we paid for them with BP we wouldn’t have access to them. (They’d be needed by the students or something.)

Again it comes down to verisimilitude. The most efficient way to do things would be to wait until the saga starts and then spend money to buy the academic summae. But that’s very artificial. Why would the covenant have no academic summae and suddenly buy a bunch at a random time? It all comes down to how much we want to game the system and how realistic we want our covenant to be at the start.

37

It isn't an issue of access but accounting- if we receive the books (or a loan of the books) then that is the form we receive a portion of our income in. So we can easily receive a few books a year from the school in lieu of MP.

There are a couple of issues here where we need to step outside the modern paradigm- the first is dependents. A child doing their chores in mythic Europe is not a dependent, they are essentially a servant. You have to be fairly high up the social ladder to be doing nothing productive with your time- even ladies of leisure have their "embroidery" (aka seamstress work) while they sit and chat, or may act as chamberlains of their own houses. Children of nobility probably have enough leisure time to be considered dependents, or the elderly who are not employed as teachers for the youth passing on their wisdom. Examples from the book are children of nobility residing at the covenant as a social obligation.

In similar vein, wealth does not refer to income as a virtue, but rather reduced workload. Income sources for individuals is covered in city and guild and depends on social status, not wealth.

38

as a note, a glassblower is unlikely to be cost effective, since they are limited to covering 20% the cost of labs, which means to break even you have to have a cost of 27 pounds a year on lab maintenance, which means 270 points in upkeep. an average upkeep of +2 would only be 30 points in upkeep, with 5 labs would leave us 120 points short of breaking even. If we go to +3 this is 60 per lab or 300 points in lab maintenance, or 30 MP per year at which point the glassblower saves us 6 MP/year but we still have to cover 24 MP per year in lab costs to justify a 1 MP/yr net savings (actually just under), as opposed to a net cost of 5 MP/yr with +0 as the covenant sponsored upkeep score.
On the other hand it allows us all to have superior equipment with no increase in upkeep, which depending on the underlying upkeep scores can save signifigantly more than what they save directly, since that gives us essentialy +2 upkeep per lab for free. If that is our plan we might also get a tool maker who can have the same benefit for superior tools, which normally has a +1 upkeep (so the savings are not as dramatic). If we decide to support up to +3upkeep then we should probably find 3 more craftsmen types to reduce our overall lab costs from 30 MP/Yr to 25 MP/yr.

before the topic comes up, weapon smiths are similarly limited in effectiveness: while they cover up to 50% of the costs of weapons and armor these also have a low maintenance cost- 1 MP for every 320 points of weapons and armor, for 5.5 MP to cover half that would require a budget of 11 pounds for 3520 points in weapons and armor. If we were to outfit our armsmen with expensive full armor, weapon, and shield this would come to 96 points of weapons and armor per arms men (plus they would stand out for the quality of their equipment), meaning we would need 37 such arms men for a weapon smith to be cost effective.

Personally I suspect we could "time share" 2 or 3 armsmen. I know Daedalus at least will spend most of his time in his lab or in safe, familiar parts of the city, and certainly would not need a full time bodyguard.

39

Regarding Dependents, Covenants states the following:

To me this implies several things:
1,) There is such a thing as an idle spouse who counts as a dependant;
2.) There is an age at which children count as a dependant, but don't count as a servant;
3.) There are infirm people who don't count as servants; and
4.) There are aged people who don't count as servants.

If every spouse, up to and including noble women with their embroidery, counted as a servant, then why have the category of idle spouses?

If every child of five and over counts as a servant, then why did they include the line "once they are old enough to work, children can be moved to another category." To me, that implies there is an age range (sadly undetermined) in which a child is old enough to need support, but young enough that they can't do the work of a full servant.

They include the category of the infirm as people who do no useful work. To me that implies that there will be some infirm who don't rise to the level of a servant.

LIkewise they use the (ill advised) term "retiree," which implies someone old enough that they're not doing any useful work anymore. Now, perhaps we don't allow for any quiet time in our grogs' old age. Perhaps we work them until they drop. In that case the number of "retirees" might be zero. But it's worth debating.

Now, I'm not saying that all of these people do nothing but sit on the couch all day eating bon bons. No doubt the idle spouses do some embroidery, the younger children help out with some of the work around the covenant, and the infirm do what their infirmity allows. But the amount of work that they do doesn't rise to the level of a full "servant," and so they count as a dependent. Yes, the whole servant/dependent distinction is a bit of an abstraction. Some servants will do 120% of the work of a servant, while others will do 75% of a servant's work. We round all those off to 100% for simplicity. Likewise a 5 year old child might do 25% of the work of a servant, or a noble lady might do 30% of the work of a full time embroiderer. But we round those down to zero and count them as dependents.

My point, as I've said, is that we should have some dependents. I'm not saying that they should overwhelm the covenant, but we should have more than zero. I'd be interested in what you think a reasonable number of dependents would be. Do you think we should have zero? If so, then we clearly disagree on the matter. For my part, I think the easiest way is to make it a percentage of total population. I would propose 5%, which would place the number at around about 4-5 for our current covenant build. (Which seems more than reasonable to me; I'd probably peg it a little higher.) I'd be interested in hearing what all the troupe members think on this matter.

40

And my point is that just because this category of people exists, and may be at the covenant does not mean they will be at the covenant. It is not like servants where there is a defined minimum ratio, they could not be there, or they might be there, and it should probably be determined by character development rather than mathematics. For example Elias' wife may well be to infirm after her encounter with smallpox to be of assistance. That would be 1. We don't need to borrow trouble with statistical modeling of a covenant with as small of numbers as we are likely to have if we avoid exploding the population with unwarranted assumptions.

If we need to have that kind of economic power we should probably drop the secondary income and find the points to make our wealth virtue major and provide us with 850 MP/year