Which was what I thought myself (or had read before).
Also, I had just posted items worth 50 points.
However, as I posted, I came up with the idea of a research grant of Vis, and if everyone was happy with that idea, I might've changed it.
As there are arguments against it, I'll just keep the planned items.
Tellus, I read your comments last night but decided to wait a little before answering, to cool down. I'll right off the bat though, that I was hurt and a little angry that you seemed to be accusing me of changing other players' decisions (in this case their allotment of build points).
I won't try to answer all of your comments, mainly because I appreciate and can agree with most of them.
I've said repeatedly that I am making suggestions, not taking decisions. Yes, I have been very active -- it just happens that I currently have the opportunity to be at the moment and it may not last -- but at no point have I assumed that simply because people haven't commented on something that it was decided to use it. And there is no time limit for provisind input. Even approval is not set in stone. If a month after something has been proposed, you realize that it doesn't work for you, just say so.
I'm sorry you felt like things would get decided before you had a chance for input. That was not intended. Rather, I've been working on stuff left and right so that we could have a complete context in which to base our stories, to everyone's benefit I hope.
I would argue that I haven't re-arranged how others spent their points. Let's see:
The only other suggestion I made is that maybe some of the sources could be inactive at saga start. You don't want your sources to be inactive at saga start? Just say so.
Yes, Vim vis is very [strike]valuable[/strike] useful. And yes, I had noticed that you went for a lot of Vim vis.
But the usefulness of Vim doesn't replace the need for other type of vis. And it irritates my sense of realism if we concentrate that much of our sources into a single Art. I know that Jonathan prefers bigger and less numerous sources, but I don't share it. Many small sources just seem more realistic to me.
Does it make it valuable? Not any more than other Forms, because magi can always extract it in the lab. You can't do that with any other kind of vis.
Actually, no, all forms are not of identical use for binding familiars. You, in general magi will be able to select the appropriate TeFo that suits them. But Animal, just like Vim, can always be used to bind animal familiars (ArM5 p.104). And Vim can't be used to heal your familiar if it gets hurt.
We could debate the usefulness of the various kind of vis for a long time...
What I did was suggest that I may change some of my vis sources. They're no final, and I'm always happy to discuss them.
The wiki is fully operational again. 
This is probably too what I should have done, but sometimes you do seem to move a little quickly and I wanted to be sure that silence was not simply taken as assent.
Agan, my apologies for seeming overly aggresive.
I can fully appriciate that!
You are quite right and I was hasty. My error.
My thanks for defining what shape the vis-source I am responsible for take - that was my responsibility which I had not shouldered.
I should note that I decided on the 12 pawns of Vim vis in the light of other sources worth 7 (I remembered it as 8?) pawns - I predict the need for truly lage amounts of Vim vis.
You're quite right I jumped the trigger here - and in your suggestions, the sources I'd brought were actually active from the very beginning as far as I can tell.
For years I hve been of exactly the same opinion, but then I realised that we have no clue as to the "normal", "natural" or "realistic" sizes of vis sources - they are fundamentally unnatural. This brought the realisation that a number of small vis-sources would likely have been easier to detect than fewer more prolific sources, meaning they would likely have been located and colonized at n earlier point.
...at the risk of weakening their local aura.
And you can extract other kinds of vis in the lab, though it requires a virtue. No matter.
Thus the choce of the word 'largely' before identical. Have you often had to heal your familiar? because it has not been a major point in the sagas I have usually played in.
Still, point well made, but I stand by Mentem being what I have seen the most of spent on familiars.
Trust me, I have. At length.
Fine and excellent.
Again my apologies for being not only hair trigger but also far more vitriolic than was warrented.
Unfortunatly, that means I have to re-evaluate my spendings, as my choice of 12 pawns Vim vis/year were based on the assumption that it was not all there was, and I'd just finally figured out what to spend my private points on.
One question then:
How do people in the troupe feel about Vis extraction from Aurae?
Most p'n'p sagas I have played in in recent years have been strongly against it, due to the risks to the aura.
If this is not considered a major problem, we can happily limit points spent on Vim Vis, as it can be extracted easily enough.
Perhaps there could even be a point to Titus extracting all the power of some minor aura, simply as a part of his studies.
This is probably too what I should have done, but sometimes you do seem to move a little quickly and I wanted to be sure that silence was not simply taken as assent.
Agan, my apologies for seeming overly aggresive.
I can fully appriciate that!
You are quite right and I was hasty. My error.
My thanks for defining what shape the vis-source I am responsible for take - that was my responsibility which I had not shouldered.
I should note that I decided on the 12 pawns of Vim vis in the light of other sources worth 7 (I remembered it as 8?) pawns - I predict the need for truly lage amounts of Vim vis.
You're quite right I jumped the trigger here - and in your suggestions, the sources I'd brought were actually active from the very beginning as far as I can tell.
For years I hve been of exactly the same opinion, but then I realised that we have no clue as to the "normal", "natural" or "realistic" sizes of vis sources - they are fundamentally unnatural. This brought the realisation that a number of small vis-sources would likely have been easier to detect than fewer more prolific sources, meaning they would likely have been located and colonized at n earlier point.
...at the risk of weakening their local aura.
And you can extract other kinds of vis in the lab, though it requires a virtue. No matter.
Thus the choce of the word 'largely' before identical. Have you often had to heal your familiar? because it has not been a major point in the sagas I have usually played in.
Still, point well made, but I stand by Mentem being what I have seen the most of spent on familiars.
Trust me, I have. At length.
Fine and excellent.
Again my apologies for being not only hair trigger but also far more vitriolic than was warrented.
Unfortunatly, that means I have to re-evaluate my spendings, as my choice of 12 pawns Vim vis/year were based on the assumption that it was not all there was, and I'd just finally figured out what to spend my private points on.
One question then:
How do people in the troupe feel about Vis extraction from Aurae?
Most p'n'p sagas I have played in in recent years have been strongly against it, due to the risks to the aura.
If this is not considered a major problem, we can happily limit points spent on Vim Vis, as it can be extracted easily enough.
Perhaps there could even be a point to Titus extracting all the power of some minor aura, simply as a part of his studies.
I'm not against a dominant vis type, but I don't like the idea of a big source yielding two rooks of vis per year. It just feels bizarre to me. That strong a source should be located in a very strong aura.
BTW, trade works both ways. If we need a large amount of vis in a single Art, that we don't have enough of, then we can trade our diverse sources for it.
They might be fun in some sagas, but I'm not wild aout them either.
Where did you put them to add them to the library? Do you remember the name of the page you used?
There is a page called "Loose Lab Texts (not in books)" to link the lab texts we have in the library, but I'm not seeing those lab texts there.
My understanding is that it is a function of the number of times vis is extracted, and not at all related to the amount of vis extracted. I'd have to review the rules, but I'm not in a position to do that, now.
It's magic. Maybe the aura lasted as long as it did, precisely because of all the vis that wasn't being exploited. Perhaps with judicious use of the vis, working of magic, we can enhance the aura. Bizarre suggests that there should be some amount of logic behind everything. And while I think that normally there should be as much as possible, I'm quite prepared to say that magi don't know everything, and we stumbled into an extraordinarily lucky find.
Apologies accepted. Let's move on and discuss things now. 
I can appreciate that my changing would have impact on other people's choice. Been there. We've had many changes in the resources over time, as players dropped out, other changing their selections, etc. My frustration has been the library, but vis sources has also been frustrating.
As I've written before, my changes are not final. You and Jonathan have both made some very good points regarding the benefits of having a lot of Vim. So bear with me some more, I have another suggestion coming... :mrgreen:
And yes, it was initially 8 pawns from the Mercuralia ritual, but I reduced it to 7 when I last made some changes in my build points.
I'm not sure I follow your point about smaller sources being easier to detect... Or is it that because the sources are more numerous, there are more chances of someone finding one?
In that case, I'd note that the background notes for some of the sources actually indicate that they had been discovered by other magi before. But low-yielding sources are not always worth the effort of harvesting, for many different reasons. Such as the magus having to travel far to collect it, murky conditions/timing of production, or having to nurture it to ensure produciton, etc. And with Treverorum having been disbanded less than a decade ago, we may have inherited some sources that were a bit far for them, but known.
In general, I don't like the aura modification rules of RoP:M, including the effect of vis extraction on the aura. Unless there is intensive extraction going on for a long time (for example, extraction going on every season for 5 years), I would say we ignore them. Having one or two seasons of extraction per year shouldn't be an issue.
And we may also have an advantage here, because our covenant has access to more than a single aura. We have the main site, the secondary site, the caves at Laach See, etc. If we are worried about extracting too much from the main site's aura, we could have a travelling lab to do it at the other sites. Just a possibility, mind you.
Finally, for my dreaded new suggestion. :mrgreen:
Have we been going at vis sources the wrong way, by doing it individually? Right now we have 39 pawns per year. To that will be added whatever Jonathan will want to add with his build points. Let's each determine what we feel each of our magi need (not simply want). That's our baseline, which should be below our total. We start the saga with enough sources to cover that, already discovered. Any additional build points we allocate are undefined vis sources to be discovered during the saga. Then, as we find out that we'd like/need vis from a different Art (or increase one of the Arts already covered), then we either trade some vis we already have, or write in the discovery of a new source using some of our undefined build points.
Let's take an example with Petronius. Let's I think the baseline for him will be 3 pawns of Vim (1 to cover covenant needs, 2 pawns for himself), 1 pawn of Terram and 1 pawn of Rego. That's a total of 5 pawns per year, that are figured into the sources at saga start. I still purchase 12 pawns per year with my build points. That means that, as the saga advances, I can write in additional sources (or increase an existing source) if I realize that I have some need and can't/won't be able to trade for it. Once written in, that source would stay, unless Jonathan allows us to write in the drying up of a source to free up some of our points.
That would give us more flexibility to adapt if we realize that we misjudged our needs regarding the type and amount of our vis sources.
It's just an idea. Feel free to poke hole into it.
This.
Oh. I was rather hoping to use those rules as a stepping stone for my research.
And if few extract Vis, the risks are small. If everybody do it, the aura will drop like a rock
All part of my brilliant plan I assure you!
I'll have to mull this over a bit
Yeah, excluding those rules doesn't make sense, especially if we look to strengthening our auras. If we exclude those rules we need to create new ones. I'd like to eventually add a +1 or +2 aura to Praxiteles House. In addition, I'd like to improve the aura at the central site.
I don't think you'll have to worry about Praxiteles extracting vis. In addition, think of the huge vis source of 19+ pawns of vim as being a manifestation of the formerly powerful aura, and it might provide a clue as to how we can improve it. We discover the large source, but it doesn't diminish the aura; we have little reason to extract vis from this aura. Why is their so much Vim vis in this low powered aura? Is it a sign that the aura's power can be improved, somehow?
I'm getting the feeling that Praxiteles doesn't search for vis sources. It's not his thing. He avoids Vis (Waster of Vis) as much as possible. He recognizes that others use it, but he doesn't go out of his way to find any additional sources, so 39 pawns, while it may seem to be a lot really isn't. Divide it among 4 magi, that's about 10 pawns per year.
Our stocks will be sufficient to handle things for the first year, such as an Aegis or perhaps any first year lab work using vis. This may result in no actual vis, with these sources having be used in the before saga start period to build/buy resources/services to construct the covenant. So why might we not have starting vis stocks? If no one plans any lab work using vis during the first year AND we can't cast a fully powered Aegis of the Hearth at saga start, then vis stocks are unnecessary.
Now I'm confused again. 
At this point, I wasn't even thinking about vis stocks, but rather vis sources. And the possibility that not all of those purchased with our build points would have been discovered at saga start, giving us the flexibility to define them later on.
Well, I'm just saying I'm not adding vis sources, except maybe a pawn to the Vim source, but probably not then, because 19 is such a mystical number! 
Well, you're talking about limiting the vis sources...so we aren't so rich? I'm suggesting that 39 pawns annually may not be all that rich. To be sure, it's the minimum for being declared rich in the Tribunal of the Greater Alps, but we are currently at 1 pawn below that level. But so what if we're rich, anyway? We still have political machinations to deal with, and then someone else "accidentally" harvesting our vis sources. Personally, and this is totally a player prejudice, i'm not wild about Vis hunt stories. If you want them, sure go for it, but I wouldn't wait too long to find the sources that are hidden from us at start, it could make us significantly weaker.
As far as defining them, I thought with the exception of Tellus's non-Vim source that they were all defined, so I'm not sure what added flexibility it adds, unless it's the idea that we need a different vis source, which I think is better handled by trying to trade with another covenant...
Actually, I'm not seeing this as limiting our vis sources, or even being or not being rich, but rather deferring their discovery to gain flexilibity.
Some of the currently defined sources may be marginal to our characters' needs. An example of this is the Ignem source in the caves, which was not really important to me. Same with the potential switch of some of my Vim to Corpus and/or Animal (which may or may not happen).
My suggestion is that, by deferring the discovery of some of the vis sources bought by our build points, we'll be able to tweak them so that they reflect our actual vis needs. Such as adding a new type of vis, or increasing the yield of one type because we realize we don't have enough. The price for this flexibility is not accumulating vis from a source in the meantime.
(Writing in a new source doesn't necessarily mean writing a full story about it. It might simply be a paragraph explaining that, while doing such and such, the magus stumbled upon a new source. It might happen quickly after saga start, if a need is quickly identified.)
(Posting this as seperate from my previous reply to avoid confusion.)
Regarding the casting of Aegis of the Hearth.
Petronius already knows it at level 20, but he is unable to achieve enough penetration by himself to gets its full benefits (which may be what Jonathan meant by "can't cast a fully powered" Aegis). But even with a lower penetration, we'll need an Aegis at the main site because of the ghosts. Otherwise we'll have a problem retaining our mundanes.
Alone, Petronius can achieve a penetration of 6 + die roll (assuming aura 2). This is enough to protect our mundanes from the ghosts, but is weak otherwise. The good news is that, because Petronius has Mercurian Magic, it costs us only 2 pawns to cast.
Unfortunately, with only Petronius and Aedituus knowing Wizard's Communion, we don't have enough effective levels to use it for a level 20 Aegis (total WC levels need to double that). And that is if Aedituus' version is a D:Sun variant for rituals (which decreases effective level by 10). Which I will assume it isn't, until Archimedes says otherwise.
The other ways to boost Petronius' penetration on the spell require study:
*I'm a bit unsure if are still going with not having all the books at saga start. Jonathan mentioned dropping the rule, but was it just for some books or all of them?
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I guess I'm OK with that. There's a cost, as with all things. If we don't have the vis stored, we can't later on trade it, but if we find we need a specific type, we just select that type, and let it accumulate for a while to be sufficient in quantity fo rwhatever use is necessary.
And this will bother Praxiteles and will do his utmost to help out with the Aegis in the future. His MuCo CS at the covenant site is 4 +2 -1 +2=7. He'll be doing as much as possible early on to improve this so he can help out his sodales.
I've been toying with bringing a mastery text for Wizard's Communion, one that details ceremonial mastery (ceremonial mastery is commonly available, unless there's a huge outcry from the troupe).
I'll bring Latin texts on Artes Liberales and Philosphae, well, they'll be above 20 bps in cost, so that means he'll be acquiring them later. 
I thought I just said that maybe one of the 20+bp books should be available. That's what I meant to say, not that all books 20+bp should be available at saga start.
Well, it's just a matter of increasing Petronius' total by 10 points or so. After a few years he won't need help anymore, at least for the level 20 version. If we ever need a stronger Aegis, though, the matter could come back.
My estimates to get the 10 points would be:
EDIT: That's 2 years of study in Vim. At least 5 years, then, before he reaches that level.
That's what I thought, but I just wanted to be certain.
In that case, provided I have the troupe's approval, I would like to again change my vis sources as follow:
This would leave the Mercuralia ritual to Tellus' 5 pawns of Creo and 12 pawns of Vim, and provide a reason why we keep a presence at the secondary site.
Trying to tie this down is almost like nailing jello to the wall.