Familiars and talismans for apprentices

Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

I have never seen the "1 season begrudgingly given, and the other 3 seasons the apprentice being a lab slave" happen in actual play. Even if a given Magus had the personality for it, most do not spend three seasons in each year doing something their apprentice could actually give them a bonus in. Then there is the lack of age and skills found in most apprentices early on, where they are very young (with poor Attributes due to age modifiers) and completely lacking in any abilities.

So they need to learn Latin, both speaking and reading/writing, along with basic education and magic theory. Even if the Magus does not teach those personally, the seasons are still taken up by the learning. For the first several years that will easily eat up at least half of an apprentices seasons. When you take into account all of the things they have to learn, with not hitting the minimum in any bad so most will slightly overshoot at the least, along with the fact that the apprentice will often actually be a lab negative early on you really have maybe 20~30 seasons max "lab slave".

You do not take an apprentice for a lab boost. With the 15 seasons of teaching plus however long it takes to find them a Magi could get a better lab boost by studying or enchanting. You take on an apprentice because they are a form of legacy.

From my personal experience, apprentices play generated often end up over powered. Even if you try to do the minimum they will end up more powerful then a book generated Magi. And if the Magi tries to push the limits they will end up horribly over powered. Like near game breaking. 21 year old just past gauntlet Magus that is more powerful then any Magus many on the forums have ever had in a game.

6 Likes
42

Well, the terms "master" and "apprentice" are also used. The way I see it, the relationship between a magus and his apprentice is much more like that of ... well, a master artisan and an apprentice, or a modern university professor and his PhD student.

The master doesn't really "begrudge" the teaching season, or "enslave" the student for the remaining three. But there is an expectation that the student's help will be worth (before graduation) at least as much as the effort spent on educating him. In some sense, passing this "net worth" test is a requirement to be considered a good legacy. This is the standard in modern academia, and it is perfectly compatible with a lasting relationship of respect and affection - most PhD advisors do think about their former students as "academic children".

If the ArM5 rules do not reflect this (the ArM3 ones certainly did, including the extremely valuable +1 to rolls for vis study), I think it's a problem with the rules! Though I do think that a careful master can squeeze quite a bit of value out of an apprentice, enough to pay back the teaching effort.

4 Likes
43

This matches what we saw when testing Apprentices. If we didn't actively hold the apprentices back, they would enter play about as powerful as the rest of the PC-magi, roughly 20-30 years out of Gauntlet.

44

Would you be suggesting applying Gift penalties to most Teaching advancement?

45

Yes and no. If the magus/maga does not extend their Parma over the apprentice, then yes. In all honest, part of the problem was probably that +2 Communication was fairly normal in that particular covenant, as was the Teaching ability. We even had a Good Teacher IIRC.

Combining this with letting apprentices study Summae of their own choice during seasons when their masters were neither teaching them, nor required their assistance in lab made things fairly ridiculous tbh.

Yet, even without those factors, we still find it hard to provide new apprentices with only the XPs given in the core book for newly Gauntleted magi. Just ... not as badly.

46

Magi are obliged to extend their Parma (thus removing Gift penalties) to their apprentices during training/teaching.

1 Like
47

Is there any precedence for OR mechanical/lore restrictions against an intentionally temporary familiar? I'm imagining a Merinita Mage doing a sort of "handfasting cord" with their apprentice to either their familiar or another faerie for a Year and a Day, specifically so the familiar can teach the apprentice something the mage doesn't know/can't teach as well, and so the Apprentice can get experience with having a familiar.

eg, the Apprentice has Wilderness Sense (Forest) so the parens (who is more of an academic than an outdoorsy person) arranges to handfast a Fox of Virtue to the apprentice as a familiar, to help them refine that.

48

Merinitae are explicitly stated as sometimes having a variety of Faerie Familiars over time (a sort of "serial monofayist" thing), but I don't think other houses do this, in canon. Considering the natures of the Realms of Magic and Faerie, it makes sense that the latter are much more temporary.

49

HoH: MC, in the chapter on Merinita, has a spell to temporarily bind a Faerie with the Until Duration. Also, Faerie Familiars can be temporary, if the Faerie Cords and the Magic Cords do not match. It's all explained in the Merinita Chapter.

50

Was recently looking at the familiar binding formulae, saw this topic again, and suddenly it crystalized.

Let us postulate a rather small, but otherwise perfectly reasonable potential familiar already associated with a pre-apprentice thanks to the Magical Animal Companion Flaw. Say, a magical mouse (Size -10), and so by the rules of Magical Animal Companion, Might 20. Then the necessary Familiar Bonding Level to bind this familiar is, in fact, -5 (25 + 20 - 50).

Now, let us consider this child as a just-Opened apprentice (thus with Art scores of all 0), just 2 XP of exposure to Magic Theory (from the season the Arts were opened, and so a score of 0), who, while they'll have a respectable adult Int of 2, is currently age 7 (and thus, per Apprentices has a -4 to that score, for a net of Int -2, and so -2 to the Lab Total), set to work in a Basic laboratory (-3 to Lab totals) in a place with an Aura of 0 (another 0). This gives the child a Lab Total of -5, which matches the necessary Lab Total to bind this familiar.

Well, since the Bonding Cost is "1 pawn of vis per five levels or fraction of the binding Lab Total", and the apprentice's Lab Total is -5, the Bonding Cost is negative one pawn of vis.

(The strength of each of the familiar cords will be 0, despite the -5 Lab Total, because the rules do specify the strength of cords is always in the range 0 to 5, even if they don't specify that the Bonding Cost can't be negative.)

Accordingly, the master sends the brand-new apprentice off to this lab for a season (with no sense of sacrifice, since the apprentice as an assistant would currently impose a -2 to the master's Lab Totals) with the task of binding the familiar. The master then, at the end of the season, collects the apprentice (now up to 4 exposure XP in Magic Theory), the apprentice's newly-bound familiar, and a pawn of vis that has spontaneously manifested as the result of the apprentice's season of work.

3 Likes
51

It's ridiculous and brilliant, but slightly flawed by the fact that this is a 25% return on investment compared to harvesting the mouse for Vis without using a season.

52

I know you are joking with the 1 pawn of vis creation. Moving away from the humour aspect, is their much point having a familiar with 0 level cords. I guess a mouse could do some decent infiltration spy work, until a random barn owl kills it.......

53
  1. Well, familiars "can learn Magic Theory and serve as laboratory assistants." And per Magical Animal Companion "The smaller and more innocuous the creature, the more intelligent it is. A ferret or crow is as intelligent as a human[.]" As a once-Magical Animal Companion mouse is even smaller, it should be pretty smart to start, and it'll (generally) learn Magic Theory as the apprentice does. So, it's a benefit to the apprentice working alone in the lab, and, if the master's Leadership is high enough, potentially to the master.
  2. "The magus may choose to use the familiar’s Magic Resistance, but this does not stack with a Parma Magica." As a Magic Might of 20 is a magic resistance of 20, that beats Parma (which an apprentice doesn't have) until the Parma reaches a level of 4.
1 Like
54

Wait no hold on, I love the idea of spontaneous vis creation due to the goofy math. Perhaps it would be simply stored in the mouse until someone notices it. The longer it goes, the more chance the mouse has to slowly become more magical.

It also does feel pleasantly fairytale-ish, the child making a friend and it literally creates magical wealth.

B of all; the idea of a 7 year old with the equivalent of Parma 4 is WILD and might well explain why already Magical familiars for apprentices is discouraged. Parma 4 is respectably high (a lot of the high-level mages in Magi of Hermes are only 4-5), and an apprentice with that kind of knowledge PLUS a bunch of inside information from the Order of Hermes + the infiltrative capacity of the mouse would make for a fairly dangerous turncoat if they waited until nearly the end of their apprenticeship and bounced.

1 Like