Guidelines for Magi of Hermes

Were there Ability and Art guidelines given to the writers of Magi of Hermes? Something to guide how much Parma/Magic Theory/Penetration etc etc an "average" magus should have at +15 years, +30 years and so on?

I realize there is no such thing as the average magus, but if there were benchmarks which the writers of that book came to a consensus in, I'd love to know them.

And, while we're on the subject, let's have a big round of applause for Hugh of Flambeau, the goddamn Batman of the Order of Hermes. Hugh is awesome.

I believe the closest we come is 15 exp a season. Benchmarks for Magi are really quite difficult, there are so many ways to build a Mage. A Spontaneous, traveling specialist is going to have very, very little in common with a Verditius lab rat, for example. Just one of your benchmarks goes right out the window, Penetration. The first will probably have a very high Penetration, because he's going to be dealing with hostile creatures, people and areas, many of them in different Auras. The Lab rat will probably have none, because magic item Penetration has nothing to do with the skill Penetration. So, again, 15 exp a season, which is time consuming to do, which is why Magi of Hermes is such a wonderful purchase.....

There was the call for submissions in 2006 ( atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/ ... enCall.rtf ). You will see from them, why guidelines about when to reach which Ability level were not given.

The part of the guidelines most directly answering your question is:

Cheers

One of the things I like about Ars is how varied magi can be. Being able to penetrate magic resistance isn't high on every magus's priority list.