House Ruling Seasonal Multiple Activities

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I need to house rule a few multiple season activities. I just put some of them, I am sure some of them have been talked. I tried searching but i was lost in the mundane library searching forum.

1.- Reading from several "sources" in same season. You get XP depending on the lowest quality "source" you read on the season.
(In order to make this more "restrictive" the word "source" could be limited to "source of same type", "book", "trainer", "teacher" or whatever)

"Lets say you just need 1 XP to reach Rego 8 (i.e 7+7) and you read a 8q14 Rego book. You can only earn 1 XP point, as limit is 8. You can go on reading another book lets say a 6q15 Perdo Book, so you earn 13 XP in Perdo (total 14, the lowest of 14 and 15)"

2.- Inventing Spells. You can invent several spells, whith maximum total levels equal half your Lab total.

"Lets say you get a Lab total 67. You need to invent a 30 level spell, so 7 levels are lost. Either you accumulate 7 points for a second spell, or just invent another level 3 spell."

3.- Create Item: Same, you can create several items, whith maximum total levels equal half your Lab total.

"Lets say you have same Lab total 67. You decide to create a batch of potions, (lets say just +6 to healing bonus, level 4), So you create 8 of these potions in the season."

4.- Investigate items. You can investigate any amount of magical items in a season as desired, until you botch or find an effect higher than your lab total value.

"I got InVi total of 35 + 1d10, so, unless a botch, all items under level 35 are discovered in the season. Items level 36-44 are discovered depending on the die roll. Higher effects can not be discovered unless an open-ended 1 pops "

I played once without this house rule. Magic items ended discarded in the trash pile, as no one was going to lose dozens of seasons discovering crap effects in items. It was easier just craft what was needed, as TIME is usually the limiting factor, more even than vis.

Any comments are welcome.

2

Um, what? The 6/15 wouldn't give you anything because you're already at 7. And if you had a 10/15, then there's no reason to read the 8/14 in the first place.

So multiple books makes very little sense; just read the book that'll give you the most points total.

3

Perhaps i explained bad.

The Character has:
Rego 7+7
Perdo 0

The library is
Rego 8q14
Perdo 6q15

I say... i want to raise that last point (just 1XP) to get Rego to 8, so, i go on reading next one, but then the amount of XP earned is the lower of both (14 in all)

4

Just to be clear. The only rules for multiple activities are in the lab chapter, page 102 they're pretty clear. You are talking about needing house rules because you wan't to loosen things up and allow more multiple activities, is this right?

In other words multiple activities is not really something that the rules don't cover as much as it is something that the rules make no allowance for. The absence of rules for reading multiple texts and so on seems intentional to me.

Your rules are significantly more generous than the book rules. This can be just fine. I don't see a functional problem with your proposed rules with the exception of your mention of potions, you seem to be thinking of lesser enchanted devices rather than charged devices.

Also I think that you may have a misunderstanding regarding investigating enchanted items. In one season you keep rolling until you fail to uncover a power. by and large spending more than one season on an enchanted item is pointless because you chances don't really get better. If you can't figure it out the first season you probably won't figure it out the second season either. The only way that you'd spend dozens of seasons is if you have dozens of items.

5

Eh. Actually, for reading summas the book rules are ultra-generous and broken. Here are two examples:

You need to spend 24 seasons in the lab. Let's say you have a L-15, Q-15 Art summa and no experience in that Art (not related to the lab work).

What we expect: 24 seasons in the lab, giving 48 experience via exposure
Better option: 24 seasons, during each of which you read for a few days and spend the remainder in the lab (distraction from reading), for 120 experience in that Art

The second option is 100% RAW and gives 72 more experience.

You have 30 Q-15 summas on different topics and want to get 15 experience out of each.

What we expect: You spend 30 seasons, each one reading a book.
Better option: You spend 3 seasons, reading from each book for 3 days per season.

In each case you've accomplished it, but the second option, which is 100% RAW and gets you smacked by the SG, gets you there in 3 seasons instead of 30 seasons.

I've pointed this issue out before. The rules do really handle reading from multiple summas. But the rules are quite broken here, so if you actually want to do that you really need to use some house rules. The easiest is just to round the other direction, losing a third for each partial month lost while allowing 10 days lost to have no impact if you're just reading one book. Then, with the given case, you could read the Rego book for 1/3 of a season and the Perdo book for 2/3 of a season. It's legal by RAW but avoids RAW's brokenness. It's also not far off of the proposed house rule. The house rule is a little more generous than this fix of the rounding, but it's not unreasonable.

6

Yeah, I feel hard to justify why a character can just learn 1 XP in a full season. In fact... is a nonsense.

I use another IMPORTANT house rule, tractatus just allow a +1 to the summa ART/2 limit . (So, tractatus work the way AM2 or AM3 Who can remember?)

These rules will avoid high power levels just by reading a zillion tractatus. In exchange, magi will reach a bit faster the ORDER limit of ART/2 (+1), but to go up... they will have to spend vis. I am considering also to bring back the old Twilight "enhanced understanding 3/4; 5/6; All"

7

Lets read all these "30 x (2?)Q15" books with my house rule. Just you could get 15 XP in all, so, either you get 1 XP in 15 skills, 15 in 1 skill, or (usually) learn the matter (yet with some XP on it, lets say you need 10 XP) up to level 2, then start the next one and earn the 5XP. (If any of those 2 books could be q12, the second skill just raises 2 XP)

No extra nerf required.