Incredible Study Total!!!!

But he wasn't rolling for experience gained, but rather the study quality of the source. He should still be limited by his capacity to learn. Pour too much water into a cup and it'll overflow. Blow too much air into a balloon and it will pop.

SInce this guy is gonna be required to perform a number of actions (teaching, enchanting, writing, acting as Big Guy ambassador...) I can see the other players having their spotlight as well. The Rego master can be a background element AND a usable character. Now you can aspire to duel with stuff that is the talk of legends, something a lot of sagas cannot even dream of. This guy can have the idea on taking on the great wyrm of the Pyrenees, for example, but he cannot do that all by himself.

So the character is a huge asset as said, which means that he needs to be "used" as an asset. When he is doing that he is not available to solve other issues. Being the most powerful makes you both a PC and a background feature of the covenant. He cannot do everything all the time, so work with that :slight_smile:

Also, to me Ars Magica is a story of a COMMUNITY (the covenant) not of individual characters. Individual characters come and go. What remains is the covenant and the community. Your covenant just got a boost. Build on it and if they do well the covenant shall become really pwoerful. Otherwise it is just Dungeons and Dragons with big shinny sparks.

Cheers,

Xavi

A primary character should never die because of just ONE roll, especially against a minor character. If a character got hit by such a lucky roll, then put him unconscious and bleeding to death... but allow friends, allies, or whoever to attempt to save him. Perhaps give him a physical flaw to represent a close brush with death.

If I'm a player, I don't want all my time and energy making this character to go down the drain just because of ONE absurd roll. As a Storyguide, I'd never inflict such a result on a PC, unless that player wanted to go along with it.

If I want a tactical miniatures game, I'll go play D&D (which I also do!)... but here I'm playing Ars Magica... a storytelling game. It is a game, the dice do add spice, but they shouldn't be the only thing providing flavor.

In ARM5 the Quality of the Source and experience gained, are basicaly the same.
Experience gained is the advancement total which is Source quality +virtues -flaws
So when you roll the source quality you are rolling your advancement total, and thus the experience points you are going to gain.

All other study sources have a gain limit?
Let's check this out shall we?
I'm assuming by gain limit you mean a maximum level to which an ability may be raised using that type of learning (that's the definition used in the corebook)
Exposure: No limit
Practice: No Limit
Books -Tractatus: No Limit
Books -Summa: Limited
Training: Limited
Teaching: Limited

As you can see not all the other forms of learning have a gain limit (only 1/2 of them do).
On the other hand I have to completely agree that oversights can happen, but the fact that oversights can happen does not mean at all that this is an oversight as you appear to be implying, and to which end you are ofering no proof at all.

And Kimbal don't forget the other source of XP, the Adventure, tath is the most clearly unlimited source that should exist.

He's talking about the way things worked in previous editions where, no matter what you did, you couldn't get more than 3 levels in one art or ability in one season. Any XP you earned beyond that was simply thrown away: if you had an Art score of zero, you wouldn't ever get more than 6xp out of your first season's study.

That said, I find it rather ironic that this thread would happen just a few days after that one where people wistfully wished they could had rolled a 1152 on a vis study total... :unamused:

Raaah i would have had this result... my dream ^^

Exposure: Limit 2 per season
Practice: Limit 3-8 per season
Tractatus: Limit once, limited by the writer

Did you even read my later posts? I am all in favor of giving the PC all of the experience, just spread out over the course of several seasons. There's only so much a person can learn at once.

In ArM5 Intelligence was the capacity to learn. In the errata that was modified to the speed and ease with which you can learn. I say Intelligence should play a direct role in how much a person can learn from raw vis during any one season.

My proposed total: Int + Magic Theory + Art. If the source quality of the vis is higher, then it isn't expended yet. You can continue drawing from it in following seasons until you have absorbed it all.

I read your later posts, but apparently you did not read mine, as I stated just before making the statement you decided to unnecessarily correct:

[color=blue]I'm assuming by gain limit you mean a maximum level to which an ability may be raised using that type of learning (that's the definition used in the corebook)

I assumed that you were using the definition given in the corebook instead of a home made one. Now I have extrapolated that you considered gain limit as the maximum number of XP you were going to get in a single season, in that case of course Vis Study is the only one, but is also the only one which can give you 0 experience points, and a nasty surprise, If you want to compare the number of XP's per season, you have to use [color=blue]averages not maximums and minimums.

I rather have 15-20 safe xp's per season, than the dream of 3512 followed that the cold harded reality of rolling a botch.

It's curious but in AM5 [color=red]none of the study methods are influenced by intelligence, so I really don't know where did you get that part from intelligence (and don't tell me the errata, because its in front of my eyes right now).

And let me tell you, that if I was the player who rolled the 3512 and was offered that learning method, I would feel utterly cheated. And would not consider this as giving me all my XP at all.
Say I have Rego 0, Int 3, and Magic Theory 3, I would be learning awooping 6 XP on the first season.
6,9,11,12,14,15 care to count how many seasons it will take learn all that rego?? It may just be a wild guess, but it will be a little more than just "several"

So the first 6 seasons I have gotten less XP that I would have gotten otherwise. Besides it makes absolutely no sense to use M.Theory for learning fom Vis.

Also using your method if I want to advance from Vis an Art in which I have 0 XP, my maximum XP would 6 or so????
So, I'd be spending vis, risking twilight, and getting a maximum of 6 xp per season??
Honestly I rather practice or much better read a book. If you don't like learning from vis just don't let the players use it, but the main reason anyone is tempted to use it is because of the open ended roll, if you remove it only the most desperate ones (or the ones living in an aura 7+) will use it.

Give him his lñevel 79-85 art level. Convert him into an asset of the covenant and play accordingly. he will be important in some adventures. In others he will be a background dude (out doiung stuff somewhere else). In others he will be a problem to be solved since his art makes him a target for good or bad. He is a strong asset of the covenant as well as a character from now onwards. Itg will influence some stuff and certainly (if he survives) will make a boost in the power of your covenant, but you need to exploit it wisely or you might just lose it.

I am Harvard University and you are the University of Malaga. However, you have a guy that just made a top notch research paper and won the Nobel Prize. I think I can offer him better conditions than you do: If I was an Autumn covenant I would right away offer membership to this dude, for example. What can you offer him to best my offer?

Cheers,

Xavi

You are going to make him an offer that he can't refuse?

Creo Horse head!!! :laughing: :laughing:

Feel cheated all you want... but if I was the SG, I would refuse to allow all the hard work I put into a saga to be turned into a train wreck because of one absurd roll. It would be a train wreck because the appropriate responses of all the NPCs would make the characters life a living hell. Anything else would be like ignoring a volcano in your home...

I refuse to believe that a magus could get all that XP overnight (and yes, in terms of the lifespan of magi, one season IS overnight!).

Here is the biggest key, how does anyone learn this person has rego so high and how high it is. Sure, he/she will invent some powerful spells but if careful about releasing such spells, it would be hard for people to know that art is that high vs just very competant.

Maybe a certamen might give it away but with vis, luck of rolls and such, it might not be appearant.

If I got such an art, I would be doing everything I could to keep people from knowing what I had and save it for crises and and lab such that no one knwos what is up.

Just to throw in my vote, I agree with those of you who want to give the guy the xp he won. There aren't any limits on this gain in the 5th edition rules, so it would be changing the system to cut him down, so of course the player would feel cheated by that. These arbitrary limits, like not gaining more levels than aura, or aura+MT, or intelligence, sound reasonable, but are still going to take something away from the player that he/she is entitled to from the RAW (I assume that means rules as written, you guys keep using it but I never saw it spelled out).

While I believe the player has a right to the xp, I also believe the storyguide has every right to make his life "a living hell." If no one has ever had this much power in an art before, maybe the SG could say that it has some previously unknown weird side effect, like giving him a glow, or unwittingly warping reality around him, that makes it hard to keep a secret. Once it is known that he has this power, he becomes a magnet for all sorts of unwanted attention (as I see is discussed at length) and the guy's life becomes completely different. I think a clever storyguide can do this without sacrificing the story ideas he already had for the future.

And then, seeing that this is all possible, storyguides should begin their sagas with a house rule such as "dice totals do not exceed 100" or whatever, from now on, if they really want to limit completely ridiculously insane totals like that.

So a storyguide should foresee all possibilities, and if he doesn't it's his sole responsibility to make the saga work, even with a "completely ridiculously insane totals like that." That's asking a lot.

I'd suggest that, in a Troupe style game (as most are?), all players shoulder some responsibility for making the game flow well. If it works for everyone, fine - if not, "being cheated" is not the most important consideration - the saga is.

I just realized how sad play may become for that character:
First he get his spotlight by using his impressive Re-score to penetrate a MR that others were unable to penetrate. Than he might use it again once or maybe his secret (if ever it was one) slipped out prior to that. As soon as others (even his convent mates) realize his potential they would do anything to keep this source of insight away from potential harm. That is, at least unless he wrote all those nice simmae! But again, summa source quality is at a max of (Com+6 )x2+vitrues-flaws, IIRC. So maybe he is kept from harm until CrMe rituals have raised his Com to 5 and he has written the books. Until then no adventure that might put the character at risk will be allowed. (just imagine a botch or a lucky punch from another character. So no dragon-slaying! This also means there is plenty of spot light for all the other magi in the convent even if these are freshly gauntleted. However, this character will have intersting adventures himself. And maybe he even secretly leaves his convent one night just like a teenager his overprotective parents' home to "see something of the world" which will create completely new stories.

Studying from vis that powerful would be like setting up a beacon. Anyone with any sort of magical perception should see this from thousands of miles away. This would be a miraculous event that has never happened before in the entire history of the Order.

The die you roll to determine the source quality from vis study does not make the vis more or less powerful, it's simply a measure of the understanding you get from that study, or how much you f*ck up with the vis (in case you botch). Getting a deeper understanding of the workings of rego by no means implies that every member of the order of hermes gets a red alert saying:
"WARNING, WARNING, spring covenant magus gets Rego 89, all hands on deck" or some other analogy :wink:

First off, unless you have cast a spell to detect magic of some sort, you aren't going to see it and it would have to be able to see through walls into his lab.

Second if you have casts such a spell and are using it to see into anohter covenant, you are scrying and prying into the magical affairs of the order and your spell has to break the aegis of the covenant.

Three, he has a breakthrough level understanding of the vis which resulted in the huge amount of xp, not that the vis is more powerful. The stars were right, the light hit it just right and used the right spell and analysis tool in exactly the right way to gain the enlightenment. THe vis is not more powerful and it is spread out over a whole season.