If you let it stand, you have the following situation and likely happenings:
If everyone stays silent, nobody outside his Covenant know anything about his Rego score. Its not as if CNN was there Covering the Season.
Plan on the fact that EVERYONE in the Covenant will now have high Rego scores...He will write books and the others will study them...
Obviously, as a Bonisagus he will want to share his knowledge...Perhaps he will choose to write his Summae and not take the credit for it... "Um, I found it in a cave"... Ie Dark Secret
As an additional story, you could have the character take a trip into the Magic Realm... This could transform him into a magical creature...(See Magic, ROP), or just put him onto additional things to study... If he transforms, other magi could look upon him as a magical creature...outside the protection of the Order...
You could have a group of Magi who are a Mystery cult... This cult is full of Magi (5 or 6) who have attained world changing abilities due to such things...They devote themselves to.... (insert lofty goal). Membership is not an option...
...But taking away his good fortune sounds like sour grapes...
The entire reason to play a roleplaying game with dice is to surrender certain control of outcomes to chance. Yes, that means the story will change. Yes, that means the saga will change. But as far as I'm concerned, that's the fun and that's the entire point. We give the dice the chance to take the story somewhere we didn't anticipate. If I wanted to have total control of the story I'd sit around with my friends and has one out. Hell, I've done that on more than one occasion. But this random event is going to change their saga in ways that the troupe could never have anticipated, and that's a cool thing.
I've had saga's take wild turns thanks to botchs, changing the entire focus of the campaign. It's an exciting experience... "I would never have thought of this, and now we need to make sense of it."
Here, it's a chance to have a saga nobody thought. Something like that happens maybe 1 time in a life... why "cap it" to stay in a "standard" saga?
Play the game, let's the "world" of this saga adapt itself to the newly powerful wizard and see what happens.
It will bring a story like this players won't never see again.
Upon further consideration, I would make the player answer an important question, "what does this huge study total look like?" What happened during the season's study to produce such an epiphany? How does it feel to suddenly be the greatest Rego master ever?
I would encourage the player to really think about the effect of the season's advancement on the character.
Exactly. If the player can't come up with a good story, why force the SG to force a lame one upon the saga?
But not every outcome, nor complete control of some. And if that one outcome is "He is become like a GOD...", then, perhaps, that is one outcome that should not be surrendered... not 100%.
I don't think the character earned a sudden, overnight boost beyond ALL reasonable expectation.
Then again the player did get an incredibly awesome roll...
The human mind can only absorb so much information at once. What the player rolls when studying raw vis is the source quality, not the experience gained. In all other cases the source quality = the experience gained, but in this instance I would say something completely different happened.
He rolled a really awesome raw vis source. Instead of the pawns being expended they became a semi-permanent study source. The amount of XP is tied into physical form of this vis. Each season he chooses to study it he gains XP equal to Int+Magic Theory+Rego score to be added to Rego. The more he studies it, the quicker he'll be able to absorb more... eventually drawing out all the XP stored in it.
It'll be a slower advancement then getting it all at once, but it should be much higher than anyone other character in the saga (at least in that one area).
And like any really fabulous thing, some people have trouble keeping it a secret. Anyone in the covenant who is a busybody or gossip might eventually learn of it, and then rumor would spread like wildfire.
I don't have much to add except that I'm glad I'm not the SG in this situation.
I agree with others that we want our players to do well; we want them to progress and learn more spells and invent new items, go to new places, and grow through more stories. But we don't necessarily want them to transform a saga with a single roll.
But this case isn't catastrophic. If it's a political saga, then the actual value of the Art isn't that important. What's important is that this character has suddenly become a huge asset to his covenant and his House (and maybe even his Mystery Cult). His services as a teacher or inventor have just become marketable and marketable, if handled correctly, means popularity which means political influence.
And if the character publicises his advancement, who is to say that Mystery Cults don't come knocking looking to bring him into the fold?
But for all those stories that suggest themselves, I'd be concerned about that one roll handing the focus of the saga to that one player/character on a plate. Every player should have focus; it should change story to story. But when something that big happens it's hard for the SG to ignore it.
But I think, on balance, that's what I'd do; Ignore it. Don't play up on it. See how it pans out. If it starts to overbalance the saga then deal with it. In our troupe we have a character who can fly, so reaches combat encounters before the other players, and who can then either turn the combatants into mice or drop them in a huge magical hole and then smother them. And that's the end of the encounter and all the other players have been saved the effort of playing a part. That's fun the first time. But as that happens more and more and that player naturally takes focus away from others then we have to find ways of limiting that capacity.
But I wouldn't make any adjustments until you feel you need to in order to make sure that the other players/characters are well-served.
He doesn't get them overnight, he gets them during the course of a whole season, and it does not break the limit of essential nature in anyway (corebook page 79)
Lets say one of your player's magi is engaged in a bar brawl because of his gift, one of the townsfolk throws a punch at him and rolls the same 3584, would you kill the character, and let your entire saga be shaped by that roll, or would you just ignore the die roll if you did not like it (assuming it was an open and not a secret roll)
??? He risked way more than that, in the same way he got all those 1's he could have gotten a bunch of 0's, assuming he had that same streak of bad luck instead of good luck and that he was working with 2 pawns of vis. He could have gotten:
For a start he could have double botched the "studying from vis roll" (that's 3 zeros)
Then failed his twilinght avoidance roll (0 for the stamina roll, & 6 for the warping one)
And botched the comprehension roll (we use the four zeros remaining, so we have a triple botch)
Assuming he had a warping score of 2 (not that high), he would be out of the game for a moon, and lost 2 xp (so he could reduce his score by 1 in Magic theory for example), plus a nasty twilight scar.
That is we do not have to forget that you got a double botch while spending vis so the storyguide could be quite nasty.
Overal he is risking way more than just vis.
He is risking time (maybe he will get nothing from studying from vis), twilight, and vis. This results are with only 2 pawns of vis and a twilight score of 2, if the score was higher or he had used more pawns, the results could have been, far, far nastier (with twilight score of 5, he could have been gone for 7 years, which would basicaly retire his character for quite a while).
Or being less dramatic he could have wasted at least 4 straight seasons studying from vis, and botching every one of them (single botch), thus wasting and entire 4 seasons of study and a lot of vis.
By these I suppose you mean that stress rolls are all bugged, and that they should be capped, because with the same amount of luck one can certamen any archmage and defeat him in his field, or kill anyone with a rock, you may dislike stress rolls, but they aren't bugged, they are open ended, and that is on purpose
It was earned, because the player played fair and square, he risked a stress roll, and got lucky, thus he earned his reward
If this had happened in my saga, I woould allow him to keep every single XP point he got, but as most have said, this opens a whole lot of options once the rest of the order finds that there is someone walking around with that amount of XP.
I like the delusional flaw (the chosen one), but I would not give it to the character, I would offer him the chance to swap one of his minor personality virtues for it (I am fully aware that this breaks the limit of the essential Nature, but I would do this for flavour reasons and only if the player liked the idea)
I don't have a problem with stress die rolls. A character in my game had shapeshifted in a raven and was chasing after a Redcap to inform him of a message he had missed. I told the player to roll Quickness to see if he could catch him... and got a result over 200. The bird-mage not only caught up to the Redcap, but flew around him several times and landed precisely on the back of the guy's horse with a dramatic flourish!
I do have a problem with lasting XP results which throw the game out of balance. Why bother using any other study method? All other study/practice methods give you at most 10-15 XP. No other source has an open-ended quality level.
If one character can do, so can all others. But you don't see official characters running around with art scores of 50+. I'd like someone to point out to me any character with such a high score that hasn't worked for many, many years to get there.
Sure it was made open-ended on purpose, so that a botch potential exists. Why do all the other study sources have a gain limit and not this one? Perhaps because it was an oversight? Just look at the existing errata and tell me whether oversights can happen....
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
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.
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.
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...
