Learned Magician Bootstrapping

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I am the SG in a campaign set in Cambridge, and the Covenant is the fledgling University. A theme of the campaign is memory

A SG character is a Learned Magician, from a tradition that has lived in Cambridge. Since when they can't recall, and have forgotten much. They are down to one and a half members(the half is the SG character's master, who is incapacitated). The players inducted the SG character into the order, but he he does not have Hermetic Magic. The (gifted) tradition survived within a monastery, and the core that allowed them to survive, was to make sure they always trained the next generation to bestow "unaffected by the Gift" for Seasonal duration using Amulets and cast it on the head of the monastery. This has lead to warping-to-a-pattern of leaving the monks "Gullible".

Now there are students turning up, he has a bigger pool to try and recruit heirs, also he wants to help with running the university, so I have some mechanical questions:

On Page 92 of HMRE, the box states that "a Magicam charm may not
grant Virtues that affect the accumulation
of experience points"

and on page 90 of HMRE, the box states that "a Fortunam effect may not grant Virtues
that affect the accumulation of experience
points".

But in the examples listed under Gift of venus (venus’ blessing) on page 90, one of the gods listed is prometheus, which grants Good Teacher which does affect the accumulation of experience points.

So would charms granting Apt Student or Book Learner or Puissant with (?) with Season duration be in scope or not?

Maybe this is solved by the DE disentangling/clarifying the difference between Source Quality and Experience points gained? But I am currently unclear...

Also for the possibility of opening a Gifted student to both the Learned Magician and Hermetic traditions, If it is done Hermetic-> Learned Magician, then a SuMa of 24 is needed to keep the hermetic opening intact assuming that the apprentice has zeros in all the Hermetic arts. Or is it 25 (HMRE page 8 states it must exceed)?

Bob

2

Additional Question:

If a SuMa spell with base 10 can grant a supernatural ability for a season,

(box on HMRE page 92: Where a Supernatural Virtue is granted that has a corresponding Ability, the character is able to
perform the Ability as if he had a score of 4.)

could they write a tractatus on that ability?

Bob

3

I think Good Teacher is an exception because it doesn't affect your experience points. I wouldn't allow Apt Student, Book Learner etc. If they were allowed, the rule you quote would be meaningless.

There's no problem with Puissant with X: but maybe that's a slip for Affinity with X, which I think would also be blocked.

4

I don't think I would allow this, but there are precedents in favour of it: Ars Notoria can grant temporary abilities, and explicitly allows you to write books. But it also says that you cannot benefit from your own books, even if you wrote them with a temporary increase that has since lapsed.

5

I was thinking of Puissant (Teaching) which affects source quality.

6

I think that's similar enough to Good Teacher that you can use it as a precedent. Again, you're granting EPs to someone else, and ArM is much kinder about that than solo bootstrapping tricks.

7

I agree with this, and would say that every time you get re-granted the ability (even from a different source) any subsequent tractatus you write are copies of the ones you have already written, until you somehow manage to get the level up to write new ones.

8

First of all, let us quote the text (for Fortunam; that for Magicam is mutatis mutandis identical) a bit more extensively - emphasis mine:

The troupe
should use common sense in selecting Vir-
tues appropriate for charms. For example,
a Fortunam effect may not grant Virtues
that affect the accumulation of experience
points, allow specific types of Abilities to
be learned, provide the character with ben-
efits from a third party, or grant a physical
object.

That, combined with the Gift of Prometheus example, makes me think that what the text really means is that you can't create an effect that retroactively changes how many xps you have already accumulated in an Ability - for example, you can't grant yourself Warrior and 50xp to "instantly" spend in Martial Abilities. But making you better at learning stuff (Apt Student, Book Learner, or Affinity) seems very reasonable, even in the context of Fortuna (which makes you lucky rather than skilled): for example, Book Learner would ensure that you have no distractions or minor mishaps when studying from a book, that pages tend to flip to relevant pages almost automatically, that you guess correctly the meaning of ambiguous passages, and so on.

That's a bit tricky. In general, I'd say no, only in part from balance reasons. Performing an Ability is different from teaching it; the memory of how you gained your hard-won xp is part of what makes you good at teaching. This is made explicit (albeit with the term "using" instead of "performing") for the Puissant Virtue if I remember correctly, so if your Ability is 5+2, you can teach it including writing books as if it were 5, not 7.

9

I assumed the no-go for lumps-of-xp-virtues when I first read it, but it was ages ago, and I now look back and see ambiguity.

As a teacher in real life, I definitely perform when teaching maths!

10

Good Teacher does not affect the accumulation of experience points: it boosts your Source Quality (and the Quality of books you write). That happens regardless of whether there's any experience being gained.

Of course, Apt Student et al also affect the Source Quality... but that only occurs when you're gaining experience from being taught, trained, study, etc.

11

EDIT: just saw Ezzelino had already said the same thing. Go read his answer above, it's way more comprehensive.

I'd borrow from the clarifications for Puissant (note that you do not, in general, use an Ability when learning it, teaching it, or writing about it). Just replace "use" for "perform" in the text.

12

I have always assumed that the prohibition against virtues which affect the accumulation of experience was intended to include Apt Student, Good Teacher, Linguist, and so on.

This is because seasonal learning is a three step process;
1} Determine base & modified Source Quality; then
2} Determine base & modified Advancement Total; then
3} Gain experience points equal to the modified Advancement Total.

So everything which affects Source Quality, or Advancement Total, also has an effect on Experience Points. Which kind of stinks.

Oddly, I don't think the way the prohibition as worded includes 'lump of xp' virtues.

[Edit:] Ezzelino's argument is sensible, but the explicit wording quoted is a problem. I think it would be helpful, if the author's intent matched the approach Ezzelino is proposing, to amend the wording from 'affect the accumulation of experience points' to 'affect the total number of experience already accumulated in the past' or maybe 'instantly grant a number of experience points for immediate allocation'. Elemental Magic is an interesting test case, in that it is explicitly worded in terms of granting experience points.[/Edit]

13

I have to say I find Ezzelino's argument about "common sense" strong now he's quoted the book.

14

Maybe it says somewhere that I haven't found, but if someone is granted a Supernatural Ability with a SuMa charm, and then gains enough XP to level up that ability in the time the charm persists, what happens to that XP when the charm goes away? Is that enough to continue to have that Supernatural Ability?

15

I wouldn't allow XP to be put into a temporary Ability. The Ability has a fixed level, set when the effect is first created, and does not get better or worse through the duration.

16

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense