Don't forget that doing the teaching of Hermetic Virtues would also give you free hermetic virtues, unbalanced by flaws, if the magus is good enough; But we are assuming that the magi are not experts at teaching, right?
Teaching virtues without flaws becomes quickly impossible. Stops with SQs in the mid 20s.
My character with a teaching sq of 23 was only able to impart 1 major and 1 minor hermetic virtue, with the third hermetic virtue being the House one that comes over the course of 10 seasons of close interaction.
Right. So a portion of your initial V&F were given to you by your parens, an equal number of V&F points. So you just got exposure for several seasons, even though your parens was "teaching" you. That was being pointed out as a way to cut down on points while still doing 15 seasons.
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very interesting discussion on teaching apprentices so far, I am almost sad to interrupt it with a return to my original question:
can I train my familiar in magic theory while I am spending a season doing labwork? I understand that if the familiar is helping me then the answer is no, but if it not can I then?
Hi,
No. If you are training a familiar, you are not doing labwork, but are training. You get exposure xp, and the product of your season is the training.
Anyway,
Ken
Normally the advantage of training over teaching is that you get to practise whatever you are training the trainee in during the same season as you trainee is getting training XP. Why doesn't this apply to training magic theory while doing activities that apply magic theory?
Hi,
That isn't the advantage of training over teaching, but being able to use a different total to determine the source quality. A mundane trainer does not produce anything during that season. For example, in City & Guild, the season a mundane master spends training an apprentice doesn't yield anything from the master's time.
It's pretty straightforward: A character gets to do exactly one thing per season, in the absence of a virtue that lets him get more done, such as Philosophical Alchemy. If the main activity of the season does not produce xp for the character, the character gains Exposure xp. An adventure can produce xp that can be used in lieu of other xp gained and also produce other benefits and deficits, but can also degrade or ruin the main activity of the season.
So the familiar can be taught or trained, but then its activity is consumed and cannot help in the lab. The master teaching or training the familiar gains Exposure xp for doing so, but produces nothing else of value.
Anyway,
Ken
Hi,
Hmm. I might have this a bit wrong. Hold on a moment. 
anyway,
Ken
Hi,
Ok, there seems to be a bit of a contradiction between C&G and the core rules. In the C&G example on 75-76, the guy training the apprentice produces nothing and gains Exposure xp.
But the core rules:
It does seem that if a master is able to make a living while training an apprentice, he must have produced something useful.
That said, magi do not earn a living from their labwork.
I had read the C&G rules more recently, and suspect that version is correct by virtue of its being more recent. Or maybe I'm missing some rules clarification.
So I'm less certain.
Anyway,
Ken
I was just about to post that excerpt from the core book that you just cited. This is the section that made me wonder if I could train (but not teach!) my familiar in magic theory while working in the lab.
First off I agree that magi dont "make a living" not from lab work and in fact not at all. However in the obvious example that I feel like they are getting at in the core book, of a craftsperson passing on the their craft to an apprentice while making a living by practicing their craft. imagine for example a potter and their apprentice:
The potter makes pots and while doing it, he/she supervises the apprentice making pots (they end up unsaleable). The potter gains Exposure xp in Craft(pottery) and also gains (makes) pots that they can sell. The apprentice gains Training xp (2+ the potters score in Craft(pottery)) and presumably a lot of useless pots/lumps of clay that are unsaleable. It would work the same way if there is no tangible product, such as if the trainer is selling a service rather than a product, e.g from training someone in sword usage while working as a warrior.
This is the core scenario in gaining Training xp. However assuming that potter didn't actually make a living off of selling the pots the xp-distribution scenario should still work. As in I dont see why selling the pots is itself essential its just hard to imagine a situation where a person has the resources to spend a season making pots and not sell them off to make a living.
However magi absolutely could make a living by working in the lab to generate magical products for sale in the same manner that potters and other craftspeople do. They are just in the fortunate situation of being so obscenely wealthy that they can afford to work and not actually do anything with their products. The code of Hermes of course prohibits that magi make a living off of their magic, but this is a social not a practical barrier.
So could a magus practice the use of Magic theory (work in the lab) while training someone else in Magic theory at the same time. In my view the answer boils down to whether or not we consider the application of magic theory in the lab to be analogous to someone working on something that could make them a living. It is also clear that if you can train someone in the lab like this, then they cannot contribute something useful to the seasons work (e.g. by adding to a labtotal, fixing an arcane connection, extract vis etc.). They only gain experience from training.
@Tellus posted earlier that they prohibited this in his group because it causes apprentices to end up with too many experience points, but that is a metagame concern that stems not from a reading of the rules and I would rather like to hear some opinion on how to interpret the rules too. Though the metagame concern is something that I will definitely have to consider if my own group chooses to allow training of familiars in the lab.
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The way my magus trains an apprentice in Magic Theory is when he is using Magic Theory alone. The list of things that can be done with Magic Theory is limited to setting up your lab, refining your lab and installing virtues.
Even though you don't really need it to calculate any totals, fixing ACs, moving vis, and investing devices all require Magic Theory as well, right?
I would think so too.
By my way of thinking those actions are all analogous to a potter making different types of pots.
Hi,
Right.
The problem is that it looks like the rules changed. With just the core book in hand, I might rule:
-
An apprentice helping a magus in the lab gets 5 Practice xp rather than exposure, because he is forced to learn how to earn a living.
-
A magus can train an apprentice in Magic Theory while working in the lab, letting the apprentice gain Training rather than Practice xp, at the cost of not getting any benefit from the apprentice being in the lab.
As an aside, I notice that a magus who says that training his apprentice in the lab counts as his one season per year required by Hermetic law, will impart 180xp if he has a Magic Theory of 5:
1 season Opening Arts
45 seasons of using the apprentice
10 seasons of Training (8xp/season)
4 seasons teaching spells
That looks pretty close to the bad parens flaw!
But it looks like the rules were quietly changed.
Anyway,
Ken
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I'm not going to touch C&G for this, since I haven't read it closely.
First, the rules in Core were clearly designed for a busy master to train a student without losing his free seasons, which he may have a limited number of. This makes sense to be allowed. They also point out that if if the master has an ability of 2, it's equivalent to 'just yelling at the student when they get something wrong', which implies that the student is actually doing some level of application - not just following around with a notebook writing class notes. It actually seems to me (though not explicitly stated) that this is a reference to the student taking the Practice source quality. It implies to me that the student is basically doing a better version of 'practice'.
It also says you can't use practice or training for hermetic arts.
So, figure out what works for you:
- No training for magic.
- Training only when doing something that only uses MT: lab setup and refinement, maybe vis distilling and affixing arcane connections. not things that utilize the Arts
- Training when doing any work in the lab. Or maybe just non-experimental stuff.
Also, when training your hermetic apprentice, they probably count as the Person virtue instead of the Assistant virtue, if you're using Covenants.
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the problem is that example in C&G violates multiple rules laid out in C&G itself. I would simply ignore it as unexamined fluff. The rules in C&G indicate that assistants are optional while the rules as described in the example make them required. The rules from core (which explicitly do not get overwritten by supplements) indicate you can earn a living while training, where the example insists they cannot. It seems to me that the example is someone using an example with more house rules than core rules.as has been described in multiple threads previously, magic theory can be trained while running a lab.
Also worthy of note- in some cases a magus may earn a living in the lab if the covenant does sell magic as a source of income.
Reading the C&G example, I don't think it explicitly says that Hans isn't producing any goods whilst training Gunter? Granted he isn't noted as producing any Labour Points, but he's not recorded as producing any of those in the previous season either, and he's explicitly making greatswords in that one.
Hi,
He is explicitly making greatswords, but he is helping the master and the increased LP are recorded there.
Anyway,
Ken
I was in at least one game where we definitely allowed someone who was upgrading a lab (so using Magic Theory) to Train someone else in Magic Theory. That was the only place it was used, so I cannot say if we would have used it more broadly.
I prefer to ignore about 90% of C&G.