There are rules for it in one of the 4th edition books. I can't remember if it's in the main or one of the supplements.
So few people write books in game, from I can see.
Except for Arts (which cannot be trained, nor be taught except one-on-one), powering down book-learning will do relatively little - training and multi-student teaching remain very effective, and over decades, characters can just keep accruing experience...
But only up to the level of the teacher before being kicked down to practice and exposure. Unless your saga has active teachers with Aristotle-level knowledge, that's a significant limitation.
What? The actual DIE roll? As in "add +stress/2 instead of +stress"? Well, that's a rather small change, less than a magnitude, and doesn't scale with the Arts. So, with your -10, it comes down to about 3 magnitudes less for each spell cast, effectively. Which is a substantial amount, but I stand by my opinion that for RAW elder magi, especially ones played-out instead of advanced through the generic character-generation rules, it would not be overly substantial; magi are that powerful.
Yes, you are right. I should have written 18 and 16; that's 1,535 XP which is less than the two RAW Arts at 40 (1,640 XP) which I was comparing against. It's been a while since I did the maths on these numbers.
Well, yes, fair point. The new numbers are slightly lower, but you're still right: raising MT 1 by requires 55 XP and raising Cr by 1 from 18 requires 95 XP; raising RAW Cr by 1 from 40 requires 41 XP. My rules do tend to discourage raising Arts above MT, and this in turn will encourage making items. It's also aesthetically less pleasing as we'd want magi to focus on the Arts more than on MT IMHO.
As for the time of study - well, yes, but even under RAW you need about 4-5 Seasons to raise Creo to 41. Under my system you'd need 9-10 Seasons to raise Creo to 19, but that's really on the same scale - I don't think it's such a huge difference.
This calls for an entirely different model of Ability advancement. However, I'd consider simply capping Ability scores at 10. You can't get better than perfect. So the experienced knight with Ability 6 isn't really much less capable compared to the centennial elite guard, but the guard probably has far broader experience that he might be able to draw on - guile, area lore, leadership skills, concentration....
If you want to cap the power of wizards, cap the Arts as well at level 30 or so. Easy enough to achieve. Or diminish the amount of XP they get, for example by limiting them to reading tractatuses or to 10 or 15XP max per season.
I also like the reduction of dice randomness and removing the "free +10" mentioned. In fact we experimented with using D6 instead of D10 in our games, with a second "both or boom" die that determined if you had to roll for botches
Cheers,
Xavi
You can have something like this:
XP gained = source quality - ability score (or score /2)
The more you know, the less likely some book, or another person, will be to teach you things you don't know: A newbie will benefit greatly from reading his first tractatus on Artes Liberales, while, to an experienced character, most of this will be known, although he may have surprises.
A similar mechanism might be used for the arts, using Art score/2, 3 or 4.
Just my 2 cents
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Yes.
2.5 rather. And yes the change for the dieroll is a tiny one, but thereĀ“s a lot of people who doesnt like the extreme variability in power that the dierolls can cause, so iĀ“ve seen it used several times.
The average reduction from the casting total is around 3.
Yes, so what? It takes magi an extra 10-30 years to be able to cast superpowered spells, and if they seriously study that hard, i think its mean not to let them finally get those big spells.
"As Abilities" means that highend spellcasting is mostly offlimits except for extreme characters that does absolutely nothing else but aiming for "that one big spell they want".
Exactly. While its nice with specialist or concept magi that goes nuts high on MT, making that the preferred route feels really bad.
4 seasons will usually be enough to get ~41 XP unless you either have a vispoor or bookpoor saga. And the latter can often be improved if the players cooperate.
Yes it is a huge difference, to a large degree because of how it mess up spontaneous magic and totally skew preference towards items.
My houserules still allows you to get Arts as Abilities, by picking the V/F(variable) "Minor Gift" that allows getting anything from a few arts up to all, with the choice for each level of taking fewer arts as Arts or more of them as Abilities.
Its a very nice V/F to use to make odd, limited or special characters, but i really dont want to use it as standard.
Those i would say are exceptionally BAD ideas. A 25 year old WILL normally be trampled by a 35 year old with the same profession. Only exception being sports that require explosive effort (endurance peaks in the 30s(IF continually trained)).
And any 90 year old in decent condition will be total murder against a 25 year old.
Age=experience, and experience is REALLY effective in reality.
The experienced magi should have lesser power because there is no possible to write them medieval stories only fantasy. And companions have absolutely no match to them.
The starting magi's power is OK but they should be more generalists. Skipping the virtues which make them specialists would do the job.
The math can be archived anyway.
Not in my experience, actually. In real life, after you've been training intensely at something for 10-15 years, you are pretty close to your own limits. Keep in mind that most people in the modern "western" world start practicing their future trade (doctor, smith, sailor etc.) relatively late in life, at least compared to what you did in the middle ages.
In my experience, it isn't in the long run. Every generation quickly reaches the limits of the previous one with relatively little effort, then pushes them a bit further. The knowledge of the Order as a whole advances at the slow pace of practice, that's true, but after two or three centuries teachers with ability scores in 20+range would end up being relatively common.
Isn't "It's impossible to tell non-fantasy stories about an experienced wizard" tautologically true? But assuming that you meant the two terms "medieval" and "fantasy" to distinguish "lightly magical fantasy" and "highly magical fantasy"... I (again) strongly disagree. It's quite possible to tell both kinds of stories. All that is required is that after a certain point, you thumb your nose at that bastard god, Logical Consequence, and lay your offerings before Consensus and Fun instead.
4th ed core rules had 3 types of books: Summae, Tractai and Libri Quaestionae (or something, my Latin is limited). WGRE expanded on these, allowing for Glossing (improving quality of books) and Commentaries (an addition to the book, with differen rules for the different book types)
Few people write books in game? Not so, in all my sagas ever, the ability to write passable books meant you could do easy and safe covenant chores, or had moderate bargaining tools for getting other stuff. And the ability to write great books was highly appreaciated and valuable.
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We have tended to play in vis-poor sagas (2-3 or so pawns of vis per magus/year, so around 10-12 pawns for the whole covenant). In those, books were a high priority since you could not use much vis for study (there were other priorities). Now we are playing on a high vis saga (around 60+ pawns/year; vis is a commodity in Mann) and experimenting with alternative book rules for hermetic libraries, but the ability to write is still highly sought after, and the scribal team is one of the most important specialist teams in the covenant.
Xavi
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Smartarse difference. Anyway our magi didn't offer anything but solved the conflict with magic quickly and killed the fun.
However it may work in your fantastic group.
Aw hey now, there's no need for name-calling! I'm not saying anybody's wrong to play any kind of way that they want. All I am doing is saying that reducing the power level of wizards (or eschewing them all together) is not a requirement for running low-fantasy, challenging games. (With the obvious caveat that if you want pure medieval-historical, then yes, something must be done about wizards. 
)
Actually, one thing we find particularly satisfying as players is to have stories unfold in such a way that historywillprevail, at least at face value. A little bit like many novels by Tim Powers, where there's a secret occult history at work behind the scenes, and "real" history as we all know it is just its byproduct. Note that the players know this, the characters do not; so the characters would not shy away from a move that will obviously contradict history. But somehow circumstances conspire against them in subtle ways 
I can see that as a possible outcome although I'm not sure it's the most likely outcome. Bringing it to the level of the players, having to find and seek out famous teachers is both more challenging and more interesting that having interchangable sources of book learning available.
I think one of the problems we're having in making our Ars Magica settings work is that we're taking a mistaken approach. The AM5 corebook has systems for advancement that work pretty well for player characters. I think we all like ticking off periods of time and adding a few experience points here and there. It's part of the game. Our mistake is that we take these same systems and assume that they must model the game universe. We try to do various statistical tricks to estimate populations, ages, and learning. But these same systems that are so much fun for players don't work for the population at large. People don't actually increase in experience at a steady rate all their lives and they certainly don't spend all their lives obsessively studying, as player magi tend to. Rather, most people seem to top out at some point in their lives. If one followed the rules strictly, all of the texts listed in Arts & Academe would be written at much higher levels, because the point totals for the writers would add up that way.
I'm inclined to just hand-wave how big the Order of Hermes is and how many elder wizards exist and at what level of power. On skill levels, Aristotle and the other true greats seems to max out at about 12, based on their listed books. I won't have background characters better than this without a very good reason. That's part of my background setting. Most will be considerably less skilled. That approach allows me to concentrate on how powerful the players in the foreground are and how quickly they advance. It's a lot easier to just tweek this than it is to project the effects of charts meant for gamer use onto an entire world.
Hey, that's because Aristotle could only build on Plato (Philosophia: 10) who in turn could only build on Socrates (Philosophia: 08 - and only by training or teaching, since Socrates left no books), who in turn probably built on a bunch of Philosophia 4-6 guys. It's exactly what I'm saying 
Seriously, I tend to agree with you Jabir, to some extent. The problem is that the rules do have to be relatively consistent with the setting, or it's very hard to rein in disbelief over long sagas where you can witness their long-term effects.
That's a fair point; what I meant, though, was that if you want a game that is TOTALLY in touch with 'medieval-historical culture, then you can't have any wizards at all - because the Order of Hermes, the Gift, and magic in general are not historical. Once you allow that wizards exist at all, you've moved from 'historical fiction' to 'fantasy'. After that it's all just a matter of degrees.
As a counterpoint, by the way, I am actually the exact opposite in most of my games. I relish the opportunity to start from a framework that is (on the surface) identical to 'real' history and then let the players totally foul it up with their interference. My general principle is that there is a certain amount of inertia that will tend to shape the world in certain ways (call it the Dominion's Plan, or what you will) but that the efforts of PCs can change this shape to greater or lesser extents (proportional to their interference.)