Interesting discussion. I think rare apprentices makes for better stories. Glad to see it works out demographically too.
Note that The Sundered Eagle mentions the tribunal finds 15 apprentices each 7 years (p. 28). For whatever that's worth.
The one thing I don't understand is why you all seem to be assuming high Intelligence. Sure, that is a nice thing to have in an apprentice and magi teaching one to get a bonus to their lab score might actually care about that more than anything else. But most magi will train apprentices for other purposes, and while intelligence is always good the person's spirit, magical aptitudes, and so on should actually matter more IMHO. A Fifth Edition wizard with mediocre, even negative, intelligence isn't actually that crippled - he can still be a fine wizard. I don't think magi would realistically demand high intelligence - although, of course, high intelligence is always a bonus.
I think the intelligence bit comes from the example magi in the core book (p. 24ff).
Only 2 of them (the Mercere and the Flambeau) have Intelligence +2, the rest have intelligence +3 or higher (Bonisagus +5, Tytalus +4).
But yeah, it's really mostly an artifact of previous editions.
No, it's not just an artifact from previous additions. Neither is it an assumption. Rather, the usual Intelligence is around +3. Noticeably below that is considered a flaw. It is explicitly an example of the type of flaw that would be overlooked by Jerbiton magi in favor of the Gentle Gift. "An Intelligence score less than +3 reflects a premium placed upon Gentle Giftedness by masters of House Jerbiton" (HoH:S pp.55).
From my own experience, I don't tend to see Virtues used to raise Intelligence. Not that it doesn't happen, but it's relatively rare. So the typical maximum I see is +3. Meanwhile +2 is not uncommon, and once in a while a +1 might creep in. I would expect the average I've seen is roughly +2.5. YR7 is right that a lower Intelligence is not crippling.
I'm going from what I've seen on character sheets. I tend to assume that PCs are a fair sample of any group to which they belong, and the vast majority of PCs which I've seen, have Int of +2 or +3. I have seen a +5, but that was an over-munched Verditius.
Even if it's not mechanically optimal, it might just be a cultural thing in the Order. Very few groups select only for those traits which are necessary for the group's primary purpose, after all.
In my Toulouse campaign, one of my players found a Gently Gifted apprentice with an intelligence of "only" +2. Having the Gentle Gift himself (although a Flambeau) he esteemed that trait very highly, and agonised for ages as to whether it would demean him as a wizard to take a "stupid" apprentice. The player roleplayed the moral uncertainty very well, and portrayed the transition from "I am ashamed of my Apprentice" to "I am protective of my Apprentice" to "I'm proud of her, even if she happens to be stupid". At no point did anybody mention that +2 Intelligence is perfectly respectable, and indeed will not hold somebody back much.
Reversing the order here a bit I know. Please bear with me for a moment:
Yes, by definition. We are talking about a game about fictional characters in a mythical (european) setting.
Further more, we are assigning simple numbers to not-easily-quantifiable attributes of imagnary people.
Everything about it is by definition an assumption.
This is our assumption.
Written re-troactively to justify the characters in the core book? Perhaps.
But it is our assumption.
I would argue that every character in the core book is build on the assumptions made after hours and hours of play in the 4th edition.
Yes, they follow 5th rules, but they are in many ways 4th ed characters.
I call it an artifact because in 4th ed (as you may recall), intelligence was the be-all-end-all stat for magi (not my words, see this thread) and so the example magi are made with very high intelligence.
And here you are largely arguing my point - that the very high intelligence is less than necessary in the 5th edition.
Also, I believe the average I've seen is a gnat's whisker above 2, on the average.
Haven't crunched the numbers though.
In our saga, me and another magus just found an apprentice. Myself one at age 16, but with an int of +3, the other at a better age 10, but only +2 intelligence. This will work nicely. I will try and find a younger apprentice after that, but I also wish to start educating about the right way to perform magic now.
I think you misunderstand. We're not making an assumption. We're reading what's in the books. This is essentially the same difference between postulates and theorems. The books lay out the postulates. The postulates are those initial assumptions. From there, if we follow what is written we can theorize things. While it is true that the theorems only hold true if the postulates are true, they themselves are not postulates. From another perspective, would you call a reporter a liar for accurately quoting a liar lying? While the quote may be a lie, that does not mean the reporter is lying. Likewise here, telling an assumption written in the books is not making an assumption ourselves. So, again:
We're not assuming it. It is stated explicitly in the books. We could, rather, question why the books assume a high Intelligence, especially since it doesn't really seem necessary.
Yes. I stated that I'm in total agreement that low Intelligence is not crippling. In lots of games I've been in we've hand-waved away that bit in HoH:S or assume the mark is much lower than +3 for just this reason.
Roughly the same holds for our troupe. Average Intelligence is somewhere between 2 and 2.5. Most magi get Intelligence +2 or +3, but slightly more tend to get +2. A few get Intelligence +1, mostly characters who are designed to be something else first (warriors, minstrels etc.) and magi second. Other than that, I've seen a snobby +5 Int Bonisagus, and a -3 "I'll take the challenge of a negative Int mage" Bjornaer.
I rather expect to see Int +2 as the 'default' these days, as it makes a decent compromise between cost and effect.
You can still have another characteristic of +2 (before negatives) which is nice if you can use it to underscore your "actual" concept without making yourself a laughing stock among magi.
Int +3 seems rare - if you go for +3, why not invest and make a point of having high Intelligence?
Int +1 or even +/- 0 has poped up, but that was by deliberate choice.
So the compromise is +2.
This does mean, however, that apparently by RAW the Gifted are "almost invariably" intelligent, so this should figure into the above calculations.
Another point to consider is how the Gift varies with "lifestyle". Many Gifted children are apparently found on a certain Faerie-touched Greek island, for example. I think it would be appropriate to have a higher abundance of Gifted children amongst those living in Magic auras.
Given that almost all of humanity lies on a -3 to +3 scale, the number of people who have a +2 and +3 in anything would be absolutely miniscule. If we're assuming +2 intelligence as standard for a Hermetic magician, which seems to be the case, then far less than 1 in 10 of humans would have that level of intelligence. In order to meet the previous estimate of the Order of Hermes as consisting of between 1 in 5 and 1 in 10 of Christendom's Gifted population, we'd have to assume that the Gift correlates highly with intelligence, with perhaps +1 being average for the Gifted (and therefore +2 and +3 not being that uncommon.)
This being the case, I think RAW supports us once again. The Gifted are almost invariably intelligent. However, the Order isn't satisfied with merely "intelligent"; they want people who're a cut above even that average. This gives us a situation where apprentices are scarce, but where non-Hermetic gifted are much more common than Magi, but are mostly ignored and treated as being castoffs and second-rate magicians. I feel that this situation models the attitudes of PCs, and enriches play, significantly.
...and therefore being covenfolk.
Since vis and Gifted children therefore seem to be at least partially increased by the presence of a Magical Aura in an area, auras might be the real treasures within any Tribunal.
Since it's not difficult to build an item that detects an aura, and then equip an adventurer with it, I imagine that in most of the more populous Tribunals, information about where the strong auras are is pretty common knowledge, and most of the powerful auras have had chapter houses or even whole new covenants deposited on them to take possession. Sure, your information might be somewhat out of date, but it's unlikely to be entirely wrong.