In this scenario, our maga, who wants to get through her annual season of teaching her apprentice as pleasantly as possible, has decided that she's going to make her pupil pay attention.
Accordingly, using as her model several canon level 15 CrMe spells that make the target feel a certain way for Sun duration (Panic of the Trembling Heart, Rising Ire, Heart of the Lion, Rising Passion), she invents a spell that imposes an emotion roughly describable as "eager to learn attentively", and casts it on the apprentice every morning just after sunrise.
If a mere level 15 CrMe can't get the effect to work as she wants, she's perfectly willing to spend another magnitude or two on making the effect more powerful/precise, adding a Muto or Rego requisite, swapping to MuMe or ReMe as the basic effect, etc.
So, should the increased attentiveness affect how much the apprentice learns? It doesn't increase the apprentice's underlying ability to learn the way the Apt Student Virtue might, but it does seem like a student who is always eagerly paying attention really should get more out of a season of Teaching than a student who gets bored, distracted, or otherwise behaves like a typical teenager. So, should reliable use of this spell by the teacher add a bonus to the Teaching Advancement Total, and if so, how much?
The advancement system in Ars Magica gives no modifications (positive or negative) for how eager or reluctant a student is to learn.
If you get no modifications for natural emotions, you shouldn't get it for the spell-induced emotions.
On a more meta-level, if it was that easy to make your apprentice pay attention and learn better, it would be a wide-spread practice in the Order already. So either it is not that easy, or the modifications are already included in the regular Teaching quality.
Also, being under the effect of a spell that often ought to give the student a warping point per year.
No, it shouldn't. I mean, not even remotely. A spell of 15th-25th level, half a day every day, for one season out of four each year, is way under the limits for Warping.
Maybe you could try to use a variant of the rule for non-standard labwork routine (Covenants, p 108): grant a +1 to +3 bonus to the teaching quality, but suffer similar side effect as Overtime, double Overtime or triple Overtime.
I understand that the intention is not to spend more time in the lab, but to have some form of magical assistance to make the student more attentive and perceptive - but there must be a price to pay, otherwise it would be widely generalised in the Order. So using similar consequences as suggested could balance the benefit and also explain why it is not general practice.
I don't share the opinion of those previous posters who seem to take granted innovation - it's not because there is no example spell that it's not a valid spell, and that everyone in the order who came before the magi must have considered the design and rejected it as unsound. If the Order really was preoccupied with improving apprenticeship learning - the whole apprenticeship system as currently designed would be entirely changed. The Order can be safely assumed not to care about how well the apprentices are learning right now, with the xp baseline at character creation and the state of the peripheral code, and can be safely assumed to be more interested in squeezing 3 seasons of exposure experience from the apprentice every year or close to.
Does eagerness or attention help improve learning total? Probably to some degree. I might grant a teaching bonus of +1 to teaching quality - this is in line with Arachne's tuition, for example. You could consider limiting the bonus to the max lab improvement for teaching, if you thought it necessary. I would require higher magnitudes and more comprehensive effects to gain a higher teaching bonus.
So would said magical effect be eligible to add a teaching bonus to the lab if it was enchanted into an item?
Another option would be to look at a variant of Aura of spells, the three that can affect Tytalus debate modifiers, that affected academic debate and perhaps lecturing that would be used by the teacher?
I see no reason to give extra XP here. The maga wants the season of teaching to proceed “as pleasantly as possible.” And it will! The student will be eager to learn. The season should proceed very smoothly.
But that’s no cause for extra XP.
As others have noted, Ars is completely unconcerned with the student when it comes to determining XP. It’s all about Source Quality. A good teacher grants the same XP to the student regardless of that student’s desire to learn.
The sole exception is the Good Student virtue. If your maga can somehow grant this virtue to their student, well, now they’d get extra XP.
So unconcerned with the student that there is the apt student and poor student virtues and flaws, which apply to teaching, and a huge list of virtues and flaws that apply to how well you learn with a given method or in a given environment. We also have Arachne's Tuition - another spell - which improves training source quality by affecting the muscles of the student. Why is affecting the muscles of the student more effective to improve learning than affecting his mind? A palatial lab can help improve teaching too. Is it an intrinsic property of gold, or is it because the student simply likely has a comfortable seat and is less distracted by back pains? I'm leaning towards the later. If it's the later, and we concur that helping him be less distracted by the lack of comfort improves his xp, I don't see this as being very different than helping him avoid distraction, whether he's comfortable or not.
It's true that there's no explicit rule in Ars for the emotional attitude of the student. On the other hand, it is quite difficult to naturally maintain any fixed emotional attitude for approximately ten hours a day, eighty days a season; absent the intervention of magic, it seems like it would be a fiddly issue that generally washes out over enough time, and can be left up to Storyguide/troupe judgment the other 1% of cases.
Given that, per Apprentices (p.45), the Gift penalizes Teaching Advancement Totals from both sides, both student-affected-by-teacher's-Gift and teacher-affected-by-student's-Gift, we seem to have a precedent for consistent magical effects on attitude affecting Teaching Advancement Totals. Further, declaring that an applied-each-day-of-instruction level 15 CrMe spell cannot affect Teaching Advancement Totals would lead one to conclude that a teacher could hit a student with Panic of the Trembling Heart just before instruction every day, making the student have "an overpowering fear" of the teacher, and it would have no effect at all on the student's learning. That just seems obviously wrong to me.
So, my conclusion is that an applied-each-day-of-instruction level 15 CrMe spell could affect Teaching Advancement Totals.
On the other hand, giving a student a not-naturally-sustainable emotional attitude would seem likely to have some side effect, even if the magic effect is not strong or persistent enough to cause Warping. Further, if things like The Resolute Mind Of The Tireless Researcher actually worked, one would expect that eventually most magi would notice and use them for themselves, even if they couldn't be bothered to use something similar on apprentices.
At which point, my thoughts are that:
An imposed emotional effect that causes someone to exert themselves more than they usually would is, quite naturally, tiring. Therefore, each "study day" a character is affected by such an imposed emotion, they suffer 1 Long-Term Fatigue Level for each point of bonus to the Advancement Total. So as a practical matter on a seasonal basis, the benefit cannot exceed +1; otherwise the student winds up unconscious with Long-Term Fatigue after a handful of days. (That this happens to work out to the exact same bonus as Arachne's Tuition may or may not be a coincidence.)
If the magus has imposed such an effect on himself (say, hoping to effectively improve the Quality of a book), he cannot effectively steer a decision on what to study, because the effect of the emotion itself gets caught up in the decision-making. While an attentive apprentice can be brought back to the main topic by an instructor's correction, someone using the spell on themselves is as likely (or more) to run down a rabbit-hole of intriguing tangents that waste a day's study as to benefit from the improved focus.
Which then solves any question about why an apprentice-teaching spell isn't universally used; many magi don't bother spending the lab time to invent or learn a spell that would just give their apprentice a +1 to Teaching Advancement Totals, just as many magi don't bother spending time specifically learning the Teaching ability for the benefit of their apprentices.
I think a good attitude is what gets you a full season of instruction. If you aren't a focused enough student, you'll get reductions to your Advancement Total due to the distraction.
I disagree with most of you. He is creating a new spell to improve students atention towards the subject. I do not know how many of you have been teachers, but I promise you that paying atention for 40 minutes, instead of 20 each day improves students result vastly. So effectively they learn more. You can magically have more armor, can induce fear, can do a lot of stuff. There is no limit of the magic blocking these. We all know it is not applied probably because they did not think of it at all, but the forums are full of these kind of things and none of you disagree so heavily, or because of game balance issues. I dont care about the real reason. But I do agree with the post creator it definately should give you more exp.
That being said paying attention fully for such a long span of time of course is tiring. So I would modify the thing a bit. Or I would recommend to make the spell a concentration spell that you maintain with the rego vim spell, for 1 or 2 hour intervals, when you are with dense learning stuff o if you create a sun duration spell you give him for each season 1 point or 2 of long term fatigue. If you attend to lab rules about pushing your time working they give you fatigue at the end of the season. This should work the same. I think that the bonus should at least be +3 to learning exp.
All this said I do understand there are SG's who do not want this kind of spells to affect their games, due to the xp increase it produces, I am fine with it, but directly tell them I do not think it would work, but I do not want to give you more exp. For the others there is no real limitation to this, but you trying to find excuses not to be used before. There are discoveries every age, and there is no problem with it at all.
There is the simple "flavour" option to say that the virtue Good Parens does not come from the master being a good teacher or giving extra seasons of teaching, but simply using such techniques to boost his apprentice learning curve. It is abstracted with a simple "lump sum" benefit after 15 years of apprenticeship.
Too often I see options ignoring the characters are meant to be human beings.
This idea is literally messing with the character's mind. Fundamentally altering who they are during the developmental phase of their life. That's pretty messed up.
Same with those people who will use rituals to improve communication, intelligence, etc. Ask yourself what increasing intelligence,communication, perception or presence truly means. Is a +5 Int, Com, Per or Pre the same kind of person as a +0. Not likely. They will like different authors and art, different forms of entertainment, have different goals in life. They will not be the same person. I've read "Flowers for Algenon".
Messing with someone's mind should be a last resort, and generally reserved for enemies.
In this case, i dont see it really much different than taking coffee to be able to study more time, tbh.
But for the same reason, i think that would be interesting to treat that spell as somewhat addictive... so the student ends with the "need" to use that spell to find the will to study if you use it too much.
In our day, coffee is a well know stimulant, with a significant degree of anecdotal and scientific study behind it, showing it is not a big risk. This is different.
The apprentice is a guinea pig. We know the warping rules because we have the rule book. He doesn't. He should fear warping (let alone how his mind is being messed with). There are limited fine measuring instruments in mythic europe. Deliberately manipulating a high percentage of a warping point doesn't make sense in the setting.
As the initial spell is described I would think it would have an impact- not in terms of offering a bonus to teaching totals but in terms of potentially reducing penalties for time the student takes away from their studies do to a lack of interest in learning. The default assumption is that the student is interested in learning and will gain the maximum benefit but if that does not apply then the partial season rules might well apply to an inattentive student.
The lab specialization rules from Covenants seem to provide good guidelines for the effects of such a spell. So I might allow it, but within the limits stated in the Teaching specialization (max +3). It would stack with the lab specialization, but only up to that maximum.
Note that the lab speciacialization rules also gives us a range of the magnitude needed to provide an equivalent bonus (10 spell levels for each point of specialization granted). So a level 10 spell/effect would grant +1, level 20 for +2 and level 30 for +3.
If using a formulaic spell, I would certainly consider giving the apprentice some warping points if this is done more than once over the course of apprenticeship (essentially cumulating the seasons over the years to determine how many warping points are received). Again, that is similar to what happens when you use formulaic or spontaneous spells to improve the lab (inflicting Warping to the lab or reducing Safety).
The effect could also be invested into an enchanted item to improve the lab, in which case I would simply use the lab specialization rules and give a Teaching specialization to the lab, without giving warping to either the lab or the apprentice.
Mate, I do not mind how you do play the game or not. I answer the creator of this thread with a honest answer. You could and in fact should think that magi are very selfish people who have properties instead of pupils. So it is no surprise to me that any magus whose pride would be his magic liege could and would use this spell mindlessly to have the best student in thw tribunal, for fame o for any other reason.
Maybe he would not use on himself, but you do not know if this is a cheesy strat or is a magus being driven by his pride or any other thing he is concerned about. I do feel by reading the book that many magi think they should rule and can do and undo as they please in this realm and I can see this spell as a mean to a goal definately.
Also I do think there are magi so driven that would not think twice on using any spell in order to hace any little advantage to surpass other magi, ir any problem he faces. Also I do perfectly think there would be a magus that thinks that magic is the way to perfection and that any spell used on himself is the way to be better each day. The thing is that you assume that answering straight to what he asked is not "roleplaying" or being history driven instead of rule defined gameplay. There are many ways this spell could be used and if you want to give it any sort of punishment for use, its fine. But if someone asks in the forums about the topic, I think i have to tell that person what I trully believe. And I cant believe that being able to improve anything by magic why this may be different.
That being said, if you were inclined to add your opinion after a honest answer I would feel it is a good answer. But telling no, it would have a lot of implications, when by raw improving your stats definately what by the way is a lot more impactful is a matter of study, vis and 1 warping point, I cant understand why you complain for this spell. You do not lime raw spells to inprove characteristics and so on, maybe you do not understand the motivation of people that much. There are people all over the world paying to risk their lifes to look in the best case a little bit younger and in the worst like a monster or dying duro g the proccedure, but you think people would not try to improve themselves by magic if it was an option? Really? If you idealize people maybe. But if in our actual world people many many times do tale risks for the most stupid things, I do not see a magi not even thinking of imrpoving himself magically.
That being said is it something every magi would try to accomplish, would care or would consider, ofc not. Like in real life there are people that are more prone to this type of things and others that couldn't care less. In my opinion you should think of what does people do for any stupid thing, like asking for money fot vacation, or beauty surgery, and so on and think what would those same people do if they had magic at their disposal. I think that giving a bonus to study would be the less concerning of the things, and most of them would not even consider any of your arguments. This is a more realistic approach than yours and is what I do prefer to play, instead of an idealistic story, where magi are brilliant well doing people who fight for honesty, love and chivalry, and devils are world's burden.