for you know, whatever
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I find it interesting knowing you would be in a covenant based around a version of your future selves, nobody too good teacher, teaching, or the poetic crafting needed to write good books, but two people took book learner...
Well maybe we can be rewarded for not being power gamers? 
And one took Incomprehensible...
No way! I need to study what everyone has made. I think we mostly made our PC's in silos.
Didn't occur to me at all, to be honest. Seemed hard to guess what might happen in the future, so I thought I'd let you worry about that.
Ha!
I genuinely was trying to avoid making choices based on the premise and focus more on building the character organically from the ground up on this general question: what might an Elven crafter of magic rings look like in ArM? With modification and adjustment of course.
I gave up months ago trying to predict what @silveroak might throw at our characters. About the time I found my head cook grog in a magical tower protected by a gryphon....
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no, it was a faerie tower, not magical towers without doors which are meant to be ascended by climbing hair or vines or the like only makes sense to fairies.
I rest my case. 
I've never had a covenant where the locally produced books were a significant portion of the library. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a worthy PC-produced summae in my games. There's a point where, if to match the books available in the order, you have to become a borderline archmagi, it's not going to happen except maybe tractatus and so on. I didn't expect our character design would really influence the library beyond available lab texts, enchanted items on covenant site, and so on.
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And on another topic, the skills you add to the book production is an additional reason for me not to even consider building a character arround that concept, out of gauntlet.
Does the Philosophiae bonus for Verditius apply (up to the MT limit) even if there isn't any particular Shape & Material bonus?
Rule quote: Summae and Tractatus have a different source quality calculation than in the core game - the base source quality of a text is equal to the authors communication+3 for good teacher, +1/2 (teaching+vulgar poetry) with a bonus for craft quality of scribe, illumination, and bookbinding for magical tomes, or simply scribe and illumination for non magical tomes (bookbinding quality will aid the durability of texts in either case).
Com +3 Good Teacher +3 +3 for Teaching 3 and Vulgar Poetry 3 + 3 for scribe / illumination / bookbinding = 12 base quality. If you want to write a sound summae of level 19 Q 12, that means an art of 38. You've already got a skilled character and you need to get to an art of 38 before you have a book matching something which is bought at level in pawns, and is merely an average book in the order. What's the chance you already have something better in your library by that point, which your purchased from vis, and you read it on your way to become this good? Your writing becomes interesting once you hit Com +5, Vulgar Poetry and Teaching both at 6, and your art to 40. At that point, you have a chance to feature in the top book of your art. (Yes, the threshold to write an interesting tractatus is wayyy lower)
I mean, I'm guessing it's possible to hit a craft quality of 2 per book skill, but that also relies on an extremely optimised book producing workshop.
The thing of it is that when you have to purchase all your books, as in college, you tend to sell the ones you are done with to cut your costs. Authors, on the other hand, tend to keep at least one copy of their book around.
Yes. With a Philosophae score matching your MT, this means that S&M becomes optional. You can now craft a toothpick of teleportation, and it's as easy as if you had decided on a portal or a pair of boots (except perhaps vis capacity, but iirc, that's merely a different mystery).
This is true, assuming none of the magi at the covenant plan on ever having an apprentice.
I don’t think the books will be a problem, though perhaps a bit of a wasted opportunity. Book aren’t that quickly made completely redundant and shipped off (especially with 8 magi). And even if they were that just means we must walk slightly different paths the second time.
Well, I did have a bit of time in Praesidium Orae, so... I had a fill of powerhouse bookwriting. Plus, every game I've been in has had at least 2 people with Good Teacher. I've decided I kind of hate Good Teacher in concept - the numbers are too strong for any long running game. I made my character idea before other characters all solidified. I think we all did that. I also deliberately designed my character to be an absolute hot mess.
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I'm curious whether the Covenant will come staffed. Or will the grogs and companions also be reverted back... @raccoonmask 's magus may not be the only hot mess we have on our hands.
I've been trained as a Jerbiton, I always remember the important things, like bathing and combing my hair and not putting my long voluminous sleeves in the alchemical formulae.
Food? I knew I forgot something.
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