Also, all of the faerie children from Evandrus botch might be potential sources of insight, as they were produced by magic.
I did some math. I think our Income is growing exponentially. And not a slow growth like IRL economic growth, a stupidly fast one. I got some numbers of potential outcomes based on those fancy rules in Covenants, by assuming a uniform set of 100 rolls and seeing what different bonuses cause. I also assumed a value of 1 equals stagnation. (That's the worse assumption for us.) Open Office Excel was used to create this. MATHS! So here we go:
+0, 1 botch die: about 2/3rds loss of income. OUCH!
+1, 1 botch die: increase by about a third. Reasonable.
+2, 1 botch die: increases by about 4000%! Yes, that is three zeroes. Multiplied by forty (40)
+3, 1 botch die: Increases by about 40,000%! That's a 400ish multiplier.
+4, 1 botch die: Increases by about 400,000!! That's over 4000 fold.
+5, 1 botch die: Increases 25000 fold roughly!!!
+6, 1 botch die: Increases by about 200,000 fold. That's gonna get us 200 million a year.
+6, Auto Botch: Increases by about 400 fold still.
New proposal:
Mechanically drop us down to our starting income, and make it so loyalty is divided by three, and rounded down (towards 0) before applying to the income rolls. You have a number of botch dice equal to the bonus on the roll.
Storywise we get a pair of horrible, essentially unavoidable disasters. You see it turns out our covenfolk had managed to breed a farmable variety of clam, and are selling a lot of pearls. Like a lot. A mind boggling amount. The covenfolk are so fanatically loyal they've managed to keep it from becoming public up until now. There have been suspicious deaths. But now the people buying them finally got wise. The pearl market is crashing. The wealthy now know how to identify a farm pearl and think them crass. Almost as bad is a horrible clam plague is sweeping the clam farm. Its killing all of them. It only effects the farm friendly clam breed our covenfolk have it seems, but we've lost our precious clam breed.
This looks interesting, how would you go about this, from a Hooks and Boons perspective? Is this separate from the two Minor Boons of Wealth? Was this one of the sources of wealth? We are still Infamous, right, so this Hook's stories could cover part of those problems? Are you aiming to be rid of the Wealth Boons? Because the silver from two Greater Sources is significant.
From a hooks and boons perspective this would be no change. We'd still have our wealth sources. They'd still be two greater wealth sources, just pared back to the levels we had around the game start. We'd still have a very nice income. Right now we're making a lot, but we're on track to make totally insane absurd amounts of wealth.
The issue is simply this- you have moved during the story from a high +4 in loyalty (between 70 and 75 points) to a low +6 loyalty (currently at 106 points), which gives you a current income of 1096 4/9 from salt and 2632 from cotton due to accumiulated growth from an initial value (based on 5 magi) of 212.5 in each, which means close to a fivefold increase in salt production over 17 years and over a tenfold increase in cotton production over the same time. Most of this was spent at loyalty +5, average growth would be 10.13% on salt, 15.95% on cotton. These are certainly high compared to modern market expectations which assume an average 8% growth, but they are not unheard of- though usually such growth in the middle ages would be reserved for merchant enterprises rather than agriculture. Given that this is Italy we are talking about I don't see an issue with fantastic amounts of income, though perhaps the bonus should be 1/2 the loyalty modifier going forward (and in my future games). Certainly there will be greater tolerance for wealth accumulation in 11th century Italy where you are, at best, a few decades ahead of the game. The larger issue is the accumulation of currency versus other uses or displays of wealth, which makes you a target socially as well as criminally. The covenant could shift this into a third source of income in buying annuities (10th century money lending written to hide what it is), invest in improvements to the covenant or labs, find a social cause, or other worthy use of the funds. As a note by the rules if you convert it to further income (at typical levels with 6 magi is an income of 100 lbs/yr) you would need to balance this with a minor flaw as well as investing 1 ton of silver (initial income is considered to be 1/20 of investment in most Ars Magic books) to be lent out.
Other options might include some form of charity for orphans that can include screening for The Gift and such.
OK, back online after 48 hours offline, have now updated Giovanni so we are good to go. Sorry for not getting this done Friday.
First, let's get Evandrus's research rolls out of the way:
The simple die: Nine
Extra Ordinary Results: Botch Potential!, Let's see, nine starting botch die. Three Safety... six total botch dice!
No Botch!
A perfectly normal longevity ritual results!
Int(3)+MT(14)+Co(30)*2(Focus)+Cr(31)+Clawball(8)+Simple Die(9)=125 for Deangelica.
The other ritual is missing the simple die so only reaches 116
given that there was no effect on DeAngelica for experimenting, and she was probably told this was a reward for her years of service rather than "hey, we want to experiment with you" it will result in a gain to loyalty
Deangelica has Monstrous Blood, so she's now aligned with the Magic Realm. She has no supernatural abilities, though, so is her LR is ½ level?
she is considered supernaturally aligned, the same way a magus is (though obviously different in details). Nicola also has monsterous blood and gets the same benefit.
I have a question: Can Experimental Philosophy perform Original Research?
I suppose so, but the breakthroughs will be far less dramatic.
Hi, silveroak,
What's Gloriana's Insight for Fertility in 1119? https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/character-design-and-development/10935/513
look 2 posts below where you linked to
Somehow I thought that was Evandrus's insight. Derp. Wait, then what's Evandrus's insight?
Hi silveroak, that was Evandrus's Insight.
I edited my update post after you had responded to Quite Possibly a Cat.
*edit, and Quite Possibly a Cat already has the item proposed in the custom spells section, so this is definitely Ev.'s Insight.
it appears that darkwing is considering dropping this game, and I am not planning to run the game with 2 players...
You could try posting a new thread in the recruitment section. I kind of like this fast play thing, but you might need to relax the rules for introducing new magi...
Otoh, evandrus could take a new apprentice and even anna could use a lab assistant.
Just brainstorming...
Yeah, no kidding, I like this sort of play, it's strange and an exercise in bookkeeping, but that's a big aspect of Ars.
Andros is ready for an apprentice, but I guess he doesn't look that attractive as a teacher, bummer. I didn't like him when I started out, but after guiding him for nearly 15 years in-game, he's grown on me!
However most of the people who've expressed any sort of interest in playing have simply fled when they grokked the nature of the Saga (super-long year-by-year advancement 'til eventually, actual play with the Arch Magi we advanced, can't really choose Magi but what's in the covenant already). I don't hold out much hope in that regard. Love to be proven wrong, though!
I am definitely interested in the campaign, though I can certainly understand if you feel that two players is untenable.
Hi guys, I've been busy the last week and am in no position to make a serious effort to catch up for another 6 days. When I was just doing Aurthor and Pazzino I could keep up with the book-keeping, but adding in Giovanni and Mercurio has made it tougher (I've made a right mess of Mercurio and he's only seven) and I'm falling further behind. And as for keeping track of vis....
I feel dropping out is my best option at the moment, sorry if I'm making the covenant unviable for you guys.