Since you folks know the covenant staff better than I, is there any way that Timaios can train in a mundane skill like Ride for one of his seasons? Either from a staff member of the covenant, or by hiring an instructor?
It depends how high your standard are. We've got a few grogs with Ride 3, but none with any Teaching ability or high Com. The local village, being Kipchaks, probably has some better riders, but there's a language barrier there which means you'd be limited to training.
If you do want to go for a Grog, Damianos, the want-to-be-stablemaster is probably the obvious choice (https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/covenfolk-character-sheets/5242/1). Assuming you are a single student you'll get 8 xp per season from him.
That's fine, it's mostly just the desire to:
- Get a minor level of competence in some Stuff That Might Come Up
- Find things to do with my seasons that don't require a lab
Just to check - you know you can study the Arts without a lab? You only really need one if you're trying to learn new spells or create items (or a few other minor activities).
Yyyyessss, but I need either a teacher, a book, or raw vis, and I don't believe I have access to those at the moment?
The covenant has a pretty decent library, and, because of the covenant's nature, all visitors have access to it.
Scott
The list of books is here: https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/covenant/5282/1 for reference (and Gregorius included it in at the end of the tour, so Timaios will know where it is IC).
I have a question about our house rule on Transformation of magic characters. We increased the required XP for Transformation by a factor of 10, for balance reasons (otherwise a character could get 50 XP's by buying a Minor Quality that cost 5 XP's), but, as I now remember after stumbling upon the posts when looking for something else, Erik Dahl pointed out to us that XP's can't be saved from season to season. Unless I'm missing something, doesn't that make Transformation effectively impossible, barring a really high vis study roll? Should we change this somehow
Scott
I don't think that's actually stated in the Rules (even if it's what Erik had in mind when he wrote them). I'd definitely agree we shouldn't go with it, but I don't think it's a case of "changing" anything as such.
I think he was assuming it's in the main rules, but it doesn't appear to be there, either: there's no real need for it, because you can assign points that don't increase an Ability or Art. So yeah, not only are the rules not as Erik said, but making them like he said would be out of line with the main rules.
I do think you'd need to specify what Quality the points will be saved toward, though.
Scott
Yes, agree that would make sense.
Dunno about you folks, but I'm having a terrible time with the boards - very slow to load, constant server errors that just crap out. Sorry that it's making it hard for me to reply to threads - some nights I can't get it to load at all.
It's not just you, though I haven't seen it so bad that I couldn't get in at all.
Scott
I've mislaid my corebook. I hope I'll find it soon.
Is it possible to bring a companion character in to the game? I am thinking of a scholar/linguist who we could rescue from the Amazons or some other situation. He would have some skill with crossbow as he was part of the defence of Constantinople vs the crusaders in 1204.
We encourage companions--I've just had trouble getting anyone to make anything but magi. 
Scott
Great I will work him up and post for comment.
Thanks
John
I am travelling with work and will be off line until Wednesday 18th April. Please don't wait for me on anything.
Thanks
John
OK, thanks for letting us know. Safe travels!
Scott
We seem to have stalled here. That's probably partially my fault, since I haven't been pushing much, due to a month of illness in the family, and making up the work I missed because of it.
Let's get the Amazon thread moving, please. In the meantime, I'll update Viola Tuesday night, and we can start the conclusion of her lab quest.
Scott