It is also the case that a young magus, joining a covenant where training apprentices is the primary «raison d'être» would meet the five requirement quickly. Such a covenant would have to have a decent library, and definately the roots of arts, which means that each art can be taken to 5 in a season. The specialist magus might need as much as thirteen seasons, but few would be that specialised. Junior magi would probably join to spend at least half their time qualify to opening arts, and the rest for other covenant duties (teach other stuff, adventure to procure resources, political entanglements, etc.). After about 5-6 years they are fully qualified. Less if they can spend all their time to qualify or are not super-specialised at gauntlet.
Starting 35-40 years past gauntlet is for experienced players only IMHO. Oh, maybe you you meant 35-40 years real age? I read it as Hermetic age
I think that sounds fair as a price to rent. As a price to buy, it does not really cover the work to copy and transport it. Did you think price to buy or price to rent?
There is a difference between a vain summa and a roots summa. The roots are very good books for a very specific purpose, and the people writing and/or copying such books know what they are doing, and will only do it if it pays their wages. A vain summa is a bad book for a very broad purpose, and the author has an inflated evaluation thereof. Being very proud of the book, the author may make copies just to promote himself, and once a copy exist, nobody wants it so the seller will be happy to get 2 pawns; the time to write it has already been wasted. In other words, I do not think the comparison between vain books and roots is fair.
But there must be an abundance of damaged roots copies around, so I am sure you can get a L6/Q20 for a pawn to buy.
It really annoys me that roots summa become very expensive in build points [Cov] compared to high-level books. They are much cheaper to produce, and supposed to be plentyful in the order.
Thanks again everyone, you have given me even more ideas to think over. I am very grateful for the support everyone seems to readily give. Again thanks.
I would think it would more than cover the cost to copy and transport it. Compare this to the cost for mundane texts. Considering it takes the same time and materials as a mundane text, covering the work and such would be under 1 lb since you can get most mundane texts for 1 lb. 2 pvf is worth many times 1 lb; as a ballpark 2 pvf are worth 20 lb silver.
This may depend on the availability (learnability) of Magic Theory. To copy an arts book, the scribe needs to know Magic Theory. If it is possible to train your rank and file scribe in Magic Theory, to copy these books, then I agree that it is comparable to mundane books, and two pawns may be fine. If however, only magi and failed apprentices (which I assume is very rare), then a magic book is never comparable to a mundane one, and few mage scribes shall be satisfied with two pawns/season (especially when he has to cover the mundane costs of copying as well).
How do you handle mundane scribes and magic theory in your saga?
So I don't see any reasons for Covenant scribes not to have magic theory. They already can read latin, so they can learn MT very easily. A score of 1 is enough to let them copy books about hermetic Arts with no fear of corruption.
In our saga, we ruled that the roots were available on demand from the redcaps for a very small consideration (I don't even remember the price, it may even have been in silver pounds...). They are not of much use to most magi after one season of reading anyway. That's typically the kind of thing that gets forgotten or misplaced after a few years taking dust on a shelf in the library...
This makes me curious about the demand for books on Magic Theory. I could totally see a covenant who is trying to create the "Fourth Estate" from Transforming Mythic Europe using mundane scribes to pump these books out to normalize Magic, as well as finding Gifted people they wouldn't otherwise reach. Otherwise, I'm not sure the demand for the books is high enough to warrant training someone who isn't Gifted in Magic Theory.
The demand for books depends on how many are being written, and how many magi have "book learner" as a virtue and prefer having new tractatus to read as their favourite hobby. Also it depends on the risk appetite of magi - the Twilight Prone and elderly magi with high warping scores may find buying books vastly preferable to the risk of botching when studying vis. Also it depends on how many magi are studying at any one time compared to inventing spells, enchanting items, adventuring, living the high life... but there's certainly enough room for at least one covenant in each tribunal to have scribes trained in copying hermetic books.
This neatly brings me back to the original poster's topic - while the supply of Gifted children may not be so massive as to need many specialised schools, it's a possibility for an interesting covenant. Likewise, having specialist facilities to open the arts of apprentices with unusual supernatural abilities is possible - I'm sure the Domi Magnae of Ex Miscellanea and Merinita have such labs on hand.
Good books are always valuable. Studying from vis is expensive and the returns are uncertain. Paying five pawns for a Q10+ tractatus in your level 25 art is good value for vis. You might get more xp by studying from vis, but on average it is about the same, depending on your aura. And you can probably sell the tractatus on after having read it. For a decent summa, you can read the same book for years. In tribunals where vis is scarce, few magi can afford years of vis study. Looking beyond game mechanics, most people will want books in addition to vis to get different perspectives.
Vain books is a different matter.
The big question is how many good authors are there? How many distinct titles exist worth having?
I routinely have grogs who are instructed to Magic theory 3- enough to copy books and handle initial lab setup (obviously refinement etc can't be done because they don't spend the time working in a lab, but it saves the magi the occasional 2 seasons and they can copy books...
of course if they have a good com score and especially if that is paired with good teacher they can also learn magic theory at higher levels to tutor apprentices and write tractatus...
Yes, it's always been that way, but it's not really so absurd. But just how much do you want to break down skills to prevent that? You have to break down skills into all sorts of subtle bits to avoid that. In the real world at the upper levels of science, people commonly teach each other by publishing what they have discovered in their research. I've always had the feeling that was what tractatuses were supposed handle. Not allowing this via any method at all is also unrealistic. The absurdity just happens with the scale. But I'm willing to accept that because it's already complex enough as is.
I totally agree that we can live with it. It is just one of these absurdities which deserves a second look and a bit of wondering.
The difference from RL research is that you can write that illuminating tractatus based on learning from a single source only. And the tractatus is even helpful for your only teacher. What saves us is the limit on how many tractatus a person can write.
and realistically a student may well have a different perspective that can lend insight to a teacher they have learned from, because people aren't simply recording devices for information.
What is a bit absurd is having 5 points in an ability and being able to write a quality 12 tractatus...
you can write a number of tractatus equal to 1/2 your level in an ability rounded up. If you have com:3 and good teacher you can write a quality 12 tractatus at level 1, which means you only have 5 points invested into the ability. Where and how did the RAW disallow this?
Getting back (slightly) to the original topic - if you're putting together a school, you're going to have to deal with the social penalties of the Gift.
The (canon) way of dealing with this is 1:1 apprenticeship, whereby the Magus extends their parma to the apprentice, and thus prevents the -6 (cumulative) penalty from occurring due to their social interactions. This is fine for 1:1, but doesn't scale to a classroom. At best, a high-level magi can extend their parma to a small group (3 or 4) students, but that's about it.
Without it, having multiple Apprentices in the same room, all affecting each other with their Gift, is a recipie for disaster. It's not just a question of whether it will fail - it's by how much. It's canon that, at LEAST, the social penalties of the Gift stack for both sides of a conversation - so, a -6 to everything if neither has Parma. And I THINK we got an official interpretation that the Gift doesn't stack in a classroom (ie, you don't get a -18 if there are 6 unshielded Gifted people in a conversation), but regardless: a -6 to social interactions, in-universe, means that it's really freakin' hard to get anything done.
My personal favorite version of dealing with this issue is "give everyone 'Unaffected by the Gift', which is a General (minor) virtue from RoP:M. As it's not a Supernatural gift, there's little reason not to be able to hand it out to folks on their first day at school, using a ceremonial Touch/Circle/Instant enchantment. (I'm pretty sure it's just modeled as "+3 to all social interactions with Gifted individuals" - objectively a rare occurrence in Mythic Europe, so it's just a minor virtue.) That being said, the core rulebook doesn't rule on a guideline for handing out mental virtues. However, it would likely be the same level as the CrMe guideline that allows you to bump your mental attributes from +2 to +3 (seeing as there's a virtue that grants 3 points to add to your virtues, and it costs 3 points to go from +2 to +3.) However, I THINK 'Unaffected by the Gift' may have a caveat that says "magi don't understand how this works" - so you may have to explicitly create an integration or Experiment that allowed magi to cast this as an effect.
Alternately, you can have Craft magi create those little talismans that can contain minor virtues, for the same effect. (You'll need a lot of craft magi to cover an entire class, every year, though.)
Or, you can use the Teaching rules in Apprentices to teach Gentle Gift - but that requires that a Gentle Gifted magi be available for every Gifted student, every year. Which you MIGHT get away with once it was set up - ie, have 4-5 gentle-gifted magi each year (who have the appropriate Teaching abilities, of course), for their Season of Service, teach Gentle Gift to incoming students. (assuming you only have 4-5 students each year). However, that's probably not very sustainable.
