Actually did a find on the House Rules page, and the rules for exposure for French are as I remembered. 4 xp per season Exposure, unless you take Exposure in something else that season (e.g. Corpus, Magic Theory, or Teaching), up to a level of 4. Once you hit French: 4, you don't get that exposure anymore.
Just below that is the Advancement rules for statted-out grogs and Companions: 30 xp per year (10 xp per season for three seasons, with one season free), plus any xp you get for adventures. Although JL did say in that post that "specialists will advance much more slowly, based on a formula to be explained below", but I don't remember seeing that laid out yet.
Ah!!
Thanks, it's all clear now
I wasn't aware of the 30 XP/year (it'll be good to know when I advance Adeline and Helest. Scratch that, I'll have forgotten it by then), and I see now where I got the 45XP from (I thought the 30XP per year were in addition of the 15 to craft wool)
It stands to reason.
Companions are supported by the covenant, and thus can be assumed to have 4 free seasons, like the magi.
Stated grogs can be assumed to be favorites of magi, exempted of normal duties.
But, as gerg and I discussed above, this breaks down with actual workers, like specialists, that are supposed to work. It also has the drawback of increasing covenant resources at an unnatural pace.
This is problematic here: Who is played? Who ain't? Pierre surely is, but, as I understand it, he also counts as a specialist for covenant purposes, for example.
I'm gonna get an aspirin
Thanks for bringing my attention to the bit about the specialists - I hadn't realized that before. That makes sense ... no buying a Craft: Stone 1 dude and letting him get limp his way up the pay scale.
Let me remark explicitly that I didn't factor in any cost savings from Pierre or his assistants (or Gaston or Eloise) to covenant expenditures. Originally Mons Electi spent 5 build points on a weaver/tailor (who turned into Pierre), but those bp got reassigned (to part of a vis source that amul and I are in the middle of introducing) when I took over Pierre. So there's no danger in not treating Pierre as a specialist, from this angle.
Still, one can surely ask (as Fixer has done) what's the right way to handle XP for these characters in workshops. With my spreadsheet numbers I've suggested this hybrid approach: work out the workshop totals season by season, but let the people's XP be an abstract 30 per year.
Note that you're not "working 2 seasons." What you're actually doing is attempting to generate 36 labor points. Those labor points are what you need in order to keep the workshop financially viable. In the context of a covenant, that means that once your workshop generates 36 labor points, you've provided the standard cost reduction mentioned in Covenants.
The point of working out these numbers is so that you can decide what you're doing with the EXTRA numbers.
Rashid's silk workshop, for example. I have set it up so that it starts off as a Trivial/Poor Income Source -- actually, I have it set up so that it is one step BELOW that, really. Rashid needs to generate 36 labor points a season in order to produce viability (0mp and sanction from Viscaria to keep working). Once he generates enough labor points, he can spend the excess on innovation, or increasing the success of his shop. He can also attempt to generate his labor points in exciting ways -- for example, crafting a wonderous item. But if he wants to provide cost reduction to the covenant, then he needs to spend 36 labor points to do it.
Edit: By that logic, I suppose he could spend ANOTHER 36 labor points to earn income AND generate cost reduction, but as the system currently stands, that would be an impressive feat to pull off every year.
