Okay, looks like everybody gets 44 more Covenant Build Points to play with.
I'm removing three of the five Magical Ovens, the Enchanted Chef, the Stone Cutting Knife, both Enchanted Porters, all five Vitalizers of Provisions, all five Deaths of Vermin, and all five Incendior Hominis.
The Incendior Hominis I was torn on, as I was thinking they could be handy. On the other hand, using them would be a violation of the Pact of Crun Clach - they can't use it against grogs from another covenant, and even with 28 Penetration it would be ineffective. If they use it on anything else, that would be reckless and dangerous considering how much woodland is around the covenant.
Is the summary of bps in the Covenant thread accurate? There's a lot of unnamed L20Q11 books tere and some duplicate summae that look fishy. Also way more tractatus than I think we've bought?
Btw, could I spend some of my bp's improving those horrible apprentice summae JL bought (I was thinking to bump them to L10Q10)?
Apprentices don't get to read. Every year they get Exposure for their three seasons of indentured servitude, plus one season of dedicated Teaching (which, as I understand it, must be actual teaching, of the +6 Quality for a single student variety).
I believe this is correct...I've been copying in everything everyone's submitted as they posted, and gone back and made corrections if I see them posted. I'll double check them when I get a chance.
@Arya I realize the arithmetic works out, but I'm not sure why you think that apprentices don't get to read. IMS, if the apprentice character and the master character agree on a course load, I have no problem with the apprentice reading, if they are able to do so. Yes, that means apprentices who read books are more powerful than apprentices generated by RAW.
Also, those books are useful to Talia, and it's a reasonable proposition that some really crappy books were left behind by Duncan. And if we're going to go down the road of changing other player's build points, I think we'll end up getting into a fight!
There are times during apprenticeship that I'm sure a magus is going to want to read summae or tractatus. That's a perfect time for the apprentice to also be learning from a book. Or the magus needs to travel for an extended period of time and doesn't wish to take the apprentice, so he assigns some reading. 60 seasons is a long time, and it is quite unlikely that 45 of those will be in the lab, exclusively.
Whereas in every game I've played in so far, if your apprentice was working three seasons a year, you were clearly too dull to be one of our magi. Most of us were too busy reading books or experimenting with vis one or two seasons a year, so you'd do one season teaching your apprentice, a season or two of labwork, then go "wow! I've got a new tractatus!" or "time to do my annual experiment with vis!" and send the apprentice off with one the primers you outgrew years ago. Only our verditius actually managed to do three seasons in the lab in a row.
I suppose some magi take apprentices to get help in the lab - we took them as vanity symbols of our impending archmagehood, or to give our aging covenant a future, or to continue our mystery cult or ex misc lineage.
I have always pimped out all my apprentices every season I wasn't personally cracking the whip. Every season the kid spends reading, that's 2-3 pawns of vis out of your pocket, buddy!
Ah, the storyguide I mostly play with tends to deny us the chance to sell many magical services, so "apprentice pimping" is usually not an option. In fact, we usually kept our apprentices close to home to avoid wandering Bonisagi stealing them, so if they could be locked in an ivory tower with a book, we'd tend to do that.
I know I'm not the only one, because PB did the same with Cygna, back when Katerina was just Mikhail's apprentice.
I couldn't have invented that Arcane Connection range Incantation of Lightning if I hadn't bought her for two seasons! (She was, pardon the pun, a beast in the laboratory.)
I just happen to have Cygna's original character sheet handy (I don't throw anything away). Okay, now keep in mind that Cygna v1.0 was 4e, so she had to spend 15 seasons getting grounded in the Arts. Other than that, she had:
1 season of busywork in the lab (no game effect).
13 seasons of Independent Study from books.
3 seasons helping Aiden in the lab.
6 seasons helping Mikhail in the lab.
11 seasons spent being taught (not including the Grounding) by her parens.
4 seasons learning spells from lab texts.
1 season inventing a spell.
5 seasons helping Aislinn in the lab.
1 season being taught by a covenant knight.
And 1 season helping Litha in the lab.
I don't think anyone's arguing that you get don't get a lot more powerful magus playing his apprenticeship season by season in play then you do with straight beginning character generation. But I don't think doubling (or more) the number of points you get for Apprenticeship in starting char-gen, or hobbling how you use your apprentice in play (just to throw out totally fictitious stuff), is the answer. And hopefully this is something that they fix in 6e.
But yeah...in Dave's campaign, cross-training apprentices was something everyone did...assuming that we knew about the apprentices, of course. And unfortunately that's the only saga I've been in that actually got as far as dealing with apprentices until Bibracte.
I had her five seasons? I don't remember spending all that much time in the lab.
I am tempted to park Mikhail at Duos Flumen. I based the covenant on Riverrun from the Ice & Fire books, but that's not very different from RBG, after all
Autumn 1236: Helping Aislinn in Laboratory: +11 XP Aurum (3 levels max) - that season, she and Mikhail were helping Aislinn invent a lightning spell.
Winter 1236, Helping Aislinn in Laboratory: +11 XP Aurum.
Summer 1237, Helping Aislinn in lab: +10 xp Aurum.
Spring 1239, Helping Aislinn in lab: +11 xp Aurum.
Winter 1239, Helping Aislinn in lab: +11 xp Aurum
So, just from helping Aislinn in the lab, she got one point shy of a 10 in Aurum. Wish I could remember why she only got 10 xp that one season instead of 11 shrug
