Does this take into account the round up rule? (kicks in quite a lot with my magus's exposiure during lab-work (affinity to MT & Vim) ).
In our game, if during exposure you assigned 1 to each Vim and Magic Theory each season to net 4 xp (1.5=2 and 1.5=2, instead of 3 in one item), I'd never end the razzing of your munchkinosity =D
Which round-up rule, now?
If you're talking about individual xp multiplied by 1.5, I don't let those add up. If you put 3 xp into a skill, x1.5 that's 4.5 - BUT you've still only put 3 xp in that skill! The fact that it gives you a "1" (and that's usually 5 xp) is a separate notation, so the .5's don't keep adding up.
That what you're talking about?
(Ugh- I cleverly misquoted my table, edited above.
On my aforementioned chart, it works like this:Abilities:
Affinity: 184 xp = "10" (normally 275 xp needed)
Puissant: 180 xp = "8+2 = 10" (Psnt. cheaper by 4 xp)
Affinity: 220 xp = "11" (330) (Affin. cheaper by 5 xp)
Puissant: 225 xp = "9+2 = 11"
Arts:
Affinity: 91 xp = "16" (normally 136 xp needed)
Puissant: 91 xp = "13+3 = 16"
(exactly equal here, Affinity becomes cheaper at 17.)
Mine does; I've not seen another that does. If you want to adjust mine to evaluate the value to your own character, reset the starting experience to how many you'd put in at the game's start, reset the study values to typical ones for you, and reset the ratio of seasons applied to the ability in question to the ratio you seem to have.
Chris
Here's true munchkinism in the game. Let's say we have a library filled with with a bunch of level 4 / quality 11 summas. Take Book Learner. Now, according to the rules, you can only gain experience by one method in any season; let's make that studying from books. Study 18 different summas each for 5 days. In each ability you get 14/3 -> 5 experience. Yay, 90 experience in a season... and you're kicked out of the group.
Or how about this? Any season I work in the lab, instead of gaining exposure experience, I read a single one of those summas for 5-8 days. You get 5 experience instead of the measely 2 for exposure. And that's not even questionable as legal.
Given that you've put two minor virtues into Affinities, I really don't think putting 1 point into each of two things to get 2 points in each is unreasonable.
Chris
The intention behind the round up rule is to be a mere convenience--that's all. This player is abusing that convenience for an increase of 33% over people who do not. I'll grant, it's not a ton of XP, but the feeling is abusive of the rule and therefore I'd give the person a hard time.
If your whole group plays this way, then it's not a problem in any way.
I would also question the book bits. At the very least: a normal lab season assumes some time off; as this person has packed his season with work end to end, then there would be room for some of the penalties like in covenants for overtime and such.
Again, though, if your whole troupe plays this way--no worries.
Is it not so that you get 0 xp when reading for only 8 days?
Yes, you cannot get study xp for reading a Summa or Tractatus for only a fraction of a season. Studying from a written work takes an entire season, simple as. I know of no SG that would ever allow the suggestion above and would raise serious objections if I did.
Do you allow Book Learner? If so, and I'd taken an Affinity instead, I'd have serious grievances in your game. They're both minor virtues. Book Learner (estimating a typical book quality around 11), gives you roughly +25% to many skills (most the ones useful to magi). As exposure and reading give those skills the main bonuses and exposure is so weak, that's probably about +15% to all those skills overall. Does clever use of exposure experience to pick up a few points, even if eventually 20 points or so, really measure up to Book Learner?
So, if I were in your game, if you're house-ruling to hurt the weaker one, I would really want you to cripple Book Learner.
Anyway, that's a house rule you use, and this is really about the ArM5 rules.
Chris
Now I know that reading a book for less than the entire season is possible in RAW. But this is usually due to distractions. There is some key to what fraction of the xp you get based on the extend of the distraction.
short-study (IIRC):
lose 1-2 months: you get 1/2 the normal study total.
lose > 2 months: you get 0 xp...
So, when you study each book for 8 days, you get 0 xp... And this was an abuse how? 
affinity:
The rule in the core book, states that you allways round fractions up...
For most people with an affinity, this allow one to split exposiure xp, and still get the bonus for the affinity (so that you end up with 3 xp). Having 2 affinities, and using both results in a slightly higher advancement (still pretty low compared to any other form of study, and it doesn't advance any one skill any faster - just allows me to advance 2 at the same rate).
Perhaps I missed something, but isnt the debate on this point concerned with gaining 4 points from splitting exposure xp using Affinity? Each 1 point would become 1.5 and thus 2 using the round up rule. I dont quite understand your argument here for only 3 points unless the exposure xp is NOT split before the affinity is applied.
split the xp:
ability with affinity-> 1 xp * 1.5 = 1.5 and rounded up that is 2.
ability without affinity 1 xp.
You and the rules disagree. For every "full month" of reading lost you lose 1/3 of your study total. If you lose one full month, you lose 1/3; if you lose two full months you lose 2/3; if you lose three full months you lose all of it. As long as you have not lost a full three months, you still have something. Five days of reading means less than three full months have been lost, which means you get 1/3 of your study total. There's really no arguing this since it's written explicitly in the rules.
In our saga we house-ruled this to round the other way. For every full month of study you got 1/3 of your total.
Now, this would be unwise with tractatus since you can only benefit from a tractatus once.
Chris
If you lose more than 10 days of your study time youtr total gets a FAST erosion in the number of XP you get in a given season.
Xavi
The ArM5 rule
time lost < 1 month: full study total
1 month <= time lost < 2 months: 2/3 study total
2 months <= time lost < 3 months: 1/3 study total
3 months <= time lost: 0
5 days of study puts you in the third category, not the fourth. That's why we house-ruled against this.
Chris
That's for lab totals, not study totals.
Chris
You know, the thing is: if someone tries to pull that out in our group, we have that weird tendency of having the next meteorite that passes by to land on his sanctum.....
Rules are guidelines. You try to abuse the setting using the rules and you are screwed IMS. The PLAYERS screw the blatant abuser.
Xavi
Nice bit of rules raping callen, but methinks you suffer from a serious munchkin tendency. No way would that reasoning fly in any saga I have ever played in.
5, 8, 10 days does not a legitimate study period make. Perhaps the rules allow partial xp for less than a season but I think you will find, should you bother to ask any of the line themselves, that the spirit of the rules is at very least 1 full month or not eve 1/3 would be awarded.
That said, I also doubt highly that this rule was worded as such to allow three books to be studied in a single season. Perhaps David could clarify the official rule?
What I really suffer from is reading the little details and understanding how the math is going to work out. That's common our saga. For example, one of us got the official rules on magical foci changed because of the messed up math in the rules.
Also, I'm not sure you noticed that I'd mentioned that we'd house-ruled to avoid this situation. We rounded the months lost up (house-rule) instead of down (ArM5 core rules). If you had noticed that, you might have written differently.
Anyway, this was supposed to be about the "abuse" of putting 1 point from exposure into an Affinity-improved ability/art. There were two parts to this. 1) There are much more serious abuses available within the rules; this doesn't come close to what could be munchkinned. 2) Even with such "abuse," the Affinity is still weaker than Book Learner, so allowing Book Learner without alterning it and considering such Affinity use to be "abuse" is a little absurd. Therefore, a reasonable accounting of the value of the Affinity should include the rounding of fractional experience. Hopefully this brings us back on topic.
Chris