Question about rules, Attribution of expérience

One of our storyguide just told us yesterday that characters abilities couldnt be raised over 5 with adventure experience is it true ?
does it mean after 5 you either need book, teacher, practice, or other activities to raise it ?

More over if it is really true how do you raise supernatural abilities higher than 5 ?
For exemple my seeker has Comprehend Magic, i dont think there is book or Teachers for it ?

Your story guide may have mis-understood the rules.

When a character gets adventure XP, no more than 5 points of that adventure XP can be spent on a single thing. So, for example, if you got 6 adventure XP one evening, you could spend 5 of it on your Supernatural Ability, but that 6th point would have to be spent on something else.

Does that make sense?

It begs the question, if you cannot raise a talent above 5 with experience, how those teachers - who seems to be the only option to progress - were able to get above :smiley:
A book of level 6 would have to be written with somebody with 12 in such skill. Assuming that he managed to get this score through practice (ei: 2xp/ season), he would need 315 xp (assuming he got to level 5 by experience), which means 158 seasons, roughly 40 years. Doing nothing else... Only mages would ever be able to pull such feat of longevity. Mind you, he did not have time to work on anything else, so other would have provide for his comfort and food.
So definitely unlikely to have any books of level 6.
Tractatus are more likely though, and one master (level 5 or more) can expect to write three tractatus, possibly four in his lifetime.

As far as I remember, in 5th ed, there is not such limit.

You should ask you SG what he wants to achieve with this rule. If it is to encourage trade of tractatus and travelling and favour exchange for teaching, fine. Otherwise...

Maybe he wanted to talk about the limitation in abilitiy levels given by the age of the character ?

(although, doesn't it only works at character creation ? )

The rule is a House rule, no canon. Anyway seems easy to find someone with comprehend magic. Maybe not easy because there are just some of then in the order but its possible and pralicians are teachers, they will help you if you work for him 2 seasons. Also you can create a tractatus and exchange it for other of the same skill. A good tip for comprehend.
I don't like the rule of your SG but don't worry, XP from adventures can be good to rise Parma, social skills, and focus the study in something important. Don't forget you cab practice, it is not the best method but can work to reach lvl 6 and make another tractatus. With this rule tractatus will be more valuable and you can sell/exchange 3.

Thanks camorak for those good ideas,

what i meaned i know you can only input 5xp per adventures inside an ability but our Sg just told us this was a book rules that abilities ( not technique or form) couldnt be raied higher than 5 with adventure xp, now after i looked to it, decided to be a house rule ! So no more disccussion about it can be done with him!

Now for comprehend magic i learned from him as well that my mentor can teach me but he lives in thebian tribunal and im in the rhine tribunal... or i should go to caer guddu to be taught,( scottland seem nearer)(since im an apt student it would be nice) but as i am wondering what would it cost me ! The tractatus idea seemed to be a great idea true ! or help them somehow.

About practice and source quality, how can i make the source a better quality ? Event or ?

Stingy SG is stingy. That, as a house rule, stinks. It doesn't really fix anything that is confusing or ambiguous as a rule, and it is definitely a disadvantage to all of the players in the game. There are several abilities that are very useful to magi, finesse, concentration, penetration and the entire spectrum of spell mastery, to name just a few. If your house rules can't be discussed, then they aren't really doing the job they should be doing for a troupe. House Rules are meant to fix things that the troupe finds to be broken, period. If the SG is the only one who likes/wants a house rule, then it is a failed house rule.

Therefore my question about what the SG was trying to achieve with such rule ? If it serves a purpose, because he wants to push the game in a certain direction, that's fine. But if it is just to reduce PCs abilities, that's very blah...

So to avoid antagonising your SG, maybe ask him what does he want to achieve ? Does he find the magus too powerful ? If yes, is it because he does not know how to handle a magus 60 years out of apprenticeship ? If yes, that's fine as long as he spell out his reason.
Does this rule apply only to magus, but not to mundane character - which would be a nice way to give more power to non-magi character ?

If it is just to be stingy, then let's hope for you that he balance that by telling amazing stories.

(As a side note, as SG, I wanted to tell several stories relying on investigation and interaction with mundanes, so for my first campaign, I explicitely forbid Mentem magi. Once I got more confortable, I allowed them for my second campaign. So specific house rules are fine if they serve a purpose).

It's possible that there's a language barrier issue here. but Sauryan seemed to say that the SG made it a House Rule, and therefore it's no longer open for discussion. IMO, that makes him a stingy SG. So, the rule stinks. The fact that it was made in response to being questioned about the rule, and then the fact that it closes the discussion would be a huge red flag for me, as a player.

I never had a different Sg in ars magica than him
he tell us that he is extremly generous about xp adventure : btw 10xp if you achieve uncorrectly the scenario up to 20 xp if you do greatly !
In general we get 15xp

Is that a lot ?

I think we usually dole our 5 exp for a story of moderate length - most of a session several hours long - and there is a significant challenge or danger. More if it's a longer of more intense story.
So yeah, I'd say he is generous with the amount of exo but his house rule makes no sense and offers absurd limitations to what you can spend those boatloads of exp on.
Perhaps he should give out fewer Exp but refrain from limiting their spending potential.

It is indeed a generous amount of XP to give out in Ars Magica adventures. Most XP awards, in my experience are between 5-10. The important thing about adventure XP, though, is that it can be spent on virtually any ability, even if it wasn't used on screen. It makes some sense now on how he limits adventure XP, however, reducing the adventure XP given would probably be a better long term adjustment, because adventure rewards now outstrip all other forms of advancement available to characters, including magi.

10 is average, 15 is high, 20 is rare/exceptional/special.

Even if you got 20-30XP, that does not make up for the extreme limit on being able to raise Abilities that he imposes. And what is he going to do when you have all the abilities you want at 5? FORCE you to spend it only on Arts or Abilities you don´t want?

And it doesn´t make any sense for such an arbitrary cutoff...

Someone doesn't like high Abilities. :slight_smile:

Since this limit does not seem to apply to Arts, I suppose magi will have to suffer with throwing all those xps at their favorite Arts.

Definitely not a good saga for someone with Supernatural Abilities.

Or Affinity with (Ability).

Some consider it a lot. I would like to consider it average for my saga. But it seems I am the only one who uses a 5/10/15 scale. Other players as Beta SG generally hand out 5 or 6. Which I find frustrating, but it seems what the majority wants so I go with it.

So handing out 10 to 20 per adventure is generous, but the artificial restriction seems unfair. A sign of killer DM syndrome maybe? I am not sure how I feel about it though. Getting double adventure xp to spend freely on Arts does free up quite a bit of time, and so maybe advancing by Practice balances out this time. Maybe?

Hi,

5 or 6 is closer to what the rules suggest. Clearly, you need to balance out your Beta SGs by handing out even more adventure xp! :slight_smile:

Along with the virtue that give +3/adventure +2/practice. (But the saga remains biased against Abilities; a magus probably already needs to worry about MT and PM. Advancing by practice balances it out, but better to avoid the need!)

Anyway,

Ken

keep in mind that you can write tractatus for abilities as well, and one every 2 levels or fraction thereof- so at level 5 you can write three tractatus. If you have another player who also has a 5 they can write 3 and you trade...

Yeah, but if the Ability you want to do this with is something that only 6 people in Mythic Europe have, say, what you get from an Ex Misc tradition, this strategy doesn't work that well. Especially if the tradition doesn't cultivate awesome writers.

Tell me about it. I currently play a maga of the Line of Pralix. Advancing in Comprehend Magic is difficult at best. Only viable solution is spending Story Exp in it, and if there is some convoluted limit capping this at 5 you're at a huge disadvantage. Although my maga reaching 5 is years if not a full decade away!