Rule Variation for book Quality.

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

A Magus with a low communication i.e. -2 say will ALWAYS wite tractatii with quality 4. However, as magi get older then they get better at teaching. Afterall after teaching a 1st apprentice the Magus will have 30xp (Flaws ammending) in Teaching giving them a teaching of 3.

This means they would surely have picked up something about conveying ideas. I suggest that the new quality score for a tractatus is 3+Comunication+Teaching. So -2 communication guy still gets a 4. However by the end of his 2nd apprentice he gets up to at least 4. This means his quality is now 5.

I know this makes them worse initially then before, but it gives lower communication magi the chance to boost their base quality rather then have it perpetually set in perpituity.

A

2

If the low-communication maga cares that much, she can already use CrMe magic to boost her Com.

3

I agree with your reasoning and I've tried this. I noted that it tends to result in slightly higher quality texts and thus somewhat more rapid advancement. After all, while this is good for a low Communication teacher, it is great for a high Communition teacher and especially great for someone who wants to invest in high levels of Teaching.

4

No, I think using Teaching 3 as the break-even point sounds good, but the increase is too fast.

This turns Teaching into a major Ability (which I think is good) and will result even higher Quality summae/tractatus. Or at least allow to write vain summae without being in the score stratosphere. Raising an Art from 21 to 23 = 45 xp = raising Teaching from 8 to 9. With your idea, expect general summae Quality to be close to 15.

4 + Teaching/2 (round up) would give the same break-even point but pull the balance closer {Art 21->23 = Teaching 3->5}.

EDIT: Taking from DW below, I would suggest not using Teaching, but the lowest of Teaching, AL and Philosophia. Your break-even point of Teaching = 3 has the same cost as bringing your Art to 23 which means it won't have an impact on Quality.

5

This is somewhat close to what i tried out long time ago to make books more dependent on skills, and a straight adding like this is unfortunately rather broken. That you reduce the addon number alleviates part of the issue somewhat, but it also makes it much less interesting for anyone without a decent Score in Teaching to even want to write, which isnt really a good thing at all in my opinion. Probably leads to specialised writers a lot.

If you dont mind the risk of books going HIGH in quality very quickly, and that the quality can be raised relatively easily, then sure it should play out decently.

But just for fun, try making a new character that has Com 5, Puissant&Affinity Teaching, Good Teacher and Book Learner(that still leaves 4 points of potential Virtues). See how good of a writer you can create at low age.
3+5+8+3, at the cost of 70XP... Quality 19.

Did you mean this to affect Summae as well? If not, then you add a secondary issue.

Myself i eventually went another direction, for Summae, take [Teaching(for same reason as you here)+Art.Lib.(for text quality)+Philosophiae(for placing the text better in context of the world overall)]/4 as a bonus to Quality.

I also use:
Greater Summae, Write Quality= Com +9+(Ability/2 rounded up)or+(Art/5 rounded up), Write Cost +100% from base cost

Greater Tractatus, Write Quality= Com +8 +(Ability/2 rounded up)or+(Art/5 rounded up), Write Cost +100% from base cost

Thorough Tractatus= Quality +3, Write Cost +100% from base cost
Meticulous Tractatus= Quality +6, Write Cost +200% from base cost

Thorough Summae= Quality +4, Write Cost +100% from base cost
Meticulous Summae= Quality +8, Write Cost +200% from base cost

I added optional book types as well but tonight is too late to get into those.

6

Actually I quite like the idea of adding either Skill/x or lower of 2 skills/x

I would say teaching and artes liberalles as the 2 skills then maybe /3 (round up). The reason I say Artes liberalles is because it's all about writing and rhetoric and Teaching for the reasons above.

This means that as teaching gets better it provides more of a bonus to longer standing teachers and makes Artes more interesting beyond just writing (and inceptions/horroscopes).

A

7

This directly implies that Teaching would also affect the writing of summae, and if anyone has converted the ArM4 rules for Liber Quaestionum, them too. If you change one calculation to include Teaching, you have to change them all.

Teaching is the skill of giving instruction directly between the teacher and the student. Teaching is different than organizing ideas and writing them into a book in a way that will be useful for others. If Teaching will be used at all, I would think it would only be Teaching / 2.

In ArM4, the original Quality for Tractatus was Communication + Scribe, which was your ability to convey ideas in general plus your writing ability. This was a very reasonable calculation as far as I was concerned. In ArM5, the Scribe skill was subsumed as a lesser portion of Artes Liberales.

ArM5 simplified the Quality calculation for Tractatus to Communication + 6. Without virtues, the Quality range is 3-9.

A Quality calculation of Communication + Teaching + 3 without virtues would change the range to 0-16+; with the maximum listed here assuming a Communication of +3 and a Teaching of 10, though a determined player in a long campaign could get a higher Teaching skill.

Personally, if we were going to put a skill back into the Tractatus Quality calculation, I would go with:

Communication + Artes Liberales (or maybe allow the substitution of Teaching / 2)

I would not include a base value, as this already allows a much higher maximum value than the RAW calculation. The lower starting value is not compensation for the issues of a higher maximum later on.

(EDIT: Given the much larger maximums, I am not sure I would allow it all.)

This appears to assume Exposure. It got me to thinking for a few minutes.

In ArM5, p.164 col.2, it says: "Third, being forced to practice a trade or craft in an environment with immediate feedback as to how well you are doing has a Source Quality of five."

If you have a magus in your covenant with a Teaching skill higher than yours, and you allow that magus to supervise your seasons of teaching your apprentice, doesn't that mean you are doing Practice at Quality 5 instead of Exposure at Quality 2? Just wondering what others thought. Because I'm sure inventive players could easily think the same thing.

8

First season or two doing teaching(ever), regardless the presence of a superior teacher i think could easily be argued as potentially being Practise instead.

You get immediate feedback from the student(s), and "being forced" can be read as doing it before you´re used to it.

Not necessarily. It IS different kinds of books after all and you simply dont write different types of books the same way.

9

But I imagine they would all be written using the same sorts of skills.

All the books in ArM4 were written using Communication + Scribe

Summae Quality was:

Communication + Scribe + 3

Liber Quaestionum Quality was:

Communication + Scribe + 6

Tractatus Quality was:

Communication + Scribe

Personally, I prefer unified general mechanical structures, and so I was in agreement with this format.

Of course, study totals for books in ArM4 were based on Intelligence + Concentration + Quality (although Liber's had a wonky modification for Quality and I never liked them much).

10

That sounds more like Training to me.

11

For Training, the student may not do anything else.

12

Oh, because the supervisor does not know the taught Ability, I guess. Otherwise he'd do the teaching himself.

Or you have to do the teaching because it's your apprentice, that'd work too.

13

Training allows you to produce something while you train an apprentice => your season is not wasted and can be in your "busy" seasons at work.
Teaching doesn't, and must be done during your "free" seasons.

Otherwise, teaching is an exposure activity as stated in A&A and the core rule book