I think this is extreme, but I can live with it if you really want to do this. It's just that such a penalty is so much worse for young magi than the more advanced ones.
It dramatically changes the balance of power. A just out-of-gauntlet magus won't be able to do any magic in a level 4 Divine aura (-30 to CS). I think the penalty scales up too quickly for the Divine. This, to me, encourages young magi to simply shut themselves in their lab instead of going out on stories, particularly where mundanes are concerned.
Note that it also weakens the Aegis as a protection from magical attacks (the aura bonus adds to Penetration, but not to the protection of the Aegis).
Where does a Divine Aura 4 exist? Closer to a church. If one is in an area where there are a couple of churches in close proximity you might see an aura of 6. Beyond the penalty, however, I think you're discounting the risk of a botch. I'd be very concerned about casting a spell in a Divine Aura just from that risk alone, but I'm botch averse. A holy magus probably isn't interested in doing magic near a church, either. It also makes it a stark divide between God and personal power...
IMO, It's almost trivial to defeat an Aegis, anyway. Just collect an AC. That being said it also allows for casting a more powerful Aegis. A couple of magi work together in the lab so that one of them can learn the 10th magnitude Aegis. The Aegis, IMO isn't there for the magi so much as it is there for the covenfolk. Magi don't want to have to go out and deal with anklebiters all the time. Sure, if there's a big bad enemy, they'll get involved. My suggestion doesn't change the equation. Magi do receive some protection, but layered with Parma, they are going to be well protected.
Going hand in hand, I think the quantity and qualities of auras need to be diminished. Durenmar's 7th magnitude Aura is something to marvel at. Any auras that are greater than that are likely rather small, such as an Aura 9 being the size of a Size -2 lab or something? And Aura 10 being Size -4...
Oh, and I like the idea of magi generally staying safe within their areas of power. Young magi are going to be risk averse and are going to rely on subordinates to handle mundane things like cities. And they are going to be frightfully scared of magi who work magic in cities or other non-friendly auras.
Agreed, high level Summae are too cheap.
But mainly in build points, which makes the level*level version nice.
The problem (IME) is rather less pronounced in-game (where build points are irrelevant).
Making books more expensive via adding a vis cost is... not the right direction I feel, especially given how cheap Vis stocks are (that's how you'd pay for the Vis with build points, yes?) vs how expensive Vis sources are (this should affect in-game purchaces more).
Did that even make sense?
+1
If it's the build points we are worried about, let's put a limit on summa levels or use the a modified build-point formula. I would still prefer not to mess with the rules for writing summae.
Note that I've added a new page on the wiki, which estimates some of the mundane travel times between covenant. I am using those as a basis for the discussions in the new in-character thread.
How are you arriving at 11 miles per day? Averaging out weather conditions? I think it is lowish and should probably be between 15 and 20...
We aren't used to walking, but I daresay that in the middle ages people were quite capable to walk 20 miles in a day (~6 hours). I've done it a couple of times, I don't care to do it again, but back then, few had a choice. And when I did it I wasn't particularly fit...
For the most part, I am using the numbers provided in City &Guild p.89 (the text below the insert specifies 12 miles/day using the roads, 8 miles/day moving downriver and 6 miles/day moving upriver). Take the distance, divide by that speed, and round the number of days up.
This may seem low, but it actually makes sense to me. These distances are as the bird flies, while both the roads and the rivers twist, turn, and force you to take detours. So while the on-the-ground distance is much longer, the as-the-bird-flies distance is much less so. Ground (or river) conditions also constrain how fast you can travel. And you have to stop every so often to buy more food, repair or replace gear, etc.
So a 12 miles/day on the roads on the map is probably the equivalent of twice that. A sustained pace of 3 miles per hour is though to maintain for days and weeks. And you will tend to loose some time by stopping at villages whenever possible, so if you reach one 2 hours before darkness, you stop for the day. If not, then you need to make camp, cook dinner, etc. And leaving the road to cut across the country actually means loosing more time. Travelling through a forest is slow, particularly if you don't know the paths. I've done it before.
River travel is slow, but that's because it is done using barges also carrying cargo. They stop at towns and cities, they slow down to navigate around rocks and rapids, they tie down for the night, etc. And rivers don't move in a straight line either.
Now, if all of the characters were experienced riders (or had a dedicated swift boat with a dedicated crew) and were unconcerned about throwing money away, travel may be faster. Swifter mundane travel is possible (and also indicated in C&G), but requires resources and skills we don't currently have.
EDIT: If the troupe want faster mundane travel, I don't have a problem with that. We can simply change to numbers in general, or for magi in particular to reflect the resources available to them.
Personally I like the slower estimates.
Medieval roads barely deserve the name except where the old roman roads have survived, and cross-country is slow.
Yes, you probably could move much faster than 12 miles per hour, but not comfortably - and then there would be an issue of fatigue.
Slow travel also encourages the use of magic for travelling purposes, which leads to the eternal dilemma of slow'nsafe (with grogs) or fast'n'alone.
I think 12 miles per day for an unladen or lightly laden party is a bit low. But, I've always gone with the rule of thumb of 20 miles per day. Of course, this presumes good weather. Consider that it wasn't out of the ordinary for peasants to walk miles to market, with pack animals, collect the items that they needed over the course of a day's trading and walk back home. Yeah, roads were horrible, but roads are only really necessary for bulk transport. If we're driving wagons over horrible roads and with delicate goods in good weather, then yes, 12 miles per day seems reasonable. If you have lightly laden pack animals and are walking, 20 miles in 8 hours is 2.5 miles per hour. If we presume a 3 mph pace (which is by no means fast) it can be done in 6.6 hours, allowing 1.4 hours for rest. Add in an hour for midday meal/siesta, we're up to 9 hours.
So, if we're moving ourselves with spare clothes, a small amount of food (buying food at inns) I think we need to go closer to 20. If we're taking carts and transporting books, our own food, etc, I think we need to go closer to 12.
As I wrote, that 20 miles of ground distance is fine. But you need to consider that over long distances, that road is not leading you straight to your destination. So you end up traveling much longer than the as-the-bird-flies distance between two point shown by a map.
It's simply the difference between walking 20 miles and actually traveling 12 miles towards your destination. Just MHO, and my experience also.
Well, 12 mpd or 20 mpd...
My fudge factor for increasing distances based on google maps is 20%. So a 100 miles becomes 120 miles, which means it gets covered in 6 days. You put your fudge factor on the distance traveled per day which makes it 10 days.
Keep the estimates.
Add a note that it assumes farly heavy transport (the numbers are from the 'trade' section of C&G IIRC).
Add the note that unladen travel could probably go up to 50% faster (that's 18 miles/day, or 20 with a 10% fudge factor) - though I'd suggest this incur a long term fatigue level.
Add estimate using Wings of Soaring Wind, which we have as a labtext. <- I could even do this myself, in theory.
If you want to use 20 miles per day for road travel, I'm fine with it.
We probably need to adjust river travel as well. C&G states downriver at 8 miles per day and upriver at 6 miles per day. Using the Moselle between Metz and Koblenz, Orbis uses 40 miles per day downriver and 9 miles per day upriver.
C & G has a trade focus...Orbis has a military focus, well, Roman, which is military..but you get my drift.
12 miles per day for a heavily laden party, sure, no problem. Some people walking with all of their stuff on a mule. Inns were typically 8 miles apart on well traveled roads, suggesting 16 or 24 as a reasonable daily limit. If you have a large camp to setup, meals to cook, etc, I think you can reduce travel times.
Oh, and here it is in C & G, I was looking for it...
I don't disagree that measuring distances between towns needs to be adjusted from modern as the bird flies or direct modern road distances. Some of the major Roman roads will still exist, and roads along rivers, while winding, will tend to be good roads.
Ok, let's get down to numbers then. Here's what I propose.
Calculating distances:
Start from the direct line between the 2 points on the map (as the bird flies)
Adjust that distance to reflect the actual roads/rivers on the ground, based on the relationship between those points
[list][*]For major centers within a reasonable distance (within 200 miles or so), add 20% to reflect a well-travelled and fairly direct trade route
For secondary centers within a reasonable distance, add 40% to reflect a more roundabout route
For secondary centers within a short distance (less than 100 miles), add 20% to reflect a frequently traveled secondary road
For local centers (villages, remote covenants, etc.), add 40% or more to reflect local paths
For rivers, based on the amount of twisting and turning it does, add 20% to 80%
[/:m]
[]Divide the adjusted distance by the means of travel under ideal conditions
Road travel: 24 miles per day
River travel, following the current: 40 miles per day (was previously 32)
River travel, against the current: 8 miles per day
[/*:m][/list:u]
This gives you the ideal travel time between the points. Then, based on the actual travel conditions, add 0 to 100% to reflect actual travel conditions (weather, season, bringandage, etc.) to obtain the actual travel time.
So, for example, let's take Petronius' and Aedituus' trip from Triamore to Koblenz.
If they try to travel by the roads only, on the most direct route, that's 150 miles. Since Triamore is not a major center and the distance is over 100 miles, we add 40% to get the actual distance to be walked of 210 miles (150*1.4). Dividing this by 25 gives us an ideal travel time of 8.75 days. It is in July, so we can assume minimal problems over that distance, but it's hot so they need more frequent stop. So let's say we add 10% to reflect actual travel conditions (pretty darn good ones) for a total of 9.6 days of travel.
If they travel by a mix of road and river travel, through Verdun and Metz, they have 3 legs to travel: Triamore to Verdun (50 miles), Verdun to Metz (30 miles) and Metz to Koblenz (110 [strike]150[/strike] miles).
First leg can be traveled either by the roads or moving up the river. We can reasonably assume that there is a well-frequented road along the Meuse river linking Verdun to Liege. So using the river would be 60 miles (50*1.2) traveled either at 8 miles per day (boat) or 24 miles per day (roads). The second one is better, so that 2.5 days of road travel.
The second leg is simple, 30 miles of road travel along a good trade route, so that's (30*1.2)/24 = 1.5 days of road travel.
The last leg is down the Moselle river, over 110 [strike]150[/strike] miles. Looking at the map, the Moselle is very sinuous, so we'll add 65% (previously 30) to that distance instead of 30% (that we would use for road travel). So that's an actual distance traveled of 181 [strike]195[/strike] miles (110*1.65), divided by 40 [strike]32[/strike] miles per day, for a total of 4.5 [strike]6[/strike] days of boat travel.
So using a mix of road and river travel and going through Verdun and Metz gives us 8.5 [strike]10[/strike] days (2.5+1.5+4.5) plus 10% for travel conditions, thus a total of 9.35 days (previously 11). Just a bit quicker [strike]longer[/strike] than travelling across the country directly from Triamore to Koblenz, but probably much easier and less tiring.
Tweaked a few numbers based on more accurate distances and slightly faster river travel indicated by Orbis. That's for a civilian boat, military was twice as fast (probably a small galley).
The changes are indicated in red.
I'll transfer the travel guidelines in the wiki and adjust the travel times there as well.
I moved the posts discussing travel over here...
Building on travel issue, there's the Redcaps issue. Mainly being that there are about 150 Redcaps in the Order, roughly 11 per Tribunal, on average (HoH:TL also says that there should be at least 10 per Tribunal). Where are the Mercere Portals, how many of them are there? Just some things to think about.
