List the other ways. Twilight experience requires warping, not forcing a player to start with warping. Next? Taught how? Minus a million xp, you need 5 at least in one season. Initiation gets around the stupid xp rule. Not forcing every player to be ex Miscellanea either.
Methinks someone doesn't know the rules.
I agree. Every game in existence I can remember reading has some golden rule about Story and fun over riding RAW. Only Ars Magica has the HUBRIS to proclaim and pat itself on the back, that it is touted as the best rule system around. Within the first few paragraphs of the first page. Don't break your arm fellas, but around town in games actually played... Story trumps crap rules like this one.
These forums are so uptight about everything being as RAW, so then apply the damn consequences. Someone wi 2 major supernatural virtues and a minor has a parens with an InVi of 140. No ifs ands or buts. Do not pass go, do not collect 200$, it's the RAW.
See, the game creates munchkins trying to avoid munchkins. If you just remove he rule, then you have lots of characters that spend way too much xp on abilities that kinda suck compared to Arts. They will be inefficient because it's flavour and fun. You limit that with stupid training wheels, the players try every way to get around and just break the game as a munchkin.
Really??? You seriously ask, "Taught how?" READ!!! I've explained it right there in what you've now quoted me as saying twice!!!
It seems you would be correct. Aim a finger at yourself and you've found that someone. I've shown you how your statement about RAW is absolutely incorrect, and I've explained how another method can be done.
Nope, as I showed, that is not RAW. This parens could have InVi lab total of 60. There are other situations that would prevent the lab total from being so high as well. In further other cases, what you say may well may be true. But the generality of your statement means it most certainly has "ifs" and "buts" that go with it and make your statement about RAW blatantly incorrect. I highly recommend you ask those who know the game better about some of these details before spouting off incorrectly about what RAW says.
I would have thought from the context that it was clear what I understand to be RAW - the rules in the corebook on opening the Arts and on teaching supernatural abilities. Since that's what we're talking about, starting characters possessing both Hermetic Magic and supernatural abilities. These were never errated, as you say.
If you want to reference a later game supplement that suggests troupes use discretion on core rules and call this reference RAW, fine. To split hairs here would be pedantic and lead our discussion towards the loss of civility already present in other posts within the thread.
I came up with two more RAW ways that lab total can be avoided. One is that the multiple Supernatural Abilities come from already being Opened to a different tradition. Then those Supernatural Abilities get lumped together under the rules for second Openings. The other, which really fits together with all the various things I've mentioned: assistance. For example, maybe three magi, all with familiars, work together to Open the Arts for their three apprentices. The extra four assistants could easily add 40 points to the lab total for that Opening, but those 40 points would disappear in general for the parens' normal lab total.
And I countered them. You got any more? In a legible format?
So let's get this straight get 3 Magi and a familiar, the player character isn't Jesus... Seriously what lengths are you going to to not acknowledge the issue?
As far as your comment about 3 magi with familiars, I did better than this only a little more than 10 years out of gauntlet, so it's definitely possible. Most won't do it, but I pulled off a CrMe lab total over 200 for a single season, while normally my CrMe lab total was far below that. And my character certainly wasn't Jesus.
I'm not not acknowledging the issue. It can be there if the SG decides to let it be. In the one game I run I made sure the players didn't set themselves up so their Arts couldn't have been opened. It only become an issue the SG chooses to let it be one, as there are ways to avoid it being an issue. There are even ways that allow the Virtues you suggested that don't require the lab total you suggested.
What I'm saying is that your statement about the only way this can work is blatantly wrong. I've shown a whole bunch of other possibilities, while you say no others are possible. And by far the easiest way is via Teaching, not your lab total method. Seriously, to what lengths do you need to go to insist that your statement about InVi-200 lab totals is right even when it's been proven incorrect repeatedly, especially when one of the other methods is far, far easier?
No, you didn't. "Minus a million xp, you need 5 at least in one season," isn't a counter to me showing you how to get a Teaching Quality of 21 to teach two Supernatural Abilities to someone whose Arts have been Opened. Not only is it not a counter, 15 is quite different from "a million xp." Exaggerating ridiculously to sound like you're right when you're not is no valid counter point whatsoever; and saying it is only makes your reasoning here appear so questionable as to make me wonder just how little I should trust the rest of your reasoning.
Oh, another RAW method: someone else Opens your Arts as part of a deal with your parens.
Can't beings of any of the Realms get Ritual Powers that grant Virtues and Flaws? No Lab Totals, Initiations or any of that necessarily involved?
Well, it's not. It is just the part from ArM5 corebook. I pointed you to Apprentices p.10f Inherited Virtues and Flaws and p.32ff Hermetic Apprenticeship already in this very thread.
Cheers
Apprentices is without doubt rules as written.
It was some seven years in the making, hence its planning should have started soon after corebook release. Already at corebook release it was quite clear, that apprenticeships in the Order of Hermes were more diverse than p.106f Training Your Apprentice could cover. With more books appearing, that diversity increased while Apprentices was being worked on.
When it finally appeared 2012, Apprentices contained p.10f Inherited Virtues and Flaws, which allow apprentices to 'discover' Virtues and Flaws at convenient times during their apprenticeship, without the need of teaching or initiation. This is only a part:
Apprentices is meant to provide rules for role-playing an apprenticeship. So it has indeed lots of calls for troupe adjudication, both within its text and in the comments of its author on this forum.
Cheers
Yes, indeed: RoP:M p.38f boxes.
It has the catch of RoP:M p.40 Ritual Powers:
Recovery of these points from the Might score is slow and "at the storyguide's discretion" (p.40).
Cheers
I believe the big power-gaming caveat on that one is the magical quality which lets you substitute vis and confidence in place of permanent might.
Yes, though I thought the bigger power-gaming bit was that you can do these rituals to get down to virtually no Might so that you can do tons of Transformation with ease to pick up lots of stuff, and then do Transformation with more difficulty to get back to the Might you had. In the end, you're able to do all that Transformation a ton cheaper than if you had not put your Might into the rituals. And you could even have a ritual that gives Improved Characteristics, so you can use it to boost yourself; or you could sell the ritual for vis so that you can get your Might back. I have house rules about Transformation and Might to prevent just this sort of abuse.
Aren't using that book. Now that you're caught up. What you just inherit past opening? No. Sorry. There is nothing to then prevent a player from taking everything as "child" then get arts opened by a scrub, then inherent all the same adult versions. So to avoid munchkinism, become a munchkin that just gets the virtues later. Slick all my npcs will do that. So there is no point to having the lab totals at all now with that book.
When a player creates a magus by the corebook or with Metacreator, she follows ArM5 p.28ff Detailed Character Creation, choosing the Virtues and Flaws of her character within its limits. She and her troupe don't need to consider p.106f Training Your Apprentice before her magus takes on an apprentice.
Enter T Riffix Rex.
After being told, that there is an entire book on playing Apprentices and developing them over play, that expands on p.106f Training Your Apprentice, he answers:
After having been shown the relevant quotes from Apprentices, he continues:
Yes, indeed.
Just as if the - oh so munchkin - player had followed ArM5 p.28ff Detailed Character Creation to create her character in the first place. See the logic?
Of course there is no need to have the detailed stats of their masters when statting NPC magi. Creating them with ArM5 p.28ff Detailed Character Creation, while keeping their background in sight, is generally fine and already some work: many storyguides and authors will use faster ways.
Cheers