I'm not convinced teaching is the right ability. Teaching is the act of imparting knowledge, not seeing that work is properly completed. In any large scale project there are tasks which are broken out allowing others to complete them while someone retains overall vision and responsibility for the project as a whole. Can't convince me that's teaching, it's managing, which falls under leadership. Whether the magi like being bossed around or not, is an RP exercise.
So, I'm sticking with Leadership, which can apply in multiple ways. It's still a bit of an XP sink, and then there's the issue of getting multiple magi to cooperate in the first place, which if it is player magi, will be up to the player via any player-to-player RP. Once they're in the lab Leadership limits how many assistants there can be.
Also, one other point against teaching is that double dips at the XP pool. Spending XPs there allows creation of better apprentices, while improved leadership allows for handling more people in the lab. I don't like one ability governing both of those aspects.
Hum... I like the idea of peregrine, of people with no skill having trouble directing the help. Maybe change nothing to the number of helpers, but just add the 3 botch dices for untrained skill for skill 0 leadership to any lab activity? You're not well coordinated, so BIG problems may happen.
I think teaching nothing like leadership. You are not teaching lab assistants but telling them what to do and guiding their actions towards a common goal.
Again, this is being restrictive when I'm looking to be less so. I'd hate to penalize the magus who never plans to use an assistant in his lab, except for an apprentice and say he can't, or risks a triple botch. That's further away from where I want to go. Does the troupe really want to penalize normal play when a magus is training an apprentice?
Well, leadership 1 is only 5XP. Pretty easy to acquire, be it only trough exposure.
And... Serf's parma, but when does one risk botches in lab work? IIRC, when experimenting only. So most magi should be safe anyway.
But if you conduct dangerous experiments with an apprentice around (or anyone, for that matter) without having any clue on how to direct him properly and preemptively stop him from doing dangerous mistakes (which is what leadership in lab work is all about), it stands to reason that, should something bad have a chance to happen, it will.
I concurr, though, that, compared to the current rules, it is more restritive for magi with 0 leaderhip. It's a... well, feature of me (some would say flaw and call me conservative^^), to make as little changes to playtested rules as possible.
But if you wish to make life easier for all magi, your idea is perfectly fine, and you should use it. I'm just not convinced they need the extra boost, and, now that i reflected on this, I tend to think that having people you don't know how to manage while in lab experimentation is a hazard that should convey more risks.
I'd like to keep the seasonal activities thread more log like. If you could do a quick review and blank out unnecessary posts, or make some easy way for me separating the wheat from the chaff, I'd appreciate it.
Otherwise I might start requiring XP log diaries be subimitted to me in a spreedsheet. Hrmm...
I already keep my records for Fiona's seasonal activities on a table on my OpenOffice Writer, mainly because I didn't want my spreadsheet data cells to get too big...this was easier for me to manage.
There is an error in the macros because he called one sort, which is a reserved word. I changed it to sortAbilities and it works.
I also see he wrote the macros in VB which will not port to anything but Excel on a PC. I will have to do some research to see if I can not port them to a more portable format
Yes it does. Page 106 of the main rulebook, under "Training Your Apprentice." The first paragraph implies that it does with the statement "A magus claims an apprentice from the beginning of the season in which he opens the arts."
The last paragraph of the page is more explicit: "One of your seasons of teaching must be spent training the apprentice in the basics of Hermetic magic, and you can teach nothing else in that season. Thus, in the season the apprentice gains a score of 0 in all fifteen Hermetic Arts, but learns nothing else. This is referred to as 'opening the Arts.'"
Err... Since the Animal requisite effectively enhances the effect, it should add one magnitude to the InCo effect...
(Or the reverse, I don't know whose base is higher)
Thing is, this screws up your total, since you're already barely doing it
I also worry that this would activate every time someone tried to hug you, hand you a glass, or whenever a cat leapt into your lap. I'd suggest dropping the environmental trigger and actively turning it on.
And now that it tripped my radar, I think the Base 3 for InCo is incorrect, it should be Base 4: Sense very general information about a body. Maybe even Base 5 to resolve amul's problem: Sense a specific piece of information about a body (that a fist or body is coming at you very fast, the specific item being how fast someone is coming at you).
According to Covenants, correspondence collections have a quality equal to the sum of the Com values, presumably plus the bonuses for skilled book-making staff, resonances, virtues, etc. Hrm. That may be the single best reason I've ever seen for someone to have high levels of Prof:Scribe -- his letter would automatically get the +1 for skilled scribe. Not that, if I were SG, I would allow it to have mechanical effects in game, but it's be a neat rp effect.
...and I've now totally forgotten my point.
If anyone is learning Greek, Viscaria would jump at the chance to do also learn the language, and then excitedly explain that she still needs to finish learning to speak Arabic, and learn Arabic letters.
