Teaching ability and book quality

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I am pondering a house rule to change how the source quality of books is calculated. What I find odd is that the virtue Good Teacher increases the source quality of the books you write, but your teaching ability doesn't matter at all (unlike for seasonal activity "teaching", where Good Teacher also applies).

From an earlier thread discussing a similar idea (Rule Variation for book Quality.), I took several comments:
-Using the straight Teaching ability results in an increase that is too fast.
-It was proposed to use the lowest of several abilities (Teaching and Artes Liberales, possibly also Philosophiae) or a fraction of their sum. I don't know any other total where this is done, so I would reject that idea as too complicated/not in line with the other rules.
-An argument against the whole idea of basing quality on teaching ability was that characters without a decent teaching score may be less interested in writing. I'd argue that tractatus of quality 6 or 7 are not too useful, so if you can't get to at least quality 9 or 10, then you will not write too much anyway. If you get to quality 9, then you already have either high Com or Good Teacher, so you probably already have some teaching ability. You only need a teaching score of 3 to get a +2 under the house rule (see below).

Therefore, I am thinking about replacing the flat "+3" in the calculation (using the extended rules from Covenants) by "+ (teaching ability)/2" (rounded up, as usual). This way, with a teaching ability of 5, you get the usual +3 bonus. Now, I'd like an opinion on whether to cap that at +3 (to keep the original quality scale more or less intact), or omit a cap, allowing potentially higher qualities than previously possible.

More precisely, the question is: do I change the calculation of a tractatus (and summae, in an analog way) source quality from
Author’s Communication + 3 + bonuses for skilled artisans, mystical resonance, and virtues to
a) Author’s Communication + (teaching ability)/2 + bonuses for skilled artisans, mystical resonance, and virtues, or to
b) Author’s Communication + (teaching ability)/2 (max. 3) + bonuses for skilled artisans, mystical resonance, and virtues?

Let's assume that someone who cares about passing on knowledge will have a teaching score of 5. Then, getting an additional +1 over the current rules costs an additional 65xp or Puissant Teaching to get teaching from 5 to 7. For +2 it's 65xp plus Puissant Teaching to get teaching from 5 to 9. For +3, it's 150xp (alternatively, Affinity with Teaching and 100xp) plus Puissant Teaching. So it seems that getting to a quality one point higher than under the current rules is not too hard, but getting much more is quite costly (but possible, if you really lean into it).

How big would the effect of omitting the cap be? Some arguments for (+) and against (-) omitting the cap are:

  • It seems fair to reward high ability when you "punish" a low score.
  • With Affinity and Puissant, high teaching skills are possible, but is that really worth investing in those virtues instead of others? Good Teacher gives you +3 to quality, are you going to buy Puissant teaching on top of that just for the +1?
  • It would make the creation of specialist (minmaxed) companions more attractive, but we mostly care about books on hermetic abilities and arts.
  • Covenants also caps the bonus from a lab's Teaching specialization at three, so that could mean a cap is a good idea.
  • Circulating more powerful books does have the potential to change a campaign.

Any opinions? The goal is to tweak the rules a little without upsetting the power balance.

2

I like it a lot, and would not have the cap (option a) and I think I might adopt it. I once had a character that (after 50 years in play) had teaching 11. However, he was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge where the rest of the players were involved in a sewing circle of trying to get their teaching and Magic theories up, and by that time had written many books when his teaching would have been lower. So it is not that game breaking even at the edge.

It also means that the breakthroughs that are distributed by wrting will likely have lower quality, as such people would not have kept their teaching up. Which I like.

Bob

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3

My advice: cap it!

Over long sagas, it is really easy for a Covenant to nurture mundane (grog) specialists with insane Teaching scores (20+). These can then quickly train magi interested in leveraging the Teaching ability - at the tune of 35+xp/season. Meaning that a magus can reach a Teaching score of 10+1 (and thus a +6 bonus) with no more than 8 seasons of effort.

In fact, my personal preference would be to simply eliminate Teaching as a standard ability entirely from the game, conflating together Teaching and Training of an Ability or Art into a single activity:

Source Quality: Instructor's Ability or Art/2 +Com + 3 (+ Bonuses such as Good Teacher)
Maximum number of trainees: Instructor's Com+3

This formula applies if the the Instructor is not getting anything useful work done during the season other than passing on knowledge. If he does (for example a magus working in the lab), he can still provide training, albeit typically with a reduced effectiveness, as follows. Choose a Training Effort equal to at least 0. Every Ability (or Difficult Art) used in those season's totals is reduced by Training Effort; every Art (or Accelerated Ability) is reduced by Training Effort x 2. Training Effort cannot be chosen so large that it would reduce any such Art or Ability to 0 or less. Under these conditions:

Source Quality: Training Effort + Instructor's Com + 3 (+Bonuses such as Good Teacher).

Optional: replace the flat +3 in all the formulas above with a +1 for each of the following four Abilities the instructor has a score of 6+ in: Folk Ken, Leadership, Artes Liberales (Rethoric), Charm.

This House Rule mostly reduces the experience gain from dedicated teachers, which is a good thing in my view, because it brings annual experience gains more in line with those of simplified character creation. I would say, too, that it is more realistic. From what I've seen in real life, while significant experience with teaching does make you a somewhat better teacher, it doesn't play such a big role compared to natural talent or to extensive familiarity with the subject being taught.

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4

Over long sagas, it is really easy for a Covenant to nurture mundane (grog) specialists with insane Teaching scores (20+).

That's a good point, thank you for bringing it up. In my saga, grogs - being minor characters - will be held (at least roughly) to the age-based limits from p. 31. A regular teacher will have Com+Teaching of 6, for a source quality of 15 (single student). It might be possible to find ones with Good Teacher and higher scores, so a source quality of 20-25 might happen, which will take a character from 5 to 9 in six to eight seasons (assuming the players can find a grog with Teaching 9), meaning that is is easier than I initially thought to get a book quality 2 points higher than under the published rules. They'd have to get one of the best teaches in Europe for that, though.

5

It is not only a good point, it is the killer point when you consider what happens when these grogs start writing tractatus on teaching for each other. Book learning is already very efficient, and players are very efficiently exploiting every rule they can find when xp are involved. Just +1 is a great bonus.

I am not sure what I think of eliminating the teaching ability though. @ezzelino 's suggestion seems good and fair for apprenticeship modes of teaching, but teaching allows for lecture-style teaching, which is, after all, important in some areas, also in the Middle Ages. I would not consider it as a house rule, since they tend to cause unanticipated effects, but it would have been worth considering for a 6ed with some resources for playtesting.

FWIW I know @silveroak used a houserule with abilities in book quality in the Fight or Flight saga.

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6

Do most sagas last that long though? I'm not sure it is an actual issue for most sagas.

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7

If the saga is going to crash within a month or two, as most do, I would not waste time making elaborate house rules anyway.

8

Well, there are two issues here.

The first is that, even though they may not be the majority, I think that there are enough long-lasting sagas (the type supported by Thrice Told Tales) that rules should not break there. This is particularly true if the extra effort to keep rules working for long sagas is not that large, as in this case.

The second is that, at least to some extent, the world should be consistent with what mechanics suggest, to maintain suspension of disbelief. So, a long-term effect on the availability of high-quality texts should not be dismissed even when playing one-offs.

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9

Keep in mind that, even going by the initial age limits on p.31, a grog without any Virtue or Flaws other than one providing access to Teaching, can have a Com+Teaching of 12 (+1 with an appropriate specialty, such as one-on-one Teaching). Such a grog is by definition "unexceptional", and yet can easily provide a Source Quality of 22 when teaching Teaching to a magus. Affinity with Teaching, Puissant Teaching and Good teacher can raise those numbers by 7, completely "by the book".

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10

I'll be honest. Most of my sagas (that actually have gone anywhere) have happily spent 2+ months on what in other games is called session zero - so saga prep. It is considered essential.
On the other hand, if a saga doesn't last at least a few years in player (not in-game) time, I consider it a bit of a waste. :-/

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11

Keep in mind as well that "breaking the game" in ars magica is even more subjective than in most game systems. Depending on the game style you are looking for having SQ of 50+ might not "break" the game while for another game any SQ over 20 is potentially game breaking.

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12

Unless it has been errata-ed, Teaching is not an Academic ability; it is General. An 'unexceptional' grog (after having made 10 aging rolls to get to 46+ years old) can have a Teaching score of 9. and a communication of +3; for a source quality of 12. If that is exceptional & game-breaking, then it should probably not have been included in RAW.

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13

It might not break the game. If the SG and players are prepared to handle the power level, and enjoy playing literate grogs with unbelievable skills, then it does not.

... but for my part, the main reason why I do not like D&D, is that the rapidly increasing hit points breaks my suspension of disbelief ...

That, obviously, does not break D&D, because D&D is not about remotely believable characters. The fact that ArM is set in Mythic Europe, may arguably turn your argument 180°.

... anyway, I do agree that it does not necessarily break the game in any objective sense, but it does break the illusion for some players ... which is the real problem for us ...

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14

And whatever works for you in your saga is great. Every table is different; as it should be. But the above grog does not have 'unbelievable' skills; they are (if located at any statistical extremity) at most one standard deviation away from 'average'.

Grogs under 30 years have a maximum ability of 5 (75 xp); 30–35 (still not making aging rolls) max out at 6 (105 xp); 36–40 (having to make aging rolls each year) max out at 7 (140 xp); 41–45 max at 8 (180 xp); 46 & over max out at 9 (225 xp). From a starting point at age 29 years and 11 months (75 xp) to age 45 years and 11 months (224 xp), this is less than 10 xp per year; whereas the rule for grogs gaining xp is set at 15 per year.

Truly exceptional, near maximum grogs with Affinity and Pussiant (and maybe 'learn from mistakes, and 'Educated' or a non-grog mundane with 'Magister') could go much higher if they are not limited by the cap. Any grog advanced in play, for example. I think it is helpful to know where the real limits are before setting expectations on what is 'unbelievable'.

15

This discussion is very enlightening, it opened my eyes to a very different style of play than I'm used to. I can see that when you have a troupe where players are "exploiting every rule they can find", then you definitely need a cap. In other sagas, a cap might not be necessary.

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16

That's not the skill levels I was referring to. I was referring to the skill levels you get when you generate SQ at 50, as silveroak suggested. Both the skill levels taken to generate the SQ and the skill levels obtained if you have access to SQ 50 on a regular basis, are unbelievable.

Sure, I know that the SQ at 50 may not be a precise and serious figure, but the base line is that (1) canon is fairly alright, (2) once you houserule, it is hard to gauge the concequences for a long-running saga, and (3) boosting SQ in this way can have a spiralling effect.

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17

Even with SQ:50 (which was a hyperbolic extreme) there can be other limitations- for example maybe SQ:50 is only possible on summae which caps levels.

18

Alas, you are right!
When house rules become so ingrained you forget they are house rules...

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19

For an example, consider a 54-year old grog created with the rules from Grogs (thus, he has Decrepitude 2, and 23 Aging points). His Characteristics, including aging, are:
Int +1, Per 0
Str -2 (2), Sta 0
Dex -2 (2), Qik -4 (4)
Pre +1, Com +3

His Virtue and Flaws are: Mentored by Demons (from RoP:I: 50xp, plus no caps on ability scores), Affinity with Teaching, Good Teacher, Delusion (mentored by the greatest academicians of the age), Noncombatant, Obese.

Thus, in addition to a score of 5 in ... say, Arabic, he has 830xp to spend on Abilities: Teaching 19 (one-on-one), Latin 5, Artes Liberales 6, Charm 1, Guile 1, Folk Ken 1, Area Lore 0(1), Order of Hermes Lore 0(1). His Teaching Source Quality is 35 when teaching one on one, and he can bring any student to a score of 6 in Artes Liberales with just 3 seasons of instruction.

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20

Not bad; I would tend to avoid 'Mentored by Demons' though; the caps don't really matter if you are leveling them up during a saga. To be really abusive I think stack on 'Puissant Teaching'; from age 5 to age 54 is 49 x 15 = 735 xp. Put 700 of that into Teaching for 1050 xp (level 20); the remaining 35 xp is not enough to get 21 -- but 35 xp buys LA 3 and Magic Theory 1. If we are going for maximum weaselage, claim Latin 5 from 'immersion in a culture' for free. That gives Teaching 20 (22 from Puissant), specialized in 'Hermetic Students'. Source (Specialty) 23 (Comm) +3 (Good Teacher) +5 = SQ 31 for a class of up to a hundred & ten, or up to 37 in one-on-one.

Although it might be more useful to get a second Affinity & sink those extra 35 xp into LA (level 4) or something.

This looks like it might be the limit for a grog; and one who (aside for not being terribly useful except teaching Teaching) is about to die of old age, to boot. If he had Latin 5 & LA 1 they could write a L10Q12 Summae on teaching; or a L6Q24 Summae, and 10x (Comm +3, Good Teacher +3, IAmWritingABook +3, GoodArtisans +3) Q12 Tracti. The books can take someone to L12, and the teacher could get them to L20 in another 18 seasons.