Heh!
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I would suggest manufactured ignorance instead of delusion.
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Okay, so a single ordinary grog with an Affinity can get to an ability level of 20; combined with +3 Comm & Good Teacher, we can see SQ up to 37. That is very close to end-of-life for the grog, though -- and they have (other than 'Teaching') essentially no useful skills to teach.
A covenant might decide to invest in this grog, though -- a longevity ritual and a couple CrMe rituals can get that grog to Comm +5, and probably double the number of useful seasons of life they have left.
The REAL cheese comes from having two teaching-focused characters. Sure, the covenant might only find one suitable grog at the University of Bologne -- but the real point of the game is the magi. It is not out of the question for a starting Bjornear (with Mystery of the Epitome) to have Comm +6 -- or even up to (with Theriomorphy, and the right Qualities) Comm +10. Add an affinity with teaching, and watch these two bounce back and forth.
I appreciate the min-max done here, but wouldn't it be better to maybe get to 16 teaching, and use the 180 XP needed for levels 17,18 and 19, to get philosophae and magic theory to 5 and 6 and teach those as well.
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Definitely; but pushing the system to the absolute extremes is useful for finding out where the realm of the impossible begins. It is extremely unlikely that a grog will get to ability 20, but perhaps in the history of the order it has happened once -- but ability of 18 is certainly not 'impossible', and ability of 12 seems positively reasonable. A casual reading of the rules might not suggest that this is true, and lead to world-building which would turn out to be easily disrupted by the players doing something unanticipated.
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Let's assume that you have a grog with Teaching 21 and a source quality of 40, whose purpose in life is to be milked for xp by the magi. Now the question is: Do you as a magus spend the 27 seasons it takes to get from Teaching 5 to Teaching 21 (assuming you don't have virtues accelerating the process)? How do you determine whether your time investment is worth it?
You could do lots of other things in that time. Let's say that you gain 15xp on average in a season spent reading books. That means you forgo 405 xp that you could have earned in order to get a bonus of +8 to the quality of your books. I'd say that as a minimum, someone else should get 405 xp more than they would have gained otherwise, meaning people should spend 51 seasons reading your improved books. I guess they will pay you back in vis or items they created in the meantime to incentivize this if you're not an altruist.
Let's say you have 5 sodales in your covenant, then you would first spend 27 seasons learning how to teach, then 10 seasons writing tractatus, then they would spend 10 seasons each to read them - so you would reach break-even (in the sense that other magi got the xp you forwent) after 42 seasons (because your sodales can start reading while you're still busy writing), or 12-15 years (as you still have other things to do in between). After that, the scheme would start to really pay off - and you probably still have a long time to live and profit.
Is this a reasonable assessment?
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Sure. The point is that you can have a grog with really high ability scores right from the start of the saga.
The issue was not how to optimize a grog as a teacher. The issue was that really high Ability scores can be achieved with characters built "by the book"; in the context of why modifying book quality by the author's Teaching/2-3 might lead to a significant boost in the availability of (really) high-Quality texts.
First of all, as I pointed out, this is a "living summa" that can teach Artes Liberales to level 6 in 3 seasons. This is great for a lot of magi.
Second, a 54-old character with Decrepitude 2 is not young, but neither is he "about to die of old age". He probably has another decade or two in front of him, particularly with good living conditions, even without longevity potions.
Third, this character can teach Teaching to level 19 to a young grog "teaching apprentice" without any relevant Virtues or Flaws in 28 seasons (during which, he'll get pretty close to 20 if he puts all the gained exposure into Teaching). If instead he teaches to two apprentices, he can get them to 20 in 34 seasons; or to two such apprentices in 32 seasons. Those apprentices will be still pretty young by the time they hit 20, and will be able to push the envelope further. So 20 or so is not the limit for a grog; it's roughly the limit of a "first generation" grog built as a starting character.
There are three issues here.
The first is that a grog who's an insanely good teacher can teach a magus to be a pretty good teacher (Teaching 10+1) in a pretty short time (8 seasons). This would suggest to me that the house rule proposed in the opening post, if applied without a cap, could significantly alter the Quality of books in circulation.
The second is that a grog who's an insanely good teacher can teach another grog who specializes in a useful skill to be an insanely good teacher - a "living summa" much better than any book in circulation. Imagine a grog who can generate a teaching Source Quality of 35 for abilities like Finesse or Penetration, to a pretty good score (let's say, 10).
The third is that who's an insanely good teacher can teach another magus to be an insanely good teacher. This is trickier, because the time of the magus is much more valuable than that of a grog. But suppose you have a magus who specializes in Parma Magica, and who's pretty talented at Teaching himself (Com+2 and Good Teacher, or Com+5). Suppose now he spends 28 seasons to learn Teaching to level 20 (+1 to other magi). In an appropriate laboratory (+3 specialization for Teaching), he can generate a Source Quality of 21+3+3+5=32 when teaching Parma to a pretty large body of other magi, who are just about as senior, but specialize in different stuff.
Let's say he asks for 1 season of non-dangerous service for every 2 seasons of instruction. This is a great bargain for students who want to improve their Parma - they are effectively spending 3 seasons to get 64xp in Parma (and 2 in exposure during the "service" season), which is better than studying from a Quality 21 book for free. As for the instructor, any season in which he teaches to a dozen students gains him 6 seasons of service from other magi roughly as competent as himself but specializing in other stuff, for a "net profit" of 5 seasons of work, and it only takes half a dozen seasons of teaching to regain all the 28 seasons he initially "invested" in learning how to teach.
Would this work even for one-on-one teaching of the Arts? Barely, and probably not enough to be worth it unless the Order is exceptionally well-organized. E.g. if I invest 28 seasons to get my one-on-one Teaching Source Quality to 37, then a season of instruction from me yields to another magus about 3 seasons of learning from pretty good tractatus. So, I can reasonably ask for, say, 5 seasons of service for every 3 of teaching, and it's still a good deal for the student who gets 9 seasons' worth of tractatus reading out of 8 seasons (and he's also getting an extra 10 xp of exposure). I am then making a "profit" of 2 seasons for every 3 I spend, and it takes me 42 seasons to recover my initial investment.
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I thought of using teaching, but it occurred to me that teaching is a very interactive process. I’m not sure how well this applies to Medieval teachers, but between being able to answer questions, give tests, and correct essays, and just look at the student to see if they are getting it or looking lost there is a lot that isn’t directly transferable to writing. Not to mention the massive boost for being able to focus on just one student. The obvious answer is their skill in writing.
The question then becomes is it Language or Artes Liberales? Since “Grammar concerns theoretical questions of the structure of languages, rather than the ability to use a specific language (that is covered by Speak skills).” (ArM 62), I decided that Language was the better bet.
Since the covenant’s guideline boils down to
Authors Communication + Virtue bonus + Good Scribe? + Good Illustrator? + Good Binder? + 3 + Resonance
And you need an ability of at least 5 in the language, I replaced the +3 with Language (textbook) -2.
Authors Communication + Virtue bonus + Good Scribe? + Good Illustrator? + Good Binder? + Language (textbook) -2 + Resonance
Or if you aren't using covenants
Authors Communication + Virtue bonus + Language (textbook) + 1 + Resonance
If you do not want to create a new specialization for writing textbooks, prose is a decent option.
Honestly, I think 'Language -2' is far too permissive; we have already demonstrated an ordinary grog with ability 20. I would tend to replace the Covenants 'I Am Writing A Book' +3 with '+1 if author has language 6+', '+1 if author has Grammar 6+', and '+1 if author has Teaching 6+'. If you want to provide a massive boost to SQ of all books in the saga, then change the bonus for each to Language/6 drop all fractions, Grammar/6 drop all fractions, and Teaching/6 drop all fractions.
Or, just do whatever is best in your saga.
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I should have specified that that's what I do, not what you should nessesarily do. While you can get abilities far higher, Ars is in general a pretty narrative game and Narratively, an Ability of 6 is 'skilled', 9 is 'Very skilled', and 12 is implied to be a legendary level of ability. at least for the current day. I would expect a texbook by a Legendary author to have an impresive quality, and have also added some additional difficulties to getting abilites to such lofty heights, such as adding soft gain limits to tractus.
possibly I should have just finnished the first two paragraphs off with "I feel that quality from abilities should mostly come from Language, not Teaching, Artes Liberales, or any other ability."
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The fact that summae exist up to level 8 indicates that authors with abilities of 16 are not unheard of.
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@ezzelino
Yes, the benefit of tractatus is that I only need to put in the work once to write one and can rent them out to recover my investment faster than with one-on-one teaching. But doesn't your post show that these extremely high Teaching scores create issues on their own through instruction, independent of the modified book quality?
@Istyatur
Language "also covers artistic compositions in the language". Teaching to me covers pedagogy in general, not only classroom didactics. For a textbook, I think it's more important to present its matter well than to be beautifully written. In addition, good teacher already increases book quality, so Teaching should have an effect.
'+1 if author has language 6+', '+1 if author has Grammar 6+', and '+1 if author has Teaching 6+'.
The danger is that a regular magus will have neither, and you just gave him a -3 compared to the current rules. Characters now have to pay 55xp to raise Latin from 4 to 6, 100xp to raise AL from 1 to 6, and 105xp for Teaching 6, just to get the +3 that the current rules give them for free. For that, you could raise an Art from 0 to almost 22.
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Yes, when spending build points to books for your covenant, the level limit for ability summae is 8 (Core p. 71). There was a calculation that showed that a reasonable maximum for a specialized Magus in an Art is 40, hence the Art summa limit of 20. I guess some similar calculation can be done to get a maximum of 16 for an Ability.
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I am okay with a 'random dude who writes as an afterthought' getting a -3 compared to the current rules. Not everyone who writes will be an immortalized great author 'of the ages'; those who choose to be serious about writing will invest some points in getting (at least) Latin 6, just 30 xp more than the minimum score to be able to write any book at all.
And, with the availability of decent quality ability texts, a mage who wishes to make a name for themselves can certainly get Grammar 6 & Teaching 6 -- all it takes is a little time.
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I'm entirely with you on this. All of this theory crafting shows that the system can already support very high SQ without much effort, so your modification doesnlt really break anything and adds a little bit of verisimilitude.
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I'd much rather have a system that trades time for Quality.
If you write a 2nd edition of your summae, the Quality/Level will improve (based on some of the factors listed above). By the 4th edition, you've done as well as you could.
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Thank you. you just convinced me that if we start houseruling (or write 6ed) we should scrap the summa/tractatus design completely. Not particularly controversial, I think. Didn't the inventor of the system say that he regretted it?
The idea that an awful author gives Q1 (Com -5) and an excellent author Q14 (Strong Writer, Com +5), regardless of effort and regardless of training (ability), and regardless of other texts available, is pure and utter nonsense. Even the regular (non-virtue/flaw) range from Q3 to Q9 is more than I find plausible. The worst OTOH is that people learning from books in R/L do not rely on one book at a time. They cross-reference multiple books, and even hard-to-read books add perspectives, and thus value.
Add to this the fact that players quickly learn that Q14 is feasible enough to make Q12 mediocre and Q10 plainly substandard, all of these rules changes, including the optional rules from Covenants, mainly add book keeping to make sure the skills.
The core rules suck, but at least they have the merit of simplicity. Trying to fix them piecemeal deprives them even of that.
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Writing takes practice, but the rules for writing books provide no avenue for improvement. You either build your character to be a writer or you don't.
That seems rather bleak to me...
One of my SGs house-ruled that Artes Liberales added to source quality rather than the flat +3, which seems fine I guess. I could see how Teaching or Language could make sense too. But it seems a bit strange for the ability of the author in the subject being discussed doesn't factor in (other than caps on how much time they can spend writing I suppose...).
Unifying book source quality with the Art Advancement Total presented in A&A pg 126 could be nice. Something like Source Quality = (Communication + Ability + bonuses) / 2? I have not done any theory crafting on this. Does studying Aesthetic Quality have the same explosive XP outcomes?
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I'm starting a new saga with the School hook, which prompted me to revisit the idea of book quality. I've fleshed out the idea of unifying it with Aesthetic Quality a bit more.
Textual Quality = Communication + Artes Liberales
+ Ability the book is about / 3
+ 1 for each of skilled scribe, illuminator, and bookbinder
+ 3 if mundane
+ resonant bonuses if arcane
+ 1 if author's Language score is 6
+ 1 if writing time is doubled
+ 1 if author works overtime (aging roll)
+ bonuses from author's virtues
Source Quality = Textual Quality / 2
+ bonus from lowering summa level
This makes Good Teacher less good for writing books, but does allow for other virtues to be applied. It also notably makes scribe, illuminator, bookbinder, and resonant bonuses half as impactful. It does, however, allow characters to improve their writing over time, and also gives some options for how much the author invests into text (double time, aging roll).
Thoughts? Should scribe, illuminator, bookbinder, and resonant be applied after the division?
Why do you want to add the +3 for mundane texts? It was removed in the errata.
You have ability/3, what about arts?
This will lower qualities over all, which is arguably a good thing, but not likely to be popular.