Teaching: Specialties

Games Discussion Ars Magica
61

Callen, you have inconsistent assumptions regarding the lifespans of magi. Either they live and are writing for 90 years or they are replaced every 50 years. Otherwise some of the good quality authors from 1220 are the same magi from 1170.

Assuming exponential growth, you can model the total number of magi from a starting number. Lets start with 100 magi at the start of the order, 1200 in 1220 and a 500 year span. You can find the rate of exponential growth by solving 100*(x)^500=1200, which gives you an x of around 1.004982. Thus, the number of magi in any particular year is 100*(1.004982)^t. If you assume 1% of the magi can write sound tractatus and those are able write one every other year, you can integrate between 0 and 500 and get 1107 tractatus written total. Lets assume that 62 of them are cult lore or for some mystery cult or something specific like that. That leaves us 1045 tractatus. Lets assume Magic Theory is twice as likely to be written about than any thing else and all the other public mystical abilities combined are as likely as Magic Theory, and divide by 19. That leaves us 55 tractatus in any particular art and 110 in Magic Theory. Then apply that some are written in Greek rather than Latin in the Thebes Tribunal, and that some are lost and burned and or written by Diedre or fried by an overeager Flambeau or probably 40 left intact in the order. Then, you figure that one half are written in so distant a tribunal that it never reached your tribunal and you got 20 different tractatus left.

I admit, having 20 tractatus existing on every particular Art seems high. On the other hand, It doesn’t take much to drop the numbers further. Just drop the percentage of magi who are good authors down to .5%, and you are down to 10 books per tribunal. You can also assume a smaller initial size to the order, (maybe 80) and much more destruction either in the Schism War or when House Tytalus was decimated by diabolism. If your covenants are not the sharing type, tractatus that are owned by a particular covenant might not be readable, even though all of their members have read the tractatus does not mean they are willing to trade, since it would make it unavailable for apprentices and new members.

Oh, for people suggesting language in tractatus would change…Isn’t the point of Latin that it was not evolving like all the living languages were? :slight_smile:

62

Good catch. Ooops. I was taking two different approaches and lost track of what I was doing. Thanks.

Chris

63

That doesnt account for the calamities that has happened. The number in "current" gametime includes declines, probably somewhat drastic over several short periods of time, like the Schism war and any other major conflict that had a death toll beyond a handful.

I dont think the end result is vastly different though.

Once you´ve gotten up a bit in score, its still slow to advance, 20 is probably fine. Due to the above its probably a bit more, but that assumes everyone actually tries getting all they can... I think its more likely that the only ones holding, and actually reading, the majority of Tractatus available on any single art, are serious specialists who has gone through the easy local stuff and is sending out commisions for exemplars or copies all over the order.
There will probably be one or two obsessed with gathering each and every good tractatus on each art but those too will be the (even more) unusual oddballs(and quite possibly also have a much larger still collection of poorer books).

64

Yes. If they're regularly traded, then you have access to 20, which is 220 experience. Figuring you'll probably handle the first 50 or so (maybe more) points on average with summas, then you can get to 270 experience without cost. That's roughly 23 in each Art for no cost. In such a situation non-specialists can advance for free for a very, very long time, perhaps their entire lifetimes. The only reason to pay anyone as a non-specialist would be to save time, such as if you can find a teacher who provides you a quality of 20 to free up a season. If you can extract (or earn) more vis in a single season than the teacher charges, then your net gain against using the free books is the the amount you extract minus the charge minus any travel-related expenses (which, as noted before, should be minimal). The teacher can keep costs down by teaching groups, allowing group teaching to still be viable even with the tribunal being awash in books.

It will pretty much only be the specialists who want to buy texts at that point. But even then, it will be worth their time to try to trade with more distant magi, too, probably specialists in the same area. Also, these specialists will profit the most from having a teacher in their early years since they want to advance well beyond where most others are. So they would prefer turn to teachers before tractatus. I would expect such a limited tractatus market (the advanced specialists) with so much trade would cause an author to want to charge enough for a Q11 tractatus to make selling just a copy or two worth more than a season of labor (extraction or what have you) so they do not write at a personal loss. Since a great author is probably a decent teacher or great teacher, that would make their season of labor worth more, too - they could teach a group instead.

This is why I was bringing in the numbers, to examine just such things. In order to bring things to any desired scale, what situations need to exist? You've named some possibilities. It's useful to know there need to be very, very few writers and there has to have been lot of book destruction in order to keep the book availability down when there is book trade.

For me, this is where my interpretation of the Cow and Calf oath comes in. All of a sudden your regular access is much more limited because you can't get access to all those 20 tractatus for free. You'll have to travel to another covenant and pay them in whatever form they ask to live with them for a season. That makes buying a tractatus from an author a lot more appealing. It also makes travel to Durenmar reasonable; whereas with 20 free tractatus available in each Art, why bother paying Durenmar's price?

This interpretation of the Cow and Calf oath also brings down tractatus prices because making new copies is relatively inexpensive for the author, making magi more likely to pay for them. The author can sell many more copies, so the price on any one copy need not be high. There's still an output limit based on the number of scribes, but each scribe would earn the author four pawns per year if a copy sells for two pawns. That would be well worth hiring the scribes. Write a new book every year to two years to handle dwindling interest in a book after a bunch of copies have been made. You could earn a good living this way, and you need not find specialists.

Yet still you can provide more experience to magi in a season through teaching, and you can keep costs down by teaching a group. This was the original case I was dealing with.

Huh? If I have a Q11 tractatus that I've read and you haven't, and vice versa, why wouldn't we trade? Our apprentices and new members could learn from the other Q11 tractatus just as well as from the one we can't use anymore. It's absolutely worth trading.

Chris

65

Why are you assuming average tractatus quality of 11? If you're looking at an average over the a hypothetical population of 20 tractatus per art, the average quality should be 6. By the basic rules Quality equals Communication +6 and plenty of Magi will have negative communication scores.

Tractatus inflation is the main reason AM5 magi are getting so powerful. I'm for nipping it in the bud.

66

It's been dealt with before. Communication +5 is obtainable by any magus who wants it given they have collected enough wealth to pay the price. Getting +1 from resonant materials is easy. Good Teacher covers most of it on its own. Anyway, I forget if we came up with 10.5 or 11 or somewhere in between, but it's based on what's in the books. Even the typical samples of tractatus in ArM5 before the boost from resonances was 10 on average.

Don't forget, we're estimating only around 1% of magi are even capable of producing such tractatus, and we're getting 20 tractatus with that assumption. If you want to include all the tractatus from the other 99%, there can be plenty more available, but that doesn't decrease the 20 sound ones, it just adds even more, making it even harder to sell a new tractatus.

I don't think anyone's come close to suggesting things close to the maximum of which I'm aware in canon: 21.

Chris

67

Ugh. Not in my Order. I'm sticking with the core rulebook for experience. I don't question the internal consistency of your argument but I hate the result.

Having an effectively infinite supply of such high quality books makes every other experience-gaining activity useless. No need to study from Vis, go on adventures, or even seek teachers. It unbalances everything and leads to Magi who can challenge Archangels, as we've been discussing on other threads.

It also kills the Medieval feel to have libraries like that floating around. Compare to the very cool list of real books in the back of Art & Academia. Only Aristotle has more than one book with Q10 and that's likely because he's intended as the epitome of knowledge. I just can't see a tribunal having 300 books lying around that are better than Aristotle.

Now 20 total tractatus on each Art floating around a set of Covenants....that sounds about right to me.

68

I am with Jabir. I do not like power inflation either. it breaks my own vision of ME.

If you only use the core book, a fairly easy alternative is to reduce the quality of tractatus written to Com +3, and do not make good teacher apply to writing, only to person to person teaching. Suddenly Q5 is common, Q8 is the top you can get. Vis study gets a fairly good boost if you do that without changing anything about vis study per se.

You can also make writing a tractatus longer: 3 points of quality per season. Makes qwriting high Q books much more time consuming, so writing a tractatus is less trivial than under the current system.

Cheers,
Xavi

69

I very much like the "Good Teacher" change,

70

The reasons that trade might be more limited

  1. Quality 11 is average for sound tractatus. If my covenant has a Quality 11 tractatus and your covenant has a quality 12 tractatus, an equal trade is not possible.
  2. The stats of the books are not known. As a game mechanic, we set the quality of tractatus, but in the language of the order doesn’t have a rating system. I discovered this when I was joining my covenant and I offered a tractatus that my character had written, and could not precisely describe it in character. I would expect that someone buying a book needs to skim through it to determine its quality.
  3. I don’t think communication or travel happens as quickly as you do. I tend to think negotiations happen at the speed of redcap, so someone suggesting such a trade and putting out the solicitation for an equivalent tractatus might have to wait a year before all the details are settled and the books are exchanged. Once the trade is determined, then the books need to be moved, and that is something of non negligible risk. In fact, if you accept my economic argument that there is a resale value for the tractatus, and that it is equal to the purchase price, that is what keeps the market price from going to infinity, the risk that it will be damaged
  4. Covenants can be enemies, and even though both will be better off by making that trade, that doesn’t mean they will do so. Or parties can be considered untrustworthy even without being enemies. The biggest library in the Normandy Tribunal is probably at Fundus (sp) where the Tytalus house is headquartered. You want to try to arrange a trade with them? Now? Maybe once they figure out who is leading the house, but right now, how are you determine who has standing to approve the trade? That is an extreme example, but there are similar, less extreme examples in every Tribunal

Because Covenants define an average sound tractatus as Quality 11. There is errata that states that Good Teacher adds its bonus for books to tractatus as well as summae.

That is not true. In the Books listed at the back of Art & Academia, In Artes Liberales, Cicero wrote three tractatus of quality 14 and Donatis wrote one of Quality 12. In Philosophae, Aristotle wrote two Quality 12 tractatus, and Peter of Avelard wrote one Quality 13. In Theology, Peter of Avelard wrote one Quality 13 Tractatus. Presumably the authors had Good Teacher and Com+3 or higher.

71

I stand corrected on the academic books. I didn't look closely enough. The fact remains though that most of the authors and their works which were used as standard texts for centuries and which are still read by scholars are substantially inferior to the nameless books that Order members would study under the Covenants interpretation of the rules.

Covenants is a book which I have very mixed feelings about. It's dripping with flavor, which I love. But it's also filled with rules that raise the power level well above that suggested in the core book. That I can do without.

Slightly off-topic, but why is a summa a beginner's work in AM5? That just feels wrong.

72

I like all these options, not necessarily at the same time of course. Maybe there should be a Good Writer virtue, distinct from the Good Teacher.

I think tractatus should have levels, like summae, but set at the author's level in the Art, not half his level. Suddenly books by poor communicators with real knowledge become useful. Old Llywellyn the Archmage may have a Com -2 but if he can write a Level 30 tractatus in Aquam he's something special. For the rest of us, advancement by books is practical up to a certain level, at which point the books become very scarce and we have to resort to more original activities.

73

I truly dislike the extended rules for book quality, with resonant materials and clarified texts, not for power reasons but because it doesn’t fit with my idea of how books should work. But Good Teacher adding to Tractatus is errata in the core book, not Covenants. If you don’t like the number of books I calculated, make the number of magi with Good Teacher and +2 or more Com to one in a thousand rather than one in a hundred. That changes things from 20 tractatus per art per tribunal to 2, which should be rare enough for anyone’s tastes.

Right now, my Verditius can write a Quality 12 tractatus in Philosophae, which is equal to what Aristotle wrote. What is wrong with my character writing a text as good as what Aristotle wrote? I can’t have a cool character? It is not like Aristotle wrote it himself, it was the lecture notes that his students took while he was teaching. At least my Verditius went and actually put pen to parchment himself. :slight_smile:

(Edited because I write messages in Word and paste them in to help with spelling, and it appears my smiley didn't translate)

74

There's nothing at all wrong with your character writing books that rival the greats. That's a big part of what makes the game fun.

What's wrong is having an enormous anonymous set of equally great works just floating the the background, devaluing both your character and Aristotle, and making it possible to become an Archmage without ever leaving the library.

What's needed is a way for the system to accomodate both of these statements.

75

I think there are different problems here.

The first, and greatest is the availability of stat-boosting rituals. It throws everything out of whack since, at least potentially, it allows every magus in the entire OOH to have +5 com.
If this isn't resolved, well, Q11 books is potentially very normal.
This doesn't seem at all common in the OOH, given the published characters. Noble's parma, and I'm probably wrong, but I can't recall one character having used them. Why is it so? I don't know.

That being said, there are assumptions about the stats and virtues
I am under the impression that a lot of people consider "natural" characteristics of +1, 2 or 3 to be about as frequent, with +4 and 5 being still pretty common.
But thing is, in reality, they aren't. Not only do increasing characteristics, mechanically, cost more and more, but, statistically, these should follow a gauss curve.
It is slightly thrown out of wack by the points used to buy them, but let's forget this and assume than 0 is the average for humans (which may very well be the assumed default, btw!!). What can you have?
Let's say that +/-1 stats are in the first quartiles (68,3% of people). You could have the second quartile (stats to +/-2) being 95.4% of people, third quartile (stats to +/- 3) encompassing 99.7% of the population, with truly exceptionnal stats (+/-4 and more, the ones requiring virtues) being the rest.
This is harsh, and completely innapropriate for some campains, but it might explain things slightly. Applied to the real world, it is also coherent with the relative scarctity of olympic-level athletes, scientific geniuses or awesome leaders of men: How many nobel-prize level researchers do you have compared to the entire world?

If you cut by half (to account for bad stats), you've got 0.15% magi with stats above +3, including Com.

Similarly, a given virtue may not be very common. How many truly Inventive geniuses are there? How many Great Teachers Onizukas? Combine that with stats and the numbers can drop.

This might explain things a little, and allow a rationnale for people: You want great books to be more common? Assume stats up to +/-3 are in the first quartile. You want something where your character (and aristotle) are truly exceptionnal, assume something like the above, with, say, Great Teacher being only 1/100 person. IF stat-boosting is at least rare

76

I thought the stat-boosting rituals where not really known outside the house of Mercere at all - and in most sagas few magi would consider a com-boost ritual worth it. You'd need to invent the spell, use plenty of vis, and then you be able to produce slightly better books - which means you'd get slightly more vis for your books... How many seasons until you'd got back you initial investment?
Far better to hunt for a naturally occuring vis source - that at least doesn't steal valuable study time.

And for the great magi - why are they spending so much time writing books? What do they get for it?
In our saga we only have a single magus who bothers - and he only does it because A) it gives him cred within his house (Bonisagus), and B) because the books are a good way of teaching multiple apprentices arts.

Writing tracti is something one might consider as a service to ones covenant, because one wishes to spread a good idea one has, or just because one has an overinflated view of oneself (the last type tends to have a really bad quality).

To find a good writer who actually bothers to write a lot would be very rare...

77

What do they get? Ego boosting through recognition. That is a really powerful motivation for most people, not only magi. The fact that the book is useful is only important because of the first element. This is not always the case, but I have seen it over and over again in mu university years. And most people did not have Com +5 and/or good teacher, I tell you

Cheers,
Xavi

78

Oooh!
Important point, yes.
This might very well be right in canon (noble's parma :blush: ), and if it isn't stated, might provide an explanation for those who don't want stat inflation.

Personally, I like that idea, as I like every house to have its little tricks

79

Which means that most publicly available books will be written by Bonisagi with a higher proud personality trait than com score...
On the other hand, the best tracti written might very well be those written mostly so that the magus in question wouldn't forget the subject. These might be held secret to prevent anyone learning the secrets that magus discovered...

80

I am nervous us about assigning probability distributions to stats and then saying that the population of magi follow those distributions. As best I can tell, the average intelligence of published magi is well over +2, and may even be above +3. It appears that intelligence is positively correlated with the Gift. I would think Good Teacher and high Com Scores are positively correlated as well.

As for developing spells to raise Com. There exists spells in the main rulebook that raise Intelligence. I can see a Creo or Mentem specialist inventing a series of spells to improve Com. Especially since if they invented it themselves, it would not warp them as a powerful mystical effect. There are a couple of additional questions though. First, if the whole Normandy Tribunal generates 30 pawns of Creo Vis and 30 pawns of Mentem Vis a year, given all the other things those kinds of vis are needed for, how easy is it to scrounge up of the right flavor of vis? Assuming the caster started at Com 0, it would take at least 45 pawns to raise that magi up to Com +5. This is assuming that a ritual is invented separately for each level, which given the bonuses to inventing from similar spells is not that unreasonable.

A final note. My calculation took the total number of magi and said that a percentage of them each year could write excellent books. Given how I did my calculation, there was no way to account for magi running out of topics to write about. I recently statted out a senior Tremere for a quick event at a tribunal, and when I looked at him, I realized that given how many years he was out of apprenticeship, he did not have high enough scores to write a book once every other year. If I had made him write a book every other year, his scores would be then have been enough lower that he would be able to write even fewer books. This was a Tremere, who I spread his arts around fairly evenly so he would be good at Certamen. Someone more specialized would have fewer topics yet.