So, I was considering vis and thought it was worth creating a new thread to discuss it so that it doesn't get lost in the noise.
What do we as a troupe think will be the quantity of vis available will be during the saga? I know we'll have BPs to spend on vis resources. What do we think those will be and what do we think a yearly vis salary for a magus ought to be in this saga? Vis is supposed to be plentiful in Thebes. But what does that mean in real numbers?
Assuming that the income of the covenant is 50 pawns/year, we currently have five or six mages for the covenant. The covenant also starts with some 500 pawns. As such, I'd imagine that we'd keep the current stocks - which might be disbursed to acquire new texts or create magic items for the benefit of the covenant.
So the 50 in income would be handed out to each magus. That's probably 8-10 per year. We do need to allot some 8 or so for our Aegis per year, but I'm not sure about other required expenditures.
I hope we have good Creo and Corpus sources as the Tebes Tribunal request that healing is to provided to other mages of the tribunal and 1/2 of the vis is to be paid by the covenant/magus provide the healing.
Sure the healing magus will gain token for the expenses but not the vis.
With I think at last 3 of our magus know healing rituals we will see wounded magus more or less regular knocking at our covenants door.
I'm thinking that for the Theban tribunal we might double the vis income for the covenant. Then 10 pawns/year vis grant or salary per magus still allows plenty for buying books and setting the aegis.
You mean have the vis income for the covenant be 100 vis/year? That seems a bit extreme to me, even for Thebes. That would be 500 BP in vis sources. Compare that to Didyma in Through the Aegis. Didyma is an Autumn covenant in Thebes and has only spent 220 BP on vis sources. We'd have over twice the vis sources of a Theban Autumn covenant.
What does the rest of the troupe think?
70 pawns per year, 10 pawns per magus, 20 towards the covenant?
That's still almost a 60% increase when compared to the autumn covenant of Didyma (which gathers, on average, 44 vis/year).
Thomsja suggested 50 vis/year (a 13% increase over Didyma), which comes to 8 pawns per magus and 10 for the covenant. That would put the covenant easily in the high range of vis per year per magus for sagas I've seen.
Because normal hermetic lab texts have absolut no use for my magus thanks to Holy Magic and normal hermetic magus have no use of his lab texts (his books and lab text about magic are incomprehensible for them), I'm all for having a good vis income. Actual I will even go so far that one of the first season of my magus in game will write down the spells he invented for his apprentice.
(Although I don't get it how to half the lab total affect i.e. learning from a arts book as the lab have nothing to do with that ... and no there is no errata for this)
I'm all for a good vis income too. I'm sure all of us could find use for whatever vis we're given. The real question is what's a reasonable amount of vis for a Summer covenant in Thebes? As much as I'd like to have a super high vis income, I'd also like to maintain verisimilitude. I don't want to pick a vis income that's way out of whack with what would be a reasonable vis income for a covenant like ours. Right now the best gauge we have is the vis income for Didyma covenant, which is an autumn covenant in Thebes. According to Through the Aegis, Didyma has 220 BP spent on vis sources, which means that their vis income is about 44 vis/year. (They have a variable vis source, so it's not constant, but it's approximately 44/year). My concern is that anything significantly over that value would be straining credulity for a Theban covenant.
Then lets go with the 50 thompsja suggest what would be easy to handle with 5 magus but if we also have NPC magus beside apprentice at the covenant the easy division / 5 is no longer a that great idea for the covenant vis.
My thought is that the covenant we are referencing is not from the Thebes book, and I'm not sure it was made taking into consideration the excess amount of vis that is supposed to be available through the tribunal. p.77 of the Sundered Eagle states that the tribunal treasury has several hundred pawns of vis stored in a single location, the covenant of Alexandria is described as having multiple enchanted items belonging to the covenant which are leased out at a rate of 1 pawn of vis per week apiece (p. 114) which depending on how often how many devices are leased could by over 100 pawns per year. 50 pawns per year is also the amount gathered for the tribunal council...