Ok but then our Parma Magica summa should be at most lvl 5.
I think we should have Finesse, Penetration and Concentration as lvl 6 summa as this ability work for all our mages similar well. (Especial Finesse and Concentration help us with our educated grog as well to let them use our magic items)
The lvl 8 Magic Theory is fine but then we probably should have at last one tractatus on Holy Magic.
Our problem with the table Trogodor put up start at latest when we want to pick books like The Bible or common Artes Liberales/Philosophiae books given in A&A as they not fit in. From a previous post:
Edit: the suggested books here are 7 BP short of 3x 35 BP so if we find a better Artes Liberales book and maybe have the Philosophiae book quality improved by 1-2 points it can fit in. Maybe both books where commented by a past magus and so the Artes Liberales have a Ql of 13 and the Philosophiae book have Ql 14.
In general I'm no fan of the lvl 6 Ql 17 books instead they should be just lvl 6 Ql 15 (the only reason I can think why someone want to pay for the 2 Ql more is because of book learner as 105 / 15 = exact 7 season and 105 / 17 = ~6.2 season)
So giving this some more thought and ignoring the table for now:
45 BP The Bible Summa Theology lvl 10 Ql 3; Church Lore lvl 3 Ql 3 (in Classical Greek)
33 BP Philosophiae lvl 6 Ql 15
33 BP Artes Liberales lvl 6 Ql 15
34 BP Parma Magica lvl 6 Ql 16
33 BP Finesse lvl 6 Ql 15
33 BP Penetration lvl 6 Ql 15
35 BP Magic Theory lvl 8 Ql 11
34 BP Concentration lvl 5 Ql 19
280 BP
(Yes I know I hate it my self that the Bible is actual a extrem expensive but pretty useless book and actual even break the rules of summa that can be bought with BP. Still given our thematic I think we should buy it)
Edit: On a slight different topic ... sad that Exceptional Book is a major boon or I would have taken it to lessen the burden my magus brings on the art library by taking a intellego (holy magic) phenomena what is part of our regio or on a sub regio of it.
I think your list is basically fine. My table was mostly meant as a starting point for debate. I wasn't married to any particular numbers for any of the books. Essentially, I had taken the library on p. 72 of the ArM core rule book for a powerful covenant and expanded on it. But if people would rather have different numbers for the books, I can work with that. Mostly I was posting the table to try and ensure that we had a good balance of books. Going 100 BP at a time would make it far too easy to have too much of one thing and not enough of another.
I also agree that even though it's a hugely inefficient book, for story purposes I don't know how we avoid having the Bible. I think we have to suck it up and buy a copy.
FWIW, on the margin, I'd prefer a PM book of level 6 and a Concentration book of level 5, but that's just a quibble.
Because half of the SQ is easier done with 20 then with 15 I prefer to keep the Parma Magic on the lvl 5. (Beside that 10 is still a good SQ for a summa while 7 already start to become mehh)
That makes a lot of sense. It might not help the older magi very much, if they already have a high Creo. But it will certainly explain how they got to that high Creo value.
Changed Concentration to lvl 5 Ql 19 and Parma Magica to lvl 6 Ql 16 in my suggestion above this way the BP cost don't change while there is actual no change for someone without virtues and flaws to learn them from 0 (except the switch in level).
My magus would like to have a good Intellego (holy magic) summa ... maybe one of the level 16.
the lvl 16 is fine. The Understanding + Meditation (hermetic gematria) guidelines fall mostly under intellego and Holy Magic allow him to invent rituals that breaking hermetic limits using the guidelines for Understanding thanks to this 2 ability. For the non ritual effects I have to look deeper but I don't think they will influence anything.
keep in mind the comprehensibility rules work both ways- a Q:15 holy summae will be Q:7 for non-holy magi...
which makes me wonder if there should be a build point bonus for such texts, given that hermetic is the default rather than holy magic...
I'm not sure what you mean by "if there should be a build point bonus for such texts. Do you mean
A) we should have a library made of all purely hermetic texts and no holy magic texts; or
B) we shouldn't have to pay for the holy magic texts we have?
If (A), I'd originally wondered that myself. But then I considered that we've had a holy magus serving as 1/5 (maybe 1/4) of the covenant for a number of years. He'd have done everything he could to have obtained texts on holy magic. And while there are much, much fewer of those around, he must have met with some success over the years. I'll agree that there's a good argument it shouldn't be 1/5 of the texts, since holy magic texts are extremely rare compared to pure hermetic magic. But he'd have found a few texts over the years.
I figured that if we were all holy magi, we'd probably have a bunch of holy magic Arts texts. Why shouldn't we have a few when we have one holy magus?
Nothing is set in stone yet. This is just a proposal. I'm only posting it to give a place to keep up the debate. People should feel free to make any suggestions they feel warranted.
I would put a tab below Bible and leave everything empty except Summa | 3 | 3 otherwise people might to wonder how the 45 BP come together. Also please use the right BP costs as the 6/15 summa are 33 BP, the 6/16 and 5/19 summa are 34.
Because of the 35 pts Magic Theory Summa I would like to claim a lvl 9 Holy Magic Tractatus (44/5= 8.8 so I take slight more then 1/5 this time)
I figured it was just us, so I didn't need to spend time explaining. But if it makes you feel better, I can toss in an asterisk with an explanation.
D'oh! I forgot to change those numbers. I'll do so. Thanks for the catch.
I have no trouble with one of the level 9 tractatus being a Holy Magic Theory tractatus. I strongly suspect that some of the other tractaus will be regular MT.
I just calculated 1 / 5 of our art summa BPs to see how much I can/should claim there
596 /5 = 119,2 BP
31 Intellego 17/14
30 Muto 16/14
29 Animal 11/18
29 Terram 11/18
119
Muto is the art my magus learned in the last years before the game start and the 15 / 16 still hold some knowledge. For the 3 other my Magus only have 5 or 6 in them, so I picked only books that are still useful to my magus.
I hope that isn't a problem after we picked Creo as our main Magic Theory Art summa. With the Art Summa for Holy Magic picked its probably easier for the rest of us to pick the other one.
I agree that uneven numbers for summa & tractatus QL in Art and Parma Magica are bad for our covenant no matter if they are holy magic or magic theory based.
Edit: I will try to change the arts summa so that we only have even Ql later today but might need to switch some points from or to tractatus while doing so.
Good I did go over this as the 15/16 Art Summa we calculated with 29 BP are actual worth 31 BP despite that it would be 6 BP the calculation was only off by 5 BP! Resulting from this I removed a complete Ql 9 Tractatus and added 4 BP more to the art summa.
Sorry its impossible to keep the lvl 20 summa if we want even QL numbers. I added the summa asked by thompsja and me I hope the change in level and/or ql don't affect the requests. For the tractatus I leave this to Trogdor as I'm not that firm with tables.
***** Removed the table here to make the thread better readable ******
Edit: looks like I have to go over this again as some number where probably optimized to get a level of X in Y season. For the 2 lowest summa I already adjusted them to be in 2 season lvl 8 but that is sadly not as good as 1 season lvl 6.