and in arts and academe artistic writing can be learned, but somehow not academic writing...
I think the simplest solution here would be Profession: Author. Writing can be learned, and itâs not the same as teaching.
Substitute the characterâs Profession: Author for the 6 used in the current formula for book quality. Puissant Author would be an exception to the rule that Puissant does not normally apply to writing books. This would result in books that are worse than RAW for amateur authors, but better than RAW for specialized ones.
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If you want to open this possibility, I would suggest to make the formula : Com + lowest ability between Teachnig and Language. Supress Good teacher (convert it in Puissant Teaching if need be). No minimum level in Teaching, you could write a book with a quality of Com + 0. A somewhat more generous variant would be Com + (Teaching capped by language level) + (1/2 language). So beginning magus with no level in teaching could write (Com + 2) books.
It's only pushing the reasoning to the end : you could learn to be a good writer, but to write you must learn it.
The fact that you must invest more experience in those abilities than in the core rules to reach the same quality, is balanced by the fact that you could attaint a higher quality than in the core rules. I feel that your formula is too generous, and the scribe skill has nothing to do with an author's work (authors dictate their works to the scribes). The language used is also more in relation with the art of writing, artes liberales is a too diverse ability tor the job.
Why do I feel that your formula is too generous ? Simply put, a beginning magus could easily have such levels in those abilities to write (Com + 6) quality books, as in the core rules, then he'll progress constantly, in a way that average books should be far better than (Com + 6) in quality. With the formula I suggest, a beginning magus could write (Com +3) or (Com +4) quality books (with some investment), and will have to work a lot to reach (Com +7) or better quality.
But I won't do that, essentially because I don't follow you in the assumption that masters in skills and arts would hone their writing skills to write better books. Did you ever read modern academic papers and courses ? Sure, their aiuthors have a deep knowledge of the subject. But it's too often badly written, very boring (and they teach by giving an even more boring lecture of that). Nonetheless, those books are praised (by their peers, that is).
Moreover, perhaps in that time there was generally a classical way of writing books, so writers of the sime don't innovate in writing quality. After all, academic learning is largely lecturing and debating about ancient authors, supposed to be at the pinnacle of the writing art.
Most academic professors are interested in knowing well their subjects, but learn too rarely to be efficient professors.
I also think there is a good, if meta-game, reason to limit to a fixed the quality you can reach in books : if you don't do that and allow writers to become better and better, it leads to escalating the quality of books in the saga. For teaching, training, it's not so important because the teacher or trainer must repeat seasons to help his students, but for books it's critical, since books are permanent teaching tools.
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If anything, I would go with artes liberales instead of language- you already have to have a language of 5 to write a paper, and artes liberales includes formal argument and reasoning, so it makes sense this would influence clear writing. scribe does make an impact- illegible script is far harder to read than clearly legible, but at best I think it would follow the craft quality bonuses from city and guild.
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If you are going to have book writing be based off of an ability I would go with giving bookwriting its own (new) skill as suggested by Jason Tondro. Profession(Author) is as good a name as any to me. In this situation the virtue "Good Teacher" is better than having both "Puissant Profession(Author)" and "Puissant Teaching" for the price of just one virtue. Whether or not this is a problem is up for debate.
As for the academic writing argument. As an academic writer myself I will have to disagree that it cannot be learned. Academic writing is very much something that you can practice. It is simply that many professors don't bother to learn writing, because they are often not rewarded for doing so, and conversely not punished for failure to learn. If you publish dense, overly long and poorly structure academic papers, people who want to use your results will still need to read them, and those who disagree will have a harder time because its hard to figure out what your papers even say. In my view this situation is very consistent with hermetic magi not generally bothering to improve their teaching or writing skills even though the could. For the same reason that real academic writers don't bother - because it wont necessarily have a positive impact on their (hermetic) careers. For some it might but for most it will not.
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Just to be clear : of course, academic writing could be learned and practiced! But as I stressed in my previous post, many academic writers don't bother and continue to publish badly written papers. I know of a botany thésis over 5,000 pages long. Presumably, none other than it's author ever read it entirely, but it earned her the academic palms.
As for the adequate ability, up to now, RAW, Latin, Greek, Arabic or Hebrew are the skills concerning mastery of language, so I think it should be used as the writing skill and you don't need a new ability. You could perhaps specialize in writing. Artes libérales encompasses many different skills, like geometry, astrology, music, logic and rhetoric, it's not only grammar and poetry, so I don't think it's a good candidate. Scribe is strictly the manual skill of forming legible letters on lines and in columns, more or less quickly depending on the scribe's level. And of course, you don't need it if you dictate your work to a notary or a scribe.
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To me this reads a lot like we are in agreement that writing books should be improvable by experience if we were striving to make the system more realistic.
Arguing that magi or modern academics or anyone does not usually bother to learn a skill (or Ability) is not an argument that said skill is not an Ability. As a counter example take for example Swim, I would risk the statement that most magi don't bother to learn Swim yet the option to do so remains. We do not consider swimming ability to be part of essential nature or otherwise accessible only through Charateristics or Virtues simply because magi dont usually have any proficiency in it.
I dont agree that the four languages that you mention (or language in general) are obvious candidates for a replacement and indeed I dont think there is a good candidate at present. For me there is no good reason to think that proficiency in speaking is the same as ability to explain oneself well. I think the requirement of having a score of 5 in a language in order to write a book in that language adequately represents the language proficiency required to write a book.
I agree that Profession(scribe) is not a good choice but to me Teaching could just as well be expanded to include proficiency at writing. There could be a new skill or any number of other solutions. It is also entirely possible to be happy with the system as is, or to conclude that adding another Ability to the already large pool of Abilities is not ideal and for that reason exclude a new Ability.
Making ArM5's writing of books realistic might require giving it a realistic system to learn from books first.
Such a new system would be a lot of work, and it's outcome quite dubious: trading off playability with realism alone is 
. It might rely on copious tweaks to Virtues, Flaws and all kinds of magic (like Creo Mentem, Succurro Fortunam) related to Characteristics and Abilities.
Just having Scribe in book quality and Concentration in learning results led to easy magical exploits in ArM4.
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That's the point I was trying to make. Sorry for a lack of clarity on my part.
I am willing to concede that its not terribly realistic that book writing is something that a character cannot change by practicing it. While personally this does bother me a little bit it is not nearly enough that I am willing to deal with the consequences of trying to fix it.
I do think that in the saga I currently play in, the solution of changing the base quality of 6 to e.g. Teaching or the new Ability Profession(writing) would not change too much. I am not nearly confident enough in my abilities as a game designer that I would dare take the system further, i.e. beyond even introducing such a simple change to anything wider than the saga I am currently playing in.
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A summary of what I've read...
Options by saga, since we are quite heavily in House Rules territory here:
- Have Teaching be a basis of book writing skill (Com + Teaching or Com + Teaching + X)
- Have Language skill be a basis of book writing skill (Com + Lang + X)
- Include both so advancing in education and elucidation can help (Com + Lang + Teach)
- Lower of the two to stop power creap. (Com + (Lang or Teach) + X)
- New skill for writing clarity: Profession Author (Com + Profession + X)
- some argument for using Int instead of Com
I think for a new system, if you want to be able to write advancing books as you go, you need to accept that people can write crappier books too. This is somewhat dealt with by people needing Language 5 to start writing books. If you include language as an option in book writing, we don't need to worry about that, and let people with lower language skills write cruddier books. I would lean towards Language because I think it's obvious that better authors have a better grasp of the language they are writing, and it takes a significant language xp to get numbers up, which can slow a bit of the power creep.
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