Virtues that grant xps, especially Affinities

Hi,

I was thinking about this back during the Great Gathering of Errata, but I was not typing recreationally at all at the time and this was a bit off-topic.

Virtues that grant xp in AM have a few problems.

  1. Virtues that grant an ongoing benefit almost never provide a benefit during character creation. Such virtues purport to describe a character, but make no effective difference until late in the game. A player who guesses wrong about the duration of a saga is punished.

  2. Virtues that grant a benefit up front provide no benefit after character creation. The benefit is diluted into insignificance as time goes on. A player who guesses wrong about the duration of a saga is punished.

Interlude: I take for granted that it is good design for a virtue to have mechanics that match and reinforce its fluff, and to not reward this kind of metagame consideration when possible.

  1. Some of these virtues are thematically redundant with other virtues. I'm especially looking at Affinity vs Puissant, which do almost the same thing thematically but involve different mechanics. Taking one over the other (or both) is purely a mechanical consideration. Great for optimizers, which is fine, but not great for anyone else, which is not.

  2. Affinities are hard to use:

4a) Division should be avoided whenever possible.
4b) It is not always obvious which xps an Affinity applies to. This has been clarified, but is still not 'always'.

Interlude: I do not consider always rounding up to be a problem. I cannot take this for granted because this is the problem most people have with Affinities, so I will talk about this for a bit.

Let's consider an 'abusive power-gamer' who decides to maximize undeserved benefits from an Affinity. Obviously, he is going to find a way to get an undeserved xp every season. In a 'fair' game, a magus would get 13.5 xp from a typical SQ of 9. But he gets 14xp, a whopping 11% benefit! (9% for SQ11) But this is not unfair enough for our abusive power gamer, because a GM or designer might prefer to allow a player to feel good about getting a tiny extra benefit in the 50% of seasons that the SQ is odd rather than even; to really abuse this virtue, he needs to trickle 1xp/season into an Affinity, for a 100% benefit. Now we're talking!

Except... who cares? Leveraging an Affinity involves getting lots of xp, not incremental xp. A magus who never gets to round up but invests 20xp per year (increased to 30xp) gets much more from the Affinity than the 'abusive' magus who achieves +100% xp but invests 4xp per year (increased to 8xp).

A total non-problem. Carrying the 0.5 is a big problem, because fractions are bad. Rounding down is not as good as rounding up, because why not give players a small bonus rather than a small malus?

  1. Affinities distort character creation. Using an Affinity well involves dumping lots of xp into an Art or Ability, and then coming up with a story for this. I see nothing wrong with this, but other people have different mileage. A better mechanic would work well regardless of what a player does.

  2. Puissant is bad because it involves extra rules, clutters character sheets and requires an extra addition when processing a character sheet.

So:

Alternate Affinity with Whatever (minor)

Gain 50xp in whatever when you acquire this virtue. You also gain 1xp per season in whatever regardless of what else you do, including Exposure. You can take this virtue multiple times, but no more than twice for the same whatever.

Then drop Puissant.

Other virtues that grant xps can be similarly revised and consolidated.

Anyway,

Ken

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That is certainly one way of resolving the issue. I like that it streamlines some things. I dislike that you automatically gain the xp "whatever else you are doing". I might also tweak the immediate vs long-term balance of the xp. Or not.

How do you view it in comparison to the virtues like Warrior or Educated, that give a flat xp bonus while also providing access to a type of Abilities? Do you consider that the access is of equivalent value to the ongoing xp from the affinity? What about Mastered Spells?

How would you change the errata'd Elemental Magic or Flawless Magic, which also provide Affinity-like xp bonuses?

Would you change the virtues like Book Learner that give you an xp bonus based on the type of learning you do? They suffer from the same short-term vs long-term problem that Affinity/Puissant do. Skilled Parens? Gild Trained?

When you start modifying the xp-giving virtues, you have to consider them as a whole, I think. Otherwise you skew the balance one way instead of another. And usually end up raising the power level of the game by giving a bit more.

5 Likes

Something you seem to have ignored in both your summary of the virtue and issues and in your changed virtue, an easy enough fix, is that Affinity also adds 2 to the CharGen ability maximums based on age.

I would not bother to switch to your virtue as a houserule but I would not hate it if, say, a 6th edition went this route. But then many of your complaints I don't see as an issue though I agree that many of the issues you think are non-issues are, in fact, non-issues.

The analysis is off by a bit- I don't know how common it is but I house rue that affnities will gain a 50% bonus on spent points in the appropriate ability(ies) during character creation as well, thereby solving the dilemma for affinity
With regards to puissant abilities, you gain +2 levels (effectively) whose point value goes up as you put more points in- if you put 5 points into an ability (level 1) it is worth 25 points (30 points for level 3-5 points spent). If you put 15 points into the ability it is worth 35 points (50 points for level 4-15 points spent) and so on, so it will continue to increase in value as the ability is improved.

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Hi,

Thanks for your interest.

The part about 'whatever else you are doing' is an abstraction to make this work mechanically.

I don't think it should seem too strange that someone especially gifted or trained in some field might make connections or observations regarding that field even when ostensibly doing something else, or even while convalescing. A mathematician might see the mathematical patterns in everything, or a rabbi might relate all his experiences to the Talmud. There's a story about Steve Jobs seething about the bad UX design of the medical equipment inflicted upon him as he was dying, because it could so easily have been done like this...

A character with a normal Affinity who uses it well is likely to seek out sources of xp, and if he finds 8xp or more during a year, he will gain 4 or more bonus xps from the Virtue. Probably much more. Giving out 1xp/season automatically is a nerf to optimization, but reduces swinginess and improves ease of use for non-optimizers.

Yes. 50xps plus a benefit makes for a reasonable standard.

I think there's a reason people take Skilled Parens over Mastered Spells! :smiley:

But MS is easily adjusted:

Affinity with Mastered Spells
During character creation, you gain 50xps toward Mastery Abilities for any spells you know. You also gain...

There are a few ways to go with Elemental Magic.

If you believe that a Major Hermetic Virtue should provide better value that its cost suggests, because you only get one, here are two versions:

a) All of the elements act a single Art for you due to your superior understanding of the elements. Any xps you gain for any of Au, Aq, Ig and Te apply to all of them. You may not take an Affinity with any of these Arts.

(More powerful than the errata but much simpler. Note that there is no need for a rule about requisites because scores are always the same.)

b) You have an Affinity with Au, Aq, Ig and Te. In addition, if a spell with one of these Forms as its primary Form has another element as a requisite, you use the primary Form to calculate totals, even if the requisite is lower.

(A touch more powerful than the errata at character creation but less powerful overall and much less finicky; and more powerful than 3vps of Affinities.)

Yes, I'd like to see more Elementalists!

As for FM, I had already assumed that all xps were doubled; perhaps I had missed some corner case? Regardless, this virtue can be left as is:

  • No division
  • It provides a benefit during character creation
  • It provides benefits during play
  • Using spell mastery already requires a certain amount of game system mastery; a GM might want to advise new or casual players about this
  • The doubling rule works nicely with 5 Practice xp for Mastery

Alternatively:

Whenever you learn a spell during play or character creation, you gain 5xp in the Mastery Ability for that spell. During character creation, you gain 50xp toward your Mastery Abilities. After character creation, you gain 3xp/season toward your Mastery Abilities, regardless of what else you do.

(For comparison, three Affinities would provide 150xp up front and 3/season thereafter. As with the existing rules, automatically gaining 1 level of mastery is deceptively good, because no time is needed.)

Book Learner should be removed, imo. Most magi spend most of their time reading, so this is a boring virtue thematically. It's not ban-worthy but it feels generic and bland.

Skilled Parens is also problematic for me. It can be left as is because it works fine mechanically: 50xps plus something extra! It's prominent in my recommended virtue list. But the game effect is "I get a bunch of xps and let's blame it on my parens" rather than "My parens was particularly skilled and I am part of his lineage." I'd rather see something else instead.

Gild Trained likewise. Awesome virtue as is. It's in an early supplement, and I think some aspects of the game were still being thought through.

While we're here, virtues like Baccalaureus are similar, and can be treated like Affinities. Note that this is completely superior to Educated, so let's go with the new one but make it generic:

Educated
Unlike most people in ME, you are educated. Perhaps you attended a university or madrasah for a time, or perhaps you acquired your education some other way. You gain 50xp toward Academic Abilities during character creation, and may apply other xps gained during character creation toward Academic Abilities. You might want to take other virtues to reflect relationships you might have developed during the course of your education. You gain 1xp per season...

Agreed! I just hadn't typed out everything I had considered.

I think I raise the power level in some ways, but lower it in others.

These Affinities are less powerful for full-out optimization, because there is no way to get more than 50xp+1/season. But they are more powerful for casual play, because there is no way to get less than 50xp+1/season. For example, if I want Magic Theory 20 (or Parma), a canonical Affinity will provide 350xp as soon as I can muster 700xp. The revised Affinity will also provide that 350xps, but predictably doled out over 75 years for the optimizer and casual gamer alike.

Of course, there is a temptation to create a starting magus who just takes Affinities, or virtues based on Affinities, to gain 500 extra starting xps. The solution is straightforward if the mass of starting xps is better than virtues that provide unique abilities: Limit the number of Affinities, say, to 4 or 5 vp.

(A casual player might not appreciate that canonical Affinities dilute each other, in the sense that the more a character has, the less each one can be optimized, since they multiply existing xp, of which there is only so much. These Affinities do the same thing always. So if you want your Companion be an exceptional swordsman, poet, harpist who exudes charm and you naively take 4 Affinities to reflect this, it simply works.)

Anyway,

Ken

3 Likes

Hi,

Oops! I had forgotten all about that, in part because I prefer to ignore that rule entirely. But also because I think that rule is not listed in the Affinity virtue itself, but somewhere else, among the rules for maximum Ability scores (which I think should be removed.)

But indeed, the fix is easy, and I did not intend to lose the +2.

Thanks for the catch!

There's nothing urgent or required about this, for sure! This is just another of my rules variants, which I post from time to time.

But I think this is worth consideration if you've experienced a game in which one player takes an Affinity but not many starting xps, while another takes two Affinities (say, in a TeFo) plus Skilled Parens and and dumps 102xps (or 103xp :smiley: ) into each, or 150xp in a single Affinity for an Ability or Difficult Art. Or if there have been too many math errors.

Anyway,

Ken

2 Likes

Hi,

This is not a house rule, but the actual rule, unless I'm off by a lot more than a bit: Affinities canonically apply to xps gained during character creation. I assume this throughout my discussion above.

I am thoroughly aware of this. There have been many discussions about Puissant vs Affinity on these forums over the years, whose conclusions I do not want to recapitulate here since the forums are searchable. Suffice it to say that Puissant scales more poorly than Affinity.

I am not sure if you read what I specifically wrote about Puissant above, which is not about scaling:

And:

Anyway,

Ken

2 Likes

I personally tend t see AM as being a very light rules system compared to what I am accustomed to working with, so the idea that it is a problem because it complicates anything is not an issue I take into consideration, which without the whole question of startup verus long term benefits being considered an issue (which it admittedly is, but with both virtues at least contributing to both is, in my opinion a trivial issue at bst) there is really no problem being identified here that your proposed fix is going to actually fix.

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Affinities are not complicated or hard. There is one thing that many misunderstand, but once that point is clear there is no real difficulty (unless one considers multiplication by 1.5 to be a difficult operation.)

The point many misunderstand is thinking affinities multiply xp. They don't.
Except for during character creation, an affinity never multiplies any xp. It multiplies an Advancement Total (which later gets converted into xp, but that's a separate thing.) So when no Advancement Total is involved, an Affinity will not apply.

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Hi,

We disagree about a great many things, so I think I'm on the right track here despite my long absence from anything AM.

I see AM5 as a heavy-weight rules system. From my perspective, AM2 was relatively light weight for a system of that era, at least as presented rather than perhaps how the designers played it themselves, but it was very much of that era. Subsequent editions of the game steadily increased the system's complexity, yet retains the hallmarks of late-80s game design, which leaned toward various kinds of complexity. Modern game designs tend toward simplicity to gain a variety of benefits. I find it more useful to consider AM5's simplicity by comparing it to D&D5 or various PbA games than to GURPS, Hero or Rolemaster.

Identified: I called out a few specific issues.

No problem: These are not problems for you, perhaps because you don't care about removing division, or about having two virtues that do virtually the same thing but with different mechanics (both of which over the years have required clarification and iirc, even errata), or about scaling issues, or about ways to simplify rules without removing any underlying richness, or about making rules friendlier to newbies and casuals, or....

Actually fix: Nope! Division, gone. Mechanics for Puissant, gone. Ease of optimization, improved. Stuff on character sheet, reduced. Number of game mechanics, reduced. Scaling, standardized.

It might not be to your taste, but this variant does what it says on the tin.

Anyway,

Ken

2 Likes

Hi,

FWIW, I misunderstood this for years.

When do we need to understand the difference between xps gained from an Advancement Total versus some other means?

Anyway,

Ken

There is no difference at all in the xps gained. It is in the steps before actual xp are calculated that the differences exist.

So for example, the bonus xp you get from Secondary Insight are just plain xp. Since no Source Quality or Advancement Total is involved, none of the virtues or flaws that interact with Source Quality or Advancement Total will apply.

Most other ways of getting xp does involve a Source Quality from which one calculates an Advancement Total from which you then derive an amount of xp.

I have a feeling much of the percieved difficulty around Affinity lies not with Affinity as such, but is due to not clearly understanding the surrounding system with Source Qualities etc., because that is where the actual complexity exists.
The system is not really complicated as such, but there are several "moving parts" where one has to be careful not conflating different steps.

Hi,

If one has to be careful about several moving parts, and if, as you say, many people misunderstand it, then maybe this aspect of the system is complicated, or at least baroque.

Note that this variant simplifies things, so that xps that involve an SQ and an Advancement Total are processed the same as any other xps, and a deep understanding of the surrounding system is less important, because there are fewer subtleties of this kind.

Anyway,

Ken

3 Likes

I love the idea, it becomes easy to advance +15 years.

OTOH, it breaks down for Vis study and Apt Student. Those things are not easy to explain as continuous gains.

Hi,

Thanks!

Agreed.

I'm less concerned about Vis study, because I don't think anyone takes that virtue, and I do think that the rules for vis study deserve extensive revision.

Apt Student is an exception, and I find the virtue more interesting than Book Learner. The virtue that improves Practice and Adventure xp (Independent Learner?) is similar. These are a different category of virtue, which improves a method of gaining xp rather than an area of interest, represented by one or more Arts or Abilities.

I'm generally happy with my variant, though some of the numbers need tweaking since I'm mostly spitballing. Should the baseline be 50xp or 40xp or 60xp? What if it also allows spending starting xps on Abilities ordinary excluded? How much better should a Major Hermetic Virtue of this kind be compared to 3 ordinary Affinity-like virtues?

But I have not really thought about virtues that govern methods of study. (long pause while I think about it, and then shake myself from a daze, having come up with nothing) This needs further thought, and maybe these virtues are fine as is.

Anyway,

Ken

4 Likes

This at least provides clarity on why I saw no value to your proposal. I enjoy some level of complexity in a game. And I heartfully gravitate towards Ars, Rolemaster and D&D 3.5 and away from the fifth precisely because the 5th edition's approach to making simple mechanics bores me. Note that there's a difference between simple-to-use mechanics and simple game design that makes character creation bland. 5th edition has so few character options that you can play a class out of the player's handbook. Your option - gutting puissant and affinity - leans in a direction that makes me shrug. I enjoy to have the choice to pick either, both or none, and to decide whether I want to combine them or spread them.

3 Likes

Realistically I don't think "hey we should make this wonderful game more like every other game out there" really gets the whole concept of market differentiation.

Hi,

I also enjoy some complexity in a game. I believe that great game design helps give players a real-world, sensory experience that helps put them into the game world. For example, were I designing mechanics for a setting in which one kind of magic involved accumulating power over time and then releasing it, but another, perhaps psychic in nature, involved just doing something right now, I might want magic rolls to involve accumulating a large handful of dice which are all finally rolled when the ritual power is released, but the psychic power might have a much faster mechanism that always involved exactly the same dice. There's extra complexity here, from two entirely different magic systems with two different game mechanics, but players will never mistake the feeling of being a wizard from being a psychic.

(I think this idea can be taken too far, though. There was this C&S fan who insisted that the incomprehensibility of its magic system was a great feature, not something to be clarified or rewritten, because wizards should be rare and magic difficult.)

Too much simplicity is a problem for me (at least in a game system; I tried running systemless in the 90s, and it was immensely rewarding albeit challenging). Over the years, though, even when I enjoy figuring out how to optimize a complex game system, I find myself asking whether the complexity is giving me anything, and I increasingly find myself wanting to streamline. But only so far! I admire games like OTE (stat your grogs and minor NPCs using OTE for easier GMing! :slight_smile: / 294293482948) or PbA but I also find them bland, except in a game in which I know dice will be rolled infrequently, because the focus is elsewhere.

And yeah, if you like Affinity and Puissant exactly as they are, and feel that you get something from it, by all means, go with it.

Anyway,

Ken

2 Likes

Hi,

This is what is known as a straw man.

Anyway,

Ken

3 Likes

No, that is literally the argument you are making rephrased, perhaps generalized. calling an argument a straw man does not defeat it if it is in fact not a straw man. Your entire argument hinges on the idea that because other game systems are moving towards simplicity that Ars Magic must do the same.
Which is, realistically a fallacy of its own- the appeal to common practice fallacy.

1 Like