Vis Study (House rule)

I always like promoting more options on alternate xp methods. Everything Is Books (tm) is kind of repetitive after a while. The real question you have to ask is why people are NOT studying vis; how rare is vis in your saga? How hard is it to get books from your sodales at Tribunal? How many of your magi are literally designed to vomit out high-quality books? The magi in my home saga (not well optimized) started studying vis at Art level 10-13, since we couldn't get summae past that easily, and we had a good chunk of vis from exploring and adventuring around the Theban tribunal.
If your goal is to house-rule vis study such that it can compete with books more easily (a choice rather than being forced into it) then a few small fixes can do it. I don't like adding Int because it forces people into high-int characters, and the ones who are less bookish are suddenly more reliant on good books. For testing purposes, its better to have smaller modifiers tested over time, but tha'ts hard to do in a real game setting. You could just add a flat (+ vis used) to the score, which gives a steadily increasing value to offset the risk of botching. You could include a secondary stat to the xp value (int, magic lore, etc), you could allow 'experimentation' lab bonuses to apply to the xp gain. I'd suggest finding how many MORE exp you want to add to the vis study, and base your house rule on that. Vis study isn't terrible, it's just worse than books because of how easy it is to abuse book-writing rules.

given that vis is consumed where books are not, I feel vis needs a serious boost in SQ to be competitive. The most obvious boost would be to add magic theory- not so much in terms of game balance but in terms of making sense- however as has been noted magic theory is a bit overused as a boost for magical abilities. Magic lore would certainly make sense as an alternative, or int or per. Given that a tractatus is generally going to be an 11 before boosts (though it can be higher) and can be resold afterwards, vis should be significantly higher, especially when you have to pay in large quantities at high level for the same ability bonus, meaning your return on investment is dropping when the cost to get to higher levels is also increasing...
I suppose adding artes liberales and philosophae would make sense, and maybe get a +1 bonus to the study total per pawn studied, even when you have to use them for study.

Another approach would be to add a Laboratory Specialisation for vis study (I realise you don't have to be in a lab to study vis, but you can be). That way a magus with sufficient interest in studying vis can invest the time to make it worthwhile, but for other magi it may still be more worthwhile to find a pocket of higher aura.

So, studying from Vis is generally more dangerous and worse than reading a good book. I feel like that's totally intended by the game paradigm.

Part of the strength of the Order is that they have the infrastructure and culture to write books that preserve and circulate knowledge. This system makes it very easy for them to reach a higher level of power than more insular culture and group would.

Which means, reading books is really good. Studying directly from vis doesn't need to be comparable because books are intended to be really good.

However, I feel like some people in the thread are assuming the order has more really good books than is feasible. A large part of the order isn't really good at writing books or inclined to do so, because they have their own idiosyncratic projects to pursue. I assume people who can write Q11+ tracti are kind of rare; not all of those choose to pursue writing, just because they're really good at it.

Assuming that the supply of high quality tracti of your desired art is inexhaustable, then no wizard will ever study from vis. However, I assume that once a wizard has blown through the several dozen really good tracti on an art that have been produced over the course of the order's history, they're going to have to lower their standards or wait until new ones are written. This may take a few years, if they wait. Otherwise they will eventually lower their standards enough that studying from vis becomes preferable.

So if this is a problem that bothers you, perhaps you should talk with your group about adjusting the availability of books and the general expectation of their quality.

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RoP:I, p.18-19:

A magus may study Hermetic Arts from vis sordida, and gain a +1 bonus to the Source Quality per pawn of vis sordida used. Infernally aligned spellcasters may [do so] without incurring any ... ill effects.

The Seventh Ring of Solomon (Ars Notoria, RoP:D) allows you to eliminate any chance of a botch. So does a Base 35 Meditation/Understanding Divine effect, if it is God's will that you undertake a certain course of action (again, RoP:D). Your SG may, or may not, allow Threads of Fate (RM) to affect botches from vis study -- I wouldn't.

Once you have removed your otherwise pretty large chance of botching (perhaps through a mobile laboratory with a lot of +Safety features), find a level 10 Boundary (RoP:M) aligned with the Art you want to study, and enjoy the 3 complimentary pawns of vis it provides every season, as well as the +30 Aura bonus (yes, +30) to study from vis.

Actually a boundary wouldn't work, because then you would be in the magic realm, where learning is not possible...

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Of course (as with most house rules), one could change nothing at all & simply take another approach. At least ArM5 has plenty of options (& virtues) for literally anything you would like to do. Say for example, "In a hypothetical Saga books are restricted severely because a mouse ate them all". Fine, let's establish our Covenant in a relatively high magic area (I think aura 5 was the max while being very safe, so let's go with that) then players can take free study & study bonus (or both) and get an average study total of 16, still plenty. And you could travel & gain adventure exp while searching great teachers of the Art of going for Vis hunt, etc. It would certainly make for an interesting Saga where the players will be nothing like your typical bookworm/labrat.

I mean, you still have options. Plenty of them in fact...

I still think that these two house rules are good ones however & while they do not change the balance from Books to Vis (which is as intended) in ArM5, they offer a counter-point, yet another route that you could go.

Hi,

I see nothing wrong with something like this: Consume one pawn. Roll a stress die. Add bonus or penalty from Aura. Gain that many xps in the Art of that pawn. If you roll a zero, roll two botch dice.
Try not to botch. :slight_smile:

Considering that you can buy a decent tractatus for a pawn, this seems pretty reasonable.

Anyway,

Ken

It even used to be this way in earlier editions.

Indeed, although you could also spend up to 3 pawns to multiply stress die by pawns spent, a necessary option back when nothing could be gained unless the total exceeded one's current Art score.

Oh, good catch!

Although .. you don't learn, but you do get pawns of vis equal to the number of xp you would have gained. That could be quite profitable ...

... especially if you study from an awesome summa. Since your score never goes up, you can keep reading and reading and reading, at least until the GM makes the walls bleed on you.

Anyway,

Ken

Thanks for listing all of those!

An alternative way to "study" from vis might be Daimons, if you allow a group of Teletarchs to represent the Techniques and Forms of Hermetic Magic, that have powers that allow them to teach the Arts to magi who successfully invoke a pact. Any magus can invoke them if they have a spell (or casting tablet) that can accumulate sufficient Summoning Points and penetrate with a single ritual. By varying the Might of their Aspects and their teaching abilities, tailoring the XP to vis ratio to give the rate of return you want should be doable.The Daimons themselves will want to teach as they accumulate Daimon Points to improve themselves and they may be part of some long term plan to strengthen magic itself, who knows?

(I didn't read the discussion, only first post).

Adding INT feels like a back step to 4th edition (which I never played).

in 5th edition, I like that covenant said "experimentation specialty" from labs add to study vis. It means a dedicated vis student can have exp bonus in his lab.
Adding an aura, it may be a lot better than just a book.
serf's parma but iirc having safety also reduce botch risk when studying vis

While adding experimentation has merits, it has quite serious implications on the rate of advancement. By RAW vis studies average 5.75xp + aura, which is equals a sound tractatus if your aura is 5. If you can go seriously into this, you find a better aura, but the source quality remains bounded.

Boosting a lab speciality is fairly easy. It takes time, but if you are going to study an art for 20 years, taking two years to build the lab is not a big deal. You can easily double the initial average source quality, and then we see source qualities better than the roots which otherwise only applies to novice learning.

My main concern is that the lab improvement is unlimited. If you play the long game, it will enable expert levels not otherwise seen.

I have not looked at tainted auras. That too may give undesired power boosts, but it is at least bounded.

First, where does Covenants say experimentation bonus affects total when studying from Vis?

Second, Lab specialties providing benefit to study quality is definitely RAW as we see with a teaching focus but there we see the only time lab bonuses are limited. If one makes the house interpretation that experimentation applies to studying from vis, capping the bonus applicable to the study total seems prudent.

I just checked the digital edition of Covenants - p112 says "The value of an Art Specialization adds to any Lab Total (but not Advancement Total) involving that Art."

Therefore it's explicity ruled out for Art Specializations, but doesn't mention if the same applied to activity Specializations. As Experimentation says "The value of the Specialization adds to all Lab Totals when experimenting" it doesn't mention it affects Advancement Totals. You could argue that it's not been explicitly ruled out, but I wouldn't allow it. The only specialization affecting experience is Teaching, which adds to training and teaching source qualities (thereby implying that training in relevant abilities like Magical Theory is possible).

It doesn't. It was a house rule proposal, and it wasn't mine.

This is clear. It adds to lab totals, period. Advancement totals is a very different concept from lab totals.

Well spotted @dc444 about the cap on teaching bonus. I think that is important for all the reasons I outlined previously. Teaching is very different from self-study though, and the fittings proposed for the teaching bonus do not sound very relevant to studies from vis. Using teaching is probably a better idea in terms of game balance, but for the sake of narrative plausibility I'd rather use experimentation capped at +3.

(Or to be precise, I'd rather stick with RAW, but it is interesting nevertheless to imagine the implications of different house rules.)