Yes, studying from Vis could be considered "experimentation" but I prefer to read experimentation as specifically being the "roll on the Experimentation: Extraordinary Results table" sort. But, it is a reasonable interpretation that studying from vis does count as experimentation, in which case I recommended limiting the bonus to +3 to be in line with the only other benefit to source quality seen by RAW from a laboratory specialization (without generous interpretations). That said, even a Texts focus doesn't add to quality for writing books, though it does help one write faster.
[edit:] I was not recommending using Teaching while studying from vis. Merely comparing a likely wise limit to bonuses to a study total from lab specialties.
I think the rules are designed to reflect the very academical structure and scientific approach of the Hermetic magic, with a rather seclusive lifestyle. So vis study is a footnote left for magus who does not have other opportunity to progress.
I also think it would be interesting to design a system for an oral based magical tradition, following Hermetic magic, with a specific set of virtues and rules putting the emphasizes on self discovery, personal experimentation, with higher Advancement total than those provided by the vis study rule. However, mixing both will only results in power creep.
This oral tradition could be a legacy from Diedne magic (although there was the ogham alphabet, I don't think druids were strong on written records), bardic and shamanic tradition.
Sources of learning could be places or remarkable events, inspiring performances, hallucination, and vis study.
Each would generate a certain Advancement total, either as total XP (equivalent to tractatus) or with L/Q for more permanent features that could be studied for longer period.
This tradition would be more prone to travel, having eschewed the need for a laboratory, preferring instead to draw direct inspiration from the world.
The rule for vis study would be different (allowing to generate higher Advancement total).
The virtue Study bonus would be the result from Bonisagus to integrate such tradition in the hermetic theory.
Since studying from vis does not in fact require a lab, I think the idea of lab bonuses only makes sense if you are going to have house rules where studying vis in a lab instead of just anywhere has some benefit to begin with...
I think those may already be allowed via Significato and Realia (less, realia, honestly), from Covenants, or Final Transmission sites (as .described in HoH:MC under the Criamon chapter). Though your interpretation may require enlarging how Significato might work beyond the few examples provided.
Right, I read that as a hypothetical subjunctive, not as an assertion about what the book actually says. But making such subtle grammatical distinction really is beyond my own knowledge of English too. It was just the only interpretation which made sense.
p107:
"Experimentation: The experimental premise is crucial to labwork. There is of course a need to try things out — magic cannot be studied or effects learned without actually performing magic. This is a process of trial and error, and involves consuming ingredients, replacing broken equipment, and so on. While there is an element of experimentation in all lab work, this principle is applied especially when using the Experimentation rules (see ArM5, page 109) or when studying Arts from raw vis."
So it stands as a good principle, and normally any sensible troupe willing to exit the "books are overpowered in setting, opposing the lore" will admit it works like that and accept the experimentation specialization on vis study. it brings diversity in labs (and advancement manners), and diversity is good.
If your ASG is the kind to say to new players "take book learner", then, no luck; you are stuck in a paradox.
The "teaching" specialty already improves the advancement total of teachers. Accepting "experimentation" for studying vis is another blow at the overpowered book learning. But we are in the house rule territory from OP so ...
How many xp is it reasonable that a magus can earn over on average over a long period (decades)?
Yes, books allow source qualities up to about 20-25, which gives 25-30 if the magus has book learner and study bonus, but only up to about level 10 which is reached in 2-3 seasons. Then qualities decline. The typical sound tractatus is at most Q11 by RAW, about even with vis studies depending on aura. Yes, there are better books, and many starting PC magi can write Q14, but these books are supposed to be scarce. To get from level 20 to 40 in an art is 610xp. The few Q12-Q14 that has been written should account for a small fraction of this.
RAW say nothing about how many Q11 books you can reasonably acquire. It is consistent with RAW to rule that you have to resort to Q8 and Q9 tractatus before you reach level 40, and then vis studies is not bad at all.
It is not a canon necessity that books are overpowered. Early in the game, they are more powerful than vis, and they should be, because novices do not make great inventions. If books remain overpowered in the long game, it is not because canon says so, but because you have houseruled something about their abundance and availability.
The present discussion follows up. Our house rules have made books overpowered. Now we need house rules to make vis overpowered too. Where do you want it to end?
Earning about 11xp/season on average sounds like enough to me, and that's what RAW suggests today. WIth vis studies you can easily push that by finding a better aura.
The question is not rhetorical: How many xp is it reasonable that a magus can earn over on average over a long period (decades)?
Things I've seen done more than once: Get a +5 com circle buff, cast it a few times on your entire covenant, have them write a tractatus once a year. Get an apprentice, give them Com 5, teach them something you want a tractatus on, make them write a book on it.
The real 'penalty' of vis study is the risk of botching, and the fact you expend vis to do it.
My reading of this is solely that "normal lab pursuits can't botch, but using Experimentation (capital E) and vis study can!"
So IMHO that is the link between the vis study. The "proces of trial and error" often involving "replacing broken lab rquipment" doesn't happen otherwise. Only when taking risks in projects (Experimentation) or studying vis.
In fact I really observe we don't play in the same troupes. In our group, for as long as I joined (back in 2008), a normal magus earns more than 40xp per year and that's not counting side-xp such as twilight or adventure. Books have always been and remained the principal source of XP. That's why each magus (except mine I think) has book learner, all books have a quality of 12 or more, because they are all written by competent writer, knowing that they will find buyer. All are automatically upgraded by professional (scribes/illuminator/binder) because those are cheap.
Then you make copies anyway to sell.
Lesser-quality books are not bought nor sold. My magus has written a MT summa level10 q14 and has now written a level 18 q14 too Vim. The only reason I didn't sell anything to become rich was because I'm Bonisagus and thus forbidden to sell my knowledge.
We had a level 12 quality 21 Vim book for decades anyway which is not really "high tier" but was really useful for every magus to raise Vim (the most important form for everyone who understand metamagic [ie Mu and Re Vi]... whose are the ASG, me, the second BSG and one of the other players... among a troupe of 6).
It costs maybe 40 pawns to buy a "good" book, but that is two big year of vis source in our covenant (for 7 magi) with an average 3 pawns per magus per year. Since my magus hasn't used the library once since I arrived in the covenant, i cannot say the average time spend in studying each book. But for example I know for sure all magi have studied my summa about MT up to it's maximum (ie level 10).
The only reason I have so much in MT is that every season of those 320 was spent experimenting, and having affinity with the MT.
And yet, for magi with 80+ gauntlet years, books remain the better source of study. Only after 20's in art, do the tractatus be really used (in our saga, tractatus have a level and the ASG decided that writting tractatus is not a well recognized activity, thus few people do it) and vis start to be used in the field of expertise... until the moment players start writing tractatus and trade them amongst them, then sell them, for better summae.
Anyway, the OP asked for "how to give vis study incentive", which the canon doesn't provide although it is said to be the main source of study. I gave one which is related to what the covenant book says. If OP doesn't like, he can not use it.
All the discussions about raw feel to me pointless since we are not RAW since first post.
Exactly. This is where you have houseruled your way out of canon. Books with L+Q>31 are exceptionally good by [Cov]. You have 33 and you don't even want to call it «high tier»?!
I also want such books to excist, but only as exceptions.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with your game. But when you break canon on books, it is a logical consequence to break canon on vis studies too. Discussing house rules on vis studies independently of house rules (and interpretations) on books do not make the slightest bit of sense. With a more canon interpretation of books, the vis rules are rather balanced.
I'd always tended to make the size of the Order a theme. 1200 magi is such a small number; in villages with a population of that order, like mine, everyone knows most of the people and have heard of almost anyone. We don't have many rogue magi running around: they are so few of them that instead of being unknown they are quite the opposite, because they are known to try to be rogue.
Anyway let's make some fast numbers!
Assuming 1200 magi and an average lifespan of one century (that had been on the rise) and wavehanding a lot let's say that there had been 1200 current magi x (13 - 8) centuries = 6000 magi.
Let's say than on average half magi had written an average of one book, because not everyone likes to write. So 3000 books.
Let's say two thirds of them are about useful stuff (the other third is obsolete or stupid, let's say a Magus writting a detailed Summa on the wing details of a specific butterfly): So 2000 books.
Let's say 1/20th of them are of each art, which leaves a 25% of them for MT, Finesse and such. So there are around 100 books written on an average Art.
I would cut it down given that accidents happen, books disappear or are stolen and lost, dragons burn covenants and such, and say that of these, around half is destroyed or lost. So around 50 books for Art. And now half of these would had been written by magi who didn't have good Communication and didn't bother to rise it with T: Circle spells because they weren't thinking in boosting your magus XPs. So 25 books are pretty much garbage, and you have 25 books to learn your art, and obviously not all of them will be masterpieces. So you shouldn't expect to learn from books for your whole life. If you are really interested in mastering and art, start saving Vis now and looking for more sources for it (we also have Vis decaying rules for the saving magus!).
I used some slightly different assumptions when I sketched out my numbers, but I wasn't looking at total number of books, instead of how hard it is to get a particular quality. I won't go into my assumptions much because it's a bit off topic for vis study house rules. The number of books available is much more relavant. I would NOT assume that magi only write an average of one book every lifetime (or half of). I'd assume that people who are good writers are going to write an average of one book every decade or so.
I like your assumptions except for how often people will write books.
In any given good year, there are 1000 magi. 100 of these are authors, because they do better writing books than studying from vis, because they have academic reputations, or whatever. So that's 100 books on all topics in a good year. Let's say there have been 100 of these.
In a bad year, 100 books are destroyed or lost, net. There have been 10 of these years.
In the other years, around 400 of them, 10 books are written, net. These are years in which the Order is forming or recovering or stagnating or growing or preparing for war or whatever.
So that's 10,000 - 1000 + 4000 = 13,000 books on all topics, mostly tractatuseses.
But of course, different assumptions, different results!
Not disputing the general sentiment of the post, but assuming that 10% of the order are authors worth reading seems high, especially given the (very high) qualities of available books that appear to be generally assumed on this forum.
Maybe if some common mystery cult had a script to initiate the relevant virtue?
Otherwise, I find it hard to disagree with @Ovarwa here.
Indeed. You can take whatever assumptions you want, and design a world.
The problem arises when players subconsciously make assumptions which are not later questioned.
Assumptions should be made in order to create the world one desires to play in. A world with 13000 sound books, and 10% of those of super-sound, and a smooth-running market for copies, may well be plausible, but I find it boring. I see more narrative potential if we rule that the best books are hard to get and it is hard to complete the range of arts with satisfactory books, and the supply of decent tractatus will diminish when your score rises.
The world where books are scarce is plausible too, but we may have to assume that Communication of the Heroes is not popular. We may have to assume that most magi do not care about writing much. We may assume that many tomes are not for sale. We simple have to pick all of those assumptions to create the world we want to play in.
If books are as abundant as some players want them to be, we can just rule a flat 15xp/season (or pick your number) for reading, and save all the book bookkeeping. True, we lose a little detail, but we save a lot of work.
Similarly, I was either going to have authors each write 1 book per year, 10 books per year or 1 book per 10 years.
Note that if we average out authors and non-authors, we get a "typical" magus writing one book every ten years, which doesn't seem excessive. The number of books comes out the same. I do see two distinct populations, though, and wanted to account for them. Non-authors might write a few books during their lifetimes rather than none at all; authors might publish something every two years, in line with what is suggested for scholars in A&A.
90% of authors are equally split among Com1,2&3.
10% of authors have Com4&5, equally split.
10% of authors are good writers, spread evenly among Com+X.
Being able to cast a level 20 penetration 30, or level 50 spell is incredible strong. One of the costs of that, is each season the specialist is getting not much XP as can't use Summae. The generalists is getting a bunch of arts and techniques to 8 in 2 seasons using the level 8 quality 18 "vain" summae. The generalist can't do the huge spell, but can spont a great selection of non-fatiguing level 4 spells, and with fatigue, a reasonable aura and reasonable stamina, a level 10 spont is near guaranteed, and a level 15 isn't unreasonable.
Flat XP greatly weakens the generalist in comparison to the specialist as they no longer have the advantage in overall XP in techniques and arts. Especially taking in to account which specialist doesn't have affinity?
