Just wondering what are your magi's Art scores, and how many years are they post-gauntlet.
My current saga uses house-rules that make this irrelevant, and at any rate just started. My last "saga" was really more an excercise in lab-work than a saga, but culminated in scores of 16+3 and 14+3 in my highest Arts (and 9+2 in Magic Theory) 18 years (73 seasons) post-gauntlet.
My Flambeau Ice Maga is 30 years post-gauntlet, and is quite specialized.
She boasts Creo 12+3 and Aquam 22.
Ten other arts are in the 8-12 range, and the rest 5+
Mind you, she is a conversion from 4th ed, but her Art and Ability scores were somewhat diminished, after calculating the "avegare" exp per year yeild. This was because the rest of the magi in this new saga were newly created in 5th ed rules, and progressed 30 years.
Can anyone beat an apprentice less than halfway through their apprenticeship with 15+3 in Ignem plus 2(1) across the board in all other forms?
Peter is Santiago’s apprentice, and Santiago has high high hopes for the lad (despite his obvious cowardice that he fails to acknowledge). As such, he pampers the boy and hardly ever uses him in the lab. He mainly sends him to the library to study.
Our covenant has two decent books on Ignem (one book, It Burns! It Burns! One Flambeau’s Struggle With the Moors, is quality 6; level 15), and Peter has the book learner, puissant ignem, affinity with ignem, and secondary insight virtues.
I am not usually an overly beardy player, and this character was never supposed to be a power play. However, Santiago in character wants his apprentice to be a fine Flambeau and make him proud and is pushing him to succeed. As such, it could be argued that Santiago is the power player, not me! 
Mark
About 9 years out of apprentice, I can't say my Merinita-turned-NPC-when-the-player-dropped is as powerful as he could be, sitting on his Rego 11 and Mentem 7.
The player Flambeau, however, has Corpus 14 and Rego 10.
Grey Mane (no fancy "Lupus" for me, thanks) is an exmiscelanea wolf mage.
Animal 18, Rego 14, Creo 13. Minor focus in wolves. Pitty the HPOH:S was not around when I created him or he would be a summoner straight from the book. He can shapeshift, though 22 years out of apprenticeship and with quite a few wolf-related spells, so his casting totals tend to be in the 40's.
Other characters IMS are more powerful than him (especially our boni seeker lab rat), but hey.
Cheers,
Xavi
The most focussed character from my last game was a Flambeau
at 22 years out he had the following scores:
Creo 29 (+3 for puissant)
Ignem 17 (+3 for puissant)
Corpus 12
Rego 11
Terram 11
perdo 10
herbam 6
intellego 5
Imagonem 2
muto 1
mentem 1
all others at 0
With his major magical focus his creo ignem casting scores got quite high (considering that he had opened an ignem focus on his talisman and had the special circumstances virtue (when angry)
Lets see
+6 talisman +3 stamina + ignem 20, + ignem again 20 + creo 32 + vis, aura, confidence and anger bonuses when appropriate and we get 81 to 90. add in three more for 2 penetration with an ignem specialty don't forget your simple die roll and he's getting some pretty wicked penetration even with level 50 spells.
WOW! And I thought my arts were OK for 22 post-gauntlet 
Cheers,
Xavi
They probably are. The characters in my last game got together at the tribunal when they were inducted into the order and had a few bonding adventures together. They then went to four different covenants for twenty years but kept in touch through the redcap network and at tribunal meetings. No big deal but... they frequently lent each other books. Ergo each of them had the library resources of all four covenants to draw upon (yet since they all received as almost as good as they got there wasn't really any reason to object to their cooperation).
Furthermore each of the characters had several tasks that I had set up for them to accomplish over the course of the twenty years of elapsed time between the introductory adventures and the time when I wanted to put my game into full swing. This particular character lived in a covenant that was periodically assaulted by magical creatures from within the regio where the covenant had been placed do to an earlier magical disaster. Rather than deal with these events as they came up he took the proactive approach and spent several seasons each studying corpus and perdo then devised a ritual to inflict a devastating disease on the magical creatures and decimate their population, in the long term freeing up several more free seasons for himself than I had originally intended to allow him (Yes, the monsters did come back during the game and yes, the returning monsters did bear the scars of the disease, these scars all clearly showing the PC's casting sigil.)
He had a few more seasons in the library, but the idea of a character spending years in research to develop a curse capable of slaying the race of his enemies was too cool to say no to.
My necromancer has a respectable 12 in perdo, 13 in rego, 17 in corpus, 15 in mentem and 13 in vim. Everything else is a bit lower.
This lets him cast all the spells he wants, although not necessarily with all the penetration he wants.
With those higher arts i am now looking at taking a whole season to raise them by one (by studying vis). I can always find more interesting and useful stuff to be doing than taking a season to raise corpus from 17 to 18.
How do those of you with uber arts scores get them so high? are you characters literally burning vis for season after season on them?
Tractati and vis. And 1 good twilight
Cheers,
Xavi
My game was high speed-slow pace with goals to accomplish in three to five years rather than in two or three seasons. Because of this, the thought process for the characters was "I want to develop spell X, what art scores will I need for the task?" rather than "I've got to take care of problem B right now, how can I do it?".
Also, as I noted above, the characters had access to four libraries rather than one. They did most of their study from tractatus and commentaries with occasional resorting to vis when they ran out of books and were in a time crunch (between two and eight times per character during their 22 year run). They did a fair amount of trading of tractatus and lab notes in order to keep the research materials flowing. Between all of their libraries everyone started out an art with a L5/Q15 summa or a L6/Q21 summa. There were a few summas available that were more in depth but I don't think that there were many.
Metodicus, a Venetian generalist Magus 21 years post gauntlet has Creo and Terram 10, Corpus and Vim 8 and all other Arts 6. Magic Theory is 5 (+2 Puissant), Penetration and Parma 1 (
) and Craft (a useful Ability for a Verditius Magus) 4. Please note that I began with Weak Parens!
Hi
My Apromor flambeau, gauntled 85 years ago, is reaching 34 in Corpus (affinity) ; 16+3 in Perdo (affinity + puissant) ; 12 in Imaginem and Terram ; 15 in Creo and 5 every where else.
He is not a scholar, just accepting to spend 1 season every two years in studying arts.
He made a strong focus on Corpus by looking after very powerfull tractutii (quality 13 and 14), that why he's quite high right now.
Additionnal information : he's not afraid by experimentation and due to his low intelligence in its first 60 years after gauntlet (a wonderfull 0) and its poor lab, he created most of his spells and items while experiencing.
And he has been lucky by gaining 4 times a full level in Corpus 
.
My magus is 7 years after apprenticeship.
Cr 18+3, Re 9, Me 9 are his best Arts. He's got 5 in 3 Arts the rest are 0.
The covenant (~summer) has a very good collection of summas.
My Bjornear, Ickabot Crane is only 2 years and one season out of apprenticeship. He has:
creo 12
intéllego 1
muto12
perdo14
rego 3
aquam 12
auram 12
corpus 17
mentem 1
vim 7
In his creation i used 8 times the extra arts and i have only studied my arts every season because i had nothing better to do, due to the fact i was running the first story.
My Tremere is about 30 years out of gauntlet, and we're looking at a good five years of down time to get some serious book learning done. Well, and bind his familiar.
Cr 12 In 12 Mu 5 Pe 6 Re 5
An 5 Aq 6 Au 7 Co 11 He 15(+2)
Ig 5 Im 6 Me 6 Te 10 Vi 12
(He has an affinity with Herbam.)
Fiodor le Silésien is a Tytalus 18 years out of apprentiship.
He is a Warder, specialised in Rego, Vim and Corpus.
Our group generally use the RAW for character advancement, but we have a house rule that you get the exposure (2xp) each season, whatever you do. Companion (and grogs) get a flat and unmodifiable 15 xp each year (we give them activity for a season, we just play them when appropriate)
Art: score (xp)
Creo: 2
Intellego: 7 (2)
muto: 2
perdo: 2
rego : 11 (5)
Animal: 2
aquam 2
auram 6 (2)
corpus 9
Herbam: 2
Ignem: 2
Imaginem: 2
mentem 2
Terram: 6 (6)
vim 10
I'm comparable to Metodicus, but I had a Skilled Paren. I think the power level depends more on the way we play the game (scenario, stories, day-to-day activity) then from the rules. It's not possible to compare with one another without the context.
There seems to always be happening something to delay our studies. For exemple, my character actually had to study hermetic law to write the charter of the covenant, 4 seasons.
[Well, I mean, I won't make a cheap charter when we will be stuck with it ever after! I studied 3 seasons and spent one season writing it.]
Then there was those Tremere who wanted to station a covenant on our territory...
Then there was that Tartar demon, some strange creature we didn't knew of at that time, that attacked our covenant.
Then there was that army of mongols approaching near our covenant...
Then there was that tribunal where we made an ennemy of a powerfull magus...
Then, we discovered the knight templars where real jerks...
Then,...
Etc...