What is a "Study Total"?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

What is a "Study Total"?

Like this one:
AFFINITY WITH (ABILITY)
"All Study Totals for one Ability are increased by half, as are any experience points you put in that Ability at character creation."

2

A study total is effectively the amount of XP one earns from studying. practicing, being taught, or simply being exposed. It is by and large also called Source Quality.

So, if you study from a Summa, for example, with a Level of 7 and a Q15, you would ear 15*1.5=23[1] experience points putting you at an Art score of 6, and 2 experience points towards level 7.
Your original post had ability, but affinities work the same way. Say you practice with a sword for a season in Single Weapon, typiaclly that's 4 xp, an Affinity Single Weapon would make it 6 xp, instead. Or you put 5 Adventure XP into Single Weapon and it becomes 8[1].

[1] Ars typically rounds up... your troupe may wish to do it differently. MetaCreator reduces the XP requirement for a certain score by 2/3 for affinities. I typically round to the even number...

3

It is an Advancement Total (see ArM5 p.163). In ArM5 terminology was sometimes a little confused still.

Cheers

4

"Study total" is the term used for caluculating how mux Xp you get from a season of learning.

  • If you study an tecnique or form from vis your study total is: Aura +a stress die
  • Study total from adventures are 5-10 xp
  • Study total from a book is: Quality of the book
  • Study Total from learning something in a big class: Teachers Communication stat + Teaching skill + 3 + bonus (from page 164) and + or - from virtues.

Read chapter 10 in Core book, pages 163-165.

When it comes to Affinity with X. Every time you study X, you will get 150% of the XP that you would normally get if you did not have the virtue.
For example:

Learning Vim (without affinity vim) from a book with quality 10) would give you 10 xp when you study it over a season. However if you have the affinity with Vim, you get a study total of 15 (10 XP from the book and 5 xp from the virtue).

Hope that I did not confuse you too much.

5

What this guy said. Its an advancement total. The editors mucked up, so sometimes when it should say "advancement total" they put "study total".

6

Ok, thank you!