What is the average Tractatus Quality?

Couple of threads I've been involved in recently have danced around this central question. Seems as if there is a large camp of people who believe there is a high number of high quality tractatus available, and they seem to fault the published line for making this so. Gripes about Covenants, specifically.
We can expand this discussion about the available number of books, too. Or go off the rails into something else altogether, which doesn't happen infrequently here... :smiley:

So what exactly does Covenants say about quality of Tractatus.

This line merely states that a Q11 tractatus is sound, Q14 is excellent and Q17 is legendary. Let's try and adjust things into ranges. First will go vain: Q5-Q7, adequate is Q8-Q9, sound is Q10-Q12, Excellent is Q13 to Q15, Legendary is Q16+. Q17 becomes possible only with clarifying, which involves a significant investment of vis, an additional season of time, and limits the book to being used in a magical aura, and not traded, as such. As such, I won't use +3 resonances in any of the examples. It's been suggested that skilled scribes, illuminators and bookbinders are easy to get (I don't agree with it, but I'll stipulate to it).

If I'm understanding things correctly, an average magus with a Com 0, and no Virtues which enhance writing quality should be producing: 0+3 +1 each for skilled scribe, illuminator and binder, for a base score of 6. Resonances can be added, which, if purchased can add another +1, and if adventure is undertaken to secure these resources is another +1. So, we can assume that it is a Q8 Tractatus, on average, with some considerable effort... Effort for adventure, and effort for employing or buying the services of a skilled scribe, illuminator and book binder. So this would be in that adequate range, achievable by the average magus, someone who is more interested in doing the bell curve analytics to quantify how many average magi there should be is welcome to join in.

An exceptional tractatus requires a teacher with Com 5 and Good Teacher (3 virtue points, or 1 virtue point and some rituals which raise Com and a lot of vis) He produces a tractatus of 5 (Com) +3 +3 (Good Teacher) +1 each for skilled scribe, illuminator, and book binder. And we'll go with +2 for resonances, again. for a total of 16.

Since we have the average/adequate and the exceptional teacher/legendary cases out, what's sound? Sound is someone with high Com and not a Good Teacher, or Good Teacher, but average com. We'll change the equation around a bit and let X=com+Good Teacher, so we have Q10<=X+3+3 (skilled scribe, illuminator, book binder)+2 for resonances<=Q12, leaves X to a range of 2 to 4. Which means a Com 2 or 3, no good teacher, or Com 0 or 1 + good Teacher, or Com 4, which is probably a bit more expensive than Com 0 or 1 with Good Teacher (feels like I'm missing a combination here). Such characters do exist, but how many of them are there?

I think the idea that Q11 Tractatus being commonly available is based primarily on the assumption of Q11 being the limit of tractatus that can be purchased with build points at covenant creation[1]. Q11 tractatus, based on what I understand about the book creation process are actually really good, and require a character, NPC or PC, who is built for communicating his ideas, somehow, either through spending Characteristic points or Virtue points.

Am I missing something or did I misread the Errata as it relates to Covenants?

[1]I have some problems with the prices of things on the chart on page 5 of Covenants. Vis stocks too cheap, sources too expensive, but I say that only to say that there are some problems, but a limit of Q11 Tractatus available doesn't say to me that Q11 tractatus are common and easily availble.

I'll split my comments in many posts, to avoid ultra-long ones...

It may be because people mix up "easy" and "inexpensive".

The cost of maintaining mundane craftsmen is relatively low and paid in silver, which means that it's not really the magi that really pay for them through their efforts. The covenant (usually meaning its mundane workers) generates income, which is used to pay the mundane craftsmen. ItMs relatively transparent for the magi.

Hiring someone to do the job full-time, however, is sometimes more difficult. Unless you can train one locally (which requires a trainer), the effects of the Gift make hiring specialized workers more difficult. Unless one of the magi has The Gentle Gift, or go through an intermediary who is used to magi.

(Second comment, this time an analysis of the number of books that exist in the Order, by their Quality.)

OOC, I've noticed a tendency to give one's magus a positive score in Com if one expects to deal with mundanes, or do research. Players know that a positive Com score (and optionally the Good Teacher virtue) is important to be able to write good quality books.

IC, however, it makes sense for some of the Houses to look for youth that are decent communicators. Simply because intelligence that is not expressed goes unnoticed, and magi look for intelligent apprentices in general.

Because of that, I don't think one can expect anything approaching a bell curve regarding Com scores. I would be tempted to say that around 70% of the magi have a score between -2 and +2. We need to remember that a score of +3 and higher (or -3 and lower) represents a major defining factor of a person. And any score that requires a virtue (or a flaw) is truly exceptional.

On the other hand, although a score of 0 can be characterized as "ordinary", it does not constitute the average, since characters start with 7 point with which to buy characteristics.

So based on these factors, I'd expect a spread of Com scores to go something like that: 0 (20%), +1 (25%), +2 (15%), +3 (5%), +4 (1%), +5 (1%), -1 (20%), -2 (10%), -3 (3%), -4 (negligible), -5 (negligible).

And, amongst those with a high Com score, having Good Teacher stacked on top of it probably that has a high probability for PCs (because of optimization bias), but somewhat lower for NPCs. Overall, I'd expect this to be around 20% of the cases. The virtue would probably not happen very often with characters with negative Com scores, so I'm completely discounting these. Which would yield a combination of (Com + Good Teacher) total that looks like this:

  • -3: 3%
  • -2: 10%
  • -1: 20%
  • 0: 20%
  • +1: 20%
  • +2: 12%
  • +3: 8%
  • +4: 5.8%
  • +5: 3.8%
  • +6: 1%
  • +7: 0.2%
  • +8: 0.2%

This is not, of course, an iron-clad analysis, but it may help guage how many magi are capable of high-quality books.

Then there is the matter of how many magi have lived since the foundation of the Order, to see how many could have written such tractatus. Let's take assume an average lifespan of about 100 years. That takes into account early fatalities due to conflicts (such as the Schism War, Wizard's War, etc.) Let's also take into account the current size of the Order (about 1000 members) and the time it has existed (about 500 years), and I think a safe number would be around 5000.

That gives us the number potential authors by "source quality" spread as follow:

  • -3: 150
  • -2: 500
  • -1: 1000
  • 0: 1000
  • +1: 1000
  • +2: 600
  • +3: 400
  • +4: 290
  • +5: 190
  • +6: 50
  • +7: 10
  • +8: 10

We migh further assume that, on average, each of the magi with low scores wrote 1 tractatus in their life. This number would rise as their "source quality" rose, probably in direct proportion. So a magus with a SQ of +8 will probably have written 8 tractatus (on a subject he is competent in) over his life. That is probably underestimating for those with his source quality.

This would give us a pool of tractatus by SQ as follow:

  • -3: 150
  • -2: 500
  • -1: 1000
  • 0: 800
  • +1: 1000
  • +2: 1200
  • +3: 1200
  • +4: 1160
  • +5: 950
  • +6: 300
  • +7: 70
  • +8: 80

For simplicity's sake, I would then assume that most of the high-quality sources would benefit from both good scribal support and resonance, while low-quality ones would not always bother with both, but may have some. So SQ below +1 would on average have only a +3 bonus, while starting at +1 the spread would be +5 (SQx5%), +4 (SQ*5%) or +3 (rest of the time).

This would give us a pool of tractatus by actual Quality as follow:

  • Q3: 150
  • Q4: 500
  • Q5: 1000
  • Q6: 800
  • Q7: 900
  • Q8: 1010
  • Q9: 1010
  • Q10: 996
  • Q11: 887
  • Q12: 590
  • Q13: 348
  • Q14: 130
  • Q15: 56
  • Q16: 32

Now, that is an approximation of the total number of books, mixing up all subjects. Even if we assume that the magi could write books on many different subjects to the maximum potential, the number of books available for a given subject would probably divided by 3 to 5.

And of course, all of these books may not be easily available. Some may be buried in a library, or kept secret. But from the best ones, I'd say that at least half would be readily available.

Which means that, for a given Art, there are probably something like 200 books of Q11 or better that exist and are somewhat available.

Now, there were many assumptions in what I presented above. But even cutting down the availability by a factor of 10 means there would be quite a few tractatus available on every Art -- leaving 20 tractatus of Q11 readily available for each Art.

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What is the Quality for a Tractatus you wrote? I recall it as 6 + Com, and I am trying to think of 5th ed Virtues that give a bonus to writing? Are there any? I vaguely recall seeing an errata about +3, but I just checked the Formulae Review on the Atlas Site and it reads 6+Com same as my book. That would make the average 6?

cj x

That is the RAW from the core rule book. I could have been clearer that I was using the extended rules from Covenants.
Basically, the Core book is Com +6 + virtues, while Covenants is Com +3 +1 each for (scribe, illuminator, binder) + resonances + virtues, breaking up the flat +6, and adding up to +3 for resonances, but my example only included +2 because of the high cost of that extra +1 from resonances.

You're assuming that all tractatus written are on an Art, which I think is a huge mistake; ignoring abilities, most especially spell mastery abilities.

So, I'll go with your 10% assumption, which means 20 tractatus per Art are "available." I'm not sure what available means? Easily acquired? Cost is time, vis, some of each? Hospitality to come and read it, which has its own costs. Then, how many are in Classical Greek? :smiley:

Well, my calculations have many assumptions, of course. But the two factors you mention were taken into account. I've highlighted the relevant assumptions in my text above.

Regarding abilities vs arts (in red), I used the hypothesis that each magus would be able to write on a number of subjects. Not all of them would be about Arts. Which is why I divided the number of total books written by 5. It is an (unstated) assumption that each author would be able to write about 3 Arts to the full estimated potential (which has been assumed to be their SQ). Of course, that is a simplification, for they would also write about other Arts, Abilities and spell masteries. So I'm saying that the greatest authors would have written only 24 tractatus on Arts, on average. In reality they would probably have authored many more. So basically, it seemed simpler to consider only Arts.

As for the availability (in blue), I've already mentioned that perhaps half of those tractatus that would be kept private/secret, lost, buried, or destroyed. That's kind of integrated by the "can be divided by up to 10".

Now, of course price would be an issue. Classical Greek versions is, IMHO, almost a non-issue. About 10%, perhaps, for that is about the proportion of Theban magi compared to the rest of the Order. Simply not a significant factor.

Let's be candid here, JL. You are taking my worst-case estimate, and trying to add further constraints on it. You are basically trying to make the facts fit your own opinion that there should be very few tractatus actually available to PC magi. I don't disagree with the opinion that there should not be too many books easily available, but that is a huge YMMV decision. There are so many factors and assumptions involved that it can swing either way.

I think that my estimate of 20 to 200 tractatus (of Q11 or better) would exist for each Art is reasonable. If you want to discuss the various assumptions that I've made (nb of magi, Com and virtues spread, nb of tractatus written per magus, availability of mundanes and resonance materials), that's fine.

But please, let's not take the numbers I gave and try to twist them to reach your desired conclusion -- which is what your comment feels like. You can do better than that. :unamused:

Ok, first my apology, I skimmed and didn't read completely. My mistake. I'm sorry.

Well, if we're being candid, you presume an error on my part is motivated on a desire to make the facts fit my own opinion. I haven't even gotten to opinions yet. But as long as I'm being accused of it, 20 Tractatus per Art is probably reasonable. Which gets to your huge error. 20 tractatus per Art is 300, not 200, which means it's 15%, pretty big error? Should I presume that you're motivated to hide an inflated number of tractatus because of that error?

Ok...here's for doing better.
Account for the Schism. Half the order is decimated. An entire House (the largest) was destroyed, and it's pretty much assured that all the books by House Diedne authors were destroyed. Probably more books than that were destroyed, accounting for non Diedne books/covenants being wiped out.
Now what about other books being destroyed when a covenant falls into Winter and never recovers?
What about accidental damage?
I think your number of 20 Tractatus per Art is probably reasonable, but that total number of books is about 300, which by my back of the hand estimate would be about 1/3 of available Tractatus, the others being spell mastery and abilities.
Taken one step further, that 20 tractatus per art of Q11 or greater (probably 28 of Q10 or greater) represents 200-230ish xp. Those XP mean vastly different things for different people, depending on whether you start reading these tractatus at an Art score of 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.
IF you want to go the next step, when a character entering a saga has an Art score of 20, should it be reasonable that they've read some of these 20 tractatus in that Art already?

As much as I love mathematical modeling (I actually do), I'm wondering if a different set of questions might lead to a different distribution that is more widely agreeable.

Suppose we look at the players themselves and add in a few corresponding fans (like us folks on the fora). Are your players "average" or "typical"? If the sagas you run/participate in run a reasonably long game time, how many books do to PCs and significant NPCs write (for whatever reason)? If they are average, take the number of texts they have writtern with associated qualities and just scale for size and age distiribution of the order. If not, apply a suitable multiplier. Add in previous past magi and assume that a good proportion make it to the maturity level where they know something worth writing about. And then ask what proporation of that actually really want to bother with writing anything. Factors can be added for, generally, how much of a book trade is there in your vision of the Order.

Another, IMV simpler, approach is just to ask how many covnenants there are in the Order, make an assumption on the number of each type of text and multiply by that, and then distribute across topics as you think your Order would. In this case, we might have, say, 150 covenants with an average tractati count of, idunno, 20 leading to 3000 tractati extant. Chop that up into 70% Arts, 20% Hermetic Abilities including Phil and AL, 5% Mastery topics, and 5% "strange stuff" and then fill in the blanks. THere are a lot of copies in that count too so the "title count", if I can coin a term could be slightly to very much lower depending on how concerned you think the Order has been in devekoping original work. Similarly for summae though the proportion that are duplicate titles would be much higher, I feel.

Really, I prefer the approach that this is really more of a construction than a derivation. I like limiting the book supply since it makes even average books more valuable. Legendary books are just that. One or two tractatus and summae for a topic and not all topics of magical interest are covered. Then I take a topical approach -- lots of MT texts avaiable because of the Bonisagi, but 80% are vain to average with only a few magi being both good theorists and good communicators. Second Sight? Maybe a dozen books written by the Order throughout its history -- some were destroyed with the Diedne -- with maybe a few more written by educated hedgies (in my own irregular saga, there is a Q16 Tractatus and an L5Q18 summa out there for the PCs to find, but only because it is interesting, not because I think it reasonable). That all said, I assume as well that the Order is large enough that is is very probable that if there is a topic of interest to the PCs, there is at least a couple interesting books on whatever mysitical topic it is and that the effort of aquisition is equal to the quality of the learning experience. The final custruction rule (not that it has been exercised) is that no library will have more than 10 years of study time in a particular topic at the start. Gotta pry them out of the lab/library somehow...

Anyhow, I guess my big point (yes, there was one!) is that there are so many assumptins based on each one's individual vision of thier Order that deriving -- or constructing -- the mean and range of the distribution of your individual Greater Collection is indeed useful but mine will be very different from yours for reasons that everything to do with taste and there is no accounting for taste... :slight_smile:

I think this somewhat misses the point. The question isn't whether there are lots of high-quality tracti out there - even with quite conservative assumptions about who writes and what is copied, it is quite reasonable that there are dozens of good (quality > 10) ones in any art or common arcane ability. The question is whether a given magus can get their hands on them.

Magi know that knowledge is power and that books are valuable. They're not going to give you a copy of some exceedingly rare and high-quality tractus unless you give them something equally rare and exceedingly valuable in exchange (and agree to calf and cow). Ditto reading rights. Which means access to these books is a great excuse for stories, either to bribe said magi or steal from them.

(Because the pool of potential authors is smaller, books on mystery cult lores, spell mastery, and common supernatural abilities will have lower average qualities than those on the arts and common arcane abilities)

You know, this sounds extremely familiar to what I've said before, maybe not exactly this way. However, I think it's good to have some arithmetic based on reasonable assumptions to provide a good basis for what exists within the saga. I think 20 tractatus of Q11 or better exist, and is probably quite reasonable. Of course, that goes up to Q16, of which there are only 1, 2 at most. Using my estimate, based on Arthur's Accounting for the Schism, there are 8 or 9 Q11 Tractatus, and around 8 Q10 tractatus, and around 6 or 7 Q12 tractatus per Art. And again, I think it's reasonable, to have magi who have high Art scores at the start of a Saga to have read some of these more common tractatus...

I'd go a few other ways.

For some Art, some magus wrote an exceptional summae. If he wrote at Quality 14, his score was high enough for 7 tractatus. If he wrote at 11, he could do 8-9 tractatus. Now assume his work replaced a good summae, which replaced a vain summae and you get a pyramid of tractatus. These authors have enough popularity for their work to survive.

For some Q14 writers, he can write 2 tractatus on every Art. That one is known too.

For some Bonisagus looking for House Acclaim, he will reach Dendrophori if he writes enough tractatus to get 100 Quality total. Which is within easy reach of anyone with score 5 in every Art (100/15 = 7). Since not all will reach that level of acclaim and some will use other path, this should give a limit on tractatus production.

Then again, maybe only the ones in Colens Arcanorum will survive the years.

There's also the Durenmar rules which might offer a limit on availability.

That's 5 paths to form an opinion based on canon and not random maths.

The virtue you're trying to remember is good teacher.

When I think about this topic, the issue I inevitably end up running into is "knowledge rot" - that is, the idea that Hermetic magic is an advancing knowledge base, and older works may not actually (despite their reputations) be as relevant as newer texts.

That is, I would consider the RAW as the state-of-the-(hermetic)-art as of 1220. Which, compared to the hermetic arts of yesteryear, includes a number of as-yet-undefined improvements to magical theory, Breakthrough, successful integrations, and so on. As such, a tractus on (say) Penetration written four hundred years ago may be ignoring certain advances in Magic Theory made in the past century, and as such may not be quite as useful as a more modern text.

That being said, there's no real rules on this - further, there are specific examples of summae and tractus that have decently-high numbers that were written by the founders and/or their peers. Which leaves us to an odd conclusion that while magic can get more efficient/powerful, books that describe the less effective version are just as effective at teaching the new stuff.

I suppose a fix is that magic is an art, and as such really isn't like the computer programming language that I'm implicitly describing here: a book of paintings of rennesiance masters can still provide insight into their artistic style, even if advances in (say) perspective drawing have made some of their techniques out-of-date.

Another fix would be that the numbers describing those ancient texts HAVE been decayed - they used to be better, but have since been reduced by (say) -1 to -3, due to their age. They're still good - because they're fantastic books. They're just not quite as good as they used to be.

I personal would even go so fare saying that the 11 sould be the minimum for a sound tractus about magical topics.
Given the +6 in the formula and that a total of +4 can be gained by paying Master worker and adding mundane materials for resonance a writer only need +1 com to get there.
For a good tractus I expect the writer should have at last a positive Com especial given the +3 of Good Teacher that pushing the com average even above 0 for this.

OTOH, IIRC, this is a feature of recent edition. In older editions, you rolled 2 dices for each pair of stats, one positive, one negative, stats averaging 0.
Moreso, the corebook states that a score of 0 is average, IIRC in the introduction chapter where it defines the characters stats.

Why??? There's absolutely NO reason at all for this, and nothing in the rules to suggest that Good Teacher (or Puissant Teaching, or whatever) is more prevalent in character with high com.
=> Not only are you making an entirely unfounded assumption, but it has the consequence of increasing the average quality of books, which is one of the things leading to...

For example, you have 5,8% of magi who have Com 2 + Good Teacher.
That is quite high in a way. If you consider that Good Teacher is randomly distributed and that only 1 in 100 persons has it, even taking your (IMO inflated) percentage of magi with Com +2, you drop to 0,15%. And suddenly, there's less reason to "fault the line".

Why? Is there any reason for this?

Yet again, I'm questioning assumptions leading to "there MUST be a high number of high-quality books".
Here's one: The better teachers/writers are the ones who write the most book. Why should they be more interested in this?
And here's the hidden one: These better teachers/writers also are quite good in valuable arts or skills. There's no reason for your Q+6 writer to also have a high score in his arts. One could just as well make the assumption that, since his high com helps him get social, he wastes his time in social endeavours instead of holing up like all these magi whose gift and low COM forces to be loners.

Why? One could just as well make the assumption that, the better a book, the less readily available it is, because:

  • The covenant that have it don't want to share it: This give them an edge versus competitors. Certamen is quite real.
  • The covenant that have it do no want to share it: It allows a steady revenue from magi willing to pay, say, 1 pawn/season, to study from it. Durenmar is a envied by all, after all.

IMO, all one can say is that we can make wildly different assumptions on a number of subjects, which has quite real effects on books. There is no problem at all with that, only with taking some of these assumptions as more or less reasonable as others, since this is a YMMV question.
For example, I find your "worst-case estimate" to be sometimes relatively optimist and high for an "average" saga.

EX-ACT-LY! :smiley:

That, or a few warping points from vis study.

Interesting, and another way to model hermetic progress, yes.
If we say tractatus = cutting edge research papers, for exemple, quality could "drop" by 1 every 50 years, meaning that legendary tractatus from 1020 is only Q12 now.

Some day, I'll finish my compilation of Com + Good teacher from the forums...

Not a problem. I know this was a long post. Even though I tried to keep it short, there are so many parameters that it is hard to keep short.

Even then, it is only a back-of-the-envelope estimate. Some of my assumptions are probably wrong. I'm working on a better (and more complete) one, which I'll post shortly.

Actually, I did assume that you skimmed quickly through my post, and simply grabbed the numbers that would support your position. Which, although you have not made it explicit in this thread, has already been made clear in previous discussions -- namely that there aren't that many tractatus available.

For the record, and as I mentioned in my own posts, I am of the same opinion. So my simulation is not aimed at proving that there are many of them out there. It is rather a way of identifying the various factors that influence the pool of tractatus that were written, and how many would be available to the players.

As for the number per Art, that is part of the problem with back-of-the-envelope calculation. Sometimes mistakes creep in, and sometimes you just cut corners. :stuck_out_tongue:

But the tone of my answer was a bit provocative, so my apologies as well. :blush:

I thought I did, by taking into account the average lifespan of magi. But it was probably not enough, as my new calculation are beginning to show.

Indeed, these are all relevant factors regarding the usefulness of tractatus. But before we can do that, or even decide if it's worth doing that, there are many things to determine if we want to approach it from a simulator's standpoint.

That's what I'll try to establish in my next version of my simulation.

  1. What is the distribution of authors by "Author Quality" (Com + Good Teacher total)
  2. How many authors has there been during the life of the Order
  3. What were these authors able to write, and what they may actually have written

These three determine the pool of tractatus that have existed. This will then be reduced by a number of factors.
4. What is the attrition rate (books destroyed or lost without being copied)
5. How many are known about (some will be kept secret)
6. How many will be accessible

Although that is an interesting notion, and could explain whay there aren't more tractatus available on a given subject, there is nothing in RAW that suggests this is the case.

Might work as a House Rule. :slight_smile:

The buying of characteristics with 7 points started in 4th edition, so it has been the baseline for quite some time. And although the corebook may describe 0 as average, it is probably meant in the sense of "typical" or "ordinary", rather than expressing a statistical average.

Furthermore, magi in general are certainly not your "average" person. As I noted previsouly, the chance that a child (or an adult) with -5 Com would be picked as an apprentice is negligible. This may happen a few times throughout the existence of the Order, but that is a negligible chance, IMHO.

I don't think this is an unfounded assumption. Yes, there might be some few magi with a negative Com score with the Good Teacher virtue. But from a statistical standpoint these would be exactly the same as a character with a slightly positive Com score.

But yes, my estimates of the number of magi with the Good Teacher may be too high. It is based on what I've seen posters here create, and there seems to be a fairly high correlation between a high Com score and the Good Teacher virtue. Call that player bias. :stuck_out_tongue:

Simply because people that are good at something usually spend quite some time doing that thing.

If you are good at teaching, or writing in this case, you will spend some time doing it. And it is not the Com score that forces magi to be loners, it is the effects of the Gift. True, those with The Gentle Gift may spend more time socializing, or teaching directly, and less time writing.

But when you are a magus that live for over a 100 years, statistically you will spend some of that time authoring books. The better you are at it, the higher the chances that you will more time doing it.

There is a difference between "how many books are out there" and "how many can we can our hands on". It helps to know the first when you want to determine the second.

As I've stated, I agree that it is a YMMV question. You can handwave it and state that in your saga books are rare, or common, or anywhere in-between. But I think it helps to know why, and what the numbers would be when you have different hypothesis. It helps build stories that are coherent with the setting one proposes to the players.

I suppose the purpose of this was to determine whether my premise was reasonable. The premise being that Q11 Tractatus are common, and easily available.
This would give us a pool of tractatus by SQ as follow:
I've taken Arthur's list, and made some further assumptions, based on the Schism destroying 60% of the books present, and then rebuilding from there. 60% might be an underestimate, too, but it's at least 50%, if you take the canon line that Diedne was the size of the rest of the Order at the time of the Schism, so roughly half the books were Diedne. That leaves 10% for other authors works being destroyed when their covenant or library in which they existed was destroyed. Of course, Diedne books may exist, but that number has to be so small it approaches zero for practical purposes here, and is more of a story hook. I also added some relevant derived values, such as how many of each book exist per Art, and how much XP that represents.

I think the chart below is reasonable. It is representative of all of the books written in the Order. There might be some copies of these books lying around. The copies get trickier, though, because perhaps the original was created with resonant materials acquired through adventure. The issue then becomes, any copies of these original books will have either involved some adventure (making them more rare) or possibly suffer a reduction in Quality. The chart below represents the number of individual books, at the best quality available. There certainly can and should be derivative copies of lesser quality out there. Leads to interesting possibilities of a magus, early on his career reading a Q10 work, which actually was a poorly bound, illuminated and scribed knockoff, without resonant materials, the original is Q15. Can he go back to the well, so to speak, and recover the +5 xp by a second reading of the original? Of course, this introduces a lot of complexity to the books issue. Complexity that Covenants introduced at the same time it tried to mask it.

[table][tr][td][/td][td]Arthur's[/td][td]My Schism[/td][td]Art[/td][td]Tractatus[/td][td]XP Per[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Quality[/td][td]Original[/td][td]Adjustment[/td][td]Tractatus[/td][td]Per Art[/td][td]Art[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q3[/td][td]150[/td][td]105[/td][td]35[/td][td]2[/td][td]6[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q4[/td][td]500[/td][td]350[/td][td]117[/td][td]8[/td][td]32[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q5[/td][td]1000[/td][td]700[/td][td]233[/td][td]16[/td][td]80[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q6[/td][td]800[/td][td]560[/td][td]187[/td][td]12[/td][td]72[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q7[/td][td]900[/td][td]630[/td][td]210[/td][td]14[/td][td]98[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q8[/td][td]1010[/td][td]707[/td][td]236[/td][td]16[/td][td]128[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q9[/td][td]1010[/td][td]707[/td][td]236[/td][td]16[/td][td]144[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q10[/td][td]996[/td][td]697[/td][td]232[/td][td]15[/td][td]150[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q11[/td][td]887[/td][td]621[/td][td]207[/td][td]14[/td][td]154[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q12[/td][td]590[/td][td]413[/td][td]138[/td][td]9[/td][td]108[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q13[/td][td]348[/td][td]244[/td][td]81[/td][td]5[/td][td]65[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q14[/td][td]130[/td][td]91[/td][td]30[/td][td]2[/td][td]28[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q15[/td][td]56[/td][td]39[/td][td]13[/td][td]1[/td][td]15[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Q16[/td][td]32[/td][td]22[/td][td]7[/td][td]0[/td][td]0[/td][/tr]
[tr][/tr][/table]