What is the average Tractatus Quality?

[maine75man]

@Jonathan.Link

Path to power is fraught with a heck of a lot of work, and quite a bit of silver. Silver for the skilled craftsmen to manufacture the book, and the resonant materials. We'll assume that for the purposes of your example, the PC covenant is just buying expensive materials, and not adventuring for them. We'l assume that this character has a Com of 3, and Good Teacher, so the base quality is Com 3 + 3 + 3 (professionals)+1 for resonant materials +3 Good Teacher. for a total tractatus quality that he can produce of 13. So that begs the question, how much does he charge to have people com read his book? And how much does he charge to make a copy and sell his book (which at this point just costs silver, so it's a silver to vis conversion scheme).

The answer to the question should be based on how much would a PC be charged for access to a similar work. Of course that's based on how rare such texts are, hence the subject of the thread. What I'm saying is if you set the availability of high Q texts low then that raises the value of creating a character that is a good writer proportionally.

Also if your publishing for trade good writers might not even bother to use skilled craftsmen and resonant materials. Let the customers add their own after market modifications.

@Jonathan.Link

A Com +3 + Good Teacher character is geared towards teaching and writing, no doubt about it. He may be good at other things, but there are signficant opportunity costs to creating such a character. Com +3 takes 6 of the 7 available characteristic points. So he has Int +1, and his LT suffers for it, but that's ok, because he writes. But then he's kind of one dimensional to play, as well. If he wants to do other things, he has to start making tough choices. Or maybe he's Com +1 and Good Teacher, as I proposed, and he writes sound tractatus at Q10-Q11, depending on things, and does other exciting things as time permits. I'm honestly not concerned about the PC player who is geared towards writing. Eventually it will stop, and the pay off is ultimately the troupe discretion.

It may be troupe discretion but it should be tied to what you make the characters go through to get good books. Since the payoff should be proportional to how good a writer they are, if it's established that good books cost a lot of vis and/or adventure then creating a really good writer makes plenty of sense.

Selling down a few stats it's basically three minor virtues to start with Com +5 and Good Teacher. Or you could go with an Essential Virtue that applies to writing, and for one major and one minor you can get an effective Com +6 and Good Teacher and you don't have to sell down any stats. What would you expect PC's to do to get access to such a writers books. That's roughly what a player who makes such a writer should rightfully expect from NPC's who want his character's books.