What is the average Tractatus Quality?

[Faern]

@Jonathan.Link

The concern here is when someone tries to stack Com 5, Essential Virtue Writer (major or minor) and Good Teacher all in one bundle, and they start cranking out Q14 and Q17 without skilled professionals or resonant materials, and you've effectively moved the cap on quality to 23, not 17. But to be honest, I don't think such a character should exist, certainly not as a PC, and as an NPC that need a huge impetus to write on the character's behalf.

You still missunderstand i'm afraid. Communciation DOES NOT stack with essential virtue. Assuming your com is 0 or higher you use either your com score OR your essential virtue score to calculate the quality. This gives a maximum quality of 18.

I'll illustrate how the virtue works with an example. We'll use covenant rules so quality of the tractatus will be:
author's communication + 3 + 3 (for skilled professionals) + 3 (good teacher) + 3 (resonant materials + clarification)
We have four magi with different communication scores, they all have access to professionals, have the good teacher virtue and will use story aquired resonant materias and clarification. This will give a quality of: author's communication +12.
Person A has +5 com
Person B has +2 com
Person C has 0 com
Person D has -1 com

If they don't have the essential virtue they will write tractatus with the following quality:
A: Q17 (5+12)
B: Q14 (2+12)
C: Q12 (0+12)
D: Q11 (-1+12)

If they have the minor essential virtue they will write with this quality:
A: Q17 (5+12)
B: Q15 (3+12)
C: Q15 (3+12)
D: Q14 (-1+3+12)

If they have the major virtue they will write with this quality:
A: Q18 (6+12)
B: Q18 (6+12)
C: Q18 (6+12)
D: Q17 (-1+6+12)

As you can see the major virtue provides only a small benifit for the person with +5 com and the minor virtue provides no bonus at all. The guy with -1 com will always write at a lesser quality since a negative stat have a negative impact on the virtue. Major virtue + good teacher costs 4 virtue points and let's you write at max of Q18. If you sacrifice other stats you can write at Q17 for 3 virtue points while also being great anything else related to communication (or for 5 points if you don't want to sacrifice other stats which is a reasonable trade-off). Like i said earlier, essential virtue is far from overpowered and it's only for when you have a very specific character in mind. In fact, if you want to limit the quality of books in your saga good teacher is the first virtue you need to get rid of and not essential virtue.

Hopefully this will clear everything up regarding this virtue.

[Jonathan.Link]

@Faern

@Jonathan.Link

The concern here is when someone tries to stack Com 5, Essential Virtue Writer (major or minor) and Good Teacher all in one bundle, and they start cranking out Q14 and Q17 without skilled professionals or resonant materials, and you've effectively moved the cap on quality to 23, not 17. But to be honest, I don't think such a character should exist, certainly not as a PC, and as an NPC that need a huge impetus to write on the character's behalf.

You still missunderstand i'm afraid. Communciation DOES NOT stack with essential virtue. Assuming your com is 0 or higher you use either your com score OR your essential virtue score to calculate the quality. This gives a maximum quality of 18.

I get it. I was relying upon Lamech's understanding as he had presented it elsewhere. All that being said, I still don't like the virtue applying to writing, but at least I understand, were it applied to writing, the impact isn't as great as I had understood.

[Lamech]

GHAA! If I presented it as stacking with Com, that's my bad. It does NOT stack with com. (Unless com is negative). Its not any better than com+6. You can use inner heartbeast mysteries and rituals to get that high. And in all honesty getting a resonance beyond +1 is going to take work. So that's 6+6+3+1=Q16 You could get better with a story, but... you could also dredge up the ghost of an archmage, or study from a post-Becoming Merinita if you are going to bother with that. The people who make them, unless they happen to be really nice, will probably try to keep fairly tight control so they can get the most from selling them.

Unless the PC is making it this is seriously expensive, or special favour territory. (Also if the PC makes it, I won't complain. I fully support team work.)

[maine75man]

@Faern

Overall I don't think the virtue is very powerful either. For three virtue points you could've raised the stat in question from 0 to 4 instead. In the case of writing books you basically need to combine it with good teacher as well since it would be pointless otherwise (with 2*improved characteristics and good teacher providing the same bonus for three points with a lot more utility).

If you're building a very specific character who absolutely needs to be the best at a very specific task you need it, but otherwise i wouldn't even bother personally.

Because of the way the traits work you don't have to put any points in the stat so in addition to performing better in it's bailiwick a Major Essential Virtue is slightly cheaper then raising a stat to +5. The extra points can be used for sharpening a character's focus or branching out.

They can also be good for creating characters who are substandard except in specific cases. Clumsy archers, Dim magi who are almost savants at spontaneous magic, An overweight knight who gets winded climbing stairs but can still soak up damage like crazy.

[Sdelear]

@Jonathan.Link

@darkwing

Surely the point of "Essential traits" is that they are only applied to beings who have it at their very essence, and while many animals may have an essential trait to reflect their nature most humans don't, and what sort of magical humanoid would have essential trait writer? A ghost of a librarian or an immortal scholar possibly, but there won't be many of them and they have difficulty gaining more skills to write about. Someone with Essential trait (writer)+6 is probably an incarnation of Thoth or Odin or another deity that gifted writing to humanity. Certainly if you can find a book written by Thoth about magic, it can probably have a quality that breaks the normal limits.

Yes, exactly! Your example is an entirely appropriate use of the trait and/or virtue granting the trait. But stacking Com 5, Good Teacher and then this virtue on a character without a might score, IMO, isn't really an intended use of the virtue/trait.

Reread the section. Essential traits replace the Com score. They do not stack. Faerie Sympathies do stack, but with an ability, not a characteristic. Major writer +6 gives you a Com score of 6 for writing books.