In the companion xp topic, Birbin asked why I train an apprentice.
Here's my answer:
I play a Bonisagus magus, living with three others: a Criamon, a Jerbiton and an Ex Miscellanae. We had some trouble with a satanistic magus, whom we killed in one of our latest sessions. He was however, still around when a chap named Gerard got our attention. He was a disturbed man and we found out that was because of dark magic.
We traced the clues and ended up in a part of the local swamp (playing near Rotterdam, Holland, which is all swamp back in 1220) that was infernally tainted. We found a cottage, had a little fight and recovered a woman, who was abducted from our village. We also found a little girl, Gerard's sister. Unfortunately Gerard had killed someone in his insanity, so he had to stand trial and the people in the market square wanted his life.
So we now had a little girl, how lost everything party due to us. Our Jerbiton took care of her, our Criamon just kept checking her for infernal taints. That Jerbiton also used some Mentem magic, to befriend this girl with a local baron's son. She found out.
The girl ran to our blatant gifted Criamon (with com. -3), who only scared and enraged her further. She then ran to my sanctum, I double-oned a nice communication roll which, combined with a nice smoothing story, got her to trust me.
I thought of her as a nice companion, perhaps a good scribe. But then she started to breath fire. This is of course rather alarming, but also a good sign of gifted individuals. Being a Bonisagus, I felt the urge to pass on my knowledge to this very intelligent girl. It is after all our duty to train pupils in order to keep the order alife.
So in short:
My apprentice was there, in the covenant
My Bonisagus magus thinks of it as his duty
I now see that the +7 to lab totals really helps a lot
I've got my longevity ritual, so this is the only way to have children
Nobody else in my covenant is ready to train an apprentice: so I recon I have to train 2 - 3 to keep the 1-on-1 ratio. (else the order will disappear)
ps: the Ex M. had little to do with the whole story (but he is a member of the covenant nonetheless).
You have 80+ years of hermetic life to train apprentices. It is likely that you will train a pair of them, in the end. Training an apprentice when you have not hit the 40-50 years (20-30 or so of hermetic age) mark would not be very common, most of the time IMO.
So, you are in no real rush to train apprentioces for the welfare of the order. Not yet, at least No cataclysm will fall on your head if you do not train sapprentices soon
You could easily sell the girl to an oplder magus searching for an apprentice, for example. Nice way to get5 favors and stuff from more powerful magi, for example.
OTOH IMO the most important thing here for a magus is to have a child. Thjat would be the driving force that makes magi train apprentices: they are your hermetic children, even if not necessarily your blood. You might clash with them, but for most magi, the final result will be a father-son relationship. You will be proyud of your apprentices, and look forward to see them succeed in the Order of hermes as well as carrying your legacy towards future generations.
Help in the lab...
Help in the lab...
An extra set of eyes around your Sancta (sometimes a pain, but what the hey)
Currently I'm on #3 and #4. This is the second set of twins (trips in this case though the third isn't gifted) I've taught. My two former apprentices are making the rest of House Verdi jealous with their work...
The double teaching is a pain, but the double lab bonus is great...It's very important when you are planning a 'big' project, so I don't mind it too much...
Another advantage is that if I ever need help, I can call, and expect help...
Children can be helpful sometimes...
My Tremere took an apprentice too early in his career, partly because it didn't occur to him to send her off somewhere, but more largely because of the whole child-rearing thing. Oh, and really because I wanted to see if an apprentice made during a campaign would look at all like a starting magus. An interesting note, because of the power-level and needs of the campaign, she wasn't that much a help to him in the lab. There were a lot of projects he needed to work on that were time consuming, but fell well within his lab total, so she was sent off to do other things, like read in the library. She is going to be quite capable right out of gauntlet. (Or doing other things like opening items for enchantment or creating minor devices or spells that are beneath our time and effort.)
But still, the real reason he took her as an apprentice were role-playing ones. He simply wanted to have someone around, and he had a poor relationship with his pater who took him before his pater was ready to add another body into the Tremere fold. Another character took one too early because he wanted to have children before taking his longevity potion and one of them came out Gifted.
We're now reaching the point where it is reasonable for us to take apprentices (we're closing in on 40 years out of gauntlet), and the Bonisagus is about to foster the apprentice for an arch-mage/mentor-type who has slipped into a prolongued Twilight. I suspect after that the character will feel like its time to get one of his own, and mostly for the lab bonus-- a true Bonisagus's motivation.
Well, that and so that he won't have to do his own scribing. Seriously. A lab rat (naturally enough) ends up with a lot of lab texts, and (if that lab rat is a Bonisagus) copies of them all need to be sent to Durenmar. That's a lot of scribing. Why not have the apprentice do it?
There are also other maintenance tasks (opening items, fixing arcane connections, etc.) that can be done by someone with a relatively low magic theory score.
No cataclysm will fall on your head if you do not train sapprentices soon 
