Various people have complained that the experience system as explained in the sourcebook is opaque. This document is an attempt to explain it.
All ways that you can gain experience have a Source Quality
.
Some Virtues or Flaws may modify the Source Quality for a
specific form of learning.
The basic period for experience is the Season. You can only
gain experience from one source in any Season, and after having
spent a Season on an activity you gain a number of experience
points from it equal to the Source Quality. Unless other
pressing business interferes a Magus may do what they like for
each of the four seasons in the year. A Companion or Grog will
usually have to dedicate two out of four seasons to their
real life job
.
(In practice Grogs and Companions tend not to spend two full
seasons doing real work
and two seasons doing other
things, but rather spend a proportion of each day doing both.
This is abstracted out.)
Eddie is a sheep herding grog. For two seasons of the year he has to herd sheep and can't do anything else. For the other two seasons in the year he is free to do whatever he wants (provided the Magi don't have something else for him to do). During the two seasons when he is working he gains Exposure XP (which has a Source Quality of 2)
Megæra ex Bonisagus is a Maga of the Order. She is allowed to spend her time as she wishes, although her Covenant Charter or local Tribunal may impose duties upon her. She has the Book Learner virtue. This means that whenever she reads a book the Source Quality is three points higher.
Exposure is the most basic form of experience. If you aren't doing one of the other types of experience, then you can probably get exposure experience which has a Source Quality of 2.
The two experience points gained from Exposure may be put into any Ability or Art that was used throughout the season. Alternatively one point may be put into two different Abilities or Arts that were used throughout the season.
Eddie spends a season herding sheep. At the end of the season he has 2 XP and puts one into Animal Handling and the other into Survival.
Megæra spends a season enchanting her staff with Herbam effects, she puts both XP into Herbam
Experience can only be gained from Adventures in the season that they take place in. The Source Quality for an Adventure will be set by the GM. If you have an Adventure in a Season then it is not required that you spend that Season on Adventure Experience, and if you have two Adventures in the same Season then you can only gain Experience from one of them. Adventure Experience may be split in any manner you choose between any of the Arts or Abilities used on the Adventure, except that no more than five points may be put into any one Art or Ability.
Megæra travels across Russia to visit the Thousand Caves covenant. In her first season of travelling she takes passage on a river-boat and is able to read the book she brought with her, however the boat is attacked by pirates, which she helps to fight off. In the second season she has to travel on horseback, and has to concentrate on travelling. When she arrives at the covenant she helps the local Magi in a dispute with some Fae.
The GM assigns the Pirates encounter a Source Quality of 5 and the Fae encounter a Source Quality of 6. Megæra decides to take experience from reading her book in the first season (as this is better for her than the Adventure experience), but her only alternative for the second season is Exposure experience, so she takes the 6 XP worth of Adventure Experience. She puts the maximum of 5 points into Faerie Lore and the remaining point into Ride.
Practice is the process of learning about things from ones own efforts. By default Practice has a Source Quality of 4, however this may be better under the following circumstances where immediate feedback is available:
Fluent) in a language spending a season Practicing that language among people who speak it natively is worth a Source Quality of 8.
Megæra spends a season practicing hitting things with her Staff. She gains 4 XP in Great Weapon.
James is press-ganged to work on an English Galley. He knows nothing about sailing, but the Captain's Mate whips him every time he makes a mistake. He gains 5 XP in Profession: Sailor every season until he jumps ship.
Training is a method of teaching while doing the job. Although this takes some of the teacher's attention away from their work, their student's work makes up the gap, so the teacher is still able to make a living during the season.
Obviously you can't teach someone more than you know – so the student can't end the season with a higher score in the ability they are learning than the teacher. Also, the teacher has to be at least vaguely competant – they must have a score of at least 2 in the ability being taught.
Subject to these requirements the student has a Source Quality three higher than the teacher's score in the ability being taught. The teacher can gain Exposure experience in that ability as normal.
Eddie takes his son, Fred, out herding sheep for a season. Eddie is an experienced herdsman with a score of 7 in Animal Handling, so Fred has a Source Quality of 10 for this season. Eddie himself gains 2 XP in Animal Handling from Exposure.
Teaching is a more intensive form of Training that takes up the full attention of the teacher. Again the teacher has to know more about the subject than their students, and they have to have a minimal score of 2 if an ability is being taught or 5 if an art is being taught. A teacher without the Teaching Ability may only teach one student at once, if they have the Teaching Ability then they may teach up to five times as many students as their Teaching score. However, Arts can only ever be taught one-on-one.
The Source Quality for Teaching is the teachers Communication plus their Teaching score plus:
During the season they spend teaching the teacher may gain Exposure XP either for Teaching or for the language they are teaching in.
During her time at Thousand Caves Megæra spends a season teaching a couple of apprentices about the political make-up of the Order of Hermes. Her Teaching score is 1, and her Communication is +1 so the Source Quality is 8. Megæra herself takes 2 XP in Russian, the language she was teaching in.
There are two types of books that one might read for Experience – Summae and Tractatus. Summae are compendia of knowledge in an area, and one can carry on learning from them as long as the level of the summa is higher than your level in the Art or Ability. Tractatus are in-depth treatments of a particular area of an Art or Ability, so you can only learn from them once, but you can learn from them regardless of your current level in the subject.
The Source Quality for reading a Tractatus or a Summa is its Quality.
On her trip to Thousand Caves Megæra reads Uno Die Roma Aedificata Est by Wentus ex Verditus. This is a Quality 8, Level 12 Summa on Creo. Megæra also has the Book Learner Virtue which gives her an extra +3 on the Source Quality, for a total of 11 Experience Points in the season.
Studying from Vis is the equivilent of Practice for the Hermetic Arts. This requires an investment of one Pawn of Vis for every 5 levels (rounding up) that the magus currently has in the Art. At least one Pawn must be used, and the Vis has to be of the Art being studied. Studying from Vis doesn't require a Laboratory.
The Source Quality for studying from Vis is One Stress Die, plus the Aura Bonus for the area where the study takes place. If needed, a number of botch dice equal to the number of Pawns of Vis used is rolled, a double (or more) botch will result in the magus going into twilight.
Megæra has a Muto score of 14. She requisitions 3 pawns of Muto Vis from the covenant stocks and spends a season studying it.
At the end of the season a Stress Die is rolled, which comes up a 7. This is added to the Aura Bonus of 5 that applies in her quarters and she gains 12 XP in Muto.
Adventures and other events may be a distraction from experience gaining. If the total amount of distracted time is less than a month then it has no effect on the experience gained, however 1/3 of the experience gained is lost for each full month spent on distractions.
The following season Megæra again starts to study Muto Vis, but at the end of the first month of the season she hears of an invasion from the Mongol Tribes. She spends the rest of the season in the field investigating.
At the end of the season she again rolls a 7 for her Vis Studying experience, giving a Source Quality of 12. However she has spent two full months being distracted, so this is reduced by 2/3 to 4 Experience Points.
Here we return to the pyramid system
which you may
remember from character creation.
If you have level n-1 in an Art then it costs n Experience Points in that art to increase it to level n.
If you have level n-1 in an Ability then it costs 5n Experience Points in that art to increase it to level n.
If you have less than Experience Points in an Art or Ability than you need to gain the next level then just note them down on your character sheet until you gain some more.
After 20 seasons (10 years!) working in the fields with his sheep, and putting all his Exposure experience into Animal Handling Eddie finally has 40 Experience Points in it. His current level is 7, and he needs 40 Experience Points to get level 8. He immediately gains level 8 (and loses the 40 Experience Points he has accrued in the process).
At the beginning of the example in the previous box, Megæra had level 14 in Muto, and 12 Experience Points. She gains 4 XP in Muto during the example taking her to 16. She then goes to level 15 in Muto, and loses the 15 Experience Points it takes to get her there, leaving her with 1 XP in Muto.