How do you work out the bonus Exp Points for Elemental Magic and Secondary Insight during character creation?

I've checked the character template in the book and the elementalist has 10 extra Exp in elemental arts while those with Secondary Insight have many more (30-40 Exp extra).

I have house ruled the following: You receive an extra set of bonus experience once a year of apprenticeship or post-gauntlet.

Is there an official answer to this?

"I have house ruled the following: You receive an extra set of bonus experience once a year of apprenticeship or post-gauntlet."

Sounds good to me.

Elemental Magic = major hermetic virtue
Secondary Insight = major hermetic virtue

Can't have both, eh???

If you are taking Elementalist I would recomend using all your apprenticeship exp (well the points you are allocating to arts scores anyhow) and using those points to raise your Techniques. After the game begins even just taking seasons to research spells will give you exposure exp (2 points) to spend, if you put one point in to an elemental art you end up getting a score of 1 in all of them the first season...after 2 more season you have all of them at 2 (and of course you will have researched 3 spells so far as well).

My GM and I were just discussing charcters who emphasised on improving their spell library and art score is in just this fashion.

Each of your art scores will advance more slowly than someone studying from Vis or a book, but you will be increasing 4 scores at a time and building up a respectable selection of spells.

Elementalist and Secondary Insight are gonna be a pain in character creation. I would suggest the following (and this is the long way, I haven't figured out a short way yet):

1) Elementalist and Secondary Insight bonuses apply AFTER apprenticeship has begun. It would be the extremely rare character to learn the Arts before apprenticeship has begun.

2) 240 experience points divided by 15 years of apprenticeship equals 16 experience points per year or 4 experience points per season for Arts and Abilities.

3) Now the fun begins. Get out the spreadsheet or paper and pencil and start applying your experience points at 2/10 per season. That's sixty columns in the spreadsheet (yikes!!!). However, you need to add another column per season for the "gains" from the virtues, so you have 120 columns so far.

4) Don't forget the gains if you have the Affinity with virtue(s). However, since "smart" players will only apportion one (1) experience point per season to max the benefit from "rounding up", I would suggest that these affinity bonuses be applied as the text states: "At character creation, any experience points you put into that art are increased by one half (rounded up)...". These points DO NOT include any gains from the Elementalist or Secondary Insight virtue. What I mean here is NOT to allow the AFFINITY virtue(s) to be applied on a per season basis as this would undermine the stated intent.

5) Then total the crap up. I believe that these maga are going to have exceptional scores, to which I am gonna try one of these out next.

6) To head off the argument that placing one xp in a technique or form is mini/maxing, I propose that most xp gained for the Arts during apprenticeship is exposure xp, and magic theory, parma, code of hermes, finnesse, etc, are actually taught during the "one season per year" of required teaching. So three seasons of the year, place 2 xp and one season place 10 xp.

Edited 12/21/2004 4:40 pm ET by Hwhnn

7) The spreadsheet turns out totally wacked. 2 xp per season of exposure gives you 4 extra in a forms and 2 extra in techniques if you place 1 xp in a form and 1 xp in a technique. The ending scores for this guy turn out to be 9,5,5,7,7 and 5,5,5,11,5,5,5,5,5,7 so therefore, I say, don't let them apply anything to their scores during apprenticeship or they will end up kicking older maga asses to kingdom come. Stick with the 240 xp and give them the half again bonus for affinity but that is it.

> The question was how to work out bonus experience during character
> creation if a character has elemental magic OR Secondary Insight
> virtue. There is no guideline mentionned anywhere in the book

the basic 5e character creation takes a simple smoothing approach, and ignores all effects that can only be resolved season-by-season.
You do get to apply the following:
* Affinity with Art or Ability (allocate all XP, then add 50% at end of char-gen, and you are allowed to exceed the per-age limits of chargen)
* Wealthy & Poor (which affect everyone's Free Time - you get 10/yr Poor, 15 Xp/yr normally, 20 if Wealthy)

that alternative is to apply Season-by-season character development, determine their activity, study total and modifiers, and work out the details....
It doesn't take *that* long, but it is more effort...

> There was concern in the playtest how far one could go in stacking up

really? I was under the impression that events during play-testing and discussions of play-test drafts remained under Non-Disclosure... only the released text and your opinions of it are not covered.

Well, I have given more thought to what I as playtester should and should not say, and that falls in the "should not" category. Oops. I edited my post to delete the improper statement.

I have been in touch with David Chart and he clarified how the non-disclosure agreement applies to public discussions. I had taken it to apply to the playtest rules themselves, but it turns out the process is also covered, so talking about comments made during the playtest is a no-no. My bad.

Edited 1/3/2005 9:08 am ET by Galerius

David Chart on Berklist:
"This is the problem, and the reason why those Virtues don't affect
normal character generation.

If you want the benefit, use Ridiculously Detailed And Obscenely Slow
Character Generation -- run your apprentice through all fifteen years of
apprenticeship. That way you have enough information to apply the
Virtues."