Hi All,

I don't know if this has been bandied about already (i'm guessing it has, but I wasn't able to find it), but our saga is converting from ArM4 to Fifth Edition, and I am having trouble deciding how to convert the Liber Quaestionum in the library to 5th Edition stats.

Are there any online resources available that give guidance for this process?

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

That does make more sense than making them Summę - since magi usually only got one reading out of them in the first place.

Do you think you would need to associate a spell with them? Or just leave them as a legacy of a better time? ;)

> Quaestionum, if I remember correctly, were about a series of
> Questions geared to a certain level of proficiency, and so didn't
> have anything to do with a spell. The old Tracti however, those had
> to do with a spell. Basically someone who mastered a spell would
> write a Tracti, and then anyone that knew the spell could read it
> once for a source of XP. Now Tracti are merely one time reads
> regarding the Arts, and not spell related. Though one could write a
> book or Tracti on a spell in order to grant xp towards mastering
> it.

True, that's why I have converted old Art LQs into Tractatus (quality usually around six lower than before, but I actually deciding/checking the writer's Com first and doing it "right").

However, old Art Tractatus I have converted into either Summae or Tractatus (mostly latter, but not always) on Spell Mastery of the appropriate spell instead.

the most accurate conversion of a 4e LQ, is to a low-level Summa with high-Quality.
The original LQ was described as a series of Questions-and-Answers, but the actual intent is "a beginner's text" -- this is still addressed in 5e, but not in the most obvious manner:

If you read the 5e Summa rules carefully, and look at the examples in the 5e Covenants chapter (library books), you will note that when writing a Summa the Author can write up to a maximum level of (half score), but can also choose to drop the target level of the book below their maximum: when they choose this option they can increase the Quality of the Summa for each Target Level dropped: +1/lvl for Art Summa, +3/lvl for Ability Summa.

Returning to low level Summa, a master of a Hermetic Art, with decent Com and Strong Writer can write a Level 6 Quality 21 text - which on one reading will take the reader from 0 to (just) level 6, after which they have exhausted the Summa (reached its target level and been capped).

Similarly a L5 Q15 text will get you from 0 to L5 in one season.

Can you get higher level-in-one books? In practice no: experiment has confirmed the assertions made in the 5e book, that L40 is a practical maximum on Art levels, and hence Target Level 20 is the most you can expect. A Level 7 book needs to grant 28 XP in 1 season to be exhausted, and within the L40 writer maximum, it is not possible to acheive this.

What you can expect to find instead, is a dearth of L7 books, and rather more L8, 9 etc: after the exhaust in one season books, you get the exhaust in two seasons, which are rather more varied according to my experiments, as readers vary in their assumed starting point.

Ability Summa are similar, except that the *5 XP cost means that even L3 is out of reach for one season (needs 30XP from 0, and you just can't get there...)

So returning to the question: What converts a 4e LQ -- the answer is a L5 or L6 Summa on Arts or a L2 or L3 Summa on an Ability, with the highest Quality the Author can write.