Alternate Build Point Costs

The Core Rules has rules on the reation of Covenants where many resources are paid for in Build Points (BP). This page collects variant rules for the cost of resources.

Einauge's Proposal

Enchanted Items

Charged Items (up to level 20): 2 BP per ten levels of effect plus 1 BP per charge
Lesser Items (up to level 20): 3 BP per ten levels of effects
Invested Items (above level 20): 6 BP per ten levels of effects

Laboratories

Extra labs: 50 BP each
Non-standard lab: Size x 20 BP; Major Virtue: 20 BP; Minor Virtue: 10 BP

Laboratory Texts

1 BP per ten levels
Casting Tablets: 2 BP per ten levels

Library

Hermetic Art Summae: Level + Quality (Level limit: 20; Quality limit: 11 + (20 – level), or 22, whichever is lower)
Occult Ability Summae: 3 x Level + Quality (Level limit: 8; Quality limit: 11 + 3 x (8 – level), or 22, whichever is lower)
Hermetic Art/Occult Ability Tractatus: 1/2 x Quality (Quality limit: 11)
Mundane Ability Summae: 1/10 x (3 x Level + Quality) (Level limit: 8; Quality limit: 11 + 3 x (8 – level), or 22, whichever is lower)
Mundane Tractatus: 1 BP (Quality limit: 11)

Mundane Abilities cover all topics for which books are widely available at a price of one or two mythic pounds. This means books on General, Academic, and Martial Abilities, with a few exceptions: Books on Order of Hermes Lore and Mystery Cult Lores are Occult books. Occult Abilities are those for which books are priced in vis: Arcane and Supernatural Abilities, as well as Order of Hermes Lore and Mystery Cult Lores.

Money

Stocks: 1 BP per 10 pounds

Specialists

Teacher: Communication + Teaching + Highest Ability Score (Score limit: by age)
Other: Highest Characteristic + Highest Ability Score (Score limit: by age)

Vis

Sources: 15 BP per pawn of vis per year
Stocks: 1 BP per pawn of vis

Change the baseline from "The base covenant has no magical resources." to "The base covenant has one source of vis yielding four pawns per year."

Reasoning

Many players have noticed that the BP cost of vis stocks is rather low. I found that the proposal of the solo rules of charging 1 BP per pawn seems to work out better, and this caused me to take a closer look at BP prices.

Enchanted Items

The core rules set the price of enchanted items at 2 BP per five levels of effects.

To find out whether that is a reasonable price, I use two excerpts from HoH:MC.

The standardized price of an item is twice the vis necessary to make it, in addition to the vis required for the project. [HoH:MC, p. 114]

If the project does not require vis, the Verditius magus figures out how much vis he could extract during the time that it takes to finish the project, and doubles that amount as the price. [HoH:MC, p. 115]

I.e. he charges 2 pawns per 10 levels of his Creo Vim Lab Total per season. There is no clean way to relate that to the level of effects, so I just equate the two. As you get one charge per five points of Lab Total above the level of effect, I arrive at a cost of 1 pawn per charge.

We start from the cost to make an item:

Charged Items: No vis cost, one season
Lesser Items: 1 pawn per 10 levels of effect
Invested Items: 2 pawns per 10 levels of effect

This yields the following in-game standard price:

Charged Items: 2 pawns per 10 levels of effect plus 1 pawn per charge
Lesser Items: 3 pawns per 10 levels of effect
Invested Items: 6 pawns per 10 levels of effect

Laboratory Texts

The core rules set the price of lab texts at 1 BP per five levels.

Even at the revised vis price of 1 BP = 1 pawn, this means that 6 BP give you either a level 30 lab text or 6 pawns of vis. That seems expensive.

Let's look at another argument made here, namely that the cost of a book is based on the amount of work it takes to create a copy.

A professional scribe (scribe 6) trained in Magic Theory can carefully copy in two seasons:

up to 720 levels of spell texts (144 BP)
two Q11 tractatus (22 BP)
two vain L12 Q12 Summa (48 BP)
one sound L15 Q15 summa (30 BP)

A magus with scribe 2 can carefully copy in two seasons:

up to 240 levels of spell texts (48 BP)
two Q11 tractatus (22 BP)
one sound L15 Q15 summa (30 BP)

Now they won't always have just the right amount of lab texts to copy, but looking at both equivalent vis "cost" and time to scribe, lab texts seem too expensive. I set the price at 1 BP per ten levels, so while a level 30 lab text is still expensive at 3 BP = 3 pawns of vis, the time to scribe one seems more in line with books.

For the price of Casting Tablets I use two references: In Covenants, they are twice the price of lab texts (now set to 1 BP/10 levels) or the same price as enchanted items (now set to 3 BP/10 levels up to level 20, twice that for higher effects), which serve as a reference because conceptually casting tablets are closer to magic items that can only be used by the Gifted.

Magi can copy tablets written by others at the same speed as lab texts [Covenants, p. 90], so twice the price seems reasonable.

Library

Books can be viewed under the aspect that they are sources of XP, but I would like to relate the BP cost to buy a book to the in-game cost to buy that same book. By the prices for books given on p. 95 of Covenants, there is a crucial difference between mundane books and Books Concerning the Arts and Arcane Abilities.

I therefore define Mundane Abilities to cover all topics for which books are widely available at a price of one or two mythic pounds. I take that to mean General (with the exception of Order of Hermes Lore and Mystery Cult Lores), Academic, and Martial Abilities. Occult Abilities are those for which books are priced in vis: books on Arcane and Supernatural Abilities, as well as Books on Order of Hermes Lore and Mystery Cult Lores.

Let's look at the cost to buy books on Hermetic Arts [Covenants, p. 95]:

Vain summa (25 >= Q+L): 1/2 level in pawns
Vain tractatus (Q6): 1 pawn
Sound summa (31 >= Q+L >= 28): level in pawns
Sound tractatus (Q11): 2 pawns

For 15 pawns (equivalent to 15 BP), you can buy a Q15 L15 summa worth 30 BP in play. That seems about right. The difference of a factor of two is explained by the fact that you also have to put in some work, and you're not guaranteed that the exact book you want is available.

For 2 pawns (2 BP) you can later buy a Q11 tractatus (11 BP), so tractatus seem comparatively more expensive. Let's take a closer look.

For 30 BP, you can get

three Q10 tractatus, which yield 30 XP in three seasons
a L10 Q20 summa, which yields 55 XP in three seasons
a L15 Q15 summa, which yields 60 XP in four seasons if you start from a score of 10.
a L20 Q10 summa, which yields 90 XP in nine seasons if you start from a score of 15.

While summae are limited by their level so that at some point only tractatus are useful, it sill seems that tractatus are too expensive. I set the price of tractatus to 1/2 * Quality, so for 30 BP you get six Q10 tractatus. Spending 6 seasons for 60 XP is still not as good as any of the above summae, but more in line.

Books on Occult Abilities are treated analogously.

Mundane books cost a pound [Covenants, p. 95], or 0.1 BP.

My proposal here is quite radical: Divide the cost of summae on Mundane Abilities by 10, and set the cost of tractatus on Mundane Abilities to 1 BP.

From a perspective of seeing books as an XP source, this seems unbalanced, but Mundane Abilities are not a priority for magi. BP are scarce and players will focus on books on Arts and Arcane Abilities. My guess is that not many players will buy a Summa on Area Lore at 20 or 30 BP when they can buy it later for a pound.

Money

The core rules set the price of stocks to 1 BP per 10 Mythic pounds.

This is spot-on: "Many “standard” sagas set the price of a pawn of vis at 10 Mythic Pounds" [HoH:MC, p. 115].

Specialists

We can compare the values of teachers and (Mundane) Ability summae (generally, teachers will only be available for Mundane Abilities).

The best summae available (e.g. L8 Q11 or L6 Q17) cost 35 BP according to Covenants and 4 BP under the proposed house rules.

A teacher with a source quality and level corresponding to a L6 Q17 summa would have e.g. Com 2, Teaching 6, Artes Liberales 6 (in the case of one-on-one teaching) and cost 14 BP. When teaching two people at the same time, he would be the source quality equivalent of two L6 Q14 summae, which cost 64 BP, or 8 BP under the proposed house rules. An alternative would be to buy one copy of the summa and have a scribe spend three seasons to copy it.

The discrepancy increases for Teachers posessing more than one Ability. A teacher with Com 2, Teaching 6, Artes Liberales 6, Philosophiae 6 still costs only 14 BP and, while less flexible, in the long run ist the equivalent of two summae costing 70 BP under the Covenant rules, and 8 BP under the proposed house rules.

Using the proposed house rules, the costs for teachers and summae appear to be within a factor of 2, which is good enough, especially since teachers can improve in play.

The sum of Characteristic + Ability is what often matters for other specialists, so the Characteristic should also be paid for.

Vis

The core rules set the price of vis Sources to 5 BP per pawn of vis per year, and the price of vis Stocks to 1 BP per 5 pawns of vis.

I set stocks at 1 BP per pawn of vis throughout the text. The only question is how to price vis sources.

My claim is that this depends on the speed of the saga. Leaving the price of a vis source unchanged means that for 5 BP you get either five pawns now, or a source of one pawn per year. The second option is better after only five years. The ratio in the Covenants book is 1:25, i.e. a vis source of one pawn per year costs the same 5 BP as 25 pawns of vis stocks. The current version of the solo rules set the price to 15 BP per pawn per year, which sounds reasonable.

Baseline

Vis sources are a necessity for covenants, and their cost tripled in comparison to the core rules. I thought it was sensible to give one vis source for free; this will help low-powered starting covenants more then high-powered ones.