I would like to try a medFan campain in a "DnDesque" universe using Ars Magica rules.
One of the premisce of Ars Magica is that Magic need complex lab equipment and a lot of time which makes mages almost obligated to be fixed to a geographical place.
I'm searching for a way to make this work for a group of traveling adventurers.
First thing would be to supress the lab or make it much reduced like a simple
Just reducing the time to something like, one week would be probably too easy so I though that the players could "buy" seasons with XP.
Meaning if the player want to create a spell or enchante a device, he would just need to pay something like 10XP and get the equivalent of a season work of lab activity and not need any lab.
Do you have other ideas of adaptation I could use to have a "smoother" progression system ?
A verrry simple way, which does not need fiddling with rules or the background, is:
have your magi gifted by a common patron with a decent to good lab in a regio which compresses time, and some keys allowing the magi to teleport to that regio from any reasonably magical place.
Similarly, you could instead focus more on the kinds of magic / wizards that do not require much time or labs to do their thing. There are a lot of traditions that can be fairly mobile. Supernatural abilities in general are like that.
Practitioners of Faerie Wizardry, Maleficia and Miraculous Effects don't need labs and can just perform their magic, subject to the limitations of their chosen methods.
Grugachan and Learned Magicians only require writing materials for their "labs". Latter are also very fast when it comes to producing charged items. And thats just to name a few.
Muspelli tradition basically requires you to be mobile so you can find faerie auras to destroy, among other things. They're also basically the Warlocks of Ars Magica.
I have two games with "wandering magi". In the first one, the covenant are a caravan in the Levantine tribunal.
It's like a lab' on a building, but generally smaller, with mobile as flaw.
In the second, my character is a maga with a covenant and a lab... I think I used it 3 seasons on 11 years on game. To create a ritual that I needed. But My character has a mix between independant study and faerie-raised magic who allows her to create spells with adventure xp.
The other way that I can see is characters with virtues who boosts ceremonial and spontaneous magic like life-linked spontaneous magic, mystical choreography and certainly other same.
I did experiment with a (somewhat less-than-optimised) Diedne Magic character. It worked rather well I thought, though you'll want to be very comfortable with the spell/effect design before embarking on having your every casting be spontaneous.
One alternative is for your magi to not have labs. They can learn arts from books and spells from teachers. Or they can borrow a lab during downtime and learn spells in a lab with purchased lab notes of spell formulae. There are also mobile labs as a possibility, or taking a basic lab that is heavily focused on spells that can be taken down or put up easily, or perhaps occupy the back of a cart- if you take highly mobile and outdoors as attributes you could essentially have a set of lab equipment you can set up in any woodland clearing...
Unless you have a virtue like Faerie-Raised Magic, you need a lab to learn spells. Regardless of if you learn the spell from a teacher, a lab text, or invent it yourself from scratch.
I guess I was not clear enough.
I know the game allow for people, with more or less effort, to live without lab.
But what I want, is a full world where magic is easier to use when travelling.
From what you all said, I though that I could give some virtues for free to every mages like Fairy raised or Diedne magic.
Maybe I could also consider that most cities have labs to rent if I still want to use them but I would rather not.
Another Idea I just had would be to consider that, in this world, a simple circle traced with runes on the ground would be enough to serve as a lab if need be...
I suppose, that you will then decide upon the development of magic and magicians in that world. How would it work? How fast would magic develop? How much control will magi have over the world?
I plan to have several countries with different approach on magic, I was thinking of giving some specific virtues to reflect that (instead of a houss, they would have a country virtue).
A good thing would be to use all hedge traditions as Kodlak proposed but it's already complicated to understand one magic system for a new player so multiplying that would scare a lot of them.
The goal is to have magic accessible by everyone, like a farmer would know one or 2 CrHe spell, a Warrior some ReTe for is weapon and armor, etc...
The difference between a powerful mage and one knowing only 1 or 2 spell would then be the amoint of XP put in it and most player would rapidly delve more or less in magic.
Another thing I'm thinking about would be to have minor users very specialised. Like the farmer would have a "Ritual farming" skill allowing for every Herbam and animal effect related to his craft.
That would be similar to how the Carft amulet skill allow any kind of protection spells ins Ars Magica...
Have you considered the 'Rhine Solution'?
Essentially, you have settled magi and traveling magi. The settled ones usually have labs etc.
The traveling ones (Peregrins) can rent access (and hospitality etc).
I think you need to be much more specific about what in magic you want to be different and why.
If you want to make it easier to be "traveling adventurers" why not simply facilitate learning some fast travel magic? A couple of lab texts for different travel methods can accomplish this without changing any rules. Or situate the Covenant near a Mercere Portal Hub where they can have rapid access to the rest of Mythic Europe.
I would also urge you to consider how much a game of Ars Magica grows from and depends on the Covenant concept itself. The Covenant is part of what makes Ars Magica what it is as much as the magic system or anything else. And the choice of Covenant both in theme and location is part of what really defines a given Saga/game. As the choice to be near a Mercere Hub, to be a Covenant on ships literally on the move, or to be remote and difficult to access somewhere ... they all have a lot of ramifications.
Seeing that you want to build your own world I think this would be a higher grade of fantasy if you will than what Ars Magica strives for. The Gift for example doesn't appear to be a concern in this world. And one of the reasons that magic takes a lab and serious time in Ars Magica is the sort of "baked in" assumptions that it is generally a serious/demanding endeavor that requires academic knowledge and magical prowess both. You seem to be aiming at a magical society that has different underlying assumptions which make magic much more trivial to access, learn, and use?
The obvious easy way to make magic easier for traveling mages is to simply allow them to learn spells from lab texts without the need for a lab- come up with a "lab total" for learning without a lab and let them read the notes during their spare time. That still puts the invention of spells in laboratories but allows traveling mages to learn rote spells in something closer to a D&D approach.
I think there are two different issues here that require untangling:
a lab and
a lot of time.
It's 1, really, that tends to make magi "static". If you want, you can easily houserule that "lab" activities can be carried out without a lab . This is simple, and does not really break anything.
As for 2, time is necessary as a balancing factor to limit the number of spells a magus can know, or the number of single-use items he can make for himself or others. You can certainly replace time with other resources, such as xp... though this does not really make the "group of traveling adventurers" more viable.
I think you point to my biggest issue.
Toying with lab requirement can be done in a lot of ways but, in Ars Magica, time is an important resource and I need to be able to replace it with something else.
I thought about XP to buy spells or "the equivalent of a lab season" of work but i'm not sure on that one...
What's not clear to me is why. You can still support a "world of travelling adventurers" if you assume that people, well, learn over time rather than "through adventures".
It would not really help that much. In Ars Magica time limits the acquisition of xp too. Sure, you'll learn fewer xps (4-7) in a season of practice than in one spent having half a dozen epic, world-saving adventures (10), but it's not so different.
Now, it may be that what you want is world in which advancement is timed by the passage of adventures, rather than of ... time. This is something I've always disliked of D&D, but to each his own. In that case, I agree with your solution:
award xps to a character only a) at character creation - a fixed amount independent of the character's age and b) for every "adventure" they are in, regardless of whether it lasts a day or a year, though possibly scaled by the nastiness of the opposition, quality of roleplay, bribes offered to the Dungeon Master, etc. Character who do not "adventure" remain "level 1" forever, regardless of whether they are spending their time studying, researching stuff, practicing etc.
assume that magi can at any time spend 10xp to gain the benefits of a season of laboratory work (learning spells, enchanting devices etc.). This development is hand-waved to take place "off stage".
As for how many xp to give for each adventure, keep in mind that a mage of great, but still not legendary power (one 100 years out of his gauntlet - say, a level 20 D&D character) would have 3000-4000. If you assume you get to that level ofver ... 60-80 challenging adventures, then you should shell out about 50xp per adventure.