Call for ArM5 Errata

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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I would like to ask people to send me any errata they have found for ArM5 (any book, but especially the core rulebook) that is not yet in the errata listed on the Atlas website.

https://atlas-games.com/arsmagica/arm5errata

You can post them here, or send them to arsmagica at davidchart dot com.

Edit: Please remember that errata need to be for a specific error, and so should ideally have a book and page number attached.

I am afraid that I cannot, right now, say much about why I am asking about this, except that it is not purely personal interest.

Please do not post anything other than errata in this thread; I have created another thread for speculation about why I am asking this. If the thread gets cluttered with other posts, I might miss errata, so I will move posts that do not belong here.

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I sent you a couple for RoP:M a week or so ago but never heard back. If you want I can post it here directly.

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Yes, please post it here. I was waiting for this to be ready…

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Realms of Power: Magic, on page 73 under the Hermetic Cats "Personal Magical Powers for Cats" section.

First the total calculated level for " Inconspicuousness" should be 10 rather than 20 (Base 4, +2 Sun). Other effects with that combination are listed at 10 already and correct.

Second, there are two mistakes in "Unmarked Passage". First the spell has a Range of Touch, rather than Personnel which is a requirement for all Personnel Powers. This has resulted in the calculated level being wrongly listed as 20 (Base 4, +1 Touch, +2 Sun, +1 for constant effect) rather than 15 (Base 4, +2 Sun, +1 for constant effect.

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ArM5, p. 102, first paragraph under Using Laboratory Texts:
"...may reproduce it in a single season if his Lab Total exceeds the level of the effect. If his Lab Total is less than the level of the effect, ... at least equal to the the level."

Exceeds and equal are contradictory.

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Realms of Power:Divine p135-136 says that all Jewish characters, including magi, must take the Outsider flaw (Major or Minor version). This is in conflict with the core rule that you can only take one social status virtue or flaw unless they are explicitly compatible with each other.

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A lot of the combat statistics in most characters or templates from a lot of books are slightly off. So much so that, whenever we need to use one, we have to calculate them over again. This is so common that we even created an excel file that does the calculations, which I can happily share if you want.

There's so many of those that I think it would be pointless to try to list them all. Almost any combat stat block is suspect.

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I will have to hunt it down again, but many animal stats have issues. One of the camels has a Str of +2, which is low, and when I was doing the Animals of Mythic Europe, we changed that to +4 or +5. There were a bunch of animals I had to recalculate and adjust.
I believe the African Elephant had Improved Characteristics 3 times, when it didn't even use one, since it's big size gives it more than 3 points from that Virtue.

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There already is an erratum about «study totals» versus «advancement totals», but there are some ambiguities remaining which should be dealt with explicitly. Notably in the elemental magic virtue, it should be made clear if `study' includes any source of experience or just deliberate study. There are probably more cases of similar ambiguity.

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Did hickory and platinum get removed/substituted from the shape and material bonus chart? As they were not known in real world europe at the time.

Bob

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Here are the ones I have for the core book. I’ll do a separate post for ones in other books.

There is a typo on p.37: "You may not take Major Vitures or Flaws” should be "You may not take Major Virtues or Flaws."

While most accidental occurrences of “Study Total” were removed and replaced with “Advancement Total,” they were missed in a few places: Affinity with (Ability) (p.40), Affinity with (Art) (p.40), Puissant Art (p.48), Deficient Form (p.53), Deficient Technique (p.53), Incomprehensible (p.55), and Wound Penalty -3 to -5 (p.179).

While normally Virtues and Flaws have been written well to avoid order-of-operation problems (alteration to quality, then multiplying advancement total, then bonus experience), there are some cases where this ordering was lost. Apt Student (p.40) and Good Teacher (p.43) should each add to the teacher’s source quality rather than the Advancement Total for students being taught. Flawless Magic (p.42) should probably double the Advancement Total like Affinity does rather than experience points to avoid potential infinite loops, though I don’t think there are any this one will actually trigger so it could probably be safely left alone.

Wind at the Back (p.128) should be "D: Special” rather than “D: Sun,” as noted in the description and the calculation.

The formula for the limit to which summa qualities may be improved (p.165) is somewhat nonsensical and does not match the example. The nonsensical part is that the maximum possible quality is lower than the baseline quality if Communication is negative. The formula is written "so the final quality cannot be more than twice the author’s Communication + bonuses from Virtues + 6.” I believe that that should be "so the final quality cannot be more than twice the sum of the author’s Communication + bonuses from Virtues + 6.” Without stating the sum is doubled, only the author’s Communication is being doubled. This fix solves the nonsensical part as well as matching the example.

I highly suspect the formula on p.166 for copying summa is incorrect. On page 165 the time required is based on the level for Arts or five times the level for Abilities. But the time required on page 166 is based on the level for both, not times five for Abilities.

The combat example on p.172 has an error. It gives a parenthetical note "note that Polandrus’ Wound Penalty does not apply to Soak because Soak is not rolled" near the end. However, Wound Penalty explicitly applies to both rolls and totals, so the reasoning implied by “because” is faulty. Most likely it is not the intent for it to be included on Soak, so the intent is there. Changing this parenthetical note to "note that Polandrus’ Wound Penalty does not apply to Soak because Soak is not an action” would, however, match the Wound Penalty rules and give the same result here.

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Here are non-animal ones from other books.

HoH:TL p.99 and HoH:S p.34: I wrote a huge post about Adaptive Casting on the forums a long time ago. Short story: according to its description, it cannot work and should not exist. This is because there is only one Spell Mastery Ability for one spell according to the core rules, and this says they are different levels of the same spell. On top of that there comes a major lack of clarity of what happens when you've learned different Abilities, when you write about it, etc. as well as a lot of room for abuse. So just deleting the sentence doesn't really solve the problem. The easiest solution is to delete the entire option and consider it automatic with different levels of the same spell. If not, there probably need to be errata for core and at least one other book that does align with the core book on this issue.

HoH:S p.36: Test of Flames should be T: Individual, not T: Circle. According to the core book T: Circle is not allowed for such Creo creation.

HoH:MC p.103 and GotF p.37: Forest/Nature Lore are not entirely in agreement. First, the type of Ability is different. GotF lists it as Arcane while HoH:MC lists it as Supernatural (near the end of the left column). Second, the methods of advancement disagree. GotF says only via practice. HoH:MC allows for exposure, practice, and adventure. HoH:MC is also unclear about which Quality is set equal to the Aura; it seems like that is for practice, as in GotF, but as it is written it applies to adventure and even to exposure.

RoP:F p.49: The first Size on the chart should be -11, not -1.

MoH p.40: Mold the Earth Within Sight should have "+1 stone” rather than “+2 stone,” and so its level should be reduced to ReTe 25. (The stat blocks on the other pages already have it correctly listed as ReTe 25, so they're fine.)

MoH, p.113: The Patient Spell uses the spell container guideline (+ 5 magnitudes) from the core book but accidentally does the calculation from the maintenance/suppression guideline (+2 magnitudes). So it should affect spells 3 magnitudes higher than it is written to affect. One sentence should change to reflect this: "The target spell can be of no higher level than the level of The Patient Spell.” should be "The target spell can be of no higher level than the level of The Patient Spell + 15.” or something similar to that effect.

ToME p.6: Most of a paragraph and a formula are devoted to Faerie Speech penetrating. However, according to both RoP:F and TC&&TC, which both give the actual Virtue, Faerie Speech explicitly does not need to penetrate. So most of this paragraph should be deleted or changed.

TME p.111-112: Both The Woolen Steed of Araby and Vessel of the Clouds have the same error. They both list +1 magnitude for extra speed, explicitly by analogy to the Rego Corpus guidelines. However, the Rego Corpus guidelines go from 5 to 15, a +2 magnitude shift, for extra speed. So those should both be “+2 for increased speed” instead of “+1 for increased speed,” which raises each of their levels by 5.

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Oops, forgot a core one:

Shared senses on p.105 uses the wrong base. A&A spends a while going into the guidelines from core and shows one sense is base 10 while all senses are base 15 for InMe, and core says InAn is supposed to match these. So "The base level to share a single sense is fifteen" should be "The base level to share a single sense is ten" and "for a total level of 30" should be "for a total level of 25."

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There was actually a few discussion about this one on the boards here:
[Core book, page 103]
Multiple adventures in one season - how much XP do PC's get? How does Independent study from HoH:MC apply in these cases?

It seems unfair to punish PC's and allow them only 5-10 xp despite several adventures in one season.

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Minor typo in HoH:MC, page 67, in the "The Path of Strife, Portrayed With Figures" infobox; the Script Bonus of the first entry (The Avenue of Faith in Strife and the Station of the Eater of Sin) lists "special Ppace and time +3"; should be "special place and time".

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Hermetic Theurgy.

  • The Lab Total on page 79 talks about a bonus for (Realm) Lore. Shouldn't this be Magic Lore, since there is nothing in the mystery virtue that says it allows to summon non-magical spirits, and RoP:M seems to categorize all described spirits as magical?
  • How do Spirits of Spells and Spirits of Form handle spells requiring Concentration or Finesse? (TMRE p. 78-80)
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Under the insert dubbed "Spell Spirits" on page 78, you got a following explanation at the bottom of the window.

"If the magus has links to other
realms, such as the Virtue Faerie Magic,
then he may invent spells to summon
spirits of those realms; otherwise the
spirit will have Magic Might."

This means that Spell Spirits can be of any realm you are aligned to with magi possessing Chthonic Magic or Holy Magic could summon Infernal and Divine spell spirits respectively.

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Similarly, stories that span multiple seasons. Presumably one should give out story XPs each season, but is that actually RAW?

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Just a reminder that errata need a specific reference. Book and page would be ideal, but anything specific will do. I need to be able to find the problem quickly, and there are about 5,000 pages of ArM5…

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On to the animal ones:

RoP:M p.141 and Book of Mundane Beasts: The boar’s Fatigue levels should be OK, 0/0, 0/0, -2/-2, -4, Unconscious.

LoM p.50: The Fatigue levels are not listed properly for the dogs. Everything is separated by commas, but there are multiple levels in different categories. Also, extra Fatigue levels have been added to the wrong categories.

Lymer: OK, 0/0, -1, -3, -5, Unconscious

Alaunt: OK, 0/0, -1, -3, -5, Unconscious

Greyhound: OK, 0/0, -1, -3, -5, Unconscious

Running Dog: OK, 0/0, -1/-1, -3/-3, -5, Unconscious

RoP:M p.142, LoM p.59, and Book of Mundane Beasts: Falcon/Gyrfalcon has been Communication 0 with no reason for it. They should either have Communication -2 or be given the Vocal Quality to make Communication 0 correct. As all the others in LoM and TC&TC are derivatives of this, the one change (albeit in three places) fixes all the rest.

LotN p.22: Defensive Fighter was not included properly into the baboon. It should have Brawl 4 (dodging) rather than Brawl 3 (bite). It should also have these Fatigue levels: OK, 0/0, -1, -3, -5, Unconscious.

LotN p.22: The Communication is incorrect. If they’re given Vocal or Mimicry, it would be 0 and there should be a note that it is +1 for the leader. If not, it should be -5 along with a note that the leader has -4.

BS&S p.46: The above two changes need to show up here, too, but exactly how is a little trickier because here the mundane animals are built off the magical beast.

BS&S p.46 and LotN p.22: Noting that mundane Callithrixes have the Palsied Hands Flaw, that implies most monkeys have better than that. However, Gift of Thumbs is listed as a Magical Quality, not a Mundane Quality, in BS&S, and it’s not listed at all in LotN. One fix could be changing it to a Mundane Quality in BS&S and including it in LotN; another would be dropping Palsied Hands from the mundane Callithrix, though this seems to run against what was intended.

Itzhak Even's comment about camels have too low Str is in BS&S p.136. Building the bactrian camels from here results in Str +1 rather than Str +3 as shown in TC&TC p.170, which is a problem. Also, the camel in MoH p.10-11 has Str +3. So presumably the camels here should also have Str +3.

Itzhak Even's comment about elephants having Improved Characteristics (only once rather than three times, though), is in LotN p.20. However, I believe that is correct, after accounting for Size. There are problems with the Characteristics, though. Cunning is debatable as 0 or +1 based on the ordering of Aggressive and Crafty; I would normally think this would end up at +1. The problem is really with Communication, which should be -5, only being -4 for the herd leader.

LotN p.20: The elephant has been given two non-magical magical powers without a Virtue even granting such a magical power, let alone a non-magical magical power. Should these just be new Qualities that are included under its Qualities? That would get rid of the nonsensical non-magical magical power part as well as solving the unlisted Virtues issue.

LotN p.19 and MoH p.10: In LotN the crocodile is also given a non-magical magical power without a Virtue for it, just like the elephant. Meanwhile, in MoH it's listed as a Quality (Roll Attack) but inexplicably described later as a power rather than a Quality. These should probably both be the same Roll Attack Quality with descriptions for Qualities rather than for Powers, as describing things as powers (especially without the non-magical note) causes all sorts of issues in disagreement with it being a mundane Quality.

MoH p.10: The asp's Quality Venomous is also in explicably described as a power rather than as a description of the Quality. This brings up the same issues as in the prior note.

Whether the decision on the three prior notes is that these should be Qualities or to keep them as (sometimes non-magical) magical powers, it would be worth noting that the dromedary camel (BS&S p.136 and MoH p.10-11) and the bat (MoH p.10) both have similar powers. These are not listed as non-magical magical powers, so the contradiction isn't there explicitly, and they're included among the Virtues. But they should all be handled the same way.

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