Dragon Age in Ars Magica?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I'd like to preface this by saying that I am aware of the existing Dragon Age RPG. I own all three Sets and would play it with somebody if I had any interested friends.

However, I'm curious how well the premise of the game can be pulled off with Ars Magica's rules.

The most significant issue I'm seeing is related to magical versatility/power and Penetration. The magical traditions presented in Hedge Magic Revised Edition are actually diverse enough and cover the appropriate roles such that you could probably tweak and shift some traits around between them and emulate their magic quite well, and the Gift fits with how magi tend to be treated in Thedas. However, the issue comes up when you reach Darkspawn. Enchanted items are no concern; if we treat the Tranquil and dwarves as using a variant of Rune Magic, then the enchanted items won't need to penetrate to strike the Darkspawn. However, the traditions limited to weak effects also tend to have low Penetration. As much as I like the versatility of Hermetic magic in this regard, I feel as if sticking to Hedge traditions is better since Hermetic magic is far and away much stronger than anything Dragon Age magi have to offer (and with Hermetic magi focused on combat, mundanes also lose relevance entirely). However, the problem is that the traditions limited to weaker effects, such as Elementalists, also tend to face Penetration limits, along with being significantly less potentially versatile. The main two solutions I can see to this are either to give the Darkspawn very low Might and to combine the traditions together a bit more, or to use Hermetic magi and have their Arts become Abilities. But then, specialists can still do a bunch even with Arts as Abilities, and it would lead to even more overspecialization than is currently present in the system. So I'm leaning more towards the first one.

Also, I wonder about how to emulate the Taint and the Grey Wardens' resistance to it, though I imagine that'd involve some kind of Power(s).

How would you guys advise I go about something like this?

2

I've never played Dragon Age, but...maybe Darkspawn just don't get MR from their Might. They probably don't need MR to survive most kinds of hedge magic, after all.

3

Hm... Actually, if I'm not using Hermetic magi anyway, abolishing Magic Resistance in general, or converting it into Magic Defenses, might serve me very well. Thanks for the idea!

4

Could you change the variants of Twilight to Taint while using the same Twilight basic mechanic?

5

I could probably emulate the Taint with Warping, yeah. It'll be a little weird to figure out since the Taint works at a different speed depending on how exactly one suffers from it, but yeah, I could make that work. Give the Grey Wardens a potion akin to a Longevity Ritual that prevents the acquisition of Taint from other sources but still gives them the point(s) per year... This is workable indeed. I'll probably have to change the Warping effects themselves a bit, though, since the Taint is more of a "gradual buildup" thing and it's pretty impossible for it to be positive. I'll either use the mundane Warping effects for everybody, or maybe tweak the Gruagachan effects and use that...

The only real issue I see here is that it doesn't make sense for the Taint to get worse if somebody is affected by normal magic, but I don't know if that'll come up often.

Thanks for the thought!

6

I think thatn you could emulate with Binding and Spell Tethering the Enchanting Items rules from other game, Elder's Scrolls. And thanks to Against the dark, We got Dragonborns.