Experimentation - Is it worthwhile?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Another thread spoke of experimentation. https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/experimentation-extra-botch-dice-due-to-magical-aura/172708/60 To not derail the thread, I'm making a new one about how worthwhile is experimentation.

Experimentation should involve a risk-reward. The question. Is the risk too high for the reward?

Let's do the maths.
Reward maths is easy. A simple dice. If the experimentation works an average of +5.5 to the lab total.
The risk maths is more challenging because it is a stress die and there's bonus botch die. I'll include my working out at then end.

Roughly 2 in 3 seasons with experimentation nothing bad happens. 1 in 3 seasons bad things happen. 1 in 20 seasons, the outcome is catastrophic. Exploding labs,destroyed items, etc.

For a maximum bonus of 10, and an average of 5.5, 1 in 3 seasons bad things happening, just seems too high a cost for any but the fanatic.

The maths
0 - assuming an aura of 3, and rounding, 4% botch (3.6 catastrophic result, 0.4% bad result) , 6% no extraordinary effect.
1-4 - No extraordinary effect - 31% decent outcome. (rolls of 2,3 or 4 and +1% for 1 then 2)
5-6 side effect - 1 in 5 are bad enough to say season ruined, 4 in 5 acceptable 16.5% decent outcome 4.5% bad outcome.(+1% for a 1 then a 3)
7 - no benefit - 10% not bad outcome, but no benefit.
8 - complete failure - 10.0% season wasted (+1.1% 1 then 4 & 1, then 1, then 2) 1.1% catastrophic result ( 1 in 10 chance object working on destroyed).
9 - special event - 10% weird.
10 - discovery 1% (1 then 5)
11 - impossible without exceptional risk
12 - roll twice 5.9% (as 1 bad result taints the outcome, 1.5% decent, and I've shared out the 4.4%)

56% decent outcome (keep bonus dice, no truly bad side effect, and a small part of the 56% may have a minor benefit)
1% - amazing outcome (discovery)
10.6% - lose bonus die, but no bad effect.
10.6%- story event (it would need an incredibly generous SG to say experimentation causing a story event won't ruin the season.)
16.8% bad outcome - wasted season
5% catastrophic result.

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2

To answer from experience: mostly yes.

Especially in combination with cautious sorcerer (or however it is called). My players mostly got more out if it than they lost due to bad things happening.

Even the "bad" results lead to plot (my player started a zombie outbreak in the Covenant after a bad ReCo experimentation).

3

Experimentation so far is necessary for Hermetic research and valuable if a specific complex lab project with limited resources shall be finished in time.

I never thought of it as something that the typical magus would use for the typical lab project - and this is fine with me.

4

Don't forget Inventive Genius. With that you're looking at +8.5 rather than +5.5. I've found it most likely that people who plan on experimenting significantly will have Inventive Genius, so this wouldn't be so uncommon.

Something is off with your math. Rounded to one spot, the botch chance for 1+3=4 botch dice would be 3%. It's 3.439%. That's less than your catastrophic result odds. Meanwhile, the single-botch (no Twilight chance) is 2.916%, leaving 0.523% chance of multiple botches (Twilight chance).

And then I would note that you get to subtract your Perception on the second roll, so the odds on the next table can be adjusted by a player interested in experimentation, as well as the more obvious Safety score of the lab which can be raised by several points trivially (as-in, 0-season effort).

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5

+11.5
Inventive Genius gives +6 to Lab Total when you experiment.

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6

Separately, one of the huge things to consider with these odds is, if you're not doing OR, how many seasons are saved? Let's say you have a Lab Total of 22 for a level-20 project, and you have Inventive Genius since you like experimenting. That's a 10-season project normally (ignoring routines for now). It's probably a 2-season project if you experiment. Let's say it takes you 4 seasons due to some non-ideal results. Well, you still finished in 4 seasons, saving 6 seasons overall. (Do remember you also get to double your MT if you invent a bad version and want to adjust it, which helps here, too.) So now it's only the catastrophic stuff that is really bothersome, and as shown those odds can be significantly reduced.

7

No, +8.5. You get +3 anyway, so you only get +8.5 more by experimenting instead of avoiding experimenting. It's not +6 v. +0.

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8

nods

So, on experimentation, it's something I usually do with Inventive Genius characters, and not necessarily characters who're specialized in lab text, or otherwise not really specialized in labwork.

Here is how I see it:

  • Your safety should be high enough to override aura and risk modifier. Since the average character I build to be optimized with labwork has a magic theory of 5+ (depending on age and interest), refining the lab isn't a problem, and that's free safety points, safety is rarely a problem unless I build a size +5 lab and don't take the time to refine it. It's okay to roll once or twice with botch risk chance... but if you're doing that consistently, you're risking your character, so I get rid of botch die pretty early.
  • I usually aim for risk modifier of +1 or more once I fixed the botch die risk chance. The idea is to increase the chance of rolling Discovery and occasionally, modified effect. Hitting Discovery one in ten lab seasons doubles how much experience you'll get from your labtime overall. With +3 risk modifier, you incur a very significant risk of wasting your lab season, but you also incur chances of hitting discovery more than once. I'm okay losing my lab season because the spell isn't exactly how I want it if I get 15-30 free xp plus exposure as a compensation. Sometimes you've ran out of books on Magic Theory and your main arts in your library.
  • Modified effect tends to be more of a pain than a reward, but hitting 4-6 on the right spell can be worth the pain on the rest of the spells. How valuable is it to develop a Pilum of Fire with range sight that's only CrIg 20? I'm pretty sure I can sell fifty copies of that lab text, and even if I keep it to myself, it's a +5 to penetration right there.
  • Incidentally, doing things at +1 risk modifier or more means that I'm consistently able to research a spell with a free magnitude in a single season over what I would be able to research otherwise. Low level effects, unless penetration is important, can usually be left to spontaneous magic unless you use them all the time - high level effects can't be faked unless you have LLSM. This can increase significantly your formulaic power. Even if you come to the conclusion that you will have to redo your lab season about 35% of the time, because of No benefit, complete failure, unwanted flaws, side effects and modified effects - you're still ahead of what you would have done if half those 1-season projects became two-season projects. And if you experiment on low-level spells, remember you can probably research two-three versions of that 2 magnitude spell depending on lab total, so getting a flawed one, hitting a discovery on the second one, and getting a standard one on the third iteration is a valuable season if you didn't need 2 spells in the same techform.
  • Exciting Discovery flaw can be fun to have stories even when you shut down your doors to do labwork, provided you have a gamemaster who isn't too much of a sadist and doesn't think "Complete Failure", "Fatal Flaw" and "Disaster" are the most fun results. I don't often take it, I've had that in just one game so far, but I've enjoyed it as a player, and as a gamemaster as well.
  • I'm a lot more careful with enchantments. Invested items and familiars are things I try to avoid experimenting on. I'm less careful with longevity rituals and lesser enchanted items - that varies on character.
  • Sometimes the side effect is a bonus in itself. I have a Sense the Weight of the X Aura spell in a game... who has the side effect of giving me the weight of the things arround me. I can't tell you how many times it's been useful to do something different than assess the aura - like deducing the presence of something invisible or hidden or fake.
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9

+1 risk mod = 10% chance of discovery, +2 ~= 11%, +3 makes life complicated because of rerolling twice 20+% of the time and the corresponding botch chances. I like +1 risk mod. Biggest increase to likely discovery with reduced likelihood of nothing happening and marginal (~+0.9 %-pts at 0 aura) likelihood to botching.

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10

Wrong question. You had better ask under what circumstances experimentation is worth-while.

Generally, lab work is a make or fail mechanics; there is no open-ended roll. So for any given project, the big question is how many seasons it is going to take.

I find that the biggest reward is with a lab total is just shy of making it in one season. Experimentation to save a season is a good investment in my opinion, and I tend to rig it so that the simple die does not matter. If the design is flawed, it will succeed the next season using the extra magic theory bonus in lieu of experimentation.

If the lab total already suffices, I might make a second low-level spell on similar reasoning.

If the project will take multiple seasons even with experimentation, I would say that it is only rarely worth it. The chance of getting through multiple die rolls without a flaw in the design is low.

Enchantments are a lot more risky than spells, because of the vis cost. Wasting the vis on a flawed item may be expensive.

Charged items is a different matter, since the bonus translates into extra charges and possible making a high-level effect not otherwise achievable. Surely there must be a case where this is worthwhile, but certainly not every case.

Now, in my experience, players experiment because they want the thrill of the lottery. Some cherish the surprise whether it be beneficial or not. You cannot put a price on that.

And forget about the 5½ average bonus. Not only is there inventive genius, but there is also lab virtues. If you start investing in it, there will be a lot of cases where the experimentation saves you a season, As my troupe reads the rules, you get the lab experimentation bonus even if you roll no benefit - you lose the benefit of the experiment but not of the lab - YSMV.

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11

However, if your lab total is so low, unless you are in dire haste, it's generally far more productive to increase your Arts first. If your lab total (including a +3 from Inventive Genius) is 22, in a +3 Aura, it means your Int+MT+Arts total is 16. So ... +3 Int, +3 MT, 10 in either a single Art or 5 and 5 in 2? Then about 4 seasons should bring your lab total to 30+ using readily available summae, and you can complete the project in 2 more seasons. Sure, it takes a little longer ... but you incur no risk, and your increase in Arts stays with you forever.

As for reducing the risk of catastrophic results ... well, you can do it by using Covenant's optional rules, increasing safety. But then, you have to ask yourself how much you can instead increase your lab total just refining your lab through those same rules.

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12

Oh, totally agreed. I don’t like experimentation myself. I was just doing a quick, trivial example to illustrate how some lost seasons can possibly still be worthwhile. It’s an important part of the stats.

13

Interesting. Is this how everybody reads it? Our troupe ruled that the level reflected the increase/decrease in potency as with the history of the OoH, the potency of PoF would probably have been acheived already and how many times can you affect the potency of a given effect?

W

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We also do it as @temprobe describes, though I think that both rulings are valid, just so long as everyone in the game is on the same page. In my Rudiaria awakening dungeon crawl, I mentally justified the infernal tainted pilum.
of black flame to have been discovered by infernal experimentation.

15

You know, technically, every book beyond the corebook is optional. Is there even a reason to point it out?

Well it would seem odd to me, at least, to recalculate the modified effects, but to ignore the side effects. Consider the core examples. Minor side effect. This should require an herbam requisite. Major flaw might require a perdo requisite. Major side effect definitely needs an animal requisite, and it breaks hermetic theory on RDT and the limit of arcane connection. Fatal flaw would require a requisite, most likely creo or Muto. The base book and the expansions are full of spells that don't precisely match the theory, some of them from experimentation. And we even have rules that suggest that spells designed with a weird RDT require an extra magnitude before your breakthrough, but not after. By that logic, it makes sense to me that you could get extra potency with no extra magnitude. Doing it the other way arround, and applying that logic to side effects as well, you could end up with all kinds of spells that you're not able to cast. It's bad enough to have an invisibility spell that makes you glow without saying it's a Pe(Mu)Im spell that requires +1 magnitude for the requisite.

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16

Yes. Where have you found players who treat anything as optional?

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17

There was errata added (Atlas Games | Ars Magica Fifth Edition Errata) in the last few years which says:

Extraordinary Results (p. 108): Add the following sentence at the end of the first paragraph. "The level of the effect is not changed by any extraordinary result, nor does it gain any requisites. This may result in a spell or effect that is more or less powerful than a conventional Hermetic effect of its level."

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18

Not much worse in my book & more consistant than being able to do something in one season that otherwise, the most talented Bonisagus would take a lifetime to create using original research.

Yet we seem to have an errata that says I'm wrong along with all the Bonisagi :wink:

W

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I accept this is smart. I think you've gone for the wrong exploit. Once you lab is hyper safe you want Creative block. Roll two dice. With the +3 experimentation, 19% chance of discovery, 1% chance of 2 x discovery, and that's only looking at the roll of 7. Factor in a 9 on the dice getting 2 rolls; 1 then 2 giving discovery; and 1 with a 5+ giving 2 rolls, I'd think you are close to 1 in 3 seasons discovery. Add to that 40% of your discovery result are roll twice, your average outcome is close to 1 discovery effect every 2 seasons.

The problem I see here, is if a player choose to do some spell design with experimentation to trigger discovery chances, and actually doesn't care if the lab activity fails, that is not a good thing.

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20

It's a tradeoff, I guess. I never really paid attention to Creative Block before you pointed it out. Thanks for pointing out something new! :slight_smile: The double dice seems counter-intuitive. You would think someone with a creative block wouldn't get results that deviate twice as much from the norm as normal. Then again, I suppose it's twice as many Complete Failures too. I think I prefer Exciting Experimentation.