Help with Botch guidelines & examples per ability

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I wish someone could give me some hints about the botch procedure. Perhaps this is yet found somewhere in the forum, but could not find it.

1.- How many botch dices are rolled?

Unless specifically specified in the rules, I need some fast&easy system, so I' ve decided to roll as many botch dices as the difficulty "magnitude" of the roll.

The "difficulty" magnitude of the roll is the magnitude of the spell or 1/3 of the difficulty for abilities, rounding up. For example:

Casting a spell level 25, 5 botch dice
Climbing a wall difficulty 12+, 4 botch dice
Failing an attack dice roll versus a TOTAL Defense roll= 20, 7 botch dice

This way, perhaps there is a lot more botch dices than average, but it does not matter, it just needs to be compensated with the effects of the botch.

2.- Once you get a botch, you can spend confidence to avoid it (unless a long term activity). Lets asume the botch goes on.

3.- Finally, you decide the level of the tragedy, depending on the number of 0`s rolled.

So here we are. My imagination has a limit, my wish-list is to get some ideas for increasing botches per skill. The problem is determine different levels of the botch.
I ve found some good hints for combat botches in Lords of Men (page 126). Weapon Breaks, Hit ally, and so on. Lets say, what could be the difference between getting a single 0 or 5 0`s while doing a Leadership, a Swim or a Chirurgy roll.

Lets say Area Lore.
1x0: Lost some hours; 2x0: Lost 1 day, 3x0: Lost half week, 4x0: Lost 2 weeks

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

2

I would say that doing botch dice based on the magnitude of the spell is much too severe. Botch dice should be determined by the environmental circumstances--how much stress the character is under, plus, for a spell, one die per pawn of vis plus any aura modifier.

For leadership:
1 botch: Grogs decide you're out of it and completely ignore your commands for .
2 botches: Grogs panic and flee.
3 botches: Grogs panic and attack you.

For chirurgy:
n botches: Wound worsens by n levels, possibly killing the patient.

For swim:
n botches: Swept underwater, loses 2n rounds and must make a swim roll CR 10 + 2n to avoid drowning.

3

Ease Factor is the term you're looking for, Richard.

Yes and no to those examples. The leadership one... I'd say the grogs get your instructions WRONG. You tell them to hold the line, they refuse to take any chance to engage the enemy till they are up in their faces. You tell them to charge, they do so, and once through the enemy, carry on forwards, not stop to flank the enemy. You tell them to withdraw, they rout.

They also fail to receive any bonus for trained group, because they aren't acting as one. Penalise their skill total as a group by the amount of botches also.

4

Sorry. Duplicated post. Thanks for these examples,